Unfortunately I can't talk to my therapists (DBT group, I see multiple individually each week) about this because it's *about* said therapists.  So I figured I'd ask you guys, particularly those of you who've done DBT more and know more about how it's supposed to go.  I've never done a formal DBT program (up until this one) and I've only been in this one for two months.  This post will be long (I'm basically going through each of my individual sessions, sorry), but **TLDR**, my therapists are ignoring/trying to make me push through my panic attacks, and are determined that because I'm not doing the *thing de jour* (the big one now is sitting up with calm body language when I'm in the seated version of fetal position trying to calm down) because panic attacks, I'm not invested in treatment.  If you want to read some but not all of the details, you can skip to where the shit hits the fan, I've bolded the beginning of that section, but read this next paragraph first so you know who's who.

For reference (names are changed) this group consists of Amy (the owner), Ellie, Natalie, and Jenny (it's a small group).  I see Natalie and Jenny (my favorite) for my individual sessions on Mondays and Thursday evenings, respectively, and all four therapists seem to rotate through leading the two groups (Sat. and Tues., plus separate parents group running in another room during the Sat. one).  Sara was my social worker for my month long hospitalisation three years ago (detox program from the concoction I was on thanks to a doctor who should really lose his license), and I hold her as my ideal therapist.

When I started therapy with this group, it was my first official DBT therapy, but I'd worked with a handful of social workers (Sara being the first) in the past who had used DBT techniques, and they'd all really helped me where no other therapist really had before.  I came in with ridiculously high hopes, and I *know* I was doing some splitting when I first met Amy, because I came out thinking she's perfect, she's just like Sara and this is going to be great, I'm going to finally be healthy and all that.  (I don't really see a problem with keeping Sara as my 'perfect' therapist because she's *waaaaaay* out of state so I'll probably never see her again, and she really did help)

My first session with Jenny goes even better (she's like Sara, too! she makes me look deep enough to cry about things that normally make me disassociate), and I continue with the mindset that this is going to be great.  When I meet Natalie the next week, I find her kind of boring and not particularly... warm?  nice? but I chalk it up to our having spent the entire session filling out paperwork.  Groups are meh, therapy wise, but I love the people in them (they're actually really cool kids).  The second session with Jasmine is just as great as the first.

The second full week of therapy reaffirms my mild dislike of Natalie after she takes *one comment* about being tired at the beginning of the session and makes the *entire hour* a lecture about sleep and not going out enough.  The homework is "out the door for *something* by 9am, screens off by 9pm, lights out by 10pm, no naps."  Okay, sure.  But that doesn't take an hour to get across, especially when I got *no say* in the timing there (not to mention that, henceforth my Natalie sessions would last until 9 and take me half an hour to get home, so...).  Okay, fine.  Maybe it's just because the session was over the phone (thanks, snow) that she wasn't as receptive to anything.

Jenny makes her whole session that week about my not doing anything with my life (fair-ish, I wasn't in classes this semester, because I got mono, ran out of my psych meds, missed the course enrolment deadline, and ended up suicidal and hospitalised) and after we settle on volunteer work, she orders me to come up with 10 potential volunteer opportunities, even though my summer job was due to start fairly soon; I do setup/decoration stuff for a summer camp, and we always start early, but how early depends on what specifically we're doing.  Jenny is at least less abrasive about her task, but prospect of finding 10 volunteer things is also a *tad* overwhelming.

That Saturday, my grandfather dies.  The funeral is the following Monday morning.  The Natalie session that evening is fairly uneventful.  I called Amy (perk of the program, she's on call 24/7) and we set up an appointment (for *me*) for Tuesday as well.  My mum drives me there and for whatever reason decides to walk me up.  So Amy turns *my* session into a double session.  I'm disassociating like hell to begin with, and she tries to force me not to with my *mother* there.  She accuses me of being defensive.  She keeps pushing me to talk and process shit when I'm struggling to begin with, and she'd let my *mother* into *my* session.  I know I eventually need to be able to handle that.  But when I'm new to all this *and* grieving?  Fuck that.

