In part 1 of our Innovators, Artists & Solutions interview with Nisha Tracy, the director of Clean & Sober Streets, she describes the vision of the organization and how it has evolved over the years. We discuss how it synthesized various methodologies and perspectives to help people overcome addiction and build a healthier, more joyful life.
In Part 2, we discuss the challenges inherent in this type of work as well as some of the concepts and ideas underpinning the program’s approach.
Elizabeth: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Innovators, Artists, & Solutions series of Creativists in Dialogue, a podcast embracing the creative life. I’m Elizabeth Bruce.
Michael: And I’m Michael Oliver.
Elizabeth: And our guest today is friend and former colleague, Nisha Tracy. Nisha is a licensed professional counselor and registered art therapist who, as Clean & Sober Streets’ Clinical Director, oversees the care of residents in a small substance abuse community treatment facility using a therapeutic arts and holistic lens. A graduate of George Washington University’s graduate art therapy program, her training included year-long art therapy internships at Accotink Academy and Sibley Memorial Hospital. In 2014, she began work at Clean & Sober Streets as an arts therapist. Welcome, Nisha.
As we mentioned, you have a Master’s in Art Therapy from George Washington University and have been working at the [00:01:00] Washington, DC non-profit Clean & Sober Streets for several years. The organization’s website says, quote, “Our alcohol/drug free setting encompasses much more than just the absence of alcohol and other drugs. It promotes the attitude that a joyful and productive life is possible without alcohol or mood-altering drugs.”
So, first of all, tell us about this organization. When was it founded? By whom? Where is it located? Who does it serve? Et cetera.
Nisha: Clean & Sober Streets was founded in 1988 by Julia Lightfoot, and it began as a community-based organization working from a 12-step model. I think I showed you the CBS “Eye on America” from years and years back, but people would literally line up in the street to wait to get into the program. And the only requirement to get into the program was that you had to go, you had to fill out a meeting sheet, so you had to go to a certain number of 12-step meetings, and then you would have the ability to come into the program. But you had to show some [00:02:00] level of motivation, interest in your own sobriety, to even get in. And then, people would actually step up, they would go from the downstairs to coming upstairs after a certain period of time, and people would come in phases, so big groups graduate or move forward as a group.
Elizabeth: Okay. Impressive. Yeah.
Michael: And so how many clients does it have, usually?
Nisha: That’s changed massively over the years. It used to serve more than we serve now.
Michael: Oh, so you’ve scaled back?
Nisha: We’ve scaled back over the years. ‘Cause it moved from a community model to a medical model, which has massively changed what it looks like. But the energy, the spirit hasn’t changed. But when Department of Behavioral Health and regulations started coming in and saying, “This is how you, what you need to do to be able to continue to function as a treatment center,” there were just a lot of different shifts that had to happen. But back then it was very little money, very little staff, and it worked really well because it was all community-based. And yeah, it was hundreds of people at that point. [00:03:00] And then at this point, when I, even when I came in 2015 when the regulations weren’t so intensive, there was like 75 people up on this floor at any given time. At this point it’s closer to 30, 35 people on the floor at any given time.
Michael: Okay, and the 35 live here? So it’s residential.
Nisha: Yes, it’s only, so we’ve always been residential, we’ve always been long-term residential. That has never changed. Anywhere, now, the length of stay has changed over time. Back when, again, it could be up to a year, people, like a normal stay was around a year. And now it’s just gradually scaled back to, six months, and then now it’s down to, most people here stay between 45 and 90 days. But we still, if somebody is here and they’re really focused on their recovery and really an asset to the community, they might stay longer.
Michael: It still uses the 12 steps, or does it combine like residential treatment with 12 steps?
Nisha: So it’s like the 12-step informs how it’s modeled, but it’s not a 12-step [00:04:00] program. It’s a treatment program. And those two things are very different. But the principles of community and one helping another and it’s just impossible to really separate out the two completely.
