A Bunch of Bananas...

So I started to go to Group Therapy...now, I haven't been in a group setting in a LONG time and didn't know quite what to expect with my first meeting.

I went in for the evaluation (while I was waiting there was a guy asking for the receptionist's email adress so he could send her naked pictures...uh yeah, we knew why he was in counseling) and after I told the therapist my story she called me resilient...at which point I bust out laughing, not really the word I would use to describe myself.

So, the first day approaches and I'm a little worried about what it's going to be like. I kind of figured that it would be a bunch of bored housewives discussing how difficult their lives were.

Imagine my surprise when one of the first conversations I heard was "I have 8 cokes a day" and then the woman turned to me and said, "you know, sodas, right?" Uhm, I don't think I have ever been included in a conversation where you have to qualify you are talking about soda.

So, I'm looking around and I see a couple people with band aids on their arms...it didn't occur to me until later they were having drug testing that day. Imagine my surprise to find out that most of the women in my group were recovering addicts. Now I'm no stranger to addiction and recovery. My uncle celebrated his 20th year of AA last year. This was a far cry from the bored housewives I had expected (yes, I know you're thinking I'm a snob...so was I!)

So, I watch a woman walk in and she was so put together I wondered why she was there. I mean how can someone who looks so normal have enough issues to need group therapy.

And then it was her turn to talk and she said, "I just had a relapse 12 days ago and I just got out of the hospital, that's why I wasn't here last week." And my jaw nearly hit the floor. I. WAS. HER. WITHOUT. THE. ALCOHOL. While I was sitting there thinking I wasn't nearly as screwed up as all these women I realized their drug of choice was just different than mine...I did abusive relationships and they did substance abuse. Talk about an instant leveling of the playing field.

I looked at this woman and you could just see the anxiety pouring off her and how uncomfortable she felt in her own skin and I wondered if that's what I looked like to people who were around me. And I felt something that I hadn't felt in a long time, I didn't feel alone anymore. There was someone else out there that was making bad decisions like I was, I wasn't the only one that wasn't coping well in my life. And it was like validation...in a weird backwards way...and it worked, and I thought "hey, maybe this will work."

And I gave it a chance, which I guess is the first step to making it work. I attend a DBT Group and I truly believe that every person should have to take a class like this. There are so many people out there that would benefit from it. I always feel out of control, that everything around me is happening because someone else chooses it to be so...what I'm learning is that I have control over myself and how I feel about what happens around me. And I get to decide what I think I can handle, what's ok for me and how I want to live my life.

I can live it in a way that makes me happy and fulfilled or I can live in a way that makes me miserable and keeps me on the path I've been on for the last 3 years. What a breakthrough this was for me...seriously, I could chose to be happy? Why had no one told me this before? And then they told me it was work. In fact, one of the hardest things I would do in my 39 years. How do you change habits and thoughts you have carried and believed all of your life?

How? Very slowly and with a lot of thought and a lot of being good to yourself.

So after my first session I left the building wondering what I really thought about what I had just heard, I wondered if this would work for me and if I wanted to invest this much time and change myself completely.

Who knew in the next 30 minutes that I would get a chance to put every new thing I had learned to the test....