The next week and a half is our vacation to Disney (we decided that Grandpa would've wanted us to still go).  Disney trips mean virtually no downtime and a particularly weird sleep schedule.  We get back late on Saturday.  Also, during the trip, I receive an email from a former teacher (let's call him Lou) that I was really close and a little codependent with.  We'd stayed in contact up until he seemingly out of nowhere stopped taking my calls about two years ago.  I knew I'd been doing a lot of mind reading and splitting with him, and I know that the crush I'd had on him was still not completely gone and could be skewing my judgement, so I hold off on replying, and decide to discuss it in therapy first.

Monday, I get to my session late (still working out the kinks of relying on Uber).  I apologise, but Natalie still gives me an earful about being late.  Somehow that means I'm not invested in treatment.  Have I found the volunteer opportunities?  Fucking when?  No.  Yup, not invested in treatment.  Following the sleep schedule?  Uh, Disney... Not invested in treatment.  Oh, and because I was kind of dizzy walking in, I'm not eating right, how many fruits or vegetables am I having?  Not enough, I need five per day.  The rest of the session is starting to make a schedule, because again, I'm not doing anything with my life.  I can't really get a word in edgewise, so I don't get to talk about Lou.

Tuesday I end up talking to my boss to turn in my work documents/forms and contract, and she tells me that she's just sent around an email to the head counsellors asking who wants their decorations made for them.  She says that I can start working as soon as she starts hearing back.  While waiting for my mum to pick me up, I cave and reply to Lou's email.  I run it by a few people, and they all say it sounded healthy.

Thursday morning I send Jenny an email explaining the long backstory to my relationship with Lou so in our session we can skip right to discussing how to set and maintain boundaries with him this time.

In said session I get an earful (from Jenny! nooooo!) about the schedule thing as well as the volunteer thing.  Apparently I was supposed to have both done by then (I thought Natalie's assignment meant it's due by Natalie's session, and the 10 volunteer things was making me anxious).  Again, I'm not invested enough in treatment.  And then we talk about Lou, and she essentially says that even ignoring the intricacies of that relationship, because he was my teacher when I was a minor, I can't ever see him again as a friend ever, and if I do he's a pedophile, somehow.  I *sort of* understand that reinstating a relationship that had poor boundaries isn't a great idea, but at that point I'm already kind of frustrated and don't want to hear her bashing someone I still care about whom she's never even met.

Now it's important to note that late assignments are a fucking *huge* trigger for me and have been ever since I failed an entire semester and almost got expelled in high school over a single research paper.  Six years later and I'm still paralysed by anxiety anytime I'm told I haven't done something fast enough.  So now this schedule thing is a trigger.  The volunteer thing is a trigger.  It's sufficiently bad that I can't even play Minecraft because that'd mean touching the computer I should be making the schedule on.  Full on panic attacks.  Luckily, I've realised over the years that panic attacks will pass fairly quickly and with a lot less pain if I just pretty much disassociate until it's over.  As long as I don't try to push *into* the thing, I'm fine.  Somehow, though, after several days of not being able to touch my laptop, I manage to at least start a schedule.  It's not done, but it's got everything I'm actually doing blocked in, including a drop in drawing class on Fridays.  It's something, and I'm actually really proud of that!

At this point, I'm pretty frustrated by how little say I get in the rules they're arbitrarily imposing on my life.  The food thing I get, but it's hard to buy produce for one, and I don't have anyone to share it with, so I'd be spending a lot of money on something that will go bad in a few days.  The sleep thing, though, is completely arbitrary, as is the volunteer thing since I already have something lined up for summer.  And all of this is causing me hella anxiety.  There's also a mandate that I not drink, even though I'm 21 and my *psychiatrist* said half a drink to a drink would be fine.  So I resolve to bring all this up in next session with Natalie, and I do.  Apparently drinking half a glass of wine for Passover is unacceptable.  And I get a lecture on how we can't address the emotional stuff until we take care of the physical, even when the emotional stuff is *preventing* me from taking care of the physical stuff.  She refuses to acknowledge how fucking hard it was to just start the damn schedule.  But we do go over it.  First off, I'm spending my entire morning doing gym stuff (workout, stretch, shower), that's not okay.  And why are there these huge gaps?  I say I don't have anything to put there yet.  Why is Reddit on the schedule?  I say that at least I get some social interaction on here.  No, you guys basically don't count as people (wut?).  Whatever, schedule's gonna completely change as soon as I hear back from my boss.

