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4: One of Them (Lessons from Group Therapy)
177 Plays3 years ago
Ever wondered if therapy really makes a difference?
In this episode, Laura continues her story as she takes you through her experience of participating in intensive, outpatient group therapy. She shares the most impactful lessons she learned and why she believes emotional intelligence and stress resiliency strategies should be a standard part of our children's education.
Seeking The Still Website: Seekingthestill.com
Seeking The Still Instagram: Instagram.com/seekingthestill
Seeking The Still Facebook: Facebook.com/seekthestill
Series sponsor Altered Ministries: https://alteredministries.com/
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Transcript
Introduction & Sponsorship
00:00:01
Speaker
Seeking the Still is produced by Jill Devine Media. Season one is brought to you by Altered Ministries. Jane Patton and her team are transforming the lives of women and children all over the world, including orphanages, recovery homes, and more. Learn how you can support them and be part of these life changing ministries at AlteredMinistries.com.
Finding Peace in Chaos
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to the Seeking the Still podcast with me, your host, Laura Fleetwood.
00:00:34
Speaker
In this safe space, we come together to seek the still amid chaotic lives, to get honest about what overwhelms us, to become connected to one another and to the divine, to step into who we were created to be. Always real, never perfect, and forever on your side.
Journey to Therapy
00:00:56
Speaker
Intensive outpatient therapy. That's what they called it. And I had no idea what that meant. I had no idea what I was walking into, but quite honestly, I don't think I really cared because life had gotten so out of control. Life had gotten so hard to walk through and manage and deal with that I was thankful that I had something
00:01:25
Speaker
with a glimmer of hope that might be the thing to get me through. So I showed up on that first day and walked into this tiny building, not at all what I had been envisioning in my mind, sat down to fill out more forms and more mental health questionnaires. And lo and behold, the receptionist name was Sarah.
00:01:54
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She was kind. She answered my questions. And she prepared me to talk to the intake therapist there.
Diagnosed with Anxiety
00:02:06
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And that was an interesting conversation because at this point, they had diagnosed me with generalized anxiety disorder.
00:02:16
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not only the center point hospital, but also my therapist, Dr. Werenberg. So I was confident that that is the issue that I was dealing with. And as the intake therapist told me what this experience was going to look like over the next eight to 12 weeks, she said something that really bothered me at first. She said, you know,
00:02:43
Speaker
So many of the people that are going to be in that room with you have experienced extreme tragedy in their life. You are going to have to be very open and honest and real. In other words, she was saying, you have not experienced the kind of pain that most of the people in this room
Everyone's Story Matters
00:03:08
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have. And in a way, she was right.
00:03:12
Speaker
I would come to learn that many of the individuals that I was with had experienced horrific abuse, trauma, extreme mental health issues, addiction, and frankly, experiences that I had not encountered in my own life.
00:03:38
Speaker
But at the same time, it was almost like that intake therapist was saying, you don't really belong here. So try your best to be as broken as everybody else. And that is not true because I may not have had the experiences of so many other people, but I had my own experiences and pain is pain.
00:04:06
Speaker
So I want to give you the encouragement to not compare your story to anybody else's story because it is your story. And it's the only one that you can really feel that you can really dig into and unpack and heal from. Your story matters. So I went into a conference room, basically,
00:04:32
Speaker
Normally there were eight to 12 individuals in group therapy with you. And it was strange, you would go in and everybody would kind of try to seek out the best seat in the house. And the first thing as you sat down was to fill out a daily mental health questionnaire with all the standard questions. Have you had thoughts of harming yourself? How much sleep did you get? Have you been eating? Do you want to see the doctor today?
00:05:01
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And then the therapist that you were assigned to, and it was different every time, would sift through those papers and decide who was going to be the first person that we were going to focus on that day.
Lessons from Group Therapy
00:05:18
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Group therapy is a unique experience and one that I'm so thankful for. It taught me so very much because you're in a room with random people that you may never see again.
00:05:31
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Some of them remain more consistent throughout your time in therapy, but generally you don't know who to expect. It could be a mix of people struggling with different issues. And instead of using the term patient to describe us, I'd like to use the word student because the difference seems important somehow.
00:06:01
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The topics that we would cover in group therapy, I now wish were topics that we would cover in our children's education as they're growing up. Emotional intelligence, emotional health, strategies for living emotionally aware and being emotionally healthy.
00:06:23
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are more important than learning academics, in my humble opinion. Because the strategies and the coping mechanisms and just the wisdom that I learned from those days in therapy would prove to be some of the most eye-opening ideas of my life.
