20/08/2022
When I Met WRAP
Lisa St. George, MSW, CPRP, CPRSS
When I arrived at my interview to work at the company where I am still employed 23 years later (RI International) I was still emerging from having been told eight years earlier, “You can never work again, you can’t take the stress.” I heard those words and even though my wisdom told me differently, because my doctor said those words, I believed them. I believed them so much that when I did return to work, I did not tell my doctor, because I was unsure what the ramifications of disobeying that directive might be. Would I be hospitalized against my will? Would I be removed from the system of care I counted on for my care? I did not know, but I knew that I needed to support my family, needed to do something to stimulate my mind, and needed to return to social work and hopefully bring good to the world through my work. It was my calling.
I could not believe it when I was told that there was an organization who wanted me because of my trauma and my mental health history and even valued those parts of my life. I was so excited to be interviewed for a job where I did not have to hide any part of who I am. Little did I know the gift of work would come with an even bigger treasure.
On my first day of work, I was given a little red book. It was a Wellness Recovery Action Plan book. I am going to be honest, part of me was haughty as I said to myself, “What? I am a social worker and I would know if there was a tool such as this that could help me…I would know if something as easy as this existed that could help people….I would have learned about it in school. But, I came to see things very differently as I built my WRAP.
I took my time and very carefully put it together, I asked questions of the WRAP facilitator at RI International (Mary Ann Long). She told me about being taught by Mary Ellen Copeland herself. She talked about how it transformed the way she saw herself and improved her wellbeing greatly. I had come through such a dark time, that I wanted to have any tool that would be helpful to me.
I developed my WRAP, I had four pages of legal sized paper (the long yellow paper) of Triggers. Seeing those pages and line after line of things that caused me distress (some were stemming from the abuse from my step-father that I suffered as a child. Some were from a job I had held that put me in dangerous situations one too many times and I was assaulted. All that was listed on those pages opened my eyes to the fact that I was triggered most of the time. The big Ah Ha! moment from that was that when I was triggered, I had a startle reaction, which caused me to take a big breath in, but I would not breathe out again. So, I would become dizzy, and my hands would start to tingle until I remembered to breathe! I guess I had never picked up on the consistency of that behavior before then, and It gave clarity to so many experiences.
Because I had made a strong list of Wellness Tools, prior to arriving at the Triggers point, I was able to draw on those tools to build a plan for my triggers. The first tool on the plan was, BREATHE! Before I knew it I was not just using the plan for my triggers to manage them, but I was eliminating triggers from my list. Some of those triggers had been getting the better of me for years!! Now, I have only a few triggers left on that list. My life is not one constant trigger anymore, but when I do feel triggered, I use my plan immediately (I have actionable tools that are physical in nature and I also have quiet internal tools that I can use anywhere, anytime. I even use them in meetings, and no one knows I am managing my wellbeing while I am participating).
Discovering and being able to manage and eliminate triggers has been one of the most important keys to my wellbeing. WRAP has been the most important tool for maintaining my wellbeing. You can buy your own WRAP at Advocates for Human Potential. If you don’t have one, make one, you will be so glad you did.
Next time, I will talk about How sharing my WRAP with my supporters and my therapist helped support my wellbeing.
