An introduction to CHIME
CHIME is the approach we use to mental health recovery – here’s what it involves
What do we mean by ‘recovery’?
At REST, we’re here to support you with your recovery. Recovery doesn’t mean you’ll be ‘cured’ of your mental health problems and never have any symptoms again. Rather, it means that you will have the tools to live well most of the time, connecting with friends, managing work and/or caring responsibilities, and making key decisions about your life for yourself.
CHIME: a holistic approach to recovery
We use an approach called CHIME which stands for Connection, Hope, Identity, Meaning, Empowerment. This approach acknowledges that we are all different and have different things that are important to us, but there are common ways that we can approach our interactions with the people, places, and things in our lives that will help us to cope with daily life and see a positive future ahead.
Connection
During an episode of mental ill health you might feel like other people don’t understand your situation, or would judge you if they knew about your situation. You might feel not worthy of other people’s time, or not have the ‘head space’ to deal with other people in your life.
As a result, you might drop many of your meaningful connections, or struggle to make new ones. This can make you more isolated, which in turn can increase those feelings (and so on, in what many describe as a ‘downward spiral’). We’ll support you to rebuild those connections in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming.
We might:
- Accompany you to a support group where you can connect with people who have similar experiences.
- Help you make a plan for social events you want to work towards attending.
- Support you with a strategy for talking to friends and family about your mental health
Hope
It can be really demoralising and demotivating to go through a mental health crisis. Research suggests that a sense of hope can be really important for our wellbeing. Working with hope does not mean downplaying the difficulties you’re facing. It means creating practical, achievable steps by which you can see a future that is not consumed by your mental health difficulties.
We might:
- Offer you sessions with a peer support worker who has gone through a process of recovery, so you can see the possibilities ahead.
- Help you identify and achieve practical goals, like having a job interview, reaching out to a therapist, or picking up a hobby you enjoy.
- After you have accomplished something, help you reflect on the resources it took that you might not realise you had, and how this might transfer to other achievable situations.
Identity
The way we view our self in relation to the world can be really affected by our mental health. It is important for human beings to have a broad identity with different aspects that can be more or less central in different situations (for example ‘In the family home I am a mother’, ‘With my friends I often play the joker’ or ‘My Indian heritage is important to me’). When our identity is based too heavily on a single, unchanging concept, particularly if that is a very limiting concept like ‘I am a broken and ill person’, it can make any mental health difficulties we face worse.
At REST we can support you to challenge the negative effects on identity that your mental health might be having. This doesn’t mean ignoring the fact you have had mental health difficulties – indeed for many people being open and honest about mental health can help to develop a more positive sense of their own identity.
We might:
- Go with you to a community group, for example an LGBTQ+ support group or an event run by Norfolk’s Asian community.
- Sit with you for a coffee in our community café, where people on all sorts of recovery journeys can plan recovery or simply relax without stigma or judgment.
- Give basic training in how to set up a support group of your own, for example a regular gathering of mothers or an online community for gamers to meet and chat.
Meaning
Experiencing a mental health crisis can be really confusing. It could lead you to doubt yourself, with lots of unwanted thoughts and feelings that make filtering out what is important very difficult. You might find yourself asking questions like ‘What is going on?’ or ‘Why has this happened to me?’
You might also struggle with connecting changes in your symptoms with things that affect them. For example, you might not have noticed that sleeping at erratic hours makes your anxiety worse in the days that follow. At REST we provide the reflective space to explore these connections between different areas of your lifestyle and wellbeing.
We might:
- Give you tools to track your mood across time and the things that affect it.
- Recommend books, films, courses or podcasts that help you make sense of your symptoms.
- Help you explore examples of people who have achieved great things and lived meaningful lives despite difficulties and barriers, and find ways you can apply this to your own life.
Empowerment
If you’re experiencing mental health difficulties you might find that you sometimes struggle to be an active decision maker in your own life. The work we’ll do with you on connection, hope, identity, and meaning should help you to feel more in control of what’s going on in your life. If you need it, we’ll also support you to build your confidence and speak up to access the support you’re entitled to.
We might:
- Help you to talk confidently to a doctor about the symptoms you experience, with reassurance, good quality information, and advance planning ahead of a session.
- If you’re really finding it hard to have a voice, support you through small pieces of advocacy work, for example making sure your claim for benefits or housing is considered appropriately by the relevant agencies.
