Anyone called to be single?

[BarbaraTherese]

Hi ASimpleSinner…actually here in South Australia we do have groups of people that suffer the same mental illness that support each other in many ways…this in fact was how I met some professional people who suffer Bipolar and talking with them was a real revelation.
As I envisage such a religious way of living in community for sufferers of mental illness, there would need to be some years of stability prior to joining the group or community. There would be open discussion too as a community of one’s illness, early warning signs etc. as well as regular visits to a psychiatrist and religiously taking medication. The ‘rule’ would be different to current classical type religious rules although incorporating many of the concepts perhaps with some adjustment - living conditions within the community would also be different from the norm.
Approval would be sort for the Rule of Life as a way of perfection for sufferers of mental illness. It would be a community life lived in community and actually it is quite well known in mental health circles that sufferers of mental illness receive cathartic type support from other sufferers and here in Sth. Australia Public Mental Health has set up positions known as Peer Support Workers who are sufferers of mental illness offering peer support to other sufferers. There are now plans, due to the outstanding success of this program, to broaden the scope of these Peer Support Workers. They are of course trained and we do have advanced education in the public education system to train in mental health work…and to go on to quite advanced training. Some of our sufferers here in South Australia are successfully entering these courses.

Is it possible for a sufferer of mental illness to lead a life of striving for perfection with total committment to the Gospel, and attain holiness, of course it is - hence it follows that to set up such a way of perfection or rule of life for sufferers is enitirely feasible. Whether The Church ‘is ready’ at this point in history for such a carrying through of the obvious is a totally debatable point.
I am fairly close to PUblic Mental Health and sufferers within that system are achieving very highly in the mental health field…no reason why this cannot be carried through into The Church, except as I said, I doubt The Church is ready for such an adventure. There is even a move in Public Mental Health to pay these workers (sufferers) as normal employees in more important positions. Currently Peer Support Workers are paid $22 hour for their services within Public Mental Health supporting and encouraging other sufferers.

Certainly my own psychiatrist who is a highly respected member of the psychiatric community in Sth. Australia would be delighted to discuss with me such a venture as I envisage and give me any help I needed. She thinks it is appalling that a person like me and at my now level of stability is precluded from religious life due to my illness…she is very much aware of the depth of my Faith and its reality and over my whole lifetime and that it has been a support re mental illness and healing factor in my own now stable condition - and has expressed absolute willingness to support any application I should make to a religious order. But things never got that far since she has been my doctor. My previous doctor did overwhelmingly support my entrance into monastic life which did contribute to their acceptance of me, although I stayed only a short time, and left not really due to my illness - rather to my misfit into the life itself and I felt if I persevered I may reach the point where my illness became active. I left recognizing God was not calling me to monastic life in that community as it was.

Because the many even the majority state something cannot be done is not therefore the reality that it cannot be done. It merely states that the majority think it cannot be done. Once upon a time and not too long ago the job brief for Peer Support Workers now being successfully undertaken and carried through would have been though within Public Mental Health totally impossible and laughable and not too many years ago either. It was in fact sufferers pushing for this that brought it into effect and at first in a very tentative way and quite nervous type of way by PMH authority. Now our horizons are almost endless.

Diamantina and I are continuing our own discussions via email.

Blessings and thank you for your comments…all are welcome…and any other sufferers interested can contact me via PM…Barb

 

[BarbaraTherese]

A last comment. Some of these Peer Support Workers were on disability pensions and after serving for a while as a paid PSW…some returning to higher eduction…have now moved on and are no longer on Disability Pensions and are in the mainstream workforce as full time employees by mainstream employers.

The biggest problem it is well known in making fully contributing and fulfilling lives in our communities is the stigma which states that we are unable to do so due to our disability. This stigma we are now proving in Public Mental Health is based on completely incorrect and false notions, concepts and information. Undoubtedly modern medicine in both treatment and available medications has changed the complete landscape of mental illness and what it means, involves and infers. Hence opportunity to prove ourselves and what we really can do and achieve is blocked by stigma which crops up everywhere and including in The Church sadly. If opportunity is denied and blocked to us then our ‘hands are tied’ at least hopefully initially and temporarily.

