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opinionatedvulgarity:

disorderlymind:

Now that I am out of the hospital I am in an intensive outpatient therapy program. I go Monday through Friday from 9am to 3pm. We do group therapy the whole time. The progress is so significant compared to inpatient that it’s night and day. Then again the patients are night and day. We are all in a different place, we are all beyond the suicidal thoughts and into the “How do I get back to work? What do I tell people about where I have been?” sort of thing. Also we deal with more long term issues, childhood traumas, there were some tears the other days when I unwittingly sculpted a pregnant woman from clay to represent some words I drew from a hat.

We have struggled with fertility since the day we got married. It took five years to get pregnant with my youngest, and last, child. It cost a fortune. We tried for another after that but had to bail out when we had a risk of five fertilized eggs one cycle and then none the next. The next step would have been IVF. Not only could we not afford it….well, we just could not afford it. We had to declare bankruptcy, we had poured too much into the attempts for the baby we never found. So I had some emotion to deal with there.

We watch videos on topics like stress, depression, and anger. Then we have group discussion. Because we have a small group and a lot of time everyone gets to really get into some deep emotions. By the end of the day I am exhausted.

It’s still a lot like the hospital in that we follow a strict schedule. First thing we check in with how we feel and what is our goal for the day. Then we do some group discusion about the night before. We have group sessions. For lunch we go to the hospital cafeteria, the process is the same as when you are inpatient: wait in line, eat crappy food, look warily at the patients at other tables. Then back to the group for more activities and group discussions.

Basically by the end of the day it’s all pretty tiring.

you are so lucky. i wish you good luck in your program.. i am so jealous

I’ll assume you’re refering to being jealous that the OP’s in treatment. Because UGH, group therapy does jack for me. I am a naturally mistrusting person. I will sit in the back of the room and glare covertly, suspiciously, at other patients. I point blank walked out of group therapy once when I was at the hospital (yes, inpatient) because some crazy woman offended me by getting a little too Jesus-y.

That’s another thing. Group therapy, at least the exposure to it that I had, made me look at myself and go “…the fuck? I am NOT as crazy as these loonies. I don’t belong here.” Bottom line, I’m not going to get any benefit from it and once I can afford therapy, I’ll be going solo.