Stress Management That Actually Sticks: Strategies That Make a Difference by Jeff Nguyen

Stress Management That Actually Sticks: Strategies That Make a Difference

Stress doesn’t knock before it shows up. One minute, you’re handling breakfast, traffic, inboxes, and bills. The next, it’s clamping your chest with a pressure that feels both invisible and undeniable. That’s the catch with stress—it blends in until it overwhelms. But not every solution needs to be a self-help seminar or a week-long retreat. Managing stress in everyday life begins with tiny decisions that carry weight. Think less about overhauling your life and more about shifting how you move through the day.

Breathe and Move

Your breath isn’t just survival—it’s a lever. When things spiral, one of the quickest ways back to the ground is deliberate, deep breathing. Ten counts in, hold, and ten out might sound too simple, but your nervous system knows better. Pair that with a ten-minute walk, and your body starts to remember what calm feels like. The science behind deep breathing isn’t spiritual fluff—it activates your parasympathetic system, calming fight-or-flight responses. Walking does more than stretch your legs, it changes the temperature of your thinking.

Career Shift

Sometimes the source of stress isn’t your response, it’s the job itself. If you find your career draining more than it gives, the boldest move may be stepping away. Opening your own business might seem like another kind of stress, but when you’re steering the wheel, the road bends differently. Many people form an LLC to give their business legal protection and structure without personal liability. Online LLC formation services often offer customized registration packages that include EIN filing and registered agent support, streamlining the process so you can focus on vision, not red tape.

Laugh and Let Go

Seriousness has its place, but it doesn’t belong in every room of your brain. Laughter is, quite literally, a chemical shake-up. It lowers cortisol and flips your perspective, even when the joke isn’t great. This doesn’t mean you need to become a comedian, but making space for humor each day—watching sitcoms to induce laughter or swapping absurd memes—can reroute a sinking mood. Humor gives you permission to not have it together all the time. That release valve matters more than people admit.

Nature and Nurture

Take your shoes off, sit in the grass, stare at the sky—whatever it is, make contact with the outside. The rhythm of nature is slower, older, steadier than anything inside your phone. When stress builds, reconnecting with physical places you can’t control can paradoxically give you peace. Even just spending time in nature regularly has been shown to reduce blood pressure, anxiety, and that buzzing sense of urgency. The goal isn’t to become a forest monk, but to remember your body belongs in green light and open space. Your mind will follow.

Mindfulness Matters

Mindfulness isn’t candlelight and silence, it’s attention. It’s watching your thoughts without handing them the keys. People overthink mindfulness as if it’s a task to complete, when it’s more like standing still in the rain and realizing you won’t melt. A few minutes a day, noticing your breathing or anchoring to sounds around you, can change how you handle everything else. Techniques like mindfulness-based stress reduction aren’t magical—they’re just practice, over and over, until your reactions soften. The payoff isn’t peace, necessarily, but clarity.

Creative Outlets

You weren’t born to work, worry, and repeat. Somewhere inside you is a builder, a scribbler, a hummer, a tinkerer. Stress festers in stagnation, but creativity invites flow. You don’t need to be good at it, just curious. Even creative activities, such as crocheting, journaling, or making playlists can give your thoughts a place to go besides back in on themselves. Every stitch, every note, is one less knot in your chest.

Self-Compassion

There’s a strange myth that beating yourself up builds resilience. It doesn’t. It just leaves bruises. Self-compassion isn’t letting yourself off the hook, it’s refusing to swing it at your own head. Your inner critic isn’t the voice of progress, it’s the static blocking it. Learning to stop putting pressure on yourself can feel foreign at first, but eventually you realize that gentleness does more for your grit than grit alone.

Stress isn’t a villain, it’s a signal. Sometimes it tells you to pause, sometimes to pivot, sometimes to protect. You can’t erase it entirely, but you can rewrite the way you relate to it. Breathe, laugh, move, notice, create, forgive, and maybe, just maybe, change paths altogether. The shape of your stress will shift depending on the day, but with the right tools, it won’t run the show. And that’s the whole point—regaining enough peace to remember you still get to choose.

Explore the journey of recovery and resilience at Life with an Eating Disorder, where personal stories and expert insights offer hope and understanding.

Why Is It So Hard To Eat?

“Why is it so hard to eat?” I ask myself almost daily.

“Why can’t I just eat without having a fight with my self?”

“Why do I even have to eat?”

“Why can’t my brain be fully on my side?”

It’s exhausting to be fighting with myself daily. And lately, I’ve just stopped fighting with myself. It’s too hard. Physically eating is too hard. Looking at portion sizes of food is too hard. Seeing other people eat normally annoys me. Having people talk about food with me is frustrating. Arguing with close friends & my team about eating and not eating is infuriating.

Some days I wish I could go back to when people didn’t know. It was just me & my eating disorder. No one to keep me accountable and question my behaviors. Obviously I know that’s not a good place to be, but it seems easier.

