This coming weekend, December 7th, marks the one year anniversary of when I was discharged from treatment the first time. One whole year ago, I was coming home to take a stab at this whole recovery thing. As you all well know, there's been a lot of ups and downs with that. However, the choice to go to treatment the first (and second time) are two of the most important and best decisions of my life.
I speak a lot about treatment. Treatment this, treatment that, when I was in treatment, when I got home from treatment, etc. I know that I do. I go back and reread my blog posts and replay conversations with people in my head and those words come up often. It may be annoying. It may seem redundant. You may even be rolling your eyes or secretly wondering when I’ll stop talking about it.
At first, that bothered me. It bothered me that people might think I am annoying or may be judging me for talking about it. I worried about what people thought and the things that they may be saying about me behind my back. I use the past tense when I say worried, because I like to think that I don’t care quite as much anymore. That I’m more comfortable with myself and my experiences and my story. I think that is mostly true. But there’s still a piece of me that feels very torn between being honest and sharing about the most transformational times of my life and staying quiet, adhering to society’s expectations and talking about comfortable, socially acceptable, non-awkward things. I’m going to bull right over those expectations today, just to warn you. I’ve come to understand that being real and authentic and honest with my story, emotions, and realizations is a lot more powerful than making myself small, fitting into the socially acceptable box, and putting people at ease. It is a lot harder, and takes a lot more courage, but it is more powerful. So that’s the place I’m going to write from today. Today, we are going to talk about my experiences in treatment.
Right now is an interesting time of year on my social media feeds. Over the past month or so, I’ve read countless posts from my treatment friends memorializing the day they went in and/or the day they were discharged from treatment. These posts all look a bit different, but have the same general theme: “One year ago my life changed.” Every single one of the posts have in some way been a testament to how going to treatment changed their life, in one way or the other. It really has got me thinking. I realize that not everyone’s treatment experience is good. I’ve read just as many posts about how although there were good parts, they don’t think that treatment helped them enough. However, no matter how each person spins it, treatment is a life-changing, transformational time in your life. You may have loved it or hated it, thought it was helpful or not at all, counted down the days or made the days count, but regardless, it is a time in your life that is deeply meaningful and profound. And that, folks, is why I just can’t stop talking about it.
Looking back on it now, I’m one of the lucky ones I suppose. One of the people that would say that it did help me, change me, transform me, and in many ways, save me. After a lot of coaxing and fighting and stubbornness, I bought into the process. But it took me a long time. Two whole treatment stays before I fully surrendered to the process. That’s the part that not a lot of people know.
I was in treatment another time, before The Meadows Ranch, back in 2017. I don’t like talking about it or looking back on it because the way that I handled the whole situation is a big regret of mine. When I checked myself into Timberline Knolls, I was not in a place where I wanted to get better or to be helped. I was solely going to get some people off my back, and that was it. The problem was, I didn’t understand how hard treatment is or how hard you have to work. I weaseled my way out of there in 17 excruciatingly long days, not even in half the time of a normal stay. I lied, I manipulated, I begged, I cried, and I got out of there. In my head I thought I had dodged a bullet. Now, I see that I cheated myself out of what could have been a very valuable experience.
After that, I had a really bad taste in my mouth when it came to treatment centers. So when my eating disorder became serious and my therapist suggested treatment, I dug my heels in and refused. I was not going to go back. Luckily for me and my health, whether I felt lucky at the time or not, I was sent again to another treatment center. This time it was for an eating disorder and across the country, but I was less than thrilled nonetheless. I went into my experience with the same attitude as I left TK with, angry, annoyed, and with a giant chip on my shoulder.
When I texted one of my best friends that I met at the Ranch on the anniversary of my intake day, her response was, “Was this when you entered dinner in your hoodie with that famous scowl?” Yep, she was dead on. Sure enough, I walked into that place with my hood up, a giant scowl on my face, and pouted about the fact that I was trapped in yet another treatment center. I was pissed, and I made that point very clear. Now we can all look back on that time and laugh, but I hope that you all can get a picture of the attitude that I walked into the Ranch with the first time around about a year ago. In that state of mind, I wasn’t going to get anywhere in my healing.
Luckily, God put all the right people in my path that time around to start breaking down the walls around my heart. It didn’t take long for the scowl to disappear off my face and for my hood to come down. The ladies that I met there welcomed me in with open arms and three days in, I was belly laughing harder than I ever have before. The Meadows Ranch was becoming home, and the people I met there were quickly becoming my family. If you know me well, you know that I’m a little wary when it comes to new people. I don’t let people in very quickly and it takes a long time for me to feel comfortable letting my guard down. But time and time again, it was proven to me that I was safe, and I started letting the real Cassie shine through.
