Behind the closed doors, there are warm-hearted humans who tether on reflections that barrel through their mind. They test the limits of their prowess where some float just to watch others sink. The overflowing ruminations grip their throat until their mind, body, and heart dwarf against the winning despair. There’s a sudden urge to reach out to outsiders who might lend them a listening ear. This is the shoe that Neesa Sunar fills.
Neesa mutes the side effects of doses and medications. She’s a part of a housing agency that offers safe space to people who experience mental illnesses. She doesn’t walk up to the residents just to prescribe them certain drug tablets and capsules wrapped in tin foils. Instead, she morphs into a sponge that absorbs their dripping anxiety, siphoning their exhausting heavy thoughts as her own to ease the burden that weighs on their mind and shoulders. Neesa heals lost souls as a Mental Peer Health Specialist.
Her role is far from a dictionary-based definition. She forges genuine relationships with people who deserve to be listened to and not just be heard. Her patience and compassion ooze for the community that she belongs to, driven by her grit to provide support and become a backbone that they can rely on. Neesa doesn’t communicate with them just to fulfill her task. She does so to embrace their narratives and find means to help them discover their renewed spirit.
“It can be challenging to maintain motivation when you experience it. There’s a stigma that surrounds someone who has a mental illness, and it’s tiring when we’re around people who are not open enough to accept them. I may be a staff person, but I maintain open-mindedness and never superiority. A huge part of my work is removing this executive power and instead infusing a give-and-take approach. The people I support might not know it, but they help me too. They’ve become the people who I truly care about and it’s no longer a job to tell them I’m here for them,” she says.
Neesa received her training from Howie the Harp in 2014 before assuming her role as a Mental Peer Health Specialist. The five-day-per-week comprehensive course allowed her to delve into the realms of non-clinical ways to approach people with mental illnesses. After six months and a half, she went for an internship offered by the agency she works for today that then hired her at the end of her tenure.
Before the pandemic’s blow, assisting people had been the stark feature of Neesa’s role. She went beyond the threshold to motivate the residents, jutting a nook for them to nurture themselves and their wellness until they had enough strength to embrace their own will. Mundane to-do lists peppered her daily routine with the likes of grocery or comparison shopping, mastering the art of budgeting, or repurposing the space of the house as they clean it. The silver lining that sparks at the end of the tunnel is for the residents to pick up the pace of each skill set, practice it on their own, and live independently with such a useful tool to face their everyday living.
“Right now, they live in the apartments provided by the agency and they get a lot of intensive management services. A big chunk of their disability money goes to us. We budget it according to their needs and give them a monthly allowance of around $200. The idea of our program is for them to learn and develop new skills that will help them become and live independently in the near future. Once they graduate from our helping hands, they will be able to support themselves where ⅓ of their income goes for rent fees and they’re free to choose how to use the rest. I’m here to solidify their skills that will allow them to stand on their own. A part of that is strong emotional support to foster the confidence they need to achieve our collective goals,” she says.
Neesa is at the vanguard of showcasing a beacon of hope that lights up the dark path of those who find themselves in the wrath of mental illness. Her decision to become a Mental Peer Health Specialist didn’t come as a mandate. It had been cultivated as she underwent waves of childhood trauma, clinical depression, and schizophrenia early in her life.
Her childhood trauma was summoned when a parent of hers resorted to abuse as an indication of affection to Neesa. She had dealt with difficult feelings and experiences growing up, suffocating her throat with unspoken thoughts and strings of unexplainable emotions. The throes spearheaded her clinical depression once she entered junior high school. By the time she reached high school, she started her medications, and to balance the side effects, she turned to the comfort of music as she played viola. The hobby became her mellow hearth that she attuned to and pursued her path as a musician through the music conservatory in Indiana University.
