The "Inner Strait Jacket": On Mental Illness and Barriers to Employment

The "Inner Strait Jacket": On Mental Illness and Barriers to Employment
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I was only 23 when I had to wear one for the first time. As I saw the starchy off-white strait jacket come out I blinked back tears of frustration and horror. Why couldn’t the police understand that I had been poisoned by anthrax and that the man whose house I had randomly wandered into had the cure? I tried to run, but it was useless. The officers were much stronger than me, and two of them held me firmly under their arms, while a third started unbuckling the jacket’s buckles, while chuckling to himself.

“We’ve got a live one here,” one officer said under his breath. The other officers laughed and nodded in agreement. While they strapped me in, I could see my neighbors in New Brunswick, New Jersey peeking out of their windows to see the scene better.

This was not the last time that I would wear a strait jacket and endure officers mocking me, but the first is etched my memory the most. After twelve hospitalizations for bipolar disorder, and nearly being institutionalized for good, I guess you might have called the strait jacket my “uniform.”

It was through sheer will that I recovered. I clawed my way out of mental illness like a ravenous vulture desperate to save her own life. Yet, I now wore that strait jacket on the inside. I was shackled by self-doubt, and a lack of belief that I could accomplish my goals. Still, I wanted a life, and I wanted to work.

I think back on that time, and I am enveloped with complete compassion for anyone who finds him or herself in this position today. And with one in five adults in the US experiencing mental illness every year, I know there are a lot of you.

With this in mind, I’ve put together some advice about how to break free from the barriers to employment that occur when one lives with a mental illness.

1. Be authentic, but expect rejection along the way

I did not begin my career disclosing my mental illness. In fact, I hid it for quite some time. Yet, there came a point where I just couldn’t do it anymore. I hated having to bury such an integral part of who I was. I wanted to work in the mental health field, so I began disclosing my illness on interviews. I made sure, though, to frame it as a strength always, remarking on how if one can overcome a mental health struggle, they can do anything. I also did not reveal all of the “gory details” of my journey. Still, I figured that anyone who was going to reject me based on the fact that I had a mental illness was not the right employer for me.

And, I was rejected quite a lot. Yet, the rejections became sort of a natural selection process, and eventually, I found a field where a lived experience of mental illness was accepted. I began working as a peer provider, helping others to recover from mental illness through my own experiences. I then got into training, and today, I work at a huge agency in NYC, where I train our three thousand employees on the fact that recovery is possible for all people.

2. Do the thing that will truly make you happy

With mental illness, many times happiness is a matter of life-and-death. I knew that if I wasn’t doing something that I loved, I would eventually sink into depression, and my depressions came with suicidal thoughts. So, my career path has been a series of sharp turns always taken to ensure my happiness. I didn’t put money first, but eventually, by following my dreams, the money came, too, and I now live quite comfortably. That is not to say that I didn’t eat a lot of ramen noodles on the way to this point.

3. Don’t compare yourself to others

My father always says “life is a long race.” Sometimes, you may be ahead of others, and sometimes you feel very behind. I often felt this way during the beginning of my career, as I saw my friends graduate from college and get fancy jobs at New York City banks, while I wasn’t able to keep a simple filing job. Yet, over time, many of my friends became disenchanted with the banks, and felt as lost in their careers as I had initially felt, during the same time that I had found my career passions. Be patient with yourself. Recovery from mental illness can feel like running the marathon with concrete on your legs. You have an additional challenge that can get in the way, so to compare yourself to others without this challenge is unfair to you, and will only hold you back.

Reflecting back on all of the time I spent cobbling together my career, I know one thing for sure: none of it was wasted. All of the knowledge that I gained in every part of my vocational journey has been valuable in getting me to where I am now. There were times that I wanted to give up, but I’m so glad that I did not, because work has been integral to my recovery. It gives me structure, social connection, and most importantly a higher purpose, and something to be passionate about. I am confident what I’ve left behind is more than just that unforgiving “inner strait jacket.” I’ve broken through the metaphorical straps that bound me to my mental illness, and created a life that surpassed any of my wildest imaginings.

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