Let’s talk about Treatment Nostalgia!
Treatment is a major step in the recovery of many individuals with mental illnesses. The intensity of these programs ranges from inpatient admissions to outpatient therapy or psychiatry or even case management. There is no single level of care that benefits every single person, even if there was, there are many barriers that prevent people from getting treatment; financial cost, stigma, trauma history, and so on. Unfortunately in our society, mental health treatment is a privilege not a right. Which is absolutely not how it needs to be, but that’s for another post. . . Nostalgia is defined by Webster’s dictionary as: “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition”. Knowing that definition, Treatment Nostalgia may seem pretty self-explanatory. People who haven’t been to treatment, or have had a negative experience in treatment, may not understand. Wanting treatment back seems undesirable. Wanting anything related to the illness back seems opposite to the end goal. And it is. And it’s natural to crave it back. . . Treatment is structured. Treatment is controlled. Two things that many mental illnesses, especially eating disorders and anxiety, crave. I’ve been privileged to go to treatment quite a few times with quite a few different programs. The eating disorder (ED) Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP) that I completed twice was exactly that: structured and controlled. We began program promptly at 11:30 every morning with weights, then lunch, group, snack, group, dinner, and finally were released from programming at 6:30pm. Each patient was on a meal plan that they were allowed to make once they were completing meals and complying with the program for a few days. Structure and Control. . . But beyond the structure and control of treatment, there lie emotional attachments as well. Humans are social creatures. We aren’t made to go through life alone. When you’re in treatment with other humans, it’s natural to form bonds with the other patients. In fact, I think everyone would be surprised if none of the patients bonded. That’s not to say everyone will be best friends, because let’s face it, throwing a bunch of wildly different personalities together is not going to end well every time. And patients are not the only people we bond to. We bond to our treatment therapists, the support staff, the nurses, etc. Leaving treatment and feeling as though we’re losing those connections can be heartbreaking. . . Finally (though I could go on and on), treatment is often a Safe Space. Before anyone comes for me: I do know that not all treatment is a safe space. There are bad treatment centers. There are unethical therapists. There are support workers who have no idea what they’re doing. But (what should be) the goal of a center is to create a space that is safe enough for each individual patient to be vulnerable and honest enough to kick start their healing journey. Healing is not completed in treatment, but that’s (hopefully) where it begins. . . All this to say, Treatment Nostalgia makes sense. We long for the control and structure that the program presented to us. We miss the close connections with those around us. We crave the safety that we felt. Some days, we want to relapse and return to the thing that started us on healing. The truth is that even if we went back to the same treatment center, it wouldn’t be the same. There are new patients, sometimes even new staff, and a different you. . . Some times, we do relapse and return to the same treatment center. I did. I went to an ED PHP in 2014 and again in 2016. While many of the therapists were still there, most of the support staff had left, and all the patients were new to me. Yes, the program still worked (because I worked it). But the nostalgia I had felt for it was not quenched. It wasn’t the same. I wasn’t the same. And that’s okay. We can’t get what we had back, in any aspect of our lives. . . Treatment Nostalgia is not “bad” and I am certainly not judging anyone for experiencing it. I’m feeling it right now, as I sit and type this. We can feel nostalgic for the times and places we knew, AND we can keep moving forward. We can build structure, control, connections, and safety in our own lives with the help of our support system.