Michael: Sure. But when you say treatment, you mean that it’s like a psychological or mental health treatment or is it—?
Nisha: It’s substance use disorder treatment, which really focuses on the addiction, focuses on things like drug of choice, drug education, triggers, and coping skills. But encompasses a lot more than that because of course you can’t address those things without addressing mental health. And so you end up in actually a lot of different spaces around health and wellness and all of those things that really encompass somebody’s whole life.
So even though you’re addressing the drugs and alcohol, it’s really not, you’re not at all just addressing the drugs and alcohol. The drugs and alcohol were generally serving a function. And so, once you take that function away, what’s left? What are you dealing with? And [00:05:00] a lot of times it’s, you’re dealing with—addiction is a trauma disease—so you’re dealing with underlying trauma, you’re dealing with minimal coping skills, you’re dealing with people who haven’t taken care of, who’ve neglected their health and maybe don’t even quite, You’re also dealing with a population who for the most part have been incarcerated and have been homeless at one point. And so there’s a lot of different factors that come into play.
Michael: So it sounds like your client population is, they have their addictions, but they have all these other issues that compound that addiction.
Nisha: Or that contributed to the addiction in the first place. Absolutely. And again, it’s the addiction is the point of entry and then all the treatment really addresses the entire lifestyle.
Michael: So what would you say the—so the mission of the organization? And you’ve mentioned like a year resident—
Nisha: That was where it came from.
Michael: So what is the mission of the organization then, particularly in terms of its relationship to clients?
Nisha: Really the [00:06:00] mission is to allow clients to see what a drug- and alcohol-free lifestyle can look like and understand that they’re capable of living a life that’s better than where they are. Really no sane person wants to live on a urine-soaked mattress. It’s and this is like where we’re, this is what we’re talking about. We’re talking about, I have a client, the client I’m thinking of is somebody who talked about literally living in a box on the street. We’re really, people who come to us aren’t coming to us because, it’s a four-star vacation hotel. They’re coming to us because their life has become so out of hand that the only option is to come into treatment, come into residential treatment, come into a safe environment where hopefully the things are laid out that they can find a way to heal.
Elizabeth: So Nisha, can you walk us through some of the Clean & Sober Streets’ different programs and initiatives?
Nisha: So, the Clean & Sober Streets idea is that you treat the addiction and then everything else will fall into place, right? So, a [00:07:00] person comes in, they don’t have housing, they have a terrible relationship with their family, they might not have a job, really the addiction has torn up their life. And so the belief is that people are fundamentally capable. And so we really try to encourage folks to address what drives their addiction. If they start to address their internal world, that all of those other things will fall into place. It’s not getting the house, or getting the car, or getting the right girlfriend, or the right boyfriend, or the right life circumstance. “If I just got this living condition, then I’d be okay.”
A lot of times what you find is that people are always looking externally for the right situation so that I can stay clean. And the reality is that there is no perfect life situation, there is no perfect thing that’s going to keep you clean. It’s really about adjusting your perspective and doing a lot of the internal work that’s required to be able to maintain a lifestyle of sobriety.
And, as far as the program’s initiatives, the program evolved over [00:08:00] time to be what it is, right? It’s like Julia, who, as I said, was here, been here longer than I’ve been alive, is in recovery and was really coming at it from, again, one addict helping another. And it was a responsiveness to what works. Looking at, so for example back when they used to let folks in if, if you used and you got honest about it, you could come back in the program. But what they found was, is that one person would use, and then it would become, it would just corrupt the entire environment. It would degradate everything you were trying to do. And it made it, and that, that went away.
People used to come in and get jobs right away, right after 28 days, they’d go get a job. And then people would find, and then they found that, if you tried to get a, people with a paycheck, right after an early sobriety, it’s just, it’s really it’s a trigger, and oftentimes people who ended up working right after right after 28 days, they would end up relapsing off that first paycheck. And so, it’s just, these things are, our rules or program policy all of [00:09:00] that stuff is really built off of experience of working with the population.
