Survivor Mindset

I wanted to share with you something about mindset that can be helpful in your healing process as you're coming off of psychiatric medication and going through healing and experiencing symptoms. I went through a tremendous, horrible, acute withdrawal process, and I healed from it, and I've come through it to the other side.

So I just want to offer my hope and my encouragement to you in your own healing, because there is healing in this, even though it may feel hopeless.

Today, I just want to meet with you right in this moment and encourage you right in this moment, wherever you're at in your healing process, about mindset, and what can help as you are struggling so much to get perspective on what is happening to you and what hope you have. And there is so much hope.

Feeling Blindsided

One thing that can happen as we're going through this is we can feel so incredibly blindsided by this, and so broken down. If that's you, just know you are not alone. So many people that I meet with and connect with have felt that way through this process, and I felt that way.

It seems to come with the territory, that this amount of suffering just seems completely out of our concept of what it is like to suffer, especially over a medication. It can feel almost like a betrayal. And in that process, we can feel like such victims.

Not Your Fault

I want to do two things here. I want to affirm that this is a suffering that has happened to you, but then also ask, what is the response to that which can empower you? This is not your fault. This isn't something that is a cause and effect of something wrong you did.

Sometimes in grief and suffering, our brains can latch onto, "Okay, what did I do wrong?" because we want to heal and to learn what we can do differently. But this isn't a "you did something wrong, and so this is happening" situation. This is something that happened to you, an injury that came because of medications.

The Victim Mindset Trap

And in that, it can also become tempting to have a victim mindset. A victim mindset is basically focusing on the victimhood of it, the helplessness part of it. There is a sense in which we experienced a suffering, this happened to us, and we have to somehow bear it, even though it wasn't something we chose into, wasn't something we did in some sort of foolish way that sent us there.

So I want to affirm that this is a real injury. This is a real suffering. This is a real hardship that isn't something you did wrong. It is simply a suffering that has happened to you.

But then secondly, this is something that you can heal from, and there are ways to respond to it that will help in your healing process, and you can learn those.

Learning the Tools of Hope

This is something that you can heal from, and you can overcome. It may seem impossible, like when you're in the thick of it, when you're in an acute wave and you're so disoriented about your life, "How can this be where I'm at right now?" It can seem impossible to integrate how this could have a positive, happy ending or outcome.

It can feel very helpless, but my encouragement to you is, you can learn along the way, along this healing process, how to respond to it, how to accept your own healing and your own timeline, how to work with your symptoms, and how to embrace this stage for what it is.

Those kinds of tools were so helpful for me, learning them from others who had more experience with suffering, more experience with life, and more experience specifically in withdrawal. Learning those tools from others helped me have ways to conceptualize and understand what was happening for me, and ways to respond to my own situation.

That's a way in which we can learn from one another. It also helped me have hope about the future, because I could see how this could make me like that person, if there was someone I admired who'd come through this or was enduring it. It gave me hope that I could somehow become more courageous through this process.

Adopting a Survivor Mindset

That is a mindset I want to invite you into, a survivor mindset, that has helped me so much, and I have seen it in others. I would basically try to learn from them in that mindset of, what can I learn from them to grow through this and to be changed in a good way through this, even though this feels like a horrible experience?

So I just invite you to have a survivor mindset, that this is something you're going to survive, and you might not be able to agree with that in a wave. I couldn't. I felt like I was drowning. It might just be a theoretical idea when you're in a wave, but just hold onto it out there. Maybe I can be a survivor of this. Maybe this is something I'm going to overcome. Maybe this is something that's going to change me in a good way.

That may feel really distant and really removed, but I would just encourage you that you can survive this, and that you can overcome and come through this, work with your symptoms, and grow in your skills and your abilities to respond to suffering effectively in a way that grows you as a person, and makes you a stronger person of depth on the other side.

There's something for people usually in this, that they gain through this process as they come to their healing. So there's something in it for you, and so that would be my encouragement to you, this isn't it, and there is something good that can be gained through suffering.

I don't know what that is for you, but there is a journey of discovery here. I encourage you and invite you into that survivor mindset, that this is something you're going to overcome, you're going to survive, and that your example and your story is going to help somebody else. So it is going to make a difference, and it is going to help, and this isn't all there is for you.

Life After Withdrawal

There's so much hope and so much healing and so much life after psychiatric drug withdrawal. I couldn't wrap my head around that when I was in it, but hearing it from others gave me more of that sliver of hope. So I just want to pay that forward to you, that there is so much life after this, and so much that is worth living for, that maybe right now you can't grasp.

But this process is finite. It doesn't last forever, and you can survive this, and there can be so much for you on the other side. So that's my encouragement to you, you are a survivor.

❤️‍🩹 Joanna