Stories of Hope and Healing – David

DAVID

David is a 45 year old man who lives with a mood and anxiety disorder that is treatable with medication, but has no cure. He is able to function fairly well on a daily basis and have a full personal, work and family life. He goes through cycles where the illness demands more of his time and energy and he has to adjust his life and activities accordingly.

He has learned to cope with what each day brings. He has learned to be flexible, listen to his body and state of mind and act accordingly. He has learned to change things on a dime, to live in the moment, and to breathe. He is a lover of life and has a tremendous capacity to embrace life and whatever it brings everyday.

He is not comfortable with the word healing, but is more comfortable with the word recovery. For him, healing implies closure or resolution. There is some inference that if you are going to heal at some point you will be done. Healing is something you undertake with a particular outcome in mind.

hHe likes the idea of recovery because to him it contains a sense of movement, or is a process toward greater health and well being that is ongoing. Recovery for him is not spiritual but physical – with physical results of greater freedom and capacity to function.

Recovery exists in the present – a kind of biofeedback in relation to what has come before and what you want to do in the future. But it is always expressed in the present. The present communicates to you about how you feel right now in relation to the past- you feel better now than you did last week. In the now, you feel satisfied that you can function and what you want to do (future) and what you can do are closer together.

He sees recovery as “that in-between place where there is movement demonstrated in your life right here and now as a physical being.” That place between what I did and what I want to do. It measures itself in the moment.

He sees illness as a deepening into life, a life path. He says:

“The problem doesn’t have to go away. We just learn how to better cope with it and grow ourselves in a way that leads to a deeper connection with ourselves and life in general. Now, if the problem is resolved and goes away, well, then I would say that this would be a full and complete recovery.”

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