And what I really love about it is going back to using what works. We’ve, you know, Clean & Sober Streets has been using acupuncture and yoga and meditation and art therapy since way before I got here. And, actually, I think art therapy since like the beginning. And it was well before when the medical model was saying, “Oh yeah, art therapy is a great thing.” Nobody knew about art therapy like that. It was just because we knew it worked. And it’s really a fertile ground for not allowing… because the world will tell you all these different things. The research will tell you different things on any given day. And there’s actually a lot of research out there that says the best stuff—it takes seven years for that to integrate into the actual common knowledge, to actually get from research to your doctor in your office actually doing the thing that people were saying was working. They were saying it was working [00:10:00] seven years ago, but it takes seven years for it to even get to your—I want to say palate, but that’s not the right word—to serve you.
And so, really, it’s a responsiveness in the moment to what actually is working, is it, does it work? It doesn’t. What doesn’t work? What things we know don’t work. It doesn’t work to not take responsibility because it’s like, addiction is a disease and I’m responsible. It’s like when I have a, if you have any disease, you’re ultimately responsible for caring for yourself. I’m sorry, I’m going off on a major tangent.
Michael: You just used a double negative. But, alright, so you have clients. Now clearly, addiction is a huge problem in this country.
Nisha: Absolutely.
Michael: Probably in the world. But definitely in this country. And so how do your clients find you? Or how do you decide which clients to take? Because I guess, there are a lot of people, there’s a lot of need. And you actually, as you said, [00:11:00] you’ve been reducing the number of residents. And so how do you, how does a client find you and how do you accept a client?
Nisha: So oftentimes the clients will come through the DBH, the Department of Behavioral Health has the Assessment Referral Center, the ARC up on 75 P Street. And that’s one way that people come in. And most people who struggle with addiction know about that space of being able to just walk in, get an assessment and get referred to treatment. The reason our population has shrunk has absolutely nothing to do with whether we want to have more people up here. It’s that often that actually, like the regulations and things around the agency and the costs going out and being able to bring people in is actually become very difficult. And so what we, and then, I’m sorry—
Michael: Because of the regulations?
Nisha: Because of the regulations.
Michael: It’s become difficult.
Nisha: It’s become really difficult to get clients in the door because we have this crazy authorization system. Where we basically get audited for each client coming in the door of [00:12:00] whether or not that person meets medical necessity to get addiction treatment. And what they don’t understand is, again, no one’s coming to us because this is fun and this is what they want to do to just have a good time. And oftentimes, even if somebody might, so somebody might be manipulating the system and might be coming in saying, “I have an addiction problem” and they, but the real issue is they don’t have housing. But if you get into that, oftentimes an addiction is contributing to that lack of housing. And so, even when somebody might be, quote unquote “manipulating the system,” it’s really not that because addiction does play a role.
Now, again, at the end of the day, addiction needs to be primary, right? People deal with mental health, people deal with these other things, and the mental health can’t be so great that that it overshadows the addiction, meaning that a person needs to be able to live in a community environment and function. And if they can’t process what’s being given to them in the information, then there’s no point in being here.
Michael: So you [00:13:00] evaluate their mental health.
Nisha: Absolutely, absolutely. And we have a nurse practitioner, like a psychiatric nurse practitioner on staff who in fact is qualified to do that. And then we also, so even before someone comes in, and again, I mentioned the ARC, the Assessment Referral Center through DBH, but there’s also, we also get a lot of our referrals directly from hospitals. So people go in to detox, they’ll come to us. I personally have contacts at most hospitals, most of the hospitals, GW, Howard, George Washington University Hospital. And so all the local hospitals, most of the local hospitals. And that’s also how we get referrals.
