Description

This blog is part of a larger series of blogs of open letters to people living with mental illness. Kayla is a woman who had been very sick and has grown more stable over time. Now she is looking for ways to move forward and achieve more without losing her previous gains. The home page for these blogs includes letters to Tony, who is much sicker and needs more basic interventions. That page can be found at http://beyondmentalillness.blogspot.com.

Friday, November 25, 2011

11/26/11

Dear Kayla,

For me, I needed to go through a very long process to learn how to learn. I was never very good at processing information I learned at school or otherwise. I could memorize the information but not apply it. There were many interventions I needed to address this. I will be writing about some of them here.

Often, the first step to making changes or learning is to examine your attitude. I was bringing some bad habits into my work without even being aware of it. I needed to look very closely at the details of what I was doing and try to find patterns or beliefs which were harmful. Often they were routines which I had never questioned. But they were holding me back from learning or doing tasks well.

Once I identified thought patterns or attitudes which I needed to change, I address that head-on. The first day or first session I would concentrate only on changing my thoughts and attitudes. And only that. I would not try to do anything differently. I would just focus on going through the day or the session thinking differently.

Sometimes I needed to do that for more sessions. It depended on the task. When I was used to thinking differently, eventually I would start to see different ideas and patterns. At which point I would give the same advice I keep giving to you and Tony: Start small. Find what small things you can and fix them. In reality, there are very few big things out there. What looks big from a distance is often really about five thousand small steps.

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