00:06:46
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And I couldn't help but thinking day after day after day, why have I never heard this before? Why don't we talk about these things with our friends? Why don't we talk about these things with our family? This is the real stuff. This is life. This is how we go through life knowing what's important and what to let go of.
00:07:14
Speaker
I met so many people in group therapy, and I wish I could tell you their stories, but those are not my stories to tell. But what I can tell you is about the woman who was struggling with so, so many things in her life. And she and I kind of became not friends, but more than acquaintances.
00:07:42
Speaker
And one day I was sharing, and the next day she brought in a book for me. I have it in front of me here. It's called The Promise of a New Day. It's a book of daily meditations. And in it there's a dollar bill. And in the front of it she wrote, yesterday is done. I cannot change it. Tomorrow never comes. My moment is now.
00:08:11
Speaker
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And then she wrote at the top, Laura, when you can't do jumping jacks, which was an inside joke when we had a substitute therapist one day.
00:08:33
Speaker
And I was sharing about panic attacks and she told me to do jumping jacks in the middle of my panic attack. So it was kind of an inside joke that we had. But I want you to know the beauty of that gesture that she gave me that book because here is a woman that was dealing with such hard things in her life with multiple family members and addiction and
00:08:57
Speaker
her own mental anguish. And she took the time to give me a book of hers that she had used in her journey and to write a note in it. You see, in group therapy, complete strangers open up about the deepest, darkest places of their life. That's what group therapy is.
00:09:19
Speaker
The counselor decides who he or she is going to ask questions to. There might be a certain topic of the day or a certain lesson, but generally they'll focus on a few people and dive deep into their story. And they ask you a question and you have to respond. That's part of the deal. If you don't respond, you don't get to stay. So I had never experienced anything like that before. You have to remember that I had only ever
00:09:48
Speaker
gone to an individual counseling session just maybe three months prior to this. So counseling in general was new to me. Talking openly about feelings and experiences and pain was new to me. I didn't even do that with my husband or family members or closest friends. So initially the thought of burying it all open on the table in front of a group of complete strangers was frightening.
00:10:17
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and yet looking back now I have to tell you that the experience of group therapy is the closest I have been to heaven on this side of earth because there was no pretending in that room there was no putting on airs and giving off the perception that you had it all together everybody there was there because they admitted they were broken that they were at rock bottom and needed help they didn't know
00:10:46
Speaker
the way through and something beautiful happens when we are vulnerable and when we open up and share. It was a turning point for me. It was a reckoning. It was an acknowledgement that I did not want to live life anymore on that superficial level.
00:11:06
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that relationships, open relationships where you could share your deep sufferings and struggles were so necessary. Like not just a good thing to do, but necessary to fully embrace and live this life that we were given.
00:11:25
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I could go on for hours about everything I learned in therapy. And I think that'll be an entire mini season of seeking the still.
Unmasking the True Self
00:11:33
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But I just wanted to share with you the most memorable day for me.
00:11:39
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It was a day that I call the day of the mask and there was a fewer number of us than normal. So the therapist gave us the option of doing a more personal exercise or doing a more standard lesson for the day. And nobody answered for the longest time. And finally I spoke up and said, I want to do the personal exercise. And those around me nodded in agreement. So he handed out,
00:12:08
Speaker
a sheet and it's called the masks that we wear. It says create a mask that shows the different faces you present to others. On the outside of the mask, put the faces you show your friends, family, coworkers. You can show these behaviors any way you like with pictures, poetry, colors, words, slogans, phrases. And then flip the page over and on the inside of the mask, show who you really are.
00:12:37
Speaker
On the outside, you might have pieces of yourself, but you also might have misrepresentations. On the inside of the mask, show your true self. Again, illustrate any way you like. And then he asked the question, what would you need to take off your mask? Now, I must tell you, initially, I thought to myself, mask?
00:13:06
Speaker
I don't wear a mask. And, you know, what you see is what you get. And it was difficult for me to get started. But then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he was right. He was completely right. I did wear a mask. On the outside of my mask, it says, what others see? Laura. There's a cross and it says faith, go to girl, charmed life,
00:13:35
Speaker
problem solver, responsible, creative, high achiever, nice, diplomatic, listener, intelligent, family, lovely, excellent. And there's a picture of an angel with a halo wing.