The mental illness that she bore lurked in her. During practice, she would break down, drawn from the internalized depression. She felt obligated to stash the depression away in a closet to fit in among the crowd. Her time in graduate school was a turning point for Neesa as she developed schizophrenia and decided to abandon her career as a musician when she left school for good.
Neesa had lost and found herself in the process of recovery. In the deep sea of depression, she swam, floated through, and found treasures of wisdom that she kept and now live with. She has grown to pocket the sageness she has plucked from each moment she winded through. “I have a lot of experiences that have given me a personal wisdom related to mental illness struggles that I’ve had, and I value it because that life experience has made me mature and much more grounded in life. I can be proud of this and how I survived it all in spite of the mental illness,” she says.
It’s no wonder why she devoted her time to become a Mental Peer Health Specialist. She’s on the mission to pave new beginnings for people she helps, not to keep them afloat, but to urge them to swim back to the shore and build themselves back to life.
In 2017, she curated a Powerpoint presentation on how to wield Facebook as a platform to offer virtual peer support. The lecture landed her four workshop gigs and geared her desire to start up a Facebook group on mental peer health and support. Fast forward to 2020, Neesa received her Master’s Degree in Social Work and her virtual group has amassed 2,200 members across the globe, establishing networks and sparking new conversations that build mental health bridges.
To top it off, Neesa just got hired as a Senior Peer Specialists Worker in New York. She’s a supervisor to a team of peer specialists and works for Crisis Respite Center, an “alternative to emergency hospitalization for individuals aged 18 and up experiencing psychiatric crises.” It’s a way to offset hospitalization and relapse without locking someone in for long-term. Those who are interested can voluntarily sign themselves into the facility where they can talk to peer specialists to free their woes and pulsing emotions, and sign out from the facility when they want. No doctors, no permissions, just groups of peer experts who invest themselves in heartfelt conversations.
Neesa has mentioned that she wants to expand her repertoire as an advocate of mental illness support. To catapult her desire to its superlative, she stands tall as a guardian to souls adrift and embodies the channels to prop them up every step of the way. “When I was discharged from my first hospitalization at the age of 14, I wanted to share my experience with my classmates. I thought that people would find my story interesting. So, I told my teacher about it that I wanted to speak in front of the class and I did. But after I finished, I asked if anybody had any questions and no one answered. There was total silence. At that moment, I felt like ‘wow, nobody cares.’
The feelings we have are difficult to describe in language. They’re all intense, and conjuring up words to explain them is indescribable. I’m thinking about my experience that regardless of the trauma I underwent, I’m still very lucky to have a nice Mom who gives me shelter, is kind to me, and never harasses me for what I have. I know that people in our community don’t have that kind of support and I acknowledge that privilege. Some of the people I work with don’t get such support and the only place they receive it from is our agency. I know what it’s like to be in the mental health system and to go through it all without anyone’s support. This thought helps me remain mindful and compassionate towards who I support,” she says.
It’s not surprising to find her in a long queue on a saturated morning, accompanying a resident to apply for the government benefits that they deserve. For today, it’s an errand on the annual application for food stamps. The rustling sound of paper reverberates to their ears, producing a musty sensation of fear. What if they don’t receive it even if they’re qualified? The soft breathing might turn erratic, elevated by the stress, but such harshness will be doused soon. Neesa Sunar then billows, sculpting a buffer to support and remind them of her presence.
Matthew Burgos doesn’t talk to people. He interviews them then writes their story, peppering the narratives with descriptive words. He’s a student of Broadcast Journalism, International Relations, and Law, an English tutor, an aspiring journalist, and a die-hard, 90%-dark-chocolate glutton.
‘New York’s Listening Ear Is Here’ is part of SPORK!’s ADA30 Interview Series: Our Voice, Our Community. In honor of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 30th Anniversary (July 26, 2020) SPORK! is highlighting the creatively diverse voices and niche professions that create, form and strengthen the community.
For more information about Matthew Burgos you can email him at Matthew@SporkAbility.org