That’s the thing that is almost impossible to explain to people about treatment: just how close you get to the people you’re there with. Treatment friendships are truly unlike any other kind of relationship. Real talk here...these people see you at your absolute worst and most raw. They see you first thing in the morning with your bedhead and morning breath. They hear your sleep talk, and make fun of your sleepwalking. They throw your laundry, underwear and all, into the community dryer so that they can use the community washer. They sit beside you in therapy groups and provide emotional support as you share things you’ve never shared aloud before. They cheer you on when you eat a fear food, or tell you to knock it off and eat your food when you’re tempted to restrict. They see you go from laughing hysterically to sobbing at a moment’s notice. They hear your one-sided telephone calls and are there when you’re homesick, angry, frustrated, or lonely. They buddy flush your toilets (yep, that’s what I said) and walk with you around campus when you’re still on monitoring after meals. More specifically for me, my friends stood beside me as I angrily threw hundreds of rocks into the desert, rubbed my back through my anxiety attacks, and sat outside the door to keep me accountable so I wouldn’t exercise in my bathroom to burn the calories I was being forced to eat. These people that you just met spend every waking second with you, and this mixture of close proximity, high emotions, no privacy, and encouragement to be real and authentic with your feelings results in extraordinarily close, trusting friendships. You start as strangers and walk out of there as sisters, because there is literally no one else in the world that can truly understand the journey that you just went through except someone who went through it with you. It sounds cliche, I know it does, but the friendships I made in Arizona are some of the most authentic relationships that I have with anyone.
That is why I say, whether you think treatment truly helped you or not, that it is so life-changing. Because of the environment, I saw and heard things that I had never seen before. I saw real, raw emotion from other human beings that I had grown to care deeply about, was able to sit with or hold people as they cried, and was entrusted with words that no one else in this world had ever heard. In treatment, I was able to see the full range of the human condition. I was able to see people at their lowest feel a whole spectrum of emotions, and walk out the other side truly different than when they walked in. The coolest thing was, as I was able to do that with others, others were able to do that with me as well. While you’re in treatment, you have a front row seat to others’ experiences, and if you truly reflect and allow it, those experiences shape you and change your perspective. At least that’s what happened to me.
No, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Especially at TK, but at the Ranch too, there were days that I hated my life and everything in it. I hated all my decisions being taken away from me. I hated the fact that I could never be alone, including when I went to the bathroom. I hated all the rules that I didn’t understand and every single one of my decisions being micromanaged and scrutinized. I hated being told when I could eat, what I had to eat, or if and when I could leave a room. I hated walking around with staff like little ducklings when we were out in the community feeling as though everyone was staring at us. As an adult, going to treatment is like being treated like a child again and it is pretty horrible to be perfectly honest.
However, through all of that, I now realize that those things had to be done. I realize that rules are in place to keep us safe, whether we liked it or thought we needed them or not. I realized that the staff was trying to keep us safe from that ED monster in our heads, even when we didn’t want to be saved. On the other side of it, even the “bad” things look a whole lot different. On the other side of it, the bad things are not the things that I even dwell on.
I talk about treatment a lot because, well, treatment is what saved my life. The relationships I made with my fellow patients and the staff there are relationships that I will hold dear for the rest of my life. Treatment forced me out of my comfort zone, forced me to be uncomfortable and angry, but also forced me to let people inside the walls that I had been building around my heart for so many years. Yes, treatment helped me develop a healthier relationship with food and exercise, but as important as those things are, I wouldn’t say that they were the most important things I took with me from the desert.
This past year, I spent 97 days in the desert. 97 days away from home, my family, my job, and my life and in saying all that, I have no regrets. Those days are, to date, the most transformational, important days of my life. Those days are when I took my life back, started to learn who I truly was, and decided that this life is worth living and living to the fullest. No, I may not be able to adequately explain my time there, what it looked like or felt like. I may not ever be able to fully explain the magnitude of what the Meadows Ranch and its staff did for me when it comes to the greater picture of my life.
But I can promise this. I won’t stop talking about it. I won’t stop reflecting on it or remembering that time and the many lessons that it taught and continues to teach me. Society says to keep quiet about your mental health and those intimate, fragile times of your life that may not be pretty to look back on. Well, I don’t buy it.
You may not have gone to treatment like me, but I guarantee you that there’s a time in your life that you can make similar connections to. A time in your life that was hard, that hurt, but that also transformed you and helped make you who you are today. I encourage you to embrace that time, reflect on that time, even talk about that time when you’re ready. Because it’s those times in your life that are uncomfortable or hard, that round out the edges of your story. That story, your story, is so, so important...it’s what makes you, you.
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