Stress can’t begin to describe how it feels to cope with being unemployed.

In today’s economy, with soaring unemployment rates, cut-backs, massive lay-offs and a consumerist culture shouts “buy, buy, buy,” it’s devastating to be jobless.

Furthermore, our cultural values are out of sync – how we value ourselves and our mental and emotional health versus the value of work, money and “stuff.”

(Ironically, volunteer work builds self-esteem more than a huge salary and it’s a great stress-reducing strategy while job-hunting.)

All this hit the headlines last week…

Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen belittled Mitt Romney’s wife Ann and her full-time career as a housewife and stay-at-home- mom.

“Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life,” Rosen said on CNN.”She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing, in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why do we worry about their future.”

That comment rang alarms with everyone across the political spectrum. Especially women.

Maybe there’s hope for me…

In today’s New York Times, the lead article in the Sunday Review is titled Where Have All the Neurotics Gone? by health reporter Benedict Carey.

Where are neurotics today?

It seems they’ve become a thing of the past. An old, dying breed. According to Carey,

“For a generation of postwar middle-class Americans, being neurotic meant something more than being merely anxious, and something other than exhibiting the hysteria or other disabling moods problems for which Freud used the term. It meant being interesting (if sometimes exasperating) at a time when psychoanalysis reigned in intellectual circles and Woody Allen reigned in movie houses.

“That it means little now, to most Americans, is evidence of how strongly language drives the perception of mental struggle, both its sources and its remedies. In recent years psychiatrists have developed a more specialized medical vocabulary to describe anxiety, the core component of neurosis, and as a result the public has gained a greater appreciation of its many dimensions.

“But in the process we’ve lost entirely the romance of neurosis, as well as it’s physical embodiment – a restless, grumbling, needy presence that once functioned in the collective mind as an early warning system, an inner voice that hedged against excessive optimism.”

There’s a mysterious, somewhat strange-sounding convention in psychiatry, I think. I’m not sure. I’ve never imagined it would apply to me, so I’ve never bothered to investigate it.

I’ve steered far away from. It scares me.

Leaving therapy…

Here’s how it was explained to me at the Eating Disorders Outpatient program I just completed. And remember, an eating disorder is a psychiatric illness.

For a minimum of two years, I was told, I could not go back to see my social worker, dietician or any of the practitioners who helped me begin eating normally for the first time in my life.

A follow-up might be possible, but now I have a psychologist to help me.

I suspect psychiatrists work in similar ways. I don’t know…

Once you say good bye. Once you receive your psychiatric “seal of approval.” Once you have your psychotherapeutic “walking papers.” Once you leave, is that it?

Do you venture off into the world on your trembling feet, vulnerable, alone? Independent?  Do you never see your therapist again? Or at least for a minimum of two years? That never seemed to be the case with Dr. Bob. It seemed he would always be there for me.

As anyone acquainted with me and this blog knows, I see a psychiatrist regularly for my mood disorder. We started seeing each other in 1991.

He’s an unusual psychiatrist…

Dr. Bob is not a psychoanalyst like my first psychotherapist back in 1960. She was Jungian and probably one of the only therapists to treat children like me in Toronto.

“A very, very, very difficult child,” I’ve been told time and again all my life. “There was something wrong with you.”

You hear that long enough and often enough and you begin to believe it, Dr. Bob reflected this week.

His orientation to psychotherapy is eclectic. We talk. I sit facing him and he sits behind his desk facing me. There’s a couch in his office, but I doubt anyone uses it. And an intriguing piece of art that says, I need you which I’ve written about here.

No. Don’t worry. I’m not getting into self-flagellation or abuse. Quite the contrary.

Here’s the story…

Back in 1977 when I joined the racy, irreverent tabloid Toronto Sun fresh out of broadsheet-biased journalism school (as all journalism schools were and probably still are) I had to learn to “punch up my copy.”

Make it grabby. Make it smart. Make it snappy. Make it sing. In other words capture the reader with the story and the intoxicating way you tell it.

The same is true when you’re looking to reinvent yourself in today’s cramped and constricted job market.

As far as presenting myself as employable, I have to “punch myself up.”

This afternoon, I met with a terrific young fella named James, an employment consultant, who works at a local agency that helps people navigate the job market and find work.

Or in my case, a new direction…

During the last week in February, I took three, three-hour seminars to get my feet wet in this pursuit. One on “Targeted Resume-writing,” another on “Interview Tips,” and a third on “Writing Cover Letters.”

