Falling To Peaces

By Carol Coussons de Reyes

Falling To Peaces: Rerelease Edition is meant to engage the reader in the power of story.  Story is at the heart of our humanity and the reason our culture moves forward.  Carol shares a first-hand account of what it is like to have a mental health condition that includes depression, bipolar disorder, and post traumatic stress disorder

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Dec 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781643452845

Carol Coussons de Reyes

Carol Coussons de Reyes is a certified peer supporter and specialist in the State of Georgia. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in psychology. Carol has worked as a peer, consumer researcher, university adjunct faculty, and staff psychologists. Most notably, she was the Director of Consumer Relations and Recovery for the State of Georgia in the Department of Mental Health. Later, she served as the Director of Consumer Affairs for the State of Nebraska. Currently, she works for the Georgia Crisis and Access Line as a peer support services administrator. She is also the President of Mission Zero, when is a new non-profit working to reduce suicide to zero in Georgia. She is a member of the National Survivor Network of Human Trafficking Survivors and the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network in Georgia. She has directed several short educational films on recovery and peers support and written wellness curriculum. Frequently, she speaks at conferences leading workshops on different topics, like Healing Trauma through Art, the Contagion of Hope, or Relational Health. Annually, Mission Zero leads a fun summer camp to hone the story of hope in kids. Carol's son Gabriel is a Taekwondo enthusiast, Harry Potter fan, gamer, and public speaker himself.

Book preview

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction: The Gift

Pages from My Diary

Glancing into the Eyes of a CIA Assassin

Peace

Falling To Peaces

Archangel

War with Madness

Our Summer American Dream in 2006

The Phone Call in Early Fall of 2006

My Mirror

Peace

The Contagion of Hope in Suicide Prevention

Making Peace with My Truth

About the Author

An inspiring story of how one woman worked hard to succeed in turning the terrifying challenges of trauma and mental illness into life-affirming gifts that help to redeem our world. Highly recommended for anyone who has considered giving up and is searching for reasons not to.

—Larry Davidson, Ph.D.

Professor of Psychiatry

Director, Program for Recovery

and Community Health

School of Medicine and Institution for Social and Policy Studies

Yale University

(http://medicine.yale.edu/psychiatry/prch/)

Senior Policy Advisor

Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services

(http://www.ct.gov/dmhas/site/default.asp)

Editor

American Journal of Psychiatric

Rehabilitation

(http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uapr)

Yale PRCH

Building 1 Erector Square

319 Peck Street

New Haven, CT 06513

U.S.A.

Carol takes us through her lived experience by giving us a view of her journey of mental health struggles. Such a journey spreads understanding of the reality of mental health challenges and the hope of recovery.

—David W. Covington,

LPC, MBA, CEO & President,

RI International

"I applaud Carol’s courage in honest admission of beliefs and note, as I know her today, that thoughts held while ill are but shadows that stigmatize a person in recovery.

I think she truly believes that love conquers all and it is not so much what a person thinks or believes but how much you care about them that matters."

—Jerome Lawrence,

Artist and Mental Health Advocate

Carol Coussons de Reyes unapologetically exposes her life, her truth, by taking anecdotes and mixing them with stories written during times when she was not well. Her brutal honesty is refreshing and takes us on her valiant journey into a perilous world that few people know firsthand. Carol masterfully navigates how bad things were for her through pivotal experiences in her life, she introduces us to the heroes she met along the way that armed her with knowledge and courage, through the many places and positions that shaped her personally and professionally, to finally be the mental health champion she is today. Falling To Peaces is a must read for anyone who wants to better understand how people with mental illness can recover, improve their lives and stand up for those that cannot yet stand up for themselves.

—Pierluigi Mancini PhD,

Author of ¡Mental! In The Trump Era.

https://www.amazon.com/iMental-Trump-Era-inspirational-immigrants/dp/1987762975/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525603871&sr=8-1&keywords=pierluigi+mancini&dpID=51A5Rzdv-PL&preST=_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

Pierluigi Mancini, PhD

President

Multicultural Development Institute, Inc.

d/b/a El Doctor Mancini

[e-mail]

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierluigi-mancini-phd-7bb1bb1

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eldoctormancini

Twitter: @eldoctormancini

Carol’s story is a beautiful reflection of perseverance and courage. Her willingness to press into life relentlessly inspires us to believe and hope through our most difficult times. Falling to Peaces is a wonderful title for a story that shines a bright light for the path of recovery to be revealed.