A lot of times, again, because the addiction community, it’s almost like a sub community, right, and in that sense, it’s most people actually know about us. You go to detox, people talk, they talk amongst themselves. “Oh, I heard this program’s like this.” “Oh, they got TVs in the rooms at this program.” “Oh, this program, they’re gonna make you work.” [00:14:00] By the way, we’re the program that makes you work. But it’s and not working in the sense of working in the kitchen, but we really insist on people who are invested in themselves, because really we don’t have the resources to, we really have very few resources at this point. So I really, I’m really interested in people who want to do the work.
And so, I will actually interview people before they come in. It’s a screening process. But you can’t really assess a person’s motivation directly because people will tell you anything. What you can do is you can say, “Here’s what we do. Are you in agreement with it?” I’ll even tell them, “Hey, there are other programs that you can go to and basically show up to group and get a certificate at the end of 28 days and if that’s all you’re looking for, great, we’re not the right place for you.”
We do things like required homework assignments. We do things like a required daily journal. We really hold to that people need to show up on time to group. And they need to be present, like, not just physically present, but because I’ll even make the [00:15:00] joke, “Are you here today? Oh, I see your body’s here, but are you here today?” And then we do themes of the week, and at the end of the week we do Friday presentations, and those are really great. People will use art, and music, and poetry, and all sorts of things to just express themselves based on the theme we’re using that week. And really connecting to the information in a different way.
And once again, it’s like I’ll tell a client, there’s a really big difference between knowing it in your mind and knowing it in your spirit. And so we use these other modalities to really integrate that information so that it’s not just information but it’s information, so the example I’d use is there’s a really big difference between teaching someone about the concept of serenity and teaching someone how to find serenity.
Michael: So it’s a holistic program, so you’re, but you’re not hiding anything from the potential client. You’re really giving them as much information as possible so they can be responsible and make a choice to actually—
Nisha: Yeah! And I’ll literally [00:16:00] say, “We’ve integrated some alternative therapies. They’re part of the main part of the program. And my expectation would be that you’re willing to try. So for example, you might be in our art therapy group tomorrow and I’m going to be asking you to paint. Now I don’t care if what you paint is beautiful. In fact, what we experience sometimes is very ugly. It has nothing to do with beauty, but are you willing to put a brush to paper and see how that feels?”
And, again, we have issues of language and writing and education. And I’m always willing to work with somebody who’s got the drive to figure it out. Somebody’s got struggles with their writing, okay, we can pair you up, you can pair up with a peer, you can work with one of our staff, but I’m not going to chase you around making sure you’ve done your homework. You’re, the expectation is that if you have a barrier, that you’re going to actively work on addressing that barrier. And actually, people who are motivated, they’ll figure it out. I make a joke, “Act there’s a hundred-dollar bill tagged onto every homework assignment you turn in. You’ll figure it out.”
Elizabeth: I want to, you all are located downtown in [00:17:00] Washington, DC. You’re located near the Community for Creative Nonviolence, or CCNV, shelter which is on Mitch Snyder Place, or 2nd Street NW, near some of the other government buildings in downtown DC. And indeed, as I understand it, Clean & Sober Streets serves a subset of the same client. Now, I want to insert a bit of local history here, so indulge me, and emphasize that Clean & Sober Streets is a different organization from CCNV. But local listeners over a certain age will remember the legendary Mitch Snyder, the late Mitch Snyder and his collaborator Carol Fennelly and CCNV back during the first Reagan administration in the ‘80s. As I’m sure our listeners know, homelessness skyrocketed in in the US in multiple cities, DC included. There were residential psychiatric institutions that were, quote, “deinstitutionalized” as, and as real estate development closed down, these SROs, [00:18:00] or single room occupancy buildings, just affordable housing became increasingly difficult for a demographic of very low-income urban residents. CCNV became well known locally under the leadership of Mitch Snyder and Carol Fennelly and others, and they were radically devoted to forcing DC city government to address this growing crisis of homelessness in the nation’s capital.
