đ§ Listen to Sarah read this installment of Cured.
Group therapy has to go. Thatâs the first mistake I make on the wrong path to mental health recovery. Stopping therapy seems to make sense. If someone is mentally healthy, she isnât in a group program thatâs part of the partial hospitalization program she was once in. Having been in a hospitalization program means something was terribly, irrevocably wrong with me.
Itâs embarrassing to recall how on Thanksgiving at ten in the morning, the other patients and I sat in the facilityâs test kitchen making mini apple pies. We werenât allowed near the ovens. Or the knives. The assumption wasnât necessarily that we were potentially dangerous, but the program couldnât open itself to lawsuits. Still, not being allowed near knives and an oven at forty-six was humiliating.
Thereâs no reason it should have been. The program was a lifeline. Having been in an acute psychiatric crisis (which usually means someone has ended up suicidal, psychotic, volatile, or manic), I needed its stability and routine.
We watched as one counselor cut a cored, peeled apple in half, then quarters, then eighths. His knife skills were poor, and I worried heâd cut himself.
The other counselor, a no-nonsense woman with red hair that reached her waist, walked over to help him. She nimbly took an apple from the bowl and brought the knife down on them with a whack!
A third counselor handed out mini disposable pie pans. She placed one in front of each of us, almost rhythmically in sync with the whacks! coming from the cutting board area.
The petiteness of the pies was infantilizing. Or maybe the fact that it was mid-morning and way too early for pie.
Of course, the point isnât the pie. It wasnât about making a delicious dessert to savor. The pie represented a manageable goal people like us could be proud ofâsomething within our grasp to achieve, albeit without access to sharp objects.
I did as I was told but with an attitude. Reluctantly, I put the sugar- and butter-coated apple slices in the tin and covered them with strips of dough.
If thereâd been talk of healing in the program, if Iâd thought making a lilliputian pie was going to lead me closer to recovery, I would have gladly done it. Instead, we were given âskillsâ (CBT, DBT, ACT, mindfulness, etc., etc.) and invited to cry and vent in group therapy and individual therapy sessions and required to express ourselves in art therapy in what felt like a vacuum. Goals beyond the management of our symptoms werenât for us to contemplate.
So I think getting away from thatâfar awayâis the answer.
To read or listen to the complete Cured, choose the discounted annual subscription for $30âabout the price of a hardcover book. Each purchase brings awareness to mental health recovery.
You can also gift âCuredâ to someone in need.