During the early stages of my recovery from schizophrenia, I had two goals in mind: working and healing. I was tired, not just from my symptoms or side effects from my medications, but from lying in bed and feeling useless. I wanted to do more.
With the support of my therapist and a good psychiatrist, both of whom prioritized a commitment to self-care, I went back to graduate school in social work. Within two years, I graduated from SUNY Binghamton — the same college I had withdrawn from years earlier after a mental health episode — with a Master’s in Social Work.
My personal experience, I found, actually benefitted me early on in my career. As a young licensed social worker, I taught my clients about the self-care concepts that had served me. Later on, I would teach self-care at the graduate level. Returning to the classroom as a teacher served as a powerful reminder that I had come just about full circle since my initial illness. Many of my students would go on to become therapists, reinforcing the importance of self-care to their patients, similarly to the way my therapist had done a decade prior.