Hi all
I just got back just about a week ago from a very intense treatment program out of state (2,000 miles away!) I spent 3 and 1/2 at the program. It is an unlocked voluntary short term residential treatment place that felt like learn-about-how-to-cope-and-deal-with-your-emotions boot camp. They used a lot of DBT based therapy, and some other things too.

They really focus on what they call “stage one” treatment of PTSD – skills building. Like how to regulate and cope with super intense emotions. Not much “deep processing” or “stage two work.”

It really fit for what I needed for where I am at right now. They talked a lot about how learning to identify and mange emotions is essential to being able to do stage two work – and pacing stage two work out in a way that it does not cause dysmore dysregulation and de-stablization. Like it did for me...

I had a counselor last year that really turned out to be not the right fit. She was all into stage two – which is really, really important work. But she required it to be much faster than I could handle and I kept coming undone. All my begging for her to back up, slow down, and go back to what I now understand to be “stage one” work - was totally ignored or seen as theraputic interferance. But at the program, it was seen as valid and important information to work through... I needed that. so badly.

I also have long found that much of the deeper healing and deeper processing happens anyhow when I am working on stage one “skills.”
For me, the program was deeply healing. It didn’t just give me more skills to use and help me turn some of my own thinking around and handle my own emotions better – but it also helped me feel really validated and empowered.

I never expected it to be as helpful as it was.

The transition back to life at home has been hard. There is so much to deal with here... I have some really serious problems to face in many areas of my life. I am so afraid I will fall and get very stuck in the old patterns really badly again. So far, I have had some success and some failure - but no getting really super stuck in bad patterns. Not yet...

Overall, I keep running into the basic fact that I do life much better when I take slow steady steps forward. Not just in therapy, but in life as well. Slowly but surely I am dealing with problems and life, one by one, getting space where I can (often not possible)... instead of trying to deal with them all at once, all the time, and get things all “fixed” and better 500 steps in advance.

Therapy is confusing right now.

Sometimes, I start to think of the old counselor, who had sent me a letter just before I left. I didn’t read it and asked she send it to me at the program and she asked for the fax number but never faxed it nor returned my calls nor teh calls of anyone at the program. (nice.) My other therapist, who is very DBT focused, decided she could be the “primary therapist” for me when I got back. When I first went, she was still in the position that I needed another therapist to help me in addition to seeing her and she would focus on DBT skills in the therapy. Now she is very excited about my progress and said she is ok with me seeing just her. I'm not sure about any of it.

I am very mixed up. At the program, something really helped me let go of the old counselor.

It just became more and more clear it was not a good fit. I am still confused and grieving and sometimes I want to call her up and ask if we can meet like we had planned just before I went off to the treatment program out of state.. and then I wonder, why? What am I thinking? what would I gain by doing that?

One thing that is very different for me is that I feel many emotions in a somewhat different way (quality wise), and in a less intense way. I’m not so much at a 1 OR a 7 to 10 range, (10 = feeling an emotion very strongly) but more often at a 5 or 6... and sometimes it feels really wierd!

I LIVE life a little more now too. My life hasn’t really changed, I just feel more present and alive and living each moment more fully. Not ALWAYS (still often) stuck in the past or future.

I am still “re-orienting” and adjusting to life back at home and processing through everything I learned and practiced while at the program. I am working really hard to try to keep all the good things I learned and started using in very good ways while at the program – and trying to PACE myself...

It’s just... somehow... a lot...

I am better now than before I left for the program. I eat and sleep and just plain function better. I got used to how awful I was feeling and doing, and now that I am doing a bit better, I'm scared I will lose this ground I have gained and go back to how awful it was...

My heart feels very small in the midst of all this... but I can feel it more now than I could before...

I am so mixed up.