Four Insights Into My Lived Experience With Recovery
- 9 hours ago
- 7 min read
Godelieve van der Leij has extensive lived experience in international business and recovery. Through her website and blog, both named The Surf of Life, she aims to support others throughout their recovery journeys and bridge the gap between business and mental health care. She is also actively involved in the Recovery Movement in the Netherlands.
In my previous article, ‘Why The Surf of Life is Recovery Reinvented’, I briefly mentioned my lived experience with medication, therapy, loss, and grief during my recovery process. These are the first things that come to mind when people think of recovery from any life-altering experience, like being diagnosed with a chronic mental illness, as in my case, or maybe recovery from substance abuse for others.
What does come to mind when we think of recovery?
1. A sad story, or ‘lived experience’?
Recovery from a physical injury from sports, or getting over a long-term relationship that has come to an end, can take months, or even years, and leave its scars. There is no better or worse when it comes to recovery. Losing the old and learning to live with the new takes time and is hard work. There is simply no way to speed up the process, and it is different for everyone. But luckily, today the Recovery Movement is ever-growing, and more and more coaches and counsellors are stepping forward to support others during their recovery process.
Related article: Summer Recovery – Why a Recovery Coach Can Be Your Greatest Ally
It took me years to find the ‘right’ medication and the ‘right’ dose for me specifically. I saw two dozen therapists, coaches, psychologists, and psychiatrists over the course of a decade, if not more. Then there were the years of grieving over everything I had lost, over and over again. Not just jobs, but people, houses, and habitats too. Luckily, getting over a fallback (read: manic episode) goes faster today than it did at the beginning.
I didn’t even know what bipolar disorder was when I woke up in the hospital that one summer day in August 2013, after my first episode. I had never even been in a hospital, well, maybe when my brother was born, or my grandma broke her arm years earlier. So, you can imagine my surprise when I woke up in an unfamiliar, bright white room (after weeks of sleepless nights and racing thoughts), a room that looked like the movies. I thought that was it. I must be dead, I thought, but I wasn’t.
Related Article: Understanding Hypomania In Bipolar Disorder
2. A recovery process, not just medication and therapy
What impacted my life most after I was diagnosed with Bipolar I Disorder was the constant overestimation by health care professionals. Since I was well educated and had significant work experience with large corporations, psychologists, psychiatrists, and business managers thought, ‘she’ll be fine’. I was, for a large part. I would still go to my appointments on time, and I even kept working for a while. I was able to articulate how I felt, organize my days around volunteer work, and live on my own.
This apparent self-reliance was tricky, though. Even though I felt fine most of the time, it usually took a few weeks, and sometimes even months, before people around me noticed I was not okay. The thing is, when I slowly moved from a ‘normal’ state of mind to the hypomanic phase, followed by the manic phase, I felt great. Larger than life, even. My thoughts went fast, and I became more and more creative. But soon, this would turn into paranoia and sometimes even psychosis. This is when it started to show that something was wrong with me.
I would be late for appointments because matching time and place had simply become impossible. One time, I even wrote on the wall at work and moved objects around in the hallways, like mannequins and business cards. ‘Ma’am, are you okay?’ the security guards asked me. My house would be covered with Post-its, think of that movie, A Beautiful Mind, by Ron Howard, starring Russell Crowe (2001).
The most dangerous thing that ever happened was in the US. I lived in Oregon at the time and had access to three credit cards and a car. For some reason, I felt like driving, and I drove. For a week. All across the state, from national park to national park. In snowy conditions, because it was wintertime.
My friends from the Dutch Club in town (Portland) had literally ‘lost’ me. They had to contact my brother in the Netherlands over Facebook to tell him, they had no idea where I was. Luckily, for some reason, I ended up back home after a week and found my way to my psychiatrist, who gave me the necessary medication.
Human Resources (HR) at work gave me some forms and two weeks off, but after that, once again, I returned to work before I quit my career in International Business for good a year later. I remember my senior manager saying, ‘It’s just a job’, when I was bawling in her office because I had just quit. But to me, it was not just a job. It was a lifestyle, a dream, that had ended. I had to leave everything behind and go back to Europe.
3. From book smart to street-wise, the ‘double culture shock’
What really gave me a ‘double culture shock’ was the social declassification that came with being unemployed. I used to work for companies like Nike and IBM, which paid me good money for the work I did for them for years. But without that salary, my life completely changed. I had to move continents, cities, neighborhoods, and even into a group home for the mentally ill for a while.
I couldn’t go on vacation to visit friends in the US anymore. I am out of money at least two days a week. I lost a great part of my network from university due to different lifestyles and a constant lack of money.
Among my university friends, I am ‘the patient’, but among my fellow patients in long-term mental health care, I am the ‘elite’. I am better educated, well-spoken, and have learned skills in school and at work that they don’t have, as they ‘grew up’ in care. I am the outsider in both worlds. Not good enough for the ‘normal’ world. The ‘top of the food chain’ among the other ‘patients’.
I get slightly better benefits (because I used to have a good job), am good at networking because of my work experience, and do well at my volunteer jobs.
Constantly having to adjust my perspective about the future and reinvent myself over and over again in different living environments was, and still is, exhausting. But don’t feel sorry, I am not trying to complain. I wouldn’t be able to tell you these stories if I didn’t have this ‘lived experience’.
4. Peer support, we support each other
Over the past few years, during my own recovery, I was a peer worker and facilitator at the local recovery college, offering a listening ear and mental support for others in recovery wherever possible.
At first, this was in the common area, and later I told my story during lunch sessions, followed by a Q&A. Finally, I facilitated sessions where we shared our recovery stories through exercises, which helped. You feel less alone in what you have experienced, even though you might not have the same experiences.
Life-altering events still mean letting go of the old and, step by step, learning to live with the new, whatever you have been through in your life. The great thing about peer support is that, unlike counselling or coaching, you do it together. I don’t just support my peers, we support each other. I don’t talk to my peers, I talk with them.
Related article: The Benefits of Lived Experience Counselling
Recovery reinvented
So, to conclude, recovery is not a linear process, as I advocate through my Surf of Life theory. It is like a set of waves, sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. So is life.
Secondly, recovery these days is about much more than medication and therapy, especially when you were once high up on that wave and now you are down. Don’t ever think your current situation will be your situation forever. Tides change all the time in this ever-changing world.
Luckily, peer support and the Recovery Movement are steadily growing globally by adding lived experience to the care package. What I am trying to do as an Experience Expert in Recovery is threefold at the moment:
Support as many people as possible during their recovery process.
Give people faith in their abilities to overcome.
Promote and grow the Recovery Movement as a whole.
So, have faith in your abilities to overcome, this too shall pass. When you have to recover from a life-altering experience (whether it is an illness, a broken relationship, or the end of a career), take your time. Let go of the old and learn to live with the new, it is a process, always.
Read more from Godelieve van der Leij
Godelieve van der Leij, Experience Expert in Recovery
Godelieve van der Leij is a former IBM and Nike employee. After being diagnosed with a mental illness in 2013, she began working on her own recovery and became involved with the Recovery Movement. This experience inspired her to share the idea behind The Surf of Life, which compares life to a series of waves with its inevitable ups and downs. She is the founder, content manager, and author of the website and blog of the same name, which aims to “give people faith in their abilities to overcome.”
