Therapeutic Community: Three Year Anniversary

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Today, January 14th 2023, I realised it has been exactly 3 years since I left the Therapeutic Community I was in.

On January 14th 2020, I had just spent 18 months with a large group of people mostly with trauma and associated Personality Disorder (or Attachment Disorder) traits. It wasn’t a residency as such, but I spent about 3 days a week in groups, then 24/7 as part of a support network, and working on myself in between group sessions. It was incredibly hard work, it’s very difficult to convey just how hard. It wasn’t just about becoming more aware of myself, or even exposing my deepest trauma and behavioural issues to a large group of people, but also it was very much about the relationships and communication between each other.

Every member of the therapeutic community was encouraged to have a special leaving day. Many would try to avoid it and just slip away though, because actually it can be really difficult, particularly with those who have experienced trauma, to have a day which focuses on us.

So my day came, though it nearly didn’t, as I wanted to quit about 12 months in, and tried to push the entire group away, because it was so emotionally painful. I am glad I stayed on though, and I am glad my leaving day went well.

I got to choose a theme for the day, though I think I managed to largely avoid it by calling the theme “just be yourself”. I made a playlist of music which I deliberately picked things that were meaningful, not too depressing. I danced a bit, and we ate together. Importantly, I came out as trans properly to the group by going to groups expressing my gender how I wanted. I’d done the entire thing without properly coming out, and part of me wishes I had done it earlier. As ever, it’s practically impossible to hide things, or get away with things in a Therapeutic Community.

Probably the most difficult bit of my leaving day at the Therapeutic Community, was the ‘traditional’ bit where everyone gets together in the comfy room. I had bought a blank notebook and left it in the room for people to write in. People wrote quite honestly, but also with care about me. There were symbolic, nice gifts, but then everyone was encouraged to speak, with feeling, to me, about me, and I in return about them.

After 6 months we were allowed to get in touch with members again, if people really wanted, but the relationships would be very different, since it would be outside the community, with different boundaries to establish.

So, this really was goodbye, and goodbyes are so important. Goodbyes are also exceptionally difficult when you care about people a lot, and I cared about everyone in the group, I still do, though mostly we’ve drifted apart.

On that day, January 14th 2020, I left the Therapeutic Community, feeling very sad, actually probably it was grief, but also there was a lot of relief that this part of my journey had come to an end. What I knew though, was that in order to make the best out of it all, I had to continue the work, but outside the Therapeutic Community.

I left not fixed, I never expected to be fixed, but like I’d done the most exhausting, rigorous exercise for my emotional self. It was like 18 months of climbing the highest emotional mountain, tethered to a large number of others, each of us both trying to help each other up, but also occasionally wanting to throw ourselves off the mountain. I say “occasionally” but probably more like every day. Most of us made it to the end but I feel strongly that even those who didn’t, did something incredibly important, something so challenging that sometimes it feels super human, when actually, it’s very much human.

Human behaviour. Which is also a song by Björk, and which I wrote some of the lyrics to, on ‘my brick’ in the wall of the corridor at the therapeutic community on my leaving day, as is customary. I tried to avoid that as well, then opted to write the words on a brick right next to the door of the main group room.

If you ever get close to a human
And human behaviour
Be ready, be ready to get confused

There’s definitely, definitely, definitely no logic
To human behaviour
But yet so, yet so irresistible

And there is no map

They’re terribly, terribly, terribly moody
Oh, human behaviour
Then all of a sudden, turn happy

But, oh, to get involved in the exchange
Of human emotions
Is ever so, ever so satisfying

And there is no map

Human behaviour, human, human
Human behaviour, human, human
Human behaviour
Human behaviour, human, human

And there is no map
And a compass wouldn’t help at all

Björk