Stubborn, Willful, Difficult

I never wanted to enroll in a treatment program, much less be ordered to do it by the court. It was safe to assume I was not going to be a walk in the park kind of patient. And I wasn’t, for a long time. However, I was never rude to my therapist or my group members; I was just plain resistant. On my first day at Rogers, I survived the groups and then it was individual time. This is where you meet with your individual therapist to talk through things and they will assign you things to work on during that time. This was my first meeting with her, and it was definitely a short one. I was stuck in the mindset that I didn’t deserve to get better and that there were other people who deserved this more. I was just taking up a spot that someone else could be benefitting from. And that is what I told my therapist. I didn’t tell her the whole story because that required me to be vulnerable, and that was by the far the last thing I wanted to be. So, I told her only enough to try and get her to leave and take care of other patients. Ones who wanted to be here, and deserved a better life. Because for a very long time, I was 100% convinced that I was going to die by my own hand, so why delay the inevitable? There wasn’t going to be any fixing of my brain, so why are we trying? See, everything for me at this time in my life was about control. I didn’t feel like I had any and that wasn’t sitting right with me. I needed something to control, and that would be my mindset. When you attempt to take your life, you don’t get to make your own choices anymore. It is in the hands of the cop who has to watch you 24/7, the doctor who decides to involuntarily hospitalize you, the crisis worker who reviews your history and also decides to hospitalize you, and the judge who puts you on “mental health probation”; as I like to call it. So, that is pretty much how the process went for me. Attempted, got medically cleared, went to a psychiatric unit, went to court, got put on a commitment, and had to follow the rules for six months. The judge said I had to enroll in a treatment program because I was a frequent flyer. (Okay, he didn’t say that but we were all thinking it). So, on to Rogers I went and we are back with my therapist. She surprised me. She was not going to let me get away with my bull crap. She didn’t push me to be more willing, but she also wasn’t letting me wallow in self pity either. It was a unique balance, to say the least. But not knowing it at the time, that balance was going to be what ultimately saved my life. (Once I got over being stubborn, and it took a few weeks.)