Sure enough, she emails me on Thursday basically saying "oh god, I've already heard from 9 people and all of them want us to decorate for them, help!!!" so I figure I'm covered on the volunteer front!  Yay!  I've already paid for a four session pass (like a punchcard, good for six months) for the drawing thing, so I tell my her I'll start Monday.  Jenny drops the volunteer issue (reluctantly), but still demands a formal schedule for my work hours (I'm hourly and can come and go as I please, but I know they need me).  She lectures me on how I'm, again, not invested in therapy and need to "put on my big girl pants" and actually make an effort (my parents are paying for my apartment while I'm in school because my college don't have dorms, so that somehow means I don't know how to work).  I tell her I *am* making an effort, it's just hard.  "Life is hard."  And I'm so exhausted and slipping into a panic attack and I realise (and tell her) I'm spiralling into feeling suicidal.  She says she can call me an ambulance as if that were a threat, and I tell her that I actually kind of *like* it in the hospital, is that weird?  She asks what my protective factors are, and I tell her that camp is probably my biggest one, because I'm making an actual difference to someone *else*. She agrees to let me go home because I have camp on Monday.

**In my Monday session of this most recent week**, Natalie immediately starts to lecture me on the food thing and the sleep thing and I finally just blurt out "so basically everything I do is wrong and I'm fucking up my life?"  And SHE FUCKING SAYS YES.  My THERAPIST effectively tells me *I'm* the problem.  And then she keeps lecturing as I retreat further and further into a panic attack.  Eventually she notices I'm in that seated fetal position, and she tells me to sit up.  I can't.  I'm at that point where the only way to move is to basically twitch an inch of so per breath.  I try to explain that.  And she says *it's not hard*.  I keep pushing, but it's slow going, and every second I'm screaming in my head the same thing she told me, *"come on, it's not that hard,"* as well as *"what the fuck is wrong with you"* and "*if everything is always going to hurt this much, I don't want to keep living."*  She tells me to let her know when I'm sitting up and actually turns around and starts doing stuff on her computer.  I eventually do manage to crank myself up to almost a 90° angle, but with my arms still very tightly clenched around my abdomen.  "Is this enough?"  No, my back needs to be against the chair.  "I'm pretty sure this is the best it's going to get."  Fine, put your hands on your knees.  Again, moving my arm one tiny crank per few breaths.  By the time the session ends, I've managed to get my right hand all the way to my left knee.  She says I can go, and I take a minute to be able to actually move.  She pulls the ambulance threat.  I manage to get up, and then stumble down the stairs and outside.

After group on Tuesday, I ask if moving forward I can replace group with a later individual session or something, because getting to group means missing a huge chuck of time I could be working (it means leaving at least an hour and a half earlier that I otherwise would).  I'm told I need to make treatment a priority.

My session this past Thursday, Amy joins Jenny to say that I'm not invested in treatment because of all of the aforementioned stuff.  They then pull the 'sit up' thing again, and when I finally manage to do so, Jenny flat out says "I'm not gonna validate you for sitting up."  She does at least sort of help by telling me to get angry and use that to do what I have to do.  But still, she actively caused a panic attack and pushed me until I started feeling suicidal.  *Again.*

I've been vaguely considering looking for something else for a while (it's been at least in the back of my mind since that first sleep schedule session) and after a really wonderful and productive conversation with my psychiatrist yesterday (I wish she did therapy, she's really insightful and she actually listens–what a concept!) I'm starting to seriously consider leaving.  I have a session with Amy and my mother on Monday morning (not pleased about missing so much work), and I'm planning on saying, "Look, here's what I need from you guys.  I need to work on the guilt and self talk that keep me from getting anywhere.  That *has* to come first.  Once that's at least getting somewhere, then we can work towards other things.  I also need my schedule to accommodate my job, because my job is *every bit as therapeutic as this,* if not more so.  Is that something you all can do?  Because if not, then I think it's time for me to look at other therapeutic options."

I guess I'm looking for validation that I'm not splitting or overreacting, that I really am in Wise Mind in my possible decision to leave.  I'd also like to know whether or not this is normal for DBT programs (I'm hoping *not* but I don't know).  And I'd love to hear if anyone has had any luck with just relying on the DBT training manual handouts combined with regular CBT therapy, since CBT therapists are much easier to find and sometimes even take insurance.

Thanks, and thanks in particular to those who read this whole mess, I know I ramble a lot.  You guys are the best &lt;3