On Running and Recovery

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Running is a counselor. It is always there for you on bad days. It counsels perseverance and shows that you have more strength than you realize. It is cathartic, transformational.

When I was sixteen, I was diagnosed with depression. One diagnosis led to another; I was bipolar, borderline, had PTSD, ADHD. I was prescribed antidepressants, Ritalin, Klonopin, antipsychotics. I kept looking for someone to figure out what was wrong with me and fix it, but the more diagnoses and medications I received, the worse things seemed to get. I accumulated more and more negative experiences and began to feel so negatively about myself, that I came to believe I was irreparably damaged and that my life wasn’t worth living.

A bright spot during those dark days was when I was running. When I ran I felt strong, connected to my body and comfortable in my own skin. I could meet the eyes of people I passed on the street and smile. I would set out with my Walkman and mix-tape and run from my pain and shame and with each mile they seemed further and further away. If I was angry I would imagine that, with each stride, I was stomping on whatever or whomever was bothering me, and before I knew it, the anger had dissipated. Sometimes during a run, I would look up at the sky and feel the breeze cooling my skin. I would be overcome with exhilaration, gratitude for life.

However, things got worse before they got better. I’d become so self-destructive that I needed to leave school and move back in with my parents. I wondered if I would ever be able to create a life for myself. As fate would have it, while working at a coffee shop, I met a social worker who encouraged me to apply for a job at a local residential program for children. It was there that I discovered my capacity to give help, instead of always being the person who needed it. I would read bedtime stories to the children, and sit outside their doorways when they were scared so that they could fall asleep. It was there that I truly started down the road to recovery, and also discovered a career path.

As I continued to work in the human services field, I often found myself confronted with my past. I would hear colleagues talk about “borderlines” or describe clients as “low-functioning,” “manipulative”, or “emotionally fifteen”, and I would wonder how people were supposed to start feeling better about themselves when this was how they were seen by those who were there to help them. It seemed that our mental health system had become so focused on symptoms and finding out what was wrong with people, that we had forgotten to look for what was right, how to bring out a person’s strengths.

I joined the peer/recovery community in Boston, first through MPOWER, an advocacy organization. I am now a social worker, taking classes in expressive therapy and in the process of becoming a certified Peer Specialist. I recognize how far we have come from a strictly medical model, with the incorporation of employment, housing and peer supports into many mental health programs, but I know there is still a long way to go. I share a vision with others in the peer/recovery movement, of a mental health system that inspires hope, is strengths-based, and offers a broad range of supports, recognizing that there are many dimensions of our wellness, including spiritual, occupational, intellectual, financial, environmental, social, emotional, and physical (Peggy Swarbrick, 8 Dimensions of Wellness).

On September 22nd 2013, 9am at Jamaica Pond, the Transformation Center is hosting its second annual 5kFlight, a 5k run/walk/move to raise awareness of the role of exercise/wellness in mental health recovery. DMH Commissioner Marcia Fowler and Jamaica Plain Representative Liz Malia will be speaking. The event is a great opportunity to meet people in the Massachusetts peer/recovery community, to support the statewide peer organization, the Transformation Center, and enjoy an autumn day at Jamaica Pond. I hope it will inspire others to discover the joy of running, walking and moving.

I first discovered running when I joined the cross-country team in high school. I still think of some of the tips our coach Mike Glennon gave us. I think they apply not only to running, but to recovery as well:
On adversity: when you see a hill, don’t slow down, speed up. Dig you heels into the hill!
On supporting one another: “It is a lot easier to run with someone, then a few strides behind them.”
And on not giving up: “Just don’t stop; keep going you can make it!”

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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Cassie Cramer
Cassie is a social worker (MSW, LICSW) and active member of the Boston peer/recovery advocacy community.  She works with older adults in the community, providing in-home counseling and connecting people with resources to live in their homes or the setting of their choice.  She is also coordinator of the Transformation Center 5kFlight, an annual race/walk/movement event to raise awareness of the role of exercise/wellness in mental health recovery, and to raise funds for peer-run wellness programs.

1 COMMENT

  1. I LOVE everything you wrote, Cassie. I am so inspired by the writers here at MIA and your ability to rise above the adversities especially being so young, very transforming for me. Bless that encounter with the social worker when you were working at the coffee shop who encouraged you to work with the children’s residential program. It seems that was the springboard for you to fill a need and eventually further your education and continue ways to help others.

    I so agree that holistic therapies and natural ways to raise endorphins (e.g running) are some great antidotes to stress, depression… “If only” what I have learned since my son’s almost overnight descent into the tainted MH industry began at age 23, I believe he could and should be alive today. But tragically, the myopic assessment by the MH facilities and the programmed for profit psychiatrists did not share what I have since learned after his death (19 months ago at age 25): the iatrogenic bipolar label was a reflection of the psychoactive chemical substance (cannabis) that showed up on his tox screen and some significant stressors he was facing. “If only” he and his family could have been given the tools to help him overcome his adversity, instead of further victimize him with forced neuroleptic drugs, brainwashing and stigmatizing he had a chronic, mental illness for life. This young man who had always had more friends, successes and positive outlook than a 100 kids his age.

    You offer such an upbeat, optimistic outlook which I believe (in the utopia I envision) as the more of us unite with stories of these horrors then good shall rise from it all. This week’s plethora of writings on MIA have been so moving. In my sadness since my son’s untimely death by suicide, I’m beginning to feel HOPE that one day, alternative therapies will be mainstream and drugs for MI will be reserved for only those that believe they are beneficial to them. It remains unfathomable to me that instead of helping a person find their strengths and focusing on what is right with them, the traditional system in MH is just the opposite. There is no logic in the system I watched take my son down. It haunts me I could not do more to save him.

    As I Monday morning quarterback what happened to him, the answers to how his recovery should have transpired seem so obvious now. But the machinery in this MH industry blindsighted us as it unfolded. I want to be part of the solution how we, as a society, get from where we are to where we need to go so anyone, like my son, who gets caught up with MH issues receives the help and support for a full recovery. Thank you for sharing your story.

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