“Life’s not about waiting for the storm to pass…
It’s about Learning To Dance In The Rain.“
Vivian Greene
I was around 10 when my mother first took me to visit her friend in a psychiatric hospital in Kaliningrad, Former Soviet Union. Her friend was suffering from schizophrenia and had just experienced another relapse. When we arrived, an orderly led us through countless metal doors to a visitors’ room. Several minutes later, two nurses escorted my mom’s friend in to see us. They held onto her the entire time and told us that the day before, she had broken through a metal door in a fit of rage and paranoia. As she glared at us through the disheveled clumps of her hair, she had this possessed look in her eyes and did not act as if she recognized us. Any other child would have been scared.
But I was fascinated.
Something about it, about her, about the whole experience, just drew me in. Days after the visit, I still wondered what must have been going on inside her mind – and how she must have felt lonely and scared. From that moment on, I snatched up every chance to work with individuals with severe mental illness.
When I first moved to the U.S. in 2005, I volunteered at a state psychiatric hospital and took every opportunity to sit down and listen to the patients. Nurses and unit security constantly sent sideways glances and odd stares in my direction. While I was eager to connect with the patients, everyone else usually cut their interactions short, did whatever they needed to do, and left.
Throughout my schooling, I continued down this path to working with severe mental illness. As a Ph.D. student at LIU in Brooklyn, I chose to do my practicum rotation and then my internship at a state psychiatric hospital. Most of my classmates did not understand my choice. They preferred to work with the common population, treating everyday people going through difficult times in their lives.
To me, however, working in the hospital was the most fascinating and rewarding experience.
Those people in the hospital needed me the most. They had already been ostracized by society, abandoned by their families, and were completely trapped in their own minds – which, most of the time, was a very scary and lonely place. They needed somebody to just be with them and let them know that they were accepted unconditionally.
Now, I work in a large residential rehabilitation center that specializes in substance use and mental health, where we see a very high rate of relapse. When most people find out where I work and what I do, they say to me, “it must be demoralizing to see the same patients come back to the program again and again.” But my reply is always the same…
It doesn’t matter how many times they relapse before they finally get it right. I want to be a part of their journey when others have given up on them.
Some of the patients I work with will never attain sobriety. I still want to be there for them when they come back for help, even if it is just to guide them through the overwhelming feelings of guilt and shame and be with them in their most desperate and hopeless moments.
After all, the present moment is all we have.
I hope you’ll join me on this journey to understanding and coping with mental illness and addiction, wherever you are in your own journey.
I blog about experiences, treatments, coping skills, and more here.
Dr. SunshineThroughTheRain is a licensed clinical psychologist in a large residential substance use and mental health treatment program. She also serves as the facility LGBT coordinator. Dr. S earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY. She completed her doctoral internship at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, NY. She has been board certified in Clinical Psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology since 2018. Dr. S provides individual and group psychotherapy, psychological and cognitive assessment, and consultation to clinical staff within the program. While her background is mostly relational and psychodynamic, she also provides a number of evidence-based treatment modalities in both group and individual settings. These include cognitive-behavioral therapy for chronic pain, mindfulness-based relapse prevention therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy for depression, cognitive processing therapy, and motivational interviewing.