00:13:53
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I think that's a pretty accurate representation of what people saw when they looked at me. But when I flipped the sheet over and began to take off my mask, look within, and share what I saw inside, it said, hypocrisy, dwell on the past, can't let go of mistakes, negative thoughts, fear,
00:14:20
Speaker
shame, doubt, unworthy, rejection, insecure, fear of failure, hurt, want to please others, impossible standards, never enough, afraid others will let me down, afraid I'll let others down, predict the future. It was honestly disturbing to realize that I had been living a lie
00:14:48
Speaker
Before all of this happened, I honestly thought that my lovely mask was the real me. And if you had known me, you would think that too. But on the inside, I had this overwhelming list of feelings and doubts and shame, which I had never given a voice to. I shared the inside and the outside of my mask with the other students. And I sobbed, you guys. I sobbed.
00:15:15
Speaker
And they stared. And the therapist asked the other students to share what they thought about my mask. And you know what they said? I never would have guessed that you felt that way on the inside. I feel that way too. And as we all shared our masks, the inside and the outside, the point of the whole exercise became so clear.
00:15:42
Speaker
Everyone wears a mask. You wear a mask. We put our best, loveliest self out there for the world to see, and we hide behind this beautiful but uncomfortable plastic fake facade masks. And it works for a while. That's the thing. Your beautiful mask works, but only for a while because eventually that fake mask cracks.
00:16:12
Speaker
or it begins to slip off. And then we become desperate to keep them on. So we deny the doubts and the feelings and the fears. And if the mask falls off when we're not expecting it or we're not looking, it's so painful. But when we come to the end of ourself and we realize that that mask is not who we truly are,
00:16:38
Speaker
and we remove it gently and with a team and we peer inside for the first time at our true self. It is beautiful.
00:16:53
Speaker
I'm always looking for creative ways that I can support organizations that are doing good around the world, and fun ways that are also creative and inspirational. Our season sponsor, Altered Ministry, has two of these that I want to share with you today. They are now offering monthly gift boxes that are filled with the most beautiful, delightful, quaint, and lovely items that are perfect for the season. You can order them at alteredministries.com slash gift boxes,
00:17:22
Speaker
And they also have a t-shirt of the month. All of the proceeds from the gift boxes and the t-shirts go to benefit the work that Altered Ministry does in orphanages, recovery homes, and even in prisons. It is a beautiful ministry to support, so I invite you to check those out. Because all of the things that are on the inside of your mask are part of your story, but they also are probably lies.
00:17:51
Speaker
that you have been telling yourself or others in your life have been telling you. And there is such freedom to recognize that you're wearing a mask and to be able to take it off with safe people. And you begin to realize that relationships are everything. That being real is the new perfect. And that is just one story from my time in therapy
00:18:20
Speaker
but gives you an example of the power of what you learn. There are so many other light bulb moments that I want to share with you, but we'll save that for another day. But a few others that just stand out in my mind was learning about the fear cycle, which is when you experience a challenging or threatening situation and you have quite a normal anxious reaction to that.
00:18:48
Speaker
where the adrenaline pumps through and your cortisol raises and you get that fight
Understanding Anxiety Cycles
00:18:53
Speaker
or flight mechanism. We all experience that. That's normal. That's part of
00:18:58
Speaker
the way that God made us to be so that we can respond to stress in our lives. But what happens is that when we experience that reaction in our body, because of our thoughts and our core beliefs, we can start to misinterpret it or distort it. And then we try to avoid it and we try to shove it away, which only makes us fearful of the sensations in our body, which were never meant to be feared.
00:19:27
Speaker
And that starts a new cycle of fear and you go through it over and over and over again. That is the anxiety cycle. And that is the cycle that if you experience anxiety, you have to learn to break.
00:19:41
Speaker
You can break that cycle, but it's hard work. And it does take learning coping mechanisms that are healthy. And that will prove to be a positive way for you to deal with stress and anxiety in your life. Another powerful exercise we did was exploring our family of origin. And I mentioned to you that I have an amazing family. I really do, but every family
00:20:07
Speaker
has their own quirks. Every family has their own masks that they wear. And I come from two sides of very stoic German Lutherans who work hard, who don't share negative emotions, who only put on their best and loveliest and strongest self. On my mom's side of the family,
00:20:34
Speaker
We have a thing that one of my cousins named Bohart Overdrive. I shared about my overdrive with you a little bit more, but it's this concept that we always want to do more and prove more and be more. So while that has a lot of great, great aspects about it, it also has some aspects that
00:21:00
Speaker
aren't exactly emotionally healthy. And I had to learn that I could break that cycle. And even though I hadn't grown up really sharing negative feelings or expressing anger or sadness to a large degree, that I could change that for myself and for my family. And you guys,
00:21:27
Speaker
In the next episode, I am gonna share how my journey through this generalized anxiety diagnosis and healing completely shifted the dynamics of my relationship with Justin, Audrey, and Anna to a point where I can't even, it's night and day, the way our family communicates and operates.
