Send us a textAshley Smith, an advocate, author, and speaker, shares her powerful journey of recovery from schizophrenia and how she transformed a legal crisis into a platform for mental health advocacy. Through her blog "Overcoming Schizophrenia," seven self-published books, and work with organizations like NAMI and the Curious Foundation, Ashley demonstrates that recovery is possible and helps others find their path forward.• Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at age 20 after a legal intervention involving a police chase with a military truck• Successfully manages schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression through medication and strong support systems• Works as a Certified Peer Specialist helping others navigate their own mental health journeys• Educates law enforcement through Crisis Intervention Team training on handling mental health emergencies• Founded the "Overcoming Schizophrenia" blog in 2008, recognized among the top 20 schizophrenia blogs worldwide• Has self-published seven books and provides coaching to aspiring authors• Emphasizes that recovery takes many different forms and is possible with proper supportContact Ashley through her blog Overcoming Schizophrenia, find her books at amazon.com/author/Smith.Ashley, or email her directly at [email protected]://tonymantor.comhttps://Facebook.com/tonymantorhttps://instagram.com/tonymantorhttps://twitter.com/tonymantorhttps://youtube.com/tonymantormusicintro/outro music bed written by T. WildWhy Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Chapter 1: What is Ashley Smith's journey with schizophrenia?
Oh, it's my pleasure. Glad to have you here. I understand that you do a lot of writing.
Yes, I am. Yes. I've been blogging since 2008, and I just had a thing for writing.
What led you to get into writing?
I'm not sure. Self-expression, creativity. As a child growing up, I had a journal and teachers gave me compliments on my writing, on my essays growing up in grade school. So I just have a joy for words and putting them together, making them sound lively and passionate and good.
So once you got into that, that actually led you to writing a book about schizophrenia.
Yes, I wrote my own blog book on my experiences living with schizophrenia. I'm in recovery now.
I think that's really good that you did this. What events, if any, led up to you actually sitting down and writing the book?
I've been wanting to share my story in recovery for a very long time. I actually had the opportunity to meet up with a peer who is also a self-published author, and she guided me through the steps of self-publishing. It was actually her idea just to put my blog articles together to get my story out there. And so she walked me through the process, and then I have these blog books.
My first blog book came out back in 2014, What's on My Mind?,
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Chapter 2: How did Ashley start her blog and write her first book?
And so this is another form of social work, being a CPS, a certified peer specialist.
What happens when you encounter people you've mentored or guided through tough times who just didn't seem to grasp what you were saying or take it in? Maybe they even pushed back a bit? How did you manage to break through that resistance and help them understand so they could still move forward?
I think that being a CPS or doing any type of work, it's important to build rapport with the individuals, whoever you're working with. And so I love talking to people. I love supporting people. And so just sharing my story and them knowing that, hey, I have a diagnosis similar to theirs or exactly like theirs, that gives them a lot of hope.
And I've actually seen firsthand how my blog books, sharing my story vocally through my blog has helped other people and empowered them to be authors. to share their memoir or to share their blog stories.
Have you ever felt like things weren't going well? Like you weren't sure if you were getting through to someone? Then one day, it's like the light switch just turned on. Everything clicked. And from there, you were able to keep nurturing that relationship to guide them towards a better place for themselves.
Yes, yes. I've worked with quite a few individuals and two become at the forefront where the communication was really soft and really hard in the early on because it was an icebreaker. It takes time to develop these relationships. And so now that in the beginning, this individual wasn't talking as much or they'll give short, brief answers or responses.
Now their face lights up and now they're looking forward to our sessions and the opening up about different things I would never thought was going on or just noticed because it's just more vocal now. And so that has been really empowering and motivating for me to continue doing this work.
That's great. It's always nice to have a success story. So what are your goals now? What do you see yourself doing in the next three to five years? How do you make this bigger and better for yourself and the ones you're helping?
Yes. And on top of my blog books, I've developed some other books. I've actually self-published seven books today. As of today, I have seven books out on my Amazon author page, amazon.com slash author slash Smith Ashley. And so I've inspired other people to write books and I want to do more book coaching.
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