All very exciting and frightening at the same time, especially for me because I have a seven page CV and no idea where I fit in today’s shrinking job market.

I wasn’t there.

I cannot attest to the factual accuracy of what I’m about to share with you.

But according to a very close relative with whom I visited this weekend, I was given “everything” ~ all the love and attention in the world ~ but “there was something wrong with me.”

“From birth,” the relative pronounced with profound authority, “you were a very, very, very difficult child in every possible way.”

That is one truth. But is it the only truth?

Take a gun. Aim it at my heart or head. Then pull the trigger. I have heard this from this relative and others in my family more times than I can remember. It is in “the family record.” It IS the family record.

And I am not buying that particular truth anymore. It’s old. It’s out of date. It’s been disproven. It’s no longer valid or real.

Perhaps I was difficult. So?

In 1948, the year of my birth, perhaps I was difficult ~ compared to other children and other “norms” of the period. Who knows? For sure?

Perhaps there were other expectations of me. Was I a bad child? Did I hurt other people purposely? I don’t know and it’s all history now. Ancient history.

A self-determination story…

Copeland, WRAP’s founder, has a dramatic recovery story beginning with her mother, Kate, who was taken at age 37 to a mental institution in the late 1940s.

She was diagnosed as incurably insane. Her doctors told her family to forget about this once vibrant and accomplished woman — she would never get well.

Doctors were wrong…

Kate began improving. Her mood swings became less severe. Several hospital personnel took a special interest in her, encouraging her to talk.

They listened to her and for the first time in her life, Kate felt emotionally supported. With the help of one psychiatrist, she started what was probably the first-ever patient support group called the Mental Health Fellowship.

She was able to organized her fellow patients and disrupt the program. So much so, that she was discharged after eight years. She reclaimed her life and lived actively and well until she died of a stroke at age 82.

Musing  a bit on madness…

Actually, the words “mad” and “madness” are quite commonly and innocently used in England.

Just here, in North America, there’s an aversion to it.

It’s time we reclaimed them, as gays and blacks have reclaimed the words that accurately describe them.

Frankly, I love the term. I love the fact that all of Shakespeare’s “fools” and “jesters” ~ often considered “mad” ~ were the only characters in his canon to speak the truth.

“Manic Depression” was changed to Bipolar Disorder by psychiatrists ~ to soften the sting out of this ancient and more accurate descriptive term.

Bipolar is a ridiculous and meaningless term…

What does it really mean? It doesn’t change the reality of living with severe, sometimes profound mood swings.

There are so many problems with the term “mental”, including a “them and us” attitude that will prevent progress in changing the perceptions of people about those of us who happen to live with emotional health issues, including mental health issues and addictions.

And who doesn’t?

Language matters. It’s powerful and political. And I don’t like political correctness. I like honesty.

A reader, who is very upset with my use of the term “emotional health,” wants to stop reading this blog and leave our community here at Coming Out Crazy.

I see “emotions” and “moods” as synonymous…

That’s where we differ. I am not my diagnosis. That the first thing. I am me. My mood disorder is unlike anyone else’s, despite a similar label. Oh, how I detest labels, but “emotional” is no label. It’s a reality of life. We all have emotions.

I wish we could sit down and discuss this…

But that isn’t going to happen because of our differences, which can be opportunities for learning. Personal growth, I think, evolves when two people can work through a problem and begin to understand each others differing opinions and perceptions.

Honestly, I interpret the word “emotional health” as a benign and inclusive term encompassing a whole health hemisphere ~ the other being “physical health” ~ and together, you have the totality of health. Mind and body, soul and spirit.

I don’t see “mental health” issues as disorders or illnesses or diseases…

Today, my friend, blogger and former babysitter Ruth Zaryski Jackson sent me Roger Cohen’s column in today’s Sunday New York Times titled The Happynomics of Life. Fascinating piece.

He opined about The Brits and their approach or lack thereof to our so-called happiness industry.

Ruth’s email was no coincidence…

Yesterday morning, we sat next to each other at the monthly meeting of the Writers’ Community of Durham Region, (WCDR) where I spoke last month about blogging. Remember? (Now, Marty and I are full-fledged members.) Yes, it’s been a while. But I don’t want to discuss where I’ve been right now. That’s for another post.

Here’s why Ruth’s email and Roger Cohen’s column clicked for me. Why she sent it.