Some years ago we were visited by a psychologist who suffers schizophrenia and now practises and travels lecturing on mental illness. Shewas from the USA and had been for years (in her late teens) in a back ward of a psychiatric unit heavily drugged and as a complete write off. She fought her way out of this as some of us have done and is an outstanding example of what we can achieve.

Barb

 

[johnnydigit]

fyi i spoke to a Benedictine vocation director and he said there are many brothers and religious with mild mental disorders. it is not uncommon and they take it on a case by case basis. many are living perfectly normal religious lives.

so if one feels they can keep up with a community without being a distraction and yet are rejected, kick the dust from your heels and keep looking!

 

[johnnydigit]

I know Iam still young and have time. I just get to feeling lonely every now and then. I know I could get a date if I didnt have high standards but i have high standards for a reason

But why is it all the nice girls seem to only want the bad guys?

are you exploring the Catholic community in your area? Theology of the Body events or study groups? Bible study groups? young adult groups? conferences? meetings, pilgrimages, volunteering, stewardship, church events, etc. check listings for different churches in your area and start attending. even at schools and colleges - i.e. Newman club.

many young Catholics have no idea how many other young (and available) Catholics there are out there. get busy following God, talking and praying to Him, and He will send you someone if that’s your calling, guaranteed!
*money back guarantee valid for 3 years, cannot guarantee perfect match.

 

[BarbaraTherese]

fyi i spoke to a Benedictine vocation director and he said there are many brothers and religious with mild mental disorders. it is not uncommon and they take it on a case by case basis. many are living perfectly normal religious lives.

so if one feels they can keep up with a community without being a distraction and yet are rejected, kick the dust from your heels and keep looking!

Thank you for (name removed by moderator)ut, JD…your profile does not say where you are located. To my knowledge anyway here in Australia the presence of a mental condition puts up immediate barriers for contemplative female religious life anyway. I have never applied to active orders.
I would certainly encourage anyone who has been rejected for religious life for any reason to fully explore the issue and go on looking and to continue to look until the matter is happily resolved or all avenues seem exhausted. The core issue is that conditions can change and because I have had the experiences I have does not state that all experience is going to be precisely the same. I am 62yrs old and stopped looking into established religious life long ago. I now have two possible impediments, my age and also my mental condition.
I am not too sure what you mean by mild mental disorders. Certainly Bipolar is regarded as the second of the two major mental illnesses (the first is schizophrenia). That is as nouns and their broad general definition. How they affect a person in actuality is a broad spectrum indeed and hence needs be taken on individual case basis.
I have been told by a prioress of a large religious order that she feelts quite a few may indeed suffer with some form of undiagnosed mental illness and while such may have problems from time to time, they do manage to live the life well. Mental illness as a subject heading can cover anything from depression to psychotic schizophrenia and more. It is often not understood that depression is indeed a form of mental illness and on the frightening increase in our society often stress based.
Statistics now quite dated stated that one in five in the general population will suffer some form of mental illness in their lifespan.

Thank you again for the comments…Barb

 

[johnnydigit]

Thank you for (name removed by moderator)ut, JD…your profile does not say where you are located. To my knowledge anyway here in Australia the presence of a mental condition puts up immediate barriers for contemplative female religious life anyway. I have never applied to active orders.
I would certainly encourage anyone who has been rejected for religious life for any reason to fully explore the issue and go on looking and to continue to look until the matter is happily resolved or all avenues seem exhausted. The core issue is that conditions can change and because I have had the experiences I have does not state that all experience is going to be precisely the same. I am 62yrs old and stopped looking into established religious life long ago. I now have two possible impediments, my age and also my mental condition.
I am not too sure what you mean by mild mental disorders. Certainly Bipolar is regarded as the second of the two major mental illnesses (the first is schizophrenia). That is as nouns and their broad general definition. How they affect a person in actuality is a broad spectrum indeed and hence needs be taken on individual case basis.
I have been told by a prioress of a large religious order that she feelts quite a few may indeed suffer with some form of undiagnosed mental illness and while such may have problems from time to time, they do manage to live the life well. Mental illness as a subject heading can cover anything from depression to psychotic schizophrenia and more. It is often not understood that depression is indeed a form of mental illness and on the frightening increase in our society often stress based.
Statistics now quite dated stated that one in five in the general population will suffer some form of mental illness in their lifespan.

