Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us

by Rachel Aviv

Deegan challenges the idea that, after the disruption of mental illness, people can slip back into their former identities. “For those of us who have struggled for years, the restitution storyline does not hold true,” she writes. In another essay, comparing herself to a friend who was paralyzed from the neck down, Deegan writes, “Recovery does not refer to an end product or result. It does not mean that the paralyzed man and I were ‘cured.’ In fact, our recovery is marked by an ever-deepening acceptance of our limitations.” She proposes that “transformation rather than restoration becomes our path.” Deegan acknowledges that some phases of recovery require planning and work, but not every part of the process can be consciously orchestrated. “All of the polemic and technology of psychiatry, psychology, social work, and science cannot account for this phenomenon of hope,” she writes. “But those of us who have recovered know that this grace is real. We lived it. It is our shared secret.”

Pat Deegan, pychologist