Had exactly the same experience with the VAHS 12-1/2 years ago. I was a mess, but I had been c&s then for 18 years. I gather now that this experience is common, and I (think I) understand now why:
Many clinicians believe that recovering alkies / druggies are merely “dry” but as yet “untreated.” (The notion is common around AA and NA, as well.) But their belief is just that: a belief. A set of verbalized concepts or ideas they have picked up more or less by imitation without actually understanding what is meant by them in actuality.
In whatever event, if I had not wound up in the hands of an Indian med school grad who saw the PTSD and the psychotic state it had induced in a genetic hypomanic, I might never have gotten “well” to the limited extent I have.
I bought into this slam-dunk triage assessment BS for awhile. I even repeated the accepted litany that psychotic-level pts are poor candidates for any form of skills training therapy. (Sigh.) I do not anymore since learning to observe to notice to recognize to acknowledge to accept to own to appreciate to understand where each individual patient is, and stop stereotyping them by class.
Because psychotic-level pts who are well-stabilized by meds can very easily do any of the five MBCTs I listed above, usually more easily than they can do some of the CBTs.
You may find that coming at 10StEP via vipassana meditation as laid out by, say, S. N. Goenka, Chogyam Trungpa, Stephen Levine, Pema Chodron, Jon Kabat-Zinn, et al, clarifies the process enough to get you to owning and the next four stages.
Actually, ownership seems to be the top of the roller coaster “hill” the little train (of mindful consciousness) climbs in observing to notice to recognize to acknowledge to accept. Once achieved, the little train goes the rest of the way by itself.
Or… just try this: Ownership is meta-acceptance, a real-ization that what is is in us, regardless of what our ego defenses (and their “voices”) may think, say or feel about it. It’s just an acknowledgment of what is “there.” If shame, guilt, remorse, regret, anger, grief or whatever are there, they are just there.
My saving grace was a crusty old buzzard of a sponsor in AA. The Big Book says, “there are those too who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.” If it was good enough for Bill W., it was good enough for Ed T. Period. d00d made me his personal fixer upper project and saved my life. He’s gone now and I miss him terribly. It’s his marked up copy of Alcoholics Anonymous that goes to the meeting with me every week.
The guy rode me relentlessly and helped me turn my habits of, “I can’t and I won’t” into “I can and I will”. He even policed my med compliance and told me that my Higher Power put doctors in my life for a reason. Not enough people like him in the world.
My experience-based sense is that one cannot get to ownership, followed by the self-energized, just get out of the way, “downhill run” of appreciation, understanding, processing and transcendence if one cannot accept what is.
I do the 12 steps of recovery. I haven’t bothered with the 10 steps of emotional whatever. I’ve given up on trying to make my emotions work like other peoples’ do.