—Alexia Jones,

CEO, BFA,MBA, CARES,CPS

R2ISE, INC

www.r2isetheatre.org

To my son,

You are so beautiful, smart, intelligent, and bright like a shining star in the sky. I love you immensely and hope you always keep on with hope in your vision on the difficult days. The worst days give us appreciation of the best. Thank you for your continued advocacy. You give life to others!

To my husband,

May you find your dreams always. Thank you for the work you do to support me and our family every day.

To Jerome Lawrence,

Thank you for showing me the finiteness of life. You are an amazing artist!

To Al Frost,

Thank you for motivating me to do more with this medium in my life. You inspire me.

To the National Survivor Network for human trafficking survivor network,

Thank you for enhancing my voice and reason.

To the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network and Georgia Parent Support Network,

Thank you for believing in me and giving me voice in advocacy!

To Mission Zero Corp membership and board,

Thank you for believing that there is something we can do to encourage children to live healthier lives in Georgia, share hope, and end suicide.

To anyone without hope,

You are loved! Reach out and call 800-273-TALK to access the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and keep reaching out and connecting to others! In Georgia, call 800-715-4225 to access the Georgia Crisis and Access Line and mobile crisis services.

To anyone who wants to be on the Mission ZerO mailing list or wants to donate to the events for the kids, visit www.missionzero.net to know how.

Foreword

by Wendy Martinez Farmer, LPC

Carol is living proof that recovery is real and that putting one’s pain into action can be life-saving not only for the person recovering but the whole community! We have the pleasure of seeing this in action daily with Carol’s work at Behavioral Health Link where she serves as our peer support administrator and uses her recovery experience to care for those in crisis. Not only does Carol ensure we provide the best care possible for those in some of their darkest hours, but she takes the time to help care for the caretakers, which is something that is often forgotten. No pain gets past her. She has a keen awareness of the toll that pain takes on people and uses her own experience to identify it and shows others how to conquer it by watching how she cares for herself and others along this journey. There is a lot of wisdom in her words that is displayed in action by her gentle strength. I am confident that those who read this book will feel her passion through the love she has for the world and the love she has displayed by caring well for herself in her recovery journey.

Wendy Martinez Farmer, LPC

(Formerly Wendy Martinez Schneider)

CEO

Integrated Health Resources d/b/a Behavioral Health Link

logo new

Preface

Mental health affects many of our lives. For some people, it impinges on the lives of their brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, or cousins. For others, as taxpayers, they pay for mental health services. Whatever one’s experience, citizens of the United States and the world need to know what is going on in the mental health field.

For many years, researchers and doctors taught us most of what we knew about mental health. We did not hear from the individuals receiving services. The people consuming mental health services often were passively obedient to their doctors. Further, many people were warehoused in hospitals, locked away from the world. Many individuals died silently and faceless to their communities at the very institutions that were to restore their health. There was a sharp divide between us, the sane, and them, the mentally ill.

Much has changed in the world. The long history of warehousing the mentally ill has come face-to-face with the demand for individual civil rights. People are reclaiming these rights that date back to the Declaration of Independence and our founding fathers.

This reclaiming of rights is called the consumer movement. Consumers of mental health services are speaking out and being heard. They can be found today telling their doctors how they feel and what medication they want to rake. They are in courts of law, telling judges where they want to live. They are on treatment teams, telling providers how they want to receive services. Consumers of mental health services are providers themselves. They are partnering with their community to create new and innovative roads to wellness. Today, there is a national movement by consumers to reclaim the sacred and mark forgotten burial grounds of those who walked before them.

Further, in our country, there is a movement toward recovery. The executive summary vision statement in the president’s New Freedom Commission Report on Mental Health reads: We envision a future when everyone with mental illness will recover, a future when mental illness can be prevented or cured… The word recovery can be found on the lips of mental health associations across the United States. Recovery means that one can lead a meaningful life in the community. It implies that one’s health improves but not in a linear fashion. One may experience a low point that some would refer to as a relapse and still be on the road of recovery—it is a journey. The notion of this pursuit of recovery was borrowed from those who live with addictive disease and come together in support groups.

The pursuit of recovery for individuals with mental health issues is primarily supported by peers with similar issues. There are support groups all over the country working to nurture people’s recovery.

