Sunday, December 18, 2005

Setting Favorable Conditions for Procovery # 7

7) Accept backsliding. The process of procovery is often two steps forward and one backward—or sometimes one step forward and two back. If we don’t expect someone to make a perfect soufflé the first time, or win a marathon, or play a song on the piano, how can we expect an individual to procover from serious illness without setbacks or relapses? Backsliding is to be expected in any really difficult matter; it can be an indication of the difficulty of the task. Society applauds a persistent person who succeeds after repeated failure "against all odds," but beats the heck out of people while they are "failing."

The real challenge of rehabilitation programs is to create fail-proof program models. A program is fail-proof when participants are always able to come back, pick up where they left off, and try again. —Patricia Deegan, Ph.D.

from The Power of Procovery in Healing Mental Illness: Just Start Anywhere, by Kathleen Crowley (c) Copyright 2000. Used with permission.

No comments: