Day 2 of Partial Program.

October 21, Friday.

That morning I was picked up first, as per usual. We had a new person get in the car, Caitlyn. She was head to toe a punk rocker who looked 18, and I was in disbelief when she told me she was only 13. She was decked out in Nightmare Before Christmas so we talked about that. She said it was her first day and first time to Partial so I told her not to worry and that everyone was very chill.

Once we got to the hospital I filled out my worksheet, I felt better today so I wrote down that I had less depression and anxiety but other symptoms remained. Slowly the room began to fill. Instead of 5 of us, we had 8. Talin, the social worker, saw this and handed out a front-and-back sheet titled: "Ice Breaker - 20 if questions." Once all of us were sitting in our chairs and quiet Talin told us that, "unless someone really needs to talk this morning about a topic" we are going do an icebreaker instead of the regular opening conversation." Everyone picked a question and answered it for the group to hear. I can't remember everyone's. Lucas' question was 'If you could have any kind of pet, what would you have?' His answer was a velociraptor. I was less surprised than I should have been. Mine was 'If you were given $10,000, what would you spend it on?' I told them I would save it for my MA Degree in Spiritual Psychology.

In nursing group we got to hit each other in the faces with stress balls. Ohkay that wasn't the instructions, but it is what ended up happening. The instructions were pretty simple: we would make a pattern with who starts with one stress ball and when it came full circle, the pattern would go again. After a few circles, Alice added another stress ball so we had two going. Once that got going, we had three, before we knew it we had five balls going. Everyone was dropping them and they were accidentally bouncing off the wall because people were trying to move so quickly that they threw them too hard. More than once Lucas got hit in the face (once it happened three times in a row) because he would go to pick the balls up and but not see that Raine was throwing a ball to him and on his way up from the floor, the ball would hit him. The entirety of the game went for maybe 20-25 minutes, mainly because we stopped going in the pattern we started with and began a game of dodgeball which made it impossible for Alice to get control of us.

When she eventually collected all of the stress balls, we all sat down and listened to what the point of the game was. I didn't exactly understand it, but she said it was to encourage us to not "bite off more than we can chew." She wanted to make a point that yes, you can multi-task with a few things, but around the third ball we started dropping them. By the time we hit five balls we weren't just dropping the balls, we were being completely counterproductive. We began putting too much effort unknowingly into one thing, missing another, not putting enough into another (comparing it to whether we threw the ball accurately to the person, too hard, or too softly).

Art Therapy was set up before we could discuss the game, so while we created fun crafts we talked amongst ourselves about it and listened to each other opinions. Lucas and Caleb had friction between them for gods know why, so they kind of hit heads a few times in the conversation but in that controlled of an environment, the argument was shut down before it could get out of hand. With Lucas already TALKING IN ALL CAPS, him yelling was very unpleasant to me. In an earlier article I described my ability to see Auras if I focus enough, this was one of the points where that was an inconvenience. The colors in the room all merged and changed and made me feel really woozy and lightheaded. Since high pitches and loud talking are triggers for me so I put music on and just shut down while I worked on my owl picture. It was therapeutic on its own because my OCD made me take time on finding the perfect colors, I had to make sure I had enough string which had to be going the same way, there were a lot of variables that my brain came up with that helped bring me down from my anxiety because I had other things to focus on that were productive. Plus I was listening to a new artist so part of my attention was on that.

The doctor came in late, so we had reflection after lunch. I sat and wrote in the composition notebook they gave me while listening to Bea Miller on my phone. I wrote out what I was going to make my vlog video about (for those look up 'setting the record' on YouTube) until Dr. P called me in. He asked all the typical doctor questions "How was I? How were my thoughts, anxiety, depression, anger, hopefulness?" After a lengthy conversation, he prescribed me Seroquel 3 times a day as needed for anxiety.

