PSAN Recovery Speaker Series – MJ Griego

About

MJ Griego is a certified peer specialist and director of The Hope Center recovery learning center in Boston, which offers mental health recovery and community groups online and in person, as well as 1 on 1 support.  They have been interested in mental health and human connection from a young age, as well as the arts.  They went to school for Sociology and Chinese and then had experience working at a Boston shelter, as well as community experience with offering peer support, mediation, and event organization.  During COVID lockdown they focused on digital community building, and in 2021 they started at The Hope Center as a peer group facilitator, then taking over to direct the program in 2022.  Since then the program has added new training and more groups than before COVID, offering both online and in-person groups and activities as well as starting 1 on 1 support offerings.

Outside of peer support, MJ has a passion for painting, having vended their art many times and having hundreds of paintings as well as over 40 filled sketchbooks of work.  They also love gardening, and live with their chosen family of 7 in a big communal house.  They are invested in mutual aid, subversive crisis care, and using trauma recovery as a tool to support people’s ability to work towards our collective healing and liberation.

Talk

I have struggled with mental health since a young age, one of my first memories being of concerning intrusive thoughts that led to my family getting me therapy at age 8.  My experience with clinical therapists and psychiatrists has been mostly negative, and unfortunately my first therapy was exploiting my mental health issues for money without providing me support.  After this experience my family didn’t try to get me a different therapist, so I went untreated for the rest of my youth.  I felt like an alien, being judged for being quiet and not smiling enough.  I had a few angry outbursts in elementary school towards others, but quickly learned to turn that anger towards myself and keep my emotional outbursts for when I was alone where no one could see.  I kept to myself and made art my passion, and continued to struggle with painful intrusive thoughts and depression as well as fatigue.  

I never had the experience of being a child full of energy, I would sit with the adults at parties listening to their conversation or drawing. I craved human connection but struggled finding people who understood me.  Unfortunately my mom struggled with untreated mental illness also, going from idolizing me to angry outbursts and then later acting as if nothing had happened and offered no apology or promise for change.  I also was pressured heavily by my family to go to college and become a financial provider for them, as we struggled with finances consistently.  At one point I broke a tooth and my dental care was expensive so my mom didn’t try to get me help, and I was in pain every day for years.  

In senior year I had the opportunity to get a full scholarship to study in Shanghai china.  I loved learning Mandarin and being there but unfortunately the program isolated us from the rest of the students, and being on my own away from home gave me the opportunity to see how hard my home life was back in Vermont. When I returned, I could no longer keep my emotional meltdowns and depression hidden away.  I found myself anxious and sad almost constantly.  Through all this I was still able to apply to college and scholarship programs, and was offered a full ride to Tufts University in boston.

When I started college I continued to struggle severely with mental health.  My whole life I experienced violent self loathing thoughts and thoughts of suicide and self harm.  What was especially hard were the violent thoughts towards others, which are very stigmatized.  Violent thoughts towards ourselves seem to be more socially acceptable to talk about, but it’s rare to hear people validate that violent intrusive thoughts towards others doesn’t mean we will act on them.  Anyone who knows me will attest that I am a compassionate person who is able to deal with conflict well and treat people with kindness.  Yet every day even crossing the street or being crowded at the grocery store, I would have very upsetting thoughts that took over my life and made me feel unsafe.

I couldn’t hide or pretend I was okay any longer, and my grades suffered enough that I was at risk of losing my scholarship.  For this reason, I ended up taking a year off of school to focus on my health.  During that time I got a job and my own housing, because I knew living with my family would make me unable to truly heal.  I raised my own money to finally get my damaged tooth removed, and get a therapist.  That year was incredibly important and I’m very proud that I prioritized my health.  

Returning to school I still struggled due to mental illness and chronic pain and fatigue, but I was able to make it through classes.  This was when I got gender affirming top surgery, as well as medication that was helpful for my mental health.  I really learned to advocate for myself, and unfortunately when I tried to do so with my mom she didn’t validate or believe my mental health problems.  I tried to stand up for myself and get her to take some responsibility for her own anger challenges, and she decided to disown me as she picked me up from my surgery and was supposed to be there helping me recover.  She simply left and went back to our home state.

This experience destroyed my sense of self which I had built around being a good child to her, and eventually a financial provider.  Family was everything to me, and suddenly I didn’t have that.  I was forced to be distanced from my brother for years due to this estrangement, and I had PTSD from the experience with chronic nightmares and severe safety concerns for myself.

That was 7 years ago, and it has taken so much time to recover.  Now, I have found my own chosen family who respects and loves me, reconnected with my brother, and I almost never have intrusive negative thoughts.  I never thought I could feel this good being alive, but it is possible.  Perhaps the most important piece of my recovery journey was not just getting therapy and medication and learning about self-help, but taking a lot of time for myself and self acceptance.  I had a lot of time where I specifically didn’t say yes to any responsibilities or projects that weren’t necessary, and focused on joy and seeing my life as good enough as is.  I was so fixated on helping others that I was putting myself last, and so obsessed with “fixing” myself that I was actually feeling like I would always be broken because of it.  Peer support as a framework was especially helpful in focusing on my autonomy and not trying to “fix” anyone, including myself.  It also empowered me to value my experience and expertise in my own life.  Me and my perspective have value even if we are not helping others or being “productive” to the world.  I hope you all get to feel that self love and self value no matter if you still have symptoms sometimes, or if you can’t always be productive or helping others.  We are allowed to prioritize ourselves sometimes, especially if we have to make up for love we didn’t get from our childhoods.

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https://bostonmedicalcenter.zoom.us/j/96984874345

Meeting ID: 969 8487 4345
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