Baby Steps

Bobby Wiley taught us all a lot about psychology and as I happen to refresh my memory of one of the greatest movies ever in "What About Bob", I start to see parallels with my somewhat unhealthy relationship with my own Psychiatrist. I guess I'm Bob in more than one way. That is all beside the point. What isn't is the notion that baby steps are really what progress is all about, it may be terribly cliche but it works, and I have a lots of proof to back that up.

I must interject, unrelated, that if you've never seen "The Man Who Knew Too Little" you are missing out on the greatest movie of all times. I'm pretty sure it won a few Oscars, but encase it didn't, it should have. It's 2:30am... maybe I'll pop it in right now. I'm not sure I'd like the look on my wife's face when she wakes up in the morning and I'm grinning from ear to ear watching Bill Murray doing a Russian dance with a little Russian doll. She'd probably roll her eyes at me and say I'm an idiot. I better go to bed after this.

After my coming home from my 2 year mission call to Kennewick, Washington, the self proclaimed, "land of milk and honey" (that's a shout out to my cousin) after 4 months, I realized I had to put my focus somewhere else and school was the next best bet. I went back to BYU in January and within a month, as previously described, started mentally getting so manic that the world was going super fast. It's a lot like that movie Limitless where he takes the drug and everything is so perfect and he is a genius, though unfortunately that has always been a bit elusive to me but not because of a lack of effort. But then it gets to be too much and his mind is racing so fast it is making him crazy and erratic. Obviously that is a movie and a bit dramatized, though I've heard stories of others with mania on that level, for me it was mostly a lot of maddening thoughts and voices in my head and a desire to just keep going and going. I sat through lectures for an hour and a half and it seemed like 10 minutes and didn't remember a thing that was said. It made maintaining a 3.95 GPA quite difficult, so I withdrew from the semester.

Long story short, things would get better and after about a year of working on my problems I decided to try and go back to BYU full time again. I had a academic scholarship that was only applicable if I went full time so I always felt the need to accept nothing less than a full load. More than the tuition cost, was the always growing desire within me to make up for loss time. I had a notion in my head that my illness had stymied the progress of my life plan and that as the months and years started to pass with little to no progress in my life plan, then there would come some point when I might actually literally timed out and explode or something. I don't know, it sounds a bit silly but I felt a very real internally driven pressure to push forward in life and keep up with my classmates from high school that I constantly saw progressing via the always wonderful and self-degrading social media resources of our day. Long story, still long but trying to make it shorter, I withdrew again from BYU. It turned out the stress of the environment and the heavy load just weighed me down and I fell into a lot of old habits and difficulties and eventually realized I couldn't do it, or at least I thought I couldn't. The truth was I probably could have finished the semesters, it just wouldn't have been with A's like I expected.

I went home and regrouped. Turned to the Lord and decided to take a smaller step. I got a part time job at a retail store I liked the clothes from and I worked 15-20 hours a week. It was simple retail. I either faked a smile and avoided talking to customers unless pressed to, or I worked shipment and came in early in the morning at 5am to process new arrivals. I loved that job. I learned that if I had someone I feared I'd disappoint that I could find the will power to get up and get to work, even at 5am and even on days I didn't sleep the night before. I think in the 4 months I worked there I only called in sick 4 times. There were a lot of days I looked like the most depressing person whom you'd never want to take a clothing suggestion from, I think that's why they put me in the fitting rooms and on shipment a lot. Every once in a while they'd make me the greeter. I prayed every shift I didn't have to do it. It was so simple, you just smiled and greeted everyone who came in the store. We were a mall entrance and so a lot of walk-through traffic came in our store. It was the worst. I remember just plastering a smile on and just saying hi to a million people. I'd make it a game and see how well I could over express my enthusiasm and crack an odd looking smirk from a guest. (I'm getting way off topic). The point was it got me out of the house. I faced a fear and I chose an environment I liked, with a level of pressure I was prepared to handle and a reward in clothing discounts that made it worth my effort. That was the first baby step I took.

It was shortly after that success that I met my now wife, Teana (that's pronounced Tiana, for the record, or Teena really, but that's another story). Once we started getting serious, I knew I needed to get back on track with school. I always wanted to be a lawyer so there was never a question in my mind about getting an undergrad degree, it was really only a consideration of what graduate level study I would pursue. When my parents came home from Australia I started back at community college locally in Texas. I honestly felt embarrassed at the time. The classes were not the most intellectually stimulating and I barely had to study to get through them. I remember thinking I was way too proud to go to community college. So I went to community college and took a full load, remember because I'm way behind my peers and need to catch up. So what happened? I ended up withdrawing because it got to be overwhelming and I realized it's really hard to succeed in school if you can't create enough consistency to get out of bed and actually show up for class. (I'm a really slow learner.) I did succeed in taking a few classes but then it came time for marriage.

Teana lived in Australia and I lived in the U.S. and it became increasingly difficult to always be saving money and traveling so far on flights that are a couple thousand dollars each time so we got to a point where we knew we loved each other and had to either get married or move on. I promise it wasn't a 50/50 coin flip. We were in love, it was just a matter of how to get it all figured out. We were married in Australia and I came back to go to school a semester (remember I thought I was in a race against time to graduate) while she stayed in Australia. That semester I took 3 classes and only attended about half of the time. Luckily the teachers were really lenient and loved me and gave me good grades even though I never went to class, I crammed well for tests, a perk of insomnia.

