Learning to Cope with Mental Illness

Peer Support is in Georgia. It's where you teach about things either the teacher asks you to teach or you choose the topic and teach it. I need to learn how to be assertive. So that is one of the topics I plan on teaching. Plus I have trouble with my coping skills. Instead of listening and helping Walter when he feels like complaining, I have ended up yelling @ him. He is usually the only person that I do it with. I actually told him to shut up and that seems to be the best. Because he was offended and told me he was not going to talk to me any more. So I did get some relief from his complaining. For a little while. Eventually I had to say I was sorry. He did not like it, he kept asking me to not say it any more and to promise I wouldn't. I never promised not to say it again. But he hasn't been complaining about anything since then.
You can teach any subject you or someone else needs to learn about. Monday the talk was persaverance. He did a great job. He even gave a reort on who had depression and they are or were famous anyway. We learned that Abraham Lincon was bipolar and that while he was President during the civil war he was really depressed and his staff was scared he was going to try and commit suicide, so he was not left in a room alone while he was President. He mentioned a long list of people we all knew. Most of them were depressed, but there were some who were bipolar. Thomas Edison was one who suffered from a mental illness, too.
I remember when I went the lst time we covered writing checks, balancing your check book and about the different terms you use for a savings account and checking account. Plus how to figure what your gross and actual amount you will earn and the tax rate.
I dropped out and put off taking the test to become a Peer Support Specialist. It is a free course, but to become a Peer Suppot Specialist you have to go thru a 2 week cram course. You stay at St. Simons in a hotel and learn all you can to pass a state test. And if you flunk it you can only take the test 2 or 3 times without having to take that 2 week course again. If Wanda is right and we can have all the costs paid. I need to follow thru, because it is the only way I know I can get the money for that 2 week course. Plus I was told that this program I am in may only last for this one year. The progrm that gives us so little a rent and will send us to school too. Walter decided he would like to become a Peer Support Specialist, too.
This course makes it so you go to these classes and then take the test and you can get hired as a therapist or a teacher I like teaching, so I will probably want to take a job as a teacher. I really learned alot when I was in the class last time.
To become a Peer Suppot Specilist you have to have been declared mentally ill and have to have been out of a mental hospital for at least 2 years. Hugs, Mary Lou





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I'm new to computing. . .Be gentle