So, Mitch Snyder, who was a, some listeners may remember, was a working-class kid from Brooklyn who’d gone to jail for car theft and then later worked in advertising on Madison Avenue, but he had been in jail with Daniel and Philip Berrigan, the radical Catholic clergy, people who had been in prison for destroying draft records in protest of the Vietnam War.
So, anyway, CCNV became legendary locally and nationally for its radical and innovative tactics and drawing attention to the horrors of [00:19:00] homelessness. They would capture a bunch of cockroaches from the current shelters and release them in a city hall hearing. And there was a film made about Mitch Snyder and others, and Martin Sheen played him in the film. That was a bit of local history for folks who don’t remember it directly.
But, anyway, Nisha, as an organization, Clean & Sober Streets serves a similar but uniquely different, as you’ve described, constituency than CCNV, but can you tell us a little bit more about what distinguishes your program from other neighbor organizations and what would you say is the most innovative aspect of your outreach?
Nisha: So Mitch had this vision of this building really serving the homelessness in all aspects. So he actually sought out Julia Lightfoot, who’s our founder, to use this section of the building to focus on drug treatment. And he also asked Dr. Janelle Goetcheus who started the [00:20:00] medical clinic, which became Unity Health Clinic—and actually Unity is now all around the city, but this is where it started—and they address medical issues specifically geared towards the homeless population. As well as Robert Edgar, who was the founder of DC Central Kitchen, and he was really tasked with dealing with issues of hunger and joblessness. And again, yes, we are distinctly separate, but we are all here serving that same population to an extent. Of course, not everybody who comes into treatment is homeless. I want to be really clear about that. But there is a lot of crossover.
Michael: I never realized that. So this building then houses all those different, sort of, it’s a whole sort of service—
Nisha: Yeah, it’s really a whole-service center.
Michael: And they were all founded around the same time?
Nisha: Yes.
Michael: Interesting.
Nisha: Yeah. So, they all were intended to serve this population and were founded around the same time. And then I think there’s also Jobs Have Priority in this building, which I always forget [00:21:00] about. But yeah, this building actually houses Unity, us, CCNV, and it did house DC Central Kitchen.
Michael: Now, you’ve mentioned that the clients here at Clean & Sober commit themselves to self-knowledge, gaining self-knowledge, gaining more and more, becoming more and more conscious about their triggers, their life, et cetera, et cetera. And then in your bio, you said you studied—
Nisha: Existential art therapy.
Michael: I love existentialism and so I want you to integrate that into your response to this question. Because this whole notion of pursuing self-knowledge as a way of healing I think is fascinating. For me, it’s probably rooted in the sort of the innovation of this particular program. So, can you just elaborate on how this approach is innovative and touch on some of those things that I just mentioned?
Nisha: Again, we try to keep things really simple in [00:22:00] certain ways and complicated in others. So it’s really simple as far as the criteria to be able to be here. Like I just said earlier, it’s can you show up to group on time? Can you turn in your journal? Can you do the homework? Can you participate?
And if people are really involved in those things, then they’re not distracting from the community. They’re not focused on other things. They’re going to naturally center in on why they’re here. And in that way, it can really become principles over personality. I might feel any kind of way about a certain person because they look like they’re really disengaged in my groups but they’re doing their homework, they’re turning in their journal, and if you read if you read their writing, they’re actually getting a lot out of the meetings. But I might not know that, even as a counselor, because they’re so busy having their street face on or having this persona. That they’re not going to let you know that they’re actually very invested in what’s happening. At least not in the traditional ways you would think.
And so again, there’s that piece. One of the things that I get [00:23:00] really excited about is I do I do a book club. I know that sounds really silly, but—not silly, but it’s people are like, wait, if you do a book club and treatment, is that really treatment? Yeah, it is treatment! Because we center it around three, three specific books. I centered around The Power of Now, which is by Eckhart Tolle, The Untethered Soul and Living Untethered, which are both by Michael Singer. And they really, it’s taught, we focus on issues of dealing with mindfulness, dealing with the present moment. Recognizing that a lot of my suffering—now, pain is going to happen, pain is life, right—but a lot of my suffering is caused by the dissonance between what I want and reality. And that actually, if I can just—
Michael: That’s very existential.