There are also individuals with mental health issues, who are referred to as peer specialists, within the mental health system. Some are certified and others are uncertified. Medicaid currently pays for certified peer specialists, and those specialists are considered valuable members in the transformation of the American mental health system to the recovery model. They are being paid because their individual journeys impart knowledge that cannot be learned from textbooks. The individual experience is completely different from a list of symptoms in a book, just as anyone’s life cannot be defined by whatever illness he or she is labeled with.

We do not consider the description of diabetes or cancer to define everything about a person, yet often mental health issues are seen as defining the individual’s character. They receive labels that become their lives. An individual living with schizophrenia, for example, may be viewed by himself and others as a person who has an illness, takes medications, and goes to psychosocial rehabilitation. People forget everything else about the individual’s life and refer to him or her as a schizophrenic. This is the act of stigmatization that can be inflicted by others or even by the individual themselves.

This stigma is furthered because, in our culture, people view our lives through the treatment model instead of a recovery model. In the treatment model, people see us as diseased individuals that must take medication for the rest of our lives. This model does not acknowledge that some people experience recovery without medication. The treatment model does not acknowledge or celebrate the wellness of people that take medications and experience recovery. It also overlooks the role that the environment and people can play in people’s lives. Supportive environments that foster recovery can result in an individual living a life where they are only experiencing the ordinary stress that everyone else does. Acknowledging the possibilities that exist in one’s self and the environment is what the recovery model does, in essence.

By creating hope in people’s lives and affirming that it is possible to recover, many are attaining lives in the community instead of being warehoused in hospitals. Service systems are moving into the community. Consumers of mental health services are becoming visible and speaking. Those with lived experience with mental health issues are at conferences where individuals gather to speak about what is working and what is challenging.

My life has been changed by the recovery model and the consumer movement, and I tell my story in this book. Readers will learn what it is like to live with a mental health issue. Others took my civil rights away from me in fear, as I was hospitalized for almost a month in the state of Connecticut. When I came home to Georgia, medical professionals at the state hospital quickly recognized that I belonged in the community and returned me there. Further, in Georgia, I was trained by the state’s Consumer Relations and Recovery Section in the recovery model. The Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network, a robust recoveryoriented consumer advocacy group, partnered in this training.

My environment did not fully change until I received this training because family and doctors were grounded in the treatment model. I’m not implying that treatment does not have a place, but this book will demonstrate the power of recovery.

I say that the team that hospitalized me in Connecticut took away my civil rights in fear because I feel fear was one of the underlying factors that kept me hospitalized. When we act in love of our fellow man, there is so much more we can do than hospitalizing people who are acting differently. In love, we can see that it is okay for someone to make their own choices once they are released from our care. In love, we see people as fully human and not as walking diseases. In love, we listen to what the individual wants, not what we want. In fear, we hold on to others with a rigid grip and hospitalize or jail people for small reasons. We see every negative thing that could happen to them in the world and overlook potential positive outcomes.

Those who react out of fear are like overprotective parents, like those I was raised by. Restrictive environments do not allow individuals to develop their own identities. They can suffocate the very voice of the individual because everyone acts out of fear that the individual may make a wrong choice. This can result in the restricted individual feeling anger instead of compassion for others.

When we love people, we allow them to experience their own choices and challenges. We are there when they falter and listen with compassion. We listen for what the individual has learned from their challenge. We search inside ourselves and see what we have in our own experience that we could share. For people that we love, we take time away from the things that busy us for these exchanges. One day the individual is so strong, full of compassion, and full of experience with challenges that they are free to choose a life of their own.

Those who live with mental health issues are often missing love and acceptance in their environment. Their families and the community at large act out of fear of and for the individual instead of love. Communities are haunted by the media, which presents the most frightening scenarios and often does not share front page and prime time space with uplifting stories.

But peers in support groups and in peer support services are giving each other positive affirmation of each other’s struggles and existence in life. When treatment reams, the community, advocates, and families act by affirming what individuals have learned through their own struggles and journeys, we will have truly have created a revolution. That revolution will be not acting in fear and suffocating the life from people but in love that celebrates the life and the struggle of each unique and valued individual.

In this work, I take the reader to the beginning of everything. It may not be the true essence of everything, because I had some horrible childhood experiences that I do not describe. What I do describe is the essence of a storm that was created in my life by what doctor’s refer to as bipolar disorder. This storm was out of my control, as you will see.

This book will tell the reader about the great torment of this storm and the positive events that arose from it. I consider this experience the greatest gift that God could have given me and not a disease of unlucky genetics.

Introduction:

The Gift

Prepare yourself for a journey into my