Successful Recovery is for Everyone
The Strength Based Journey
Everybody is unique and has their own strengths and weaknesses.
Old style recovery methods used to focus intensely on what is wrong with a person, as if there’s something broken that needs fixing.
Peer based recovery is different and recognizes that every story -including yours- develops within a context. Your unique environment and circumstances are different from anyone else’s, and you must learn to negotiate this terrain based on your own qualified resources.
But you don’t have to travel this journey alone. Many experienced travelers have succeeded before you and their success is available to all. Successful recovery is available to everybody and recovering persons are in charge of their own journey.
Strength & Resilience
A Journey of Discovery
We all want to live our lives as fully as possible and to develop to our optimal potential. Sometimes it takes resilience to overcome the impediments of behavioral health issues we may encounter. In this respect, people sometimes speak of overcoming these obstacles to recovery. Others prefer to see their recovery as a journey of discovery in the quest for wellbeing.
The Peer Recovery coach respects everyone’s unique journey and is there to support the process. The one who is steering her own journey is in charge of the Peer relationship. It is this relationship that is foremost in helping to accompany and share in the strength-building transformation.
These strengths and personal resiliences will carry over into all areas of a person’s life, such as finances, social engagement, career and employment, education, spiritual pursuits, community activity, health and lifestyle, living space, and other objectives.
Together, the Peer Recovery coach and the Individual will map out the terrain of healthy living, define and develop personal strength and resilience and resources of community-based strength that promote the very best in self actualized wellbeing.
Community is actually our most cherished collective resource for support and healthy resources.
Worrying Does Not Empty Tomorrow Of Its Troubles, It Empties Today Of Its Strength.
Appreciative Inquiry:
If you go in, looking for problems, you’re likely going to find them…
If you look rather for solutions, you’re likely to find solutions.
'Nothing About Us Without Us'
The Peer Based Movement
The Peer Movement
…Reflects perspectives which were instrumental in transformational change in protections and the resources that have become available for individuals with mental health and substance use disorders.
It reflects our lives, our psychiatric challenges, our coping skills and our recovery: what we did to get by, get better, to help and to be helped by others. From a past of coercive and dehumanizing treatment, peer recovery emerged based on the insights of strength based models of autonomy and peer representation.
The dynamics of peer recovery are based on health and well-being, dignity, choice, and hope for all. Recovery is available to everyone. Peer recovery is based on self-help, mutuality, and empowerment.
What used to be a radical idea, soon found acceptance worldwide. Growing out of the Clubhouse movement in the 1950’s, Peers insisted on an idea that was new to many outsiders: we had rights just like anyone else.
What had been considered clinical issues were reframed by reformers as basic self-determination. This set the stage for the deinstitutionalization of psychiatric care.
The patient’s rights movement encouraged consumers to take active roles in our own treatment.
‘We believe in the freedom to choose the kind of services that make us feel like worthwhile adults in the community, and like contributing members of society. We feel the best way to accomplish this is to allow us to make our own choices’.
Peers organized for empowerment and autonomy under the motto ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’. People can and do recover, even from severe mental illness and recovery is strength based, not diagnostic.
Peer programs provide a safe and supportive environment, acceptance, education, and encouragement; often accompanied by the sharing of personal stories. Self help among equals is the general method, with some formal roles to sustain and expand the groups’ accomplishments.
The Peer Recovery model offers peers certain affordances not found in other modalities and there is a unique bond that develops among peers.
Peer programs are a ‘work in progress’ and continue to evolve based on experiences, participation, and accomplishments.
Strong not Wrong
Making your future brighter.
Peer based support and self-help groups are often guided by a Learning and Comfort Agreement that helps insure dignity, respect and emotional safety, while helping facilitate engagement...
