I Hate Therapy

It's time for me to admit that going to therapy is like me going into a darkened room with a hammer and being told there is a nail somewhere that I should pound into a wall. Somehow, someway...I'm sure it makes sense to the person who gave me the hammer, but to me, I'm clueless as to where to find the nail. Maybe I'm just tired of hearing all the same things, recycled and reformatted in different ways, and feeling like a failure because one of my coping mechanisms for depression doesn't include "positive affirmations of self and situation".

I went to an intensive outpatient program (conveniently known as IOP) today with no less than 14 other crazy people in a room the size of a small office. That's a lot of crazy in one space. It took over two hours to go over our daily check-in sheets where we list if we are currently having any suicidal urges or hallucinations. Or maybe where we report if our voices are telling us to hallucinate more. I'm not sure. The daily check-in logs always seemed a little silly to me. Same with the question, "Do you have a plan to hurt yourself?" That has to be the dumbest question I'm routinely asked. Really, you should ask something along the lines of, "Do you know exactly how you plan to hurt yourself and what your back-up options are if something goes wrong?" That would be a more precise question. I'd also like to point out that you don't actually NEED a plan to do damage. Sometimes it just happens. Sometimes you are just sitting there, feeling like shit, and the idea comes to you. No planning. No flow charts. No excel spreadsheets with forecasts on probabilities of success and the division of property.

I annoy my sister because she says that I complain about every place I go to as not being therapeutic enough for me to actually get any benefit out of. It's a little surprising that my sister is even still talking to me, six years after moving to VT/NH and entering into my first program. During that time it's become apparent to me that I have a very firm idea as to what is "therapeutic". I imagine that my nirvana of therapy would involve soft music, extended meditation on comfortable pillows, and gentle cognitive behavioral coaching and guided reflection in a small group setting, no more than 5 people. There would be hot tea, honey, and locally-grown mandarin oranges, when they are in season, of course. We would eat salads and drink mineral water for lunch, without having to worry about how much money you're losing by not being at work.

What I got today was a brightly lit room crowded with people in straight-backed chairs. There was a woman in her late teens, early 20s that dominated the group with some serious ADD/Anxiety/I-have-no-idea-what, but it caused me to leave the group 30 minutes early. She screamed and gasped without any apparent provocation. She would hold her breath and have to be reminded to breathe. She talked on and on about ex-boyfriends and how famous they are, which made no sense to me. I was trying to practice my "non-judgment of others and self" skill that they teach in DBT, but I'll be honest, I was ready to evict that girl from the group within the first hour. I'm out of vacation and sick leave and have to work eight hours AFTER my three hours of therapy, so I'm already annoyed and trying to focus on getting the most out of my time when I hear her yelp to the right of me. Finally some of the older clients (it was a mixed group of adolescents, adults, and seniors - two out of the three therapists were sick today), told her to quiet down.

In individual therapy at the new DBT place, I've taken to wrapping myself in a throw blanket and lying in the fetal position for 50 minutes. I feel like I can be an active participant in my recovery, while I ward off potential invaders to my sub-conscious. My brain is busy and it's tired of wondering how I'm going to pay for the therapy that I'm receiving. Taking a nice rest sounds much more productive and less expensive.

Clearly, I either need more napping and less therapy or to become a Buddhist monk. Those are the options I'm looking at right now.