IOP (Intensive Outpatient) is an experience I thought I would hate and ended up with a sisterhood, validation, love, support, and the knowledge that I am not alone and people from all walks of life, professions, and personalities struggle with mental illness. It made me realize I am not “crazy” because I saw that none of them were crazy. Just overwhelmed, people pleasers, with past traumas and some of us with “physical” illness that are struggling on that front as well.
I put physical in quotations because mental illness is a physical illness also. It’s your BRAIN! Without one you cease to exist. Everyone has a brain, it is the MOST important organ in the body, it can get sick too, it can get overwhelmed like any organ can by external and internal forces. It physically hurts inside too. For me I get overwhelming pressure in my chest and stomach, my other aliments flare up, and I am unable to regulate my breathing. It affects the whole body when someone is suffering from a mental illness.
Through IOP I found things out about myself through the testimony of others. I found answers to questions I had been searching for, for as long as I can remember. Radical Acceptance was probably the first tool I really internalized. Two things can be true at the same time. You can truly deeply love someone and at the same time for your own self-care choose not to interact with that same person. You can forgive, yet still walk away. Opposite Action, I’ve been depressed for years. Just doing the laundry is a terrifying task. That may sound nuts if you haven’t experienced depression or your experience is different; doing simple tasks is extremely difficult with anxiety and depression. As a tool Opposite Action is helping me overcome that in small increments. Like our group therapist said, “just do one load, and say that’s it for today.” So instead of freaking out about doing a load of laundry for hours, I have been having the kids bring me what they need washed each night and letting them put it in the washer before I fill the rest of the load and start it before bed. Small step, but huge accomplishment at the same time.
The STOP Skill. LIFESAVER! This helps keep me from going down the rabbit hole. When I am feeling overwhelmed, or hurt, rejected, what have you; I have the skills now to STOP, ‘check the facts’ and proceed from a wiser state of mind. Or to just table certain things.
The other thing about IOP is that it brings it ALL up. Things you have buried, things you didn’t even remember until that very moment a word was said by someone else, or a skill in the book could trigger a lot. Not a bad thing, but a hard thing to deal with. After sessions I would sometimes feel weights lifted, sometimes felt really happy, sometimes bawled all the way home. It was a rollercoaster. I actually had a horrible four days before I graduated, yesterday. I could not use any of my tools, my brain was overwhelmed, struggling to process everything happening in my environment. I had several panic attacks, and I self-harmed (My way of self-harm has always been scratching my forearm or starving myself, I now have Colitis so I rarely have an appetite.) This is something I have not done with the exception of the day I was hospitalized, in years. I was completely honest with the IOP therapist and my peers in the room about the self-harm and inability to self-regulate. They didn’t judge me, they embraced me. To be clear self-harm and being suicidal are different things. Self-harm is an unhealthy way of regulating yourself, snapping out of it so to say. You get desperate for relief and the pain distracts you. It is not an attempt to die. The tools are there to help you not get to that point. Pushing yourself with mental health is not always the way to go, you have to accept your mind and bodies boundaries too as a way of self-care. I overdid it. I wasn't practicing self-care.
I also know what triggered the four days of hell. Thursday, I ran from 7am-9pm during that time I did several things that overwhelmed me. I had to run to a big store, I don’t like loud and chaotic environments with lots of lights. It completely overwhelms me. I stick to the small store in my town. This time however I needed cheap grey eyeliner and a grey one-day hair color in a spray can for my twins talking history for literacy night at school, had to talk to the school’s principal about an incident with a bus driver. Then had to run and get my daughter, she forgot her bookbag. Drove the ten miles back to her school to get it and got the twins ready in only an hours’ time. Literacy Night…way too many people, way too much noise, four kids of course scattered so I was constantly looking for them. Then to wrestling practice. Lots of noise. The only way I made it through that without a panic attack was that a friend and I sat together and talked, and it distracted me, and was so very helpful. However, the day had mentally and physically drained me and with graduation looming my anxiety peaked and I couldn’t regulate. So, we identified the problem, now my husband is helping with wrestling practice as much as possible and understanding more that there is still a lot of healing to do and we need to do everything we can do to let that happen. Almost clearing my plate and adding things back to it as I am able.
Yesterday was hard. Graduation meant that I was moving on, but it also meant that I was not going to be with this wonderful therapist and these wonderful women three times a week. I love them, we get each other, and we are kind to each other. Build each other up, not break each other down. We are further stripped of our ability to judge other human beings.
Yesterday was filled with tears, gifts from the heart, cards full of positivity, love, and hugs (if you know me, I am not a big hugger…but I was yesterday.) It also filled in a little bit more of MY circle, the people like me that I can lean on and they can lean on me. When we just need a listening ear and a little validation we can meet up for coffee and vent a little knowing that they KNOW me and they are not judging me, nor I them. We are connected through our experiences.
Today, I am doing okay. Getting some work done and making progress on some other fronts. Last night was a good night to. I was able to do small things that meant the world to my children. I also came home to a beautiful graduation card signed by my husband and children. My sister has been checking in with me more often. My tanks are not on empty. I also know that boundaries and self-care need to be prioritized right now as I heal and as a lifestyle change. Graduation doesn’t mean I am fixed, it is a daily exercise. I must use those tools and recognize when I am slipping and when I take steps backwards.
Next step…designing my Zen Garden…hopefully making enough progress to be able to create it soon. The Earth is my church, and I will have a symbol for each one of the wonderful women and men that I met through this program. There will also be a symbol for the beautiful soul that was our therapist that guided us all through some really trying times and hard topics.
I hope they have it all!
Side note: I want all of you to think about those humans in our society that cannot afford that type of program, who do not have the right insurance, that don’t have a voice because they are already underwater. Judge less and empower more.