User and Carer Perspectives on Mental Distress – promoting recovery

Duration: 6.19 mins 

Speakers: 

S1       - Interviewer, Tracey Holley 

S2       - Pat Caplen 

S2       So, how can our perspectives help to promote recovery?  It becomes clear that we obviously need to talk to someone in some way and somebody who can understand our language. 

S1       Absolutely.  I think that’s the first point of call isn’t it? It’s having that someone with ears who can actually listen and can actually hear what we have to say and not try and, erm, either calm us down or sanitise what we’re saying, just really listen to the actual words coming from our mouths. It’s interesting, you were talking in symbolism earlier on. That was your way of connecting with what was going on inside your head and for me, I’ve learnt about trying to describe the indescribable and actually the fact that my own words, you know, are important.  I think especially when you have professional help and there’s a professional sitting alongside you and if they speak the same language it’s so much easier, but even better is when they listen to your words and reiterate things in your own words.  I remember my therapist, I was quite frightened of saying what I was thinking because I had really bad issues with self-worth, you know, no-one wants to listen to what I say or how I feel, you know, I’m not worthy of the space or the time.  But the fact that she actually used my exact phrase and put it up on the blackboard and printed it off on a card, that was my words, that validated my experience, that that honoured my emotion. That was powerful stuff and I think if you have that together with a really good therapeutic relationship, somebody who can speak to you on your level.  Sometimes they’re not in that professional mode as well. It’s the people that you come into contact with that can really help you on your way to your recovery and eventual independence because they give you that sense of hope and self-belief as well. 

S2       The trouble we have here is that a lot of therapists will not understand that – I mean I obviously had never talked about hearing voices because there are connotations.  How can I be a non-service user, a carer, and in fact hearing voices?  But it’s been my recovery. My husband used to laugh at me for what I did to help myself recover and if professionals don’t understand that these voices are real and they have meaning, then they’re not on the same wavelength. 

S1       Mm.  Have you become a service user because of your hearing voices? 

S2       No. 

S1       We must get that clear. 

S2       OK. No, I’ve never, because I haven’t felt as though I needed to. 

S1       Yes.  Maybe, I don’t know, if you’d come face to face with a psychiatrist, you know, the medical model, you know, maybe – I’m saying maybe – he might or she might have viewed it differently. 

S2       Sure. 

S1       And said, you know, ‘this is not right’. But you are functioning more than most people in fact. 

S2       I’ve gone through phases when things get very bad, but we all, as carers, we do. 

S1       As carers, as human beings, as everybody would. 

S2       Yeah.  I’ve been depressed but I suppose it’s who decides who does actually go for help and who doesn’t and I’ve just been one of those that haven’t.   What other things have we found useless as tools for recovery? Of course, one of my major ones was meditation and I think we’re beginning to realise that meditation can be very useful as a tool to recovery. 

S1       That’s if you’re the type of person who can actually sit down and be at one with yourself. For me it was very difficult to do that. 

S2       It is difficult, that’s the whole point. It is but it is the training of that that is the answer to that.  No, it’s not easy. In fact the harder it is, the better a meditator you are. 

S1       Right.  The other coping mechanisms that I have are, well, I know that eating properly – if you eat shit, you feel shit, basically – pardon the language, but it’s so true. 

S2       It’s true. 

S1       And I couldn’t believe it and it was only when I got my self-worth up, my self-belief back, that I was worthy enough to eat good food and actually missing out certain food in my personal case made me feel so well physically and that just made me able to think straight, more confidence and then I discovered exercise.  Because I was losing weight, I was able to move more freely. The exercise was absolutely amazing, you know, you get high on the exercise basically. 

S2       But physical and mental wellbeing go together. 

S1       I think so. 

S2       And trying to treat one without the other.. 

S1       Yes. For me there’s another element though, Pat, there’s a third element which we’ve touched upon which is the spirituality element. 

S2       Yes. 

S1       And without offending anybody’s religion, for me the Holy Trinity for me would be the mind, body and spirit.  That’s what’s really, if I pull those together, I can pull myself together in a really healthy way. 

S2       Yes, yes, absolutely.         

END OF RECORDING