Nisha: If I can just align my, instead of trying to make reality fit what I want, can I get good with reality? And again, you use different words, principles of acceptance, you might, again, if you want to use the [00:24:00] 12-step lingo, you can, but it’s the same ideas. Can I get to a place where I can be at peace in all situations?
And that’s such a big deal for an addict or alcoholic who’s been looking to drugs or alcohol to just escape themselves. And life is, things have gotten so bad that I just don’t, I don’t even want to be here anymore. And so, it’s really addressing those things in a really thoughtful way.
Again, and maybe in Malibu, the addiction centers in Malibu, they’re doing all of the same things we’re doing. We’re bringing to a population that’s not traditionally given this kind of treatment.
Michael: Are you saying that traditionally this kind of treatment is maybe more expensive?
Nisha: Absolutely. Absolutely!
Elizabeth: Movie stars.
Nisha: Absolutely. For the movie stars. For, if you ask my clients, it’d be for rich white folks. And that’s not the way we look at it. It’s not, and we don’t use education as a reason not to. I have a guy in my book club right now who learned how to read at [00:25:00] 44 years old. And thought, when I asked him if he wanted to be a part of it, was just so flattered that I would think that he could be a part of it. That he could be included.
And there’s also like this healing—again, the material itself is really healing—but there’s also a healing process that happens with the community, that happens with engagement, that happens with redoing these experiences of—some clients have compared being at Clean & Sober to being in school. And it’s, yeah, it’s a little like school, but I’m always going to work with you to get your A. They might not have had that. Not even to work with you to get your A. I don’t even care about the A. I just want to see you work.
There’s so many folks up here who’ve been told that they’re dumb, that they’re not worth anything, that they’re never going to be anything, and it’s really reformatting that way of thinking. And really emphasizing that, like what I do, what I specifically do, is really spend a lot of time emphasizing that worthiness is inherent. That you don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to become a—and I’m [00:26:00] getting ahead of myself—but it’s, “I want to be a productive member of society.” What the heck does that mean? What does it mean to be a productive member of society? Is society even something I want to engage in?
Honestly, it’s a lot of the ways that we operate. That’s not going to bring me happiness. Society is telling me I need the newest Jordans every six months. I’m just saying. Society is saying, I need, it’s trying to sell me this, or sell me that, or sell me on the American dream. And if I keep, and again, going back to when my desire is different from my reality, that’s what creates the suffering. So if I stop buying into that I need this to be happier, I need that to be happier, I need this to make, I don’t know, I need to be somebody. What if you just were somebody? What if you were somebody and all you need to do is just honor that.
And then you can still go to school and you can get a good relationship and you can get a good, you can do all those things, but it doesn’t have to be who you are. They keep thinking if I get—not just say, I’m thinking, I’m just speaking in broader terms, but—you think if you get the right degree, [00:27:00] then you’ll be somebody. You think you get the right job, then you’ll be somebody. And the problem is that you achieve the right degree, the degree. And then you gotta get the next one, cause you’re still not, that, that sense of not enough is so ingrained. And or you get the, you get the house, and you’re worried about, now I gotta keep the house, now I gotta figure out how to—and nothing’s eliminated as far as the suffering. That suffering mind just adjusts what it complains about, what it’s upset about, what it’s worried about. And you notice that a lot with our clients. It’s you get the one thing figured out. “If I could just get a hold of my case manager, then I’ll be okay.” You get a hold the case manager and that same suffering brain is going to attach on to the next thing. And then it’s the next thing. And so it’s really getting, it’s unhooking from all of that.
Michael: “The suffering brain.” Is that a term?
Nisha: No, it’s just—
Michael: No, it sounds like it could be in a book somewhere. “The suffering brain.”
