insane (adjective)

A deranged state of the mind; in a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction; seriously mentally ill.

My life has become a list of skills. Skills I used. Skills I didn't use. Skills I thought about, but didn't want to use. Skills I tried to use, but didn't help.

This is DBT. 

DBT is all about skills. 

I am crabbily scribbling down answers to our homework assignment. The Mr. is passed out next to me. It's late. I'm tired. I have three worksheets to fill out, and I have two choices: write down the truth or what I know they want me to say.

I choose the truth.

This skill is called Check The Facts. It helps regulate your emotions. 

"Every emotion you have is valid, but not every emotion you have is justified." The therapist says.

This is where checking the facts comes in. If you are angry, you are supposed to stop and ask yourself WHY. What prompted it? Then you check the facts. Here, list them on this sheet of paper. Now, is this a reasonable reaction to this situation? 

It sounds simple, right? I can see that thought on the therapist's face as she smiles at us. This is simple. Obvious.

Sure.

I write down my facts. I ate too much food. I gained weight. I am a worthless piece of shit.

So my anger is justified, as is my decision to restrict the following day.

In group I am politely corrected. Only my weight gain is a fact. The other two are judgments. My emotion is unjustified. 

"They are all facts to me." I say defiantly. 

"That is your eating disordered mind talking."

"But I believe them."

We go in a circle until we end here: my facts are just wrong. And that's that.

The things my brain tells me to be true and real are not. And a small part of me knows that. I know that I believe what is untrue, but I also wholeheartedly believe what's untrue is true.

Does this not sound eerily similar to the definition of insanity?

Do you know how it feels to know you can't trust your own brain? Do you know how it feels to be told that you can't trust your own brain? Who then can you trust? Anyone? No one? What is the point, then? To go on listening to your broken brain until it leads you off a cliff? To trust the people telling you differently and blindly follow their every direction? Do you feel the walls of reality crashing around your ankles?

Molly tries to lure me into naming my eating disorder with Harry Potter. "What if you called it Voldemort?" She says.

I don't say anything.

"What are other good names from Harry Potter?" She looks up, thinking, waiting.

I don't offer any.

Stop dividing me up into pieces. I want to scream. Stop telling me that this piece is good and this one is bad and this one is wrong and this one is right because I am left believing that something is both black and white at the same time and I feel like I am losing my fucking mind.

I am not very good at checking the facts. Apparently.

There are six women in my group and one teenage boy. We are all different ages, sizes, and shapes. I have seen them cry. I have seen them yell. I have seen them get up and abruptly leave the room. I have seen them happy. I have seen them fucking pissed.

And I've come to care about each and every one of them.

At one of my first appointments with Molly she told me that the first thing she realized about people with eating disorders is that they're all really smart. Almost across the board.

I hadn't really thought about it before, but once I did, I realized how absolutely true it is. The people in my group. The writers of the blogs I've read. The people who comment here. I have seen so much creativity and wit and intelligence in people labeled as mentally ill. 

After we were dismissed, one of the girls in my group caught up with me, and we ended up talking in the hallway for forty-five minutes. Surrounded by people I don't know, I can be painfully shy, and this was the first one-on-one conversation I've really had. And it was so good. When someone understands a tangled, messy part of you that most people don't, it's like finally surfacing from underwater. 

Maybe I am insane and broken and disordered, but I'm not the only one. And that one conversation helped more than the three and a half hours of therapy I had today.