maybe there was a message in it—i don't know where you hid it

[erika]

Types of therapy/psychiatry I'm currently doing:

• CBT/DBT/eclectic with a therapist, Colette: weekly-twice monthly as needed.


• Supported Community Living, with a social worker, Gina: weekly-twice monthly, ideally opposite weeks when I see my therapist.


• Psychiatrist visits: once every one to three months.

Types of therapy I have previously done:

• "Strict" CBT with a therapist, Katie, weekly for two years+.



• Group therapy:


• DBT (STEPPS): 22 weeks.


• ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy): 12 weeks, I ended up doing part of one session and all of another, so roughly 18 weeks total.


• Outpatient Partial Hospitalization: Technically not group therapy, but everything was done as a group. From 9-5 for as long as necessary. I stayed for a week and a half, then quit going because it was too difficult for me to wake up that early.

---

What happens in therapy after you've been in it for 5 years:

I go to the office building & wait in the lobby for my therapist to come downstairs from her office.

We go to her office & the session generally starts with us chit-chatting a little, probably no more than 5 minutes ever. She always starts the harder stuff by asking how I am, and then asking me to explain my generally one word answers to that question. (What? No one outside of therapy expects longer than a one word answer to that question.)

Side note: I have a policy to always be truthful and honest in therapy, and more than that, to be forthcoming with the truth. It's just ... more helpful to me and to the therapist not to circumlocute or dance circles around the truth. (Department of Redundancy Department, please enter your PIN number.)

We go over the events in the last however-long-since-I've-been-there (generally a week, lately two weeks). And we try to mostly talk about the important stuff and my reactions to it; whether the reactions were appropriate, why I reacted the way I did, how I feel about it now. She reinforces (or teaches) the CBT skills I've learned, validates my emotions, and acts as sort of a cheerleader. . . if cheerleaders were ever business-like 50 year old women.

For example, today we talked about Chance (because I recently started talking to him again), and then my abscess and how I feel rejected by my body (more commonly heard as "my body has betrayed me"). We explored how I feel about Chance and whether my perceptions of our relationship in the past are accurate, and if they are, what that means for our relationship now, and what our relationship now means to me. Et cetera.

And that is what being in therapy is like.

Questions welcome.

Comments

[royalfireworks]

Dude, you are so much more therapeutically advanced than I am. :D This was really interesting to read.

My sister actually started a nine-to-five outpatient partial hospitalization today. I haven't heard yet how it went, but am kind of boggled that she was able to get up that early for even one day.

[erika]

Yeah... I should write about how my therapy would've gone five years ago, except it would go like this after the "how are you?" part:

"I burst into tears. Through tears, I try to explain why it's important that I kill myself this week. The therapist gently dissuades me, and we talk about how my emotional reaction might be, maybe, just a possibility--a touch overblown."

[mercredigirl]

It’s always fascinating to see how other people deal with their headspaces. (I’m unmedicated and un-therapy’d – yeah, I’m not quite sure how I’m still around, either.) Thank you for sharing.

[erika]

No problem! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I've been in therapy and on meds for 5+ years now. :D

[alwayswondered]

No one outside of therapy expects longer than a one word answer to that question.

So true. Nor, outside of therapy, is it generally acceptable to answer negatively.

I wish I had a therapist right now!

[erika]

I love my therapist. I have no idea what I'm going to do when we terminate—whether it's due to her retiring or I moving.

[illariy]

Dropped by your journal again via the lovememe when I remembered your posts on mental health. I like your philosophy of working with the truth as far as you can. I know well the temptation to make things sound "nicer" but it doesn't work for therapy. ;-)

Now a question: how did you find ACT? (full disclosure: I might attend an ACT workshop later this year)

[erika]

Actually that's an interesting story. I didn't know it was an ACT group when I first went into it, it just happened to be a group therapy offered for free by a graduate student (supervised, ofc) through the local University. It was only after it was so helpful to me that I actually asked if it was a specific modality.