Today was a weird day at IOP. To start with, I was the fourth one there. Fourth! I never use exclamation points, but fourth? Come on. What’s wrong with me? Fourth! Check-in was fairly normal. I talked about my weekend. It was a nice weekend. Spent it with my partner. We went to a sugar…
I wasn’t the first person to arrive at the IOP this morning. I was second. It threw me off. Second. I didn’t win. I got there about the same time I always do. It’s just that someone else was earlier. So disconcerting. My check-in was fine. I was very tired again, which is kind of…
I got some good news at my IOP this morning. I’m stepping down to three days a week. I thought I’ve been making progress, and this is confirmation that the IOP thinks so, too. Yay me. I woke up with a nervous feeling this morning. It was like butterflies in my stomach. I brought that…
Week six of my IOP is off to a pretty good start. I was a little nervous because stupid daylight savings time started this weekend. I hate daylight savings time. It messes me up for about a full week. But I was feeling OK today. For my check-in, I talked about my weekend. It was…
Week five of my IOP is in the books. The name doesn’t lie. It’s an outpatient program that’s intense. I’m exhausted. Today was a pretty normal session, but we had a big group. Check-ins took the whole first hour and about half of the second hour. When it came to my turn, I talked about…
The regular clinician was back today at my IOP. Yesterday’s clinician was perfectly good, but it felt like getting back to normal today. It’s amazing how much I like my routines in an IOP setting. I sit in the same chair every day. I’m the first one there every day. I even prefer it when…
I really don’t feel like writing this today. I’m tired and have a definite lack of energy (there is a difference). But, after 23 installments, I feel like I’ve committed. I have an obligation to keep posting. So, I’m going to use one of my tools, opposite action, and power through. We had a different…
I don’t know how I was feeling at the start of today’s IOP session. I even put “I don’t know” on my check-in sheet. I was better than yesterday, no headache, but I was still pretty tired. I was feeling pretty good by the end of it, though. My check-in was pretty basic. I went…
I was back at it for week five of my IOP this morning. It was a pretty normal day. We started with check-ins and then moved on to skills. I was super tired and had a headache, so that wasn’t much fun. But the rest of the session was fine. For my check-in, I recapped…
We started IOP a little differently today. Instead of just diving into the check-ins, we did a mindfulness exercise. The clinician put some music on. I didn’t recognize it. I think it was Indian. Then, we closed our eyes and just listened. If any thoughts came into our heads, we let them pass and stayed…
