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Rapunzel: let me tell you about my brother...

Your story touched me Rapunzel. No need to acknowledge this response, I just wanted you to know that.

Munkee: It is very hard to live like this, but I push myslef to keep going if not for me, for my family. I cannot abandon my husband and son. So I have to keep on for them. If it was just me, it would be a different story. Not only does a person with schizophrenia often feel depressed and useless, but the other problems with delusions, hallucinations and in my case paranoia are unbareable at times. Not to mention that stigma of being "mentally ill". Oh no! He or She is a lunatic! People shy away when they find that out. This is why I hide my illness from everyone except my husband. Your brother must have felt so alone.

I remember quite early in my own recovery process, my sister commented that I seemed to have a lack of self-esteem. I laughed and replied that in order to have a sense of "self-esteem" one must first have a sense of "self" to attach the "esteem" to!

One of the best models I've found for understanding my own experience is that of ego collapse. The ego is a structure of the personality that is made up of what we believe to be true about ourselves, others, the world around us, and our place in it. We form these beliefs as based on our relationships, our experiences, the roles we play and the activities we engage in. All of these combined, create our ego -- which for most of us, creates our sense of who we are. It stands to reason that if you have no sense of self, you cannot possibly have a sense of self esteem. It was essential for my own recovery that I manage to create a new sense of self-identity. How do we do that? I think we have to look to how we did it the first time around: The ego is a structure of the personality that is made up of what we believe to be true about ourselves, others, the world around us, and our place in it. We form these beliefs as based on our relationships, our experiences, the roles we play and the activities we engage in.

In a manner of speaking, this stage can involve a lot of reality testing -- much as Rapunzel challenged you to examine if what you believe is true about women is really true. After all, Belief and Truth are not synonyms; the mere fact that we believe something is true doesn't mean it is. Sometimes, what is true is obscured by our perspective. If we shift the perspective we may find the Truth or at least, a glimpse of it.

For recovery to occur, healing has to unfold on at least five distinct levels: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and relational. The relational aspect can possibly be better understood if we draw a diagram:
[*] Picture yourself standing in a circle. That's you. Your relationship with your self must be addressed within this space.
[*] Now, draw another circle around the first one. That's where your closest intimates go -- your husband, your son, perhaps other family members and friends. These two circles are the most intimate and also the places where we're most vulnerable.
[*] Now, draw another circle around the first two. This circle encompasses the relationships we have with the immediate larger world -- work, school and other individuals within our communities and extended families.

We can keep drawing circles to represent ever expanding relationships -- culture, country, continent, world, universe. Within each of those expanding circles, we will have different roles, relationships, activities, experiences and beliefs. All those, together, create our sense of self-identity but it all starts at that very innermost circle where we have our relationship with our self. That one, impacts every other circle. If it isn't healthy, none of the rest of them will be which is why it's such an essential task.

Rebuilding the self is a lengthy process and it's not a linear process, it's a multidimensional. But as we interact with the world around us we will find ourselves creating new roles, new experiences, new beliefs, new activities, new relationships, and thus, a new sense of self-identity. Slowly, we come back down to our bodies.

I'll close this post with a couple of links -- food for thought stuff. Feel free to read them, take from them what you find useful and to discard that which you do not...
[*] The Spirit of Tonglen
[*] <a href=http://spiritualrecoveries.blogspot.com/2006/05/spiritual-emergency-my-definitions-of.html>spiritual_emergency: My Personal Definition of Recovery</a>
[*] <a href=http://spiritualemergency.blogspot.com/2006/01/archetypes-individuation-process.html>The Individuation Process: The Shadow</a>