RTP: WRAP Planning Reduces Fears, Highlights Individuality

Wellness Recovery Action Planning

Recovery to Practice Highlights; John Woodruff, 3/13/2014

I grew up in a tiny town in northern Minnesota. No one knew I left the house at night and wandered the short blocks of our town, traversing from streetlight to streetlight, leaving a cone of light to dip into the darkness in the middle of the block and then to the next corner, back into yet another cone of light.

Eight years ago, I felt my entire life was just a series of those wanderings… and I didn’t want to be around anymore. I was stuck in the darkness in the middle of the block.

Thanks to my healthcare provider, Kaiser, I picked up a small red book, Wellness Recovery Action Plan, written by Mary Ellen Copeland, Ph.D., and considered visiting the Kaiser WRAP group. It was a 6-week group where folks were collectively working on their plans.

The Wellness Recovery Action Plan, better known as WRAP, is a system for self-managing uncomfortable and often painful physical and emotional challenges. WRAP over the last decade has taken hold across the world in every aspect of mental health services for people seeking wellness. Developed by Dr. Copeland, WRAP is a different way—simple, safe, noninvasive, and self-directed. People like it. And as the research shows, it works. WRAP is now listed in the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices.

I figured not much else worked in my life, so why not go?

Yet I approached that first meeting with every fear imaginable. I’d never done anything like this. I felt insecure and hopeless. Would others make fun of me? Would I be judged? Not sure how, but I entered the room expecting to flee within minutes. I hoped no one knew who I was (then no one could track me down after I left).

Wonder of wonders. I found others working on their own stuff. I wasn’t the only one with the feelings I had. No one judged me. I could just be myself. That dreaded fear and self-loathing slipped away. I discovered I was in charge of my life—no one else was.

I let go of the blame and shame that I had clung to. I learned what would help me as I navigated my life. I discovered my voice and was able to advocate for my wellness, because I knew what worked for me. I worked on my unique support system that helps me along the way. I realized I have hope in my life; I believe that things do get better. I was amazed to find people sharing stories that explained hope, personal responsibility, education, self-advocacy, and support as concepts continually operating in their lives during their journeys of wellness and recovery. All of us were allowed to share our truths, and it was certainly OK for many different truths to be in the same room. Judgment wasn’t there. It was clear that others would support me, should I ask for support.

We worked on what are called Wellness Tools. Talk about fun. Wellness Tools are those fun activities and things that I did in the past or ones I might want to try. When I’m not doing well, they help me feel better. Often they are free or inexpensive. At first I was having a bit of trouble thinking of anything I enjoyed—go figure. Then I remembered I enjoyed jigsaw puzzles as a kid. I tried a 50-piece puzzle. It was a picture of puppy dogs. Yup, you guessed it; I still like to get lost working on puzzles. I tackle thousand-piece puzzles now.

We started working on the six sections of a Wellness Recovery Action Plan:

• Daily Maintenance Plan (three lists). The first list describes me when I’m well—for example, the talkative person I am. The second is the most important things I do on a daily basis when I am well, like talking with at least one friend. The third list is the many things I might consider doing to avoid the stressors that can pop up in a day, such as going for a walk and checking out the sky.
• Triggers and Triggers Action Plan. Triggers are external events or circumstances that get my negative reactions going, like hearing the siren of a police car. (There’s a story behind the sirens heard: many years ago, on Main Street in Salt Lake City, Utah, I dropped my trousers). A Trigger Action Plan is the list of activities I know I might do to respond in a different fashion than I did to triggers in the past. I find these actions in my Wellness Toolbox that we worked on in the beginning.
• Early Warning Signs and Early Warning Signs Action Plan. Early warning signs are those subtle signs that come from within me that let me know that I’m beginning to not be doing so well with the world around me, like I negotiate with the clock in the morning (not wanting to get out of bed when the alarm goes off). Once again, after identifying my early warning signs, I began working on an Early Warning Signs Action Plan that would nip those things in the bud right away and get me back to living the way I enjoy in my Daily Maintenance Plan.
• When Things Are Breaking Down and When Things Are Breaking Down Action Plan. These, too, are internal signs. But unlike early warning signs, they are more severe and, if unattended, might lead to others’ needing to care for me. An example from my life is how I remove myself from any social activities and avoid contact with others. I now recognize this as the wakeup call for me to put into play my Action Plan for When Things Are Breaking Down. This plan differs from the others. I don’t have as many options, and I must do everything in the plan and keep doing them until I am feeling better.
• Crisis Planning. I don’t know about you, but I prefer to not go through life waiting for a crisis to happen. I am not prepared for someone else to predict, determine, or claim that my life will be one crisis followed by another. In our WRAP group, I began to rethink crisis and see it as something that life can throw at me. But crisis is a wonderful opportunity for growth and change. I know some don’t see it that way, but I hold onto my truth about this topic. I love working on this section, because I am able to bring into play the things I have learned about myself from the past and from others. Then I am able to share it with the ones I select to be my supporters, should I ever have to be supported at a time when I might not make good decisions for myself, like when I got the phone call that my brother, Twain, had suddenly and unexpectedly died. I’ll share with you the nine parts of this section:
• What I’m Like When I’m Feeling Well
• Indicators That Others Need to Take Over
• Supporters
• Medications
• Treatments
• Home/Community Care/Respite Centers
• Treatment Facilities
• Help From Others
• Indicators That the Plan Is No Longer Needed
• Postcrisis Plan. Whenever life has come at me (or I have chosen to take on life), I have found that I needed to ease myself back toward living the way I was when I was at the peak of my wellness. This last section of WRAP is the only section I work on when I’m not at my best. As I move back toward wellness, I am able to focus on addressing the issues that came up during my crisis and on creating a timetable for resuming the responsibilities I have in my life—for example, gradually going back to work.

That first WRAP group at Kaiser was amazing. I was no longer that wounded, labeled person who doctors told would never work again. I trained to become a WRAP facilitator and began facilitating ongoing WRAP groups in Alameda County, Calif. A few years later I trained to be an Advanced-Level WRAP facilitator, a trainer of WRAP facilitators. Just in time for New Year’s 2012, I moved to the Sacramento area. And get this: I bought a house and have a pool in my backyard—now that makes me happy.

While I don’t work full time, I work—and I love every moment. I have mended fences in family relationships. I thrill to bicycle riding and hiking. And I love my movies. Those bright cone-shaped lights and dark passages in between are no longer a description of my life. And WRAP is why.

John Woodruff, a Copeland Center educator and a certified Advanced-Level WRAP facilitator from Sacramento, Calif., is the CEO of Life Is Amazing Consulting—a firm devoted to the wellness all may share in WRAP Workshops and Facilitator Trainings. Contact him at jochwood@gmail.com.

Many questions about WRAP are answered at http://www.mentalhealthrecovery.com and http://www.copelandcenter.org. The Copeland Center is the primary worldwide provider of training/education, technical assistance, and consultation on the work of Mary Ellen Copeland and the Wellness Recovery Action Plan. The Copeland Center hosts WRAP Around the World and summits that offer important worldwide networking and educational opportunities. A future WRAP Around the World is planned for early next year; dates and location will soon be announced on its Web site.