I moved back to Australia and the urge to go back to the BYU, after she received her visa, came over me again. So we went back to Utah and what did I do? That's right, I decided to take a full load of classes to make up for all the lost time, especially now that I had a spouse to support. This was so stressful and the environment so full of past traumas and memories of dark times that it really drove me to the edge. I made an impulsive decision that put me in the hospital and we had to stop and re-evaluate everything.

This is when I first started believing in "baby steps." It was a humbling experience. It took me 4 attempts, a lot of money (of my parents) and a my wife emotionally falling apart to realize that just trying to smash and hammer the square peg into the round hole wasn't going to happen.

We moved back in with my parents in Texas and I gave up my dreams of graduating from BYU's prestigious Accounting program. I went back to community college. The first semester I think I took two classes, and then three the next, and then eventually 12 hours at community college. The last semester I added a part time job to that and realized my capacity was slowly, step by baby step, increasing.

I finally made the jump to a commuter school in Dallas, that growing up I swore I'd never go to, and I realized after one semester I couldn't do work and the higher level of school. I dropped back my hours and I did the same thing I did at community college at UNT. I took first, 1 class in the summer, then 2 in the fall and then 3 in the spring and so on. The final year both semesters I took 12 hours each. I always wanted to load that 15th credit hour to prove I was really going full-time but I knew in the back of my head four classes was enough and it wouldn't change the time table of my graduation.

I graduated early from high school in Dec of 2002 and walked across the stage in cap and gown in May of 2012 with a BBA in Finance. It took me nearly 10 years to finish an undergraduate degree. I had all the financial, emotional and physical resources I needed and it still took me 10 years. If you would of told me it'd take me 10 years those first few years, I'd of probably quit. But I didn't. I wanted it and I learned from all of it that with my illness progress is slow. When we start comparing to others, as my Dad would say, "it's a slippery slope." I didn't go to my dream school by any means but I finished the task and I learned that as I became more patient with myself along the way and took baby steps, one class at a time, one semester at a time, I achieved my goal. I had a great internship offer even though I was way older than most other kids and the Lord blessed me. Now when I got to the work place that was a whole new mountain to climb.

I'm now back at the foot of the work mountain. Currently I'm not working but have an opportunity for part time work lined up. I thought graduation would be the Everest and I would plant my flag and the confidence and experience it gave me would end the difficulties and I would get back to the plan of flourishing. That hasn't been the case. The time commitment and stress of a full time job in business has been a lot more than expected. Intellectually I have the capacity but anxiety and pressure cause a lot of instability in my moods and thoughts. It's an odd and frustrating feeling to sit in a cubicle working at the task at hand while dealing with all sorts of random thoughts and feelings from extreme agitation to the feeling that your boss is going to come over any moment and fire you. Needless to say, I take a lot of "smoke breaks." It's where I go outside and walk around a bit and clear my mind of all the smoky thoughts that keep me from thinking clearly. When your mind and illness feel as if you're labeled defective it's hard to overcome that self-perception. That's why I choose to be so open about my diagnoses. I find that most people have the opposite reaction I would think, they are sympathetic or admire me or even can't believe it's true because nothing in my behavior seems to reinforce that to them.

Life for any of us is about making small improvements that over time amount to larger ones. With Mental Illness, especially, any step can seem so daunting that it is often important to think about what we want to do and create a step short of that to bridge the gap. I look back now at my community college experience and am so grateful that a resources such as that exists for people of all sorts. Very few people question where people started their progress unless it's to find out how they ended up where they are today. There is no step to small to not be noted as progress.

To some, the thought of school being something to build towards is silly, for others they may be thinking that the thought of school is even too stressful to make a reality. I wanted to get an education for me so that I could do the best job possible at supporting my family. It's turning out I may not even be able to do that without my wife's help now but I know that it was worth it for me. It may not be school for you. It may be finding the courage to socialize a little more and isolate a little less. To choose to listen to a song that uplifts you rather than reaffirms your emotional difficulties. Everyday there are hundreds of choices and everyday is a new day.

Recently I talked to my Dad about some of my problems and wanted his counsel. I want to be so much more than I am but I feel so incredibly limited by my illness. I believe literally in the faith of men in the scriptures and in the miracles performed by many. I asked him what he thought the Lord expected of me and what I needed to do better. Now my Dad is probably one of the wisest people I know and has had a lot of life experience and counseled people with lots of issues, so I hold his counsel close to my heart. He said to me, "It's pretty simple. On the days you feel good, act on it. Do something to build yourself up and lift your spirits. Go exercise or be a better husband or father. Do what you feel you should for others and yourself for your long-term improvement. On the bad days, weather the storm. Don't expect more of yourself than anyone else with a flare up of an illness. Take care of yourself and try not to destroy the progress you've already made." That was maybe not an exact quote, rather an interpretation but you get the gist.

We can't expect to always be moving forward. Sometimes it's two steps forward, three steps back, but overall if we stay with the course we know that we can find progress.

Along the way I always told my therapist I couldn't do it anymore and I'd never graduate. I look back now and realize it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be and I did make it through, despite a lot of difficulty. Now I tell him I can't do work and I don't know if I can support my family. Do you know what he says? One day you'll look back and you'll see that you did it, you know how? Baby steps...