Nisha: No, I’m not saying I’ve coined it, I’m just, I’m saying I don’t know if, I don’t know that [00:28:00] it’s in a book.
Michael: Right.
Nisha: But it’s really trying to—
Michael: So you’re trying to basically reduce the suffering that, the sort of manufactured suffering at some level.
Nisha: Absolutely.
Michael: Because, as you said, the pain is real. Pain is real. It happens. It’s going to happen. But the suffering you’re talking about is the, this psychologically-induced suffering that is this disconnect between what we want that will make us happy, we think will make us happy, and the reality of our lives.
Nisha: Yes. And if I get really good with the present moment, like if I really start to develop a true sense of mindfulness practice, that there’s, most moments, I’m okay. I’m serious. And again, I’ll bring that to a client. “Look at this moment right now. Not five minutes ago, not what happened ten years ago, not what’s going to happen in two weeks. I don’t know what’s going to happen in two weeks. This moment, right now, what’s wrong?” And most of the time the answer is nothing. Nothing is wrong. But a lot of what creates the problem in [00:29:00] our minds is what’s going to happen in five minutes. What happened five years ago. What happened maybe even this morning.
And it’s building enough sense of yourself and your spirit from those things to be able to recognize that I actually have a lot to be grateful for. And it’s not, lipstick on a pig gratitude. It’s really finding the reality of it. And the reality that, of the, you know, the peace within.
We’ll talk about grief as a manifestation of love. And actually, it doesn’t need to be fixed. Because we keep thinking that these negative emotions need to be fixed. I need to go fix my sadness. I need to go fix my depression. I need this pillar, that pillar, that thing to be okay. Again, to be okay. What if sadness was a gift? What if the range of my emotions were a gift? And that I’m getting to experience this great sadness, and now I’m gonna experience this other thing.
Like, the theme this week was moment of clarity. I don’t know [00:30:00] if you’ve ever heard that term. But a moment of clarity is like when you’re in the midst of the addiction, and you look around and you go, “Oh, no.”
Michael: You mean like an epiphany.
Nisha: It’s like seeing clearly for the first time how much of a mess this is and I can’t live this way And there’s some part of me that doesn’t want to live this way. And we call it a moment of clarity. To get to a moment of clarity there has to be suffering. If there is no suffering, I’d never get there. Some of the greatest change, the best change whether it’s on the personal or the global level, is behind suffering is behind—not suffering—pain. I’m, sorry. Let me use the right word. Is behind pain. And so, even in that sense, if given the space of time, everything is in order. As opposed to looking at the really bad thing that’s happened to me as being my only defining feature, it’s actually the really bad thing happened to me and I’m so much more than my pain.
And because again, you’re looking at a group of folks [00:31:00] who sometimes the mental health model works against us, because it’s like, these people are sick and need help. And yeah, we have some challenges that we need to work through. But it’s not, I’m not a lost cause. There are no lost causes. And sometimes what needs to—it’s like when somebody says, “I’m depressed” or “I feel depressed.” Look at your life circumstances right now. Of course! Those are depressing life circumstances. We’re having a natural response to a human situation.
Michael: I’ve often wondered why psychologists don’t acknowledge that more frequently. Working with kids and teenagers most of my life, sometimes their lives are so messed up it’s no wonder that they’re mentally unstable.
Nisha: They’re having a natural response to a given set of circumstances!
Michael: They don’t need drugs to reorient them. They need to somehow calm their lives down.
Nisha: Yes! And so it’s, “Oh, okay.” And then, [00:32:00] and again that you’re, that we’re not helpless. That people are capable. And then you have examples of people who’ve come through the program and been really successful. I’m in the parking lot, she’s doing really well, and other people see that. And they get excited. If they can do it, I can do it too. And again, doing really well might not look like doing really well by, if you want to say, like, middle class white America standards. It might, doing really well might look like being happy, joyous and free in my given circumstance. And again, I’m not waiting to be compared to the next person to find my joy.
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