Monday I had my group therapy. I was looking forward to it. I had several things I wanted to bring up during Group. However, when I walked into the treatment center, I almost turned right around and went home. Sitting in a chair, very close to the check in window, was a woman who had been in the State Psychiatric Hospital at the same time I was. I have no idea what her diagnosis is. What I do know is that during the time I was in the hospital, she was violent at times.

For those of you who have not had to stay in an under staffed, under budgeted, government, psychiatric hospital, I probably need to explain a few things. The environment is very rough. I am sure not as rough as jail, but still rough. It was a completely foreign environment. It was stressful. It was loud. At times it was very chaotic. There were fights, and riots. Violent patients are kept with the non-violent patients. To protect myself, I had to be loud and forceful when someone crossed my boundaries.

This woman had been in the hospital for a couple of weeks before I got there, and I am guessing she ended up staying for a while longer after I left. When I was there she was refusing her medications, behaved violently at times, and would call her husband, threatening him with all kinds of bodily harm if he did not get her out. For some reason, during my time in the hospital, she began some weird competition thing with me. She was acting as if she felt threatened by me for some reason. Everything I did, she made sure she did it too, and did it better. I tried to stay away from her but she followed me.

On the Sunday that I was in the hospital, one of the nurses turned a radio on and let us listen to the one station that the radio could pick up. It was not playing loud, or at least it did not seem to be. It was hard to tell in that place, because between the TV and all the people it was always loud in there. This woman decided that she did not want to listen to the radio, and went to go turn it off. The rest of us were enjoying the music as a nice change from the blaring TV. I told the woman to not turn off the radio, since the rest of us were listening to it. She came back over to me, grab my arms, and began to tell me all sorts of things including the fact that since she beat me in a game of Hearts we were equals. It was strange stuff that she kept saying, and my arms were hurting from the way she was holding me. I had to raise my voice and ask her several times to let me go. Eventually, she did. That interaction made me even more uncomfortable around her.

Before I was released from this hospital I found out that she lives in the little town next to mine. We do a lot of our grocery shopping and etc. there so I kind of always have expected to see her around, but I never did. I was happy that I had not seen her. After her altercation with me and hearing how she threatened her husband, I was more than slightly nervous about running into her.

Walking into the treatment center and seeing her sitting right there was a shock for me. However, she did not seem to recognize me. As I was checking in, I leaned into the window and asked the receptionist if that woman was going to be in group. Of course, she could not tell me because of privacy issues. She got the office manager and she also said she could not tell me because of privacy issues. When my counselor found out what was going on, she had me sit in her office and she said she would find out if that woman was going to be in group that day. She also remember me telling her about the altercation that woman and I had so she understood why I was concerned. While I was sitting in the office, I was shaking and really felt on the verge of a panic attack. I decided to call my husband. I hit the wrong speed dial number and got my mother. Which worked out fine.

My mother was really calm and helpful on the phone. She said some things that really helped get me off of the melt down ledge. For example, that most likely since the woman did not recognize me, she probably did not even remember what had happened in the hospital. Especially, since she was not taking her medications and was not completely in control of herself. She did not make me feel as if my anxiety was not normal or that I was acting silly. She told me that while she could not understand how I was feeling, she could understand why I would be having the feelings that I was.

My counselor came back into her office and let me know that the woman would not be in Group. She also did reassure me that the woman was doing much better than when I had seen her last. She was taking her medications and doing other things that seemed to curb any violent tendencies she may have had.  I attempted to apologize to my counselor for making her have to do all that and causing group to start late.  She told me not to apologize and was very glad that I had spoken up.  She acknowledge that had this happened last year I would have reacted differently.  I either would have turned around and left the treatment center and never gone back or, I would have sat through Group, not saying anything and then when it was over, left and not gone back.

I am going to count that as progress for these reasons.

1. I made people aware that I had a problem.
2. I gave them a chance to fix the problem
3. I did not actually have the panic attack
4. I called someone and got some emotional support.