Day Three

Well, my third day of PH went pretty well. We begin every day by coming up with a daily goal, then sharing it with the group. When I got there, I felt like I had already accomplished a major goal just by showing up, but I managed to decide that my goal would be to take cold medicine. I have a cold, and I'm extremely stubborn about adding anything to my (already high) number of nine pills a day. My husband gets extremely frustrated because I'm a big complainer, but I won't listen when he tells me that medicine will help. Unfortunately, despite the goal I forgot to take more medicine when I got home. Oh well.

While I was sharing my goal, I told the group about something else. I went to see my psychiatrist on Tuesday, and although I was sure of the opposite, she said I am actually doing better. She's really proud of me for seeking out PH and following through with it for awhile now. When I shared this with the group, everyone nodded and smiled like they were proud of me, too!

It was the last day for two of the patients, and we did "Dove Chocolate Therapy". It's not as fancy or official as it sounds, but it's way delicious! The leader passed around a bowl of Dove chocolates. We all saved our wrapper as we enjoyed the chocolate, then we went around and read the quotes from the wrappers to the departing patients. The funny part is that many times the quote is best for the person who opened it! That was true for me. My wrapper said, "Celebrate the small victories in your life." I said that this is really hard for me because I'm such a black and white thinker. To me, black is failure and white is the big successes. The small victories fall in the gray, and I just overlook them. Someone piped up and told me that they remember me saying on the first day that I quit a lot, and they thought it was a huge victory that I had been going to PH for two weeks. I thought it was so sweet that the person not only remembered what I said on my first day, but wanted to give me positive feedback!

At the end of the day I was feeling confused, and I shared it with the group. I was confused because Wednesday I was so resistant to being there that I called in sick. Later on Wednesday, I really missed PH and regretted not being there. But by Friday when I was there again, I was feeling depressed and unhappy about being there. Another patient told me that a lot of people aren't so sure about it in the beginning, but you move past that and learn to appreciate PH. That sounds hopeful to me!