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By Root 994 0

not attend, as the center took extra measures to protect and preserve our confidentiality and anonymity. Being left behind meant there were just three people having lunch in the large lunchroom (the third was a client too ill to go out). I sat facing the door, looking at the crossroads on which the campus is situated. I could a see long ways down the country road, its slight undulations from the giant live oak trees’ roots that wove and bulged underneath. In my mind’s eye, I imagined standing up, walking to the door, placing my hand on the knob, and walking out. Just walking out. That simple. I had no car, no phone, no money, but I could walk, and I imagined doing so. I have walked many miles on country roads in my life, and I could just … walk out of there and see where the road would take me. I had the vague sense that doing so would be none too smart, that the pain I was in would accompany me wherever I went. Those thoughts were vague, and I am not sure what prevented me from leaving. After lunch, when I crossed the street back to the center, I did look down the road once. A dim, fuzzy thought formed that I could indeed walk out of here someday, and maybe—just maybe—I would do so as a changed woman.

The weekend activities included a lot of quiet time for written work, Big Book study, Twelve Step meetings, an occasional movie with recovery themes, and process groups in which clients could share in depth about something going on with them, facilitated by a member of the treatment team. I felt ashamed as I struggled to learn the language of recovery: what to say in my “feelings check,” when to give peers feedback, and when such feedback was considered “cross-talk,” offering comments about another person’s sharing that is not appropriate in Twelve Step meetings. I began to use the dreaded “confrontation” format, as required, at the beginning of each group. People who wind up in treatment generally have trouble expressing their feelings and their needs moderately; often they’ve not been taught how to, having never seen healthy communication modeled. Using a standardized script with fill-in-the-blank sentences, I practiced owning my reality with simple statements devoid of under- or overdescribing and ultimately taking responsibility for how I was going to respond to another person’s behavior and take care of myself. (Mind the final statement: “To____. When you rage at the staff after lunch, I think you are doing the anger you have toward your dad. I feel fear and pain. I need and would like you to do anger work with Tennie and Kim. And, I intend to remember ‘if I spot it, I got it,’ do my own work, focus on my own recovery.”) People with healthy internal and external boundaries can listen with detachment and know the exchange is not just about them (even though it seems directed at them), but is a reflection of what is happening inside the person who is sharing. It took me a while to arrive at that place of loving detachment. When one of our peers gave my sister and me a confrontation for perhaps not considering how our closeness might be painful to watch for clients who missed their families terribly, I took it personally and totally shut down. I felt that no matter what I did, I was doing it all wrong.

That Sunday, I was up most of the night, wild with irrational fears and anxiety that felt like worms in my chest. I felt I needed to tell the tech what I was experiencing, yet as I lay in bed, I imagined I was locked in my room, which increased my anxiety. When it finally drove me out of bed, I was so surprised and relieved when the knob turned smoothly in my hand. It never occurred to me that a) this was not a lockdown unit; and b) locking clients in was an illegal fire hazard. I stumbled across the garden, found the tech, and in gulps of air punctuated with heaving sobs managed to say something about how no one has ever believed me before when I said I was in trouble emotionally, that I had been in bed really coming unglued. The tech soothed and consoled me, validated me, reminded me she was not trained to do much more