Packet time, and I think it was one of the hardest topics for me personally that we covered: Distress Tolerance. It had to have been copied from a book because the pages are numbered 60-71, but nowhere was a title. The front page said on top "Distress Tolerance Skills" then had a bunch of stick figures freaking out in different ways, and then at the bottom it said "Getting through pain situations without making them worse! Crisis Survival Strategies."

The packet was small, but it was actually pretty thorough with different ways you could cope with bad situations without needing to go into a yoga pose in the middle of Walmart or something. The first thing it told us was that "A Wise Mind ACCEPTS."

Activity (keep busy)

Contributing (get your mind off yourself)

Comparison (could be worse)

Emotions (do something that makes you feel differently)

Pushing away (block out thoughts and feelings)

Thoughts (distracting thoughts)

Senses (be aware of your senses)

Talin explained to us that the way to be aware of your senses is to look around and find 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. The exercise is supposed to ground you and make you realize that even though the world seems to be ending in your mind, you are in a solid and safe place.

The next acronym we got was "IMPROVE The Moment"

Imagine (better times, better things, success)

Meaning (find one useful thing about the situation for you)

Prayer (find some quiet place inside of you)

Relaxation (quiet your body)

One thing at a time (just this moment)

Vacation (go someplace in your mind, or take a time out)

Encouragement (tell yourself it will be ohkay).

During our group conversation we connected the dots between 'one thing at a time' and our game earlier today. We all stayed away from 'prayer' once we realized that we had some different spiritualties in the room, and Talin brought Alice in to talk about 'taking time outs.' She told us very urgently that it was important for us to realize that when we are in a stressful situation or 'in distress' that you can say to the other person, "I need to stop and cool off. Can we come back in x-amount of minutes?" Alice said 15 minutes is usually the best, but to not go longer than 45 minutes.

The next few pages were worksheets, which they usually tell us we can do for homework unless it's a topic people are confused on. The next not-worksheet page was about breathing. The entire group groaned and sighed because it was such a cliché to say, "if you are feeling anxious, just stop for a minute and take some deep breaths" but this list was actually different than that. Of course deep breathing was on the list, but there was also 'measuring your breath by your footsteps', 'counting your breath', following your breath while listening to music', 'half-smile while remembering your anger during a recent disagreement or argument' and 'breathing to quiet the mind and body.'

Counting your breath was the main one that people didn't really know what it was. It's when you inhale and count four seconds, then hold your breath for four seconds, and exhale for six seconds then repeat. Once you get the idea down you can edit it to how long you can personally take it. Mine is 4 inhale, 7 hold, 8 exhale. The other confusing one was half smiling while remembering and experiencing recent anger. The idea is to replace the current situation with one that is already resolved and say "I'm glad that is fixed and I see that persons point of view now." Continue reliving the situation until that anger is replaced with compassion. This is a form of distracting yourself (that particular coping skill still confuses me, but multiple people said that would be helpful to them).

Closing Group was taken up to talk about all we learned that day instead of going over our closing sheets. We also discussed the last page in our packet that wasn't necessarily about distress tolerance. The page was entitled "Basic Principles of Accepting Life On Life's Terms." It was a list about accepting pain, suffering, and judgement, acknowledge that's what it is, stop fighting reality, and turn your personal suffering into an emotion that you can endure. Underneath the list, it discussed that acceptance is a choice and can be represented as a fork in the road. You can either reject reality by saying "I don't have to deal with this" or you can go to acceptance and endure the pain to come out stronger. "You have to make an inner commitment to accept" "the commitment to accept does not itself equal acceptance, it just turns you toward the path, it is the first step."

After getting home that day, I reread the packet a few times. I realized that if I chose the path of acceptance, or if anyone did, there will be a heck of a lot more forks in the road than if you choose the other path. If you chose the path of acceptance, you'd have to continuously choose acceptance for each situation you encounter, whereas if you go down the other path you get to bypass all of the hard discussions life throws at you because your attitude remains the same. I guess the good thing is that you can always switch to the path of acceptance.

-Andrew