Anxiety's Family Ties
00:21:49
Speaker
So on the other side of my family,
00:21:52
Speaker
same German Lutheran background, and a lot of anxiety in our family that I didn't really know about until I went through this season, came to find out that I have many cousins of both genders who have struggled with anxiety diagnosis, my aunts, and also my grandmother. I never talked about it with her when she was alive,
00:22:20
Speaker
Hearing stories, it's pretty clear that she went through some really dark seasons in her 30s and 40s, struggling with anxiety. It just wasn't talked about back then. So our family of origin impacts us in amazing, positive ways, but also in the habits and in the ways that we deal with our emotional selves, our true selves.
00:22:45
Speaker
And it just is what it is. We are all messy, miracle human beings. So we live how we know to live. And the beauty of it though, is that you can change that cycle. If you come from a family of abusers, of alcoholics, of addicts, you know this, that our tendency is to repeat the behaviors that we saw.
00:23:14
Speaker
growing up, but it doesn't have to be that way. However, you have to work through it. You have to have a team and you have to know that it will kind of always be your default to want to go back to those tendencies and it takes work to fight against them.
Healing Takes Time
00:23:34
Speaker
So group therapy lasted for me, I think it was around 12 weeks. I think I did it longer than most three days a week, three hours a day. I took a leave of absence from my job. And thankfully I had a, you know, I had an employer that worked with me on that and was so beautifully supportive. I know that that is not always the case. And I know that if you.
00:24:02
Speaker
Take the brave step to seek out help and go through an outpatient program like this. It will be so beneficial, but you will also have to fight the system to support you in doing it. And I want to say, fight on warrior. If you are struggling with a mental diagnosis or emotional issues, it is just as important for you to get a leave of absence, a paid leave of absence.
00:24:29
Speaker
as it is if you were struggling with a physical condition. I believe this to the root of my soul. You may have to fight and you may have to go back to your insurance and prove things and give documentation. Do it because you are worth it. Taking this time to heal, to learn how to grow and to be strong. And by the way, being strong does not mean
00:24:58
Speaker
not having any issues to deal with. Being strong means facing the issues you have to deal with head on. You can do it. And I will be cheering you on along the way. At the end of my 12 weeks, it was time to return to the land of living. And I was scared. I didn't know what it was going to look like to walk back
00:25:27
Speaker
into my employment. I didn't know what people had been saying about me other than group therapy and seeing my individual therapist and going to my psychiatrist for
00:25:39
Speaker
medication adjustments, I had pretty much not been active in my normal life. My life had become my therapy students. And so it was very stressful. And I remember the first day that I went back to be among them all.
00:26:07
Speaker
I don't know about you, but I always learn something and feel so much better and so much more relaxed after I listen to Laura.
Masterclass & Podcast Subscription
00:26:17
Speaker
I'm Jill Devine, and as her producer, her co-worker, and most importantly, her friend, I can tell you
00:26:23
Speaker
that she has some amazing resources to help you seek the still in your life. In fact, Laura would love to send you a completely free video masterclass that helps you learn how to twirl your way through your next difficult day. It's five short videos from Laura herself that will land in your inbox. And in her calming voice, she'll explain what that acronym twirl means and how it will help you transform your hard days.
00:26:48
Speaker
All you have to do is text the word twirl to the number 55444. These videos are perfect for the girls in your life too, so make sure you grab the free twirl masterclass while you can. Text twirl, that's T-W-I-R-L,
00:27:03
Speaker
T-W-I-R-L to 55444. That's 55444. Or sign up for it at SeekingTheStill.com. You will be so glad you did. And make sure you've subscribed to Seeking The Still because Laura will continue her story and her journey with you in a new episode that launches every Wednesday.
00:27:25
Speaker
So again, subscribe to Seeking the Still on the podcast platform of your choice. And then you will be notified when a new episode releases, but just know every Wednesday you will get a new episode and new inspiration from Laura. And she's going to leave you right now with an inspirational quote.
Love, Fear, and Creativity
00:27:45
Speaker
There are two basic motivating forces, fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life.
00:27:52
Speaker
When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn how to love ourselves first, in all our glory and imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. John Lennon. Be still.