Thank you again for the comments…Barb

thanks i’m from california.

hm i guess i was thinking of depression and anxiety as far as mild illnesses. bipolarism and schizophrenia - definitely more severe, but if they can be controlled and affordable under medical insurance, i don’t see much of a problem. definitely a discussion for the vocation director. who knows, let’s say you have all four yet are perfectly normal with a $5 pill a day, sure why not.

oh btw, i mentioned how someone was told that they should quit their medication cold turkey and rely on God if they wanted to enter the order, and we both chuckled. i was assured that ignoring medicine is just not realistic in today’s day and age. God can accomplish the impossible but we still gotta use the common sense and tools He gave us!

 

[BarbaraTherese]

Quoting JohnnyDigit:

hm i guess i was thinking of depression and anxiety as far as mild illnesses. bipolarism and schizophrenia - definitely more severe, but if they can be controlled and affordable under medical insurance, i don’t see much of a problem. definitely a discussion for the vocation director. who knows, let’s say you have all four yet are perfectly normal with a $5 pill a day, sure why not.

Thanks Johnny…California huh! Have heard it is a beautiful place.
Like all mental illness, depression and anxiety can range from mild to very severe to a psychotic state. Bipolar and Schizophrenia while regarded as major mental illness and with treatment that is effective can also range from mild to severe to psychotic state. Modern medications and insight by medicine into MI is changing the ‘face’ of mental illness. Bipolar for example in my case is completely episodic and between times I am told I am completely normal (this is not unusal with Bipolar) if always eccentric which of course is not MI.
The other point of interest as an aside is that psychiatry is discovering that mental illness actually has physiological and biological causes which actually means mental illness is a misnomer and it is actually a physical disability that affects the mental functioning. So the future will see the misnomer “mental illness” itself die out. Bipolar was once called “manic depression” and this was changed to Bipolar as it gave people a completely false concept of what this illness actually is and how it can manifest itself.
As a complete generalization, both society and The Church are yet to catch up with the fact that available medications and psychiatry’s insight into MI has dramatically changed the ‘face’ of mental illness to a extremely marked degree over the past 30 years which of course as science and evolution of science goes is not such a long time. Even now, psychiatry knows it is still a baby science and in its infancy still and their hopes for the future are entirely positive for sufferers of MI. I do expect were I alive in 50 years time at the most to look back on my own experiences as an example as the dark dark ages. When I first took ill a psychiatric hospital was an appalling place, dirty, dark and dank. Not so nowadays.
I see my doctor nowadays only if I feel I need to and take my medication ($12 roughly month in total) regularly and my illness is in a state of “between episodes” as medicine would put it and I am completely normal if quite eccentric. My ‘eccentricity’ apparently takes the form of thinking outside the norm…outside squares and at times acting outside those squares. I can be totally surprised when others are surprised.

oh btw, i mentioned how someone was told that they should quit their medication cold turkey and rely on God if they wanted to enter the order, and we both chuckled. i was assured that ignoring medicine is just not realistic in today’s day and age. God can accomplish the impossible but we still gotta use the common sense and tools He gave us!

Yeah, this was me. I entered a strictly enclosed monastic situation and had to go cold turky on medication and rely on God who it seemed would protect me from the implications if I was indeed called to that Order. I left before I did get ill as I felt the stress I was under just could perhaps cause an episode and disrupt the community. Not only that they were still back in the 16th century absolutely. There were other reasons too.

Blessings and Peace with Joy…my regards…Barb