I feel bad arguing with my friends & my team.. I don’t want to fight them, because logically I know what they’re suggesting and encouraging is for the best. But it’s not easy.. eating is just too damn hard right now.

I know it’s not about the food.. I know that. I know that me regressing into old behaviors isn’t fun for the people in my life. I know that if I’m being pushed too much by them, it only further pushes me into my disorder. I know that this isn’t going to change over night. I know I need to get some traction and switch the flip in my brain.

But I still go back to the question… “Why is eating so damn hard?”

3 years ago today, I went into residential treatment. I didn’t know what to expect. But I remember starting to understand that eating was so hard. It stressed me out so much. I remember my first meal in residential and I was told I had to eat it all with in a certain time frame. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten a whole meal. It was terrifying. Daunting. And seemed impossible. Yet, I did it. And continued to while in residential. It seemed less hard as time went on there. I started feeling hungry when it was time to eat. It seemed less scary.

But now.. it feels like I’ve lost that momentum completely. Eating meals feels terrifying again. Gaining weight stresses me out. When my clothes get too tight, I freak out. I feel like I’m not much different than I was 3 years ago. I’ve gone backwards. And that’s disappointing.

I know it’ll get better in time.. and easier again. Just now it’s hard.. and I’m not a fan.

Recovery, pandemic, small victories!

It’s been a hot minute… (a hot year?) since I’ve written.. I’ll be honest, I’ve thought about it in the last year. I didn’t feel like I had anything positive to write. It felt daunting because the past year has been full of ups & downs in my recovery.

Starting in the middle of March of 2020, we all went into lockdown. For the past 13 months I have not seen my therapist in person or my dietician. I am thankful for technology so we can do telehealth or zoom calls. But it’s not the same. I don’t do well with change.. I don’t know a lot of people who do well with change. The pandemic changed everything for me. As it did for everyone. It was out of my control. Everything felt out of control. We didn’t know at the beginning of this how long it would be. The uncertainty was anxiety inducing. I can say without a doubt in the past year my anxiety has spiked. Thankfully I have an incredible team and we have found meds that have helped alleviate the anxiety.

I have found that when I’m more anxious in general, eating gets harder. When the pandemic started, my behaviors increased. Everything seemed to change over night. My regular routine got thrown out the door. I needed something to control. Of course I have learned that restricting my food intake doesn’t solve anything, but it does help alleviate my anxiety for .001 second, and for some reason, that feels like enough. That is why some days I still hold on to it. It helps for just a moment.

The last few weeks have been rough. I started trauma therapy again. I haven’t been sleeping because of my anxiety. I hate it. My feelings feel out of control because I’m dealing with stuff that I don’t want to and I’m always exhausted. If you know me, you know I don’t like feeling emotional or feelings for that matter. I don’t know what to do with them and it makes me feel like I’m spinning out of control. So what do I do? I go to what feels like control.. restricting. Luckily I have a treatment team who calls me out and reminds me how engaging in behaviors won’t help me achieve my goals.

They reminded me this past week that being a functional anorexic won’t work forever. That if I kept going on that route, I’d end up back to where I was a few years ago. Passing out. Feeling sick all the time. My brain will go offline. Barely surviving not thriving.

Working on recovery is not easy. But it’s not impossible. Even if I think it is at times. I’ve struggled a lot this past year with feeling like I’m not farther along in my recovery. I shouldn’t be struggling as much as I do. Sometimes I feel like I’m right back to where I was before residential. Some days are excruciating and the thought of eating stresses me out so much that I end up not eating. Choosing what to eat or where to go to eat are still my least favorite questions. It’s too stressful for me. The eating disorder part of me is really good at talking me out of eating. It’s mastered making me feel guilty about eating certain foods. I’d even dare say it comes up with amazing arguments and excuses of why not to eat. It’s quite frustrating. Sometimes I try to argue back (in my head of course). Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I need to have an outside voice argue back and fight for me.

I am grateful that I have been medically stable and my weight has stabilized for the past 4 months, which I think is the longest since leaving higher level of care at the end of 2018. I’d say that’s a small victory!

Home For A Year

A year ago I woke up on a rainy morning in Eugene, ready to go home from my partial hospitalization program (php). I hadn’t been home for 4 long months. I am grateful for my parents who came to visit me most weekends and brought my dog. I know it wasn’t an easy 4 months for them either. As excited as I was to go home, I was also terrified. Transitions are never easy, for anyone. However, I knew I was going back to an incredible outpatient team and incredibly supportive family and friends who have helped me a lot in the past year.

One thing I’ve realized a lot after being home for a year is that while higher level of care was vital for me and necessary for me to stay alive, it didn’t prepare me in regular life like I expected it to. In residential you’re basically isolated from the outside world to focus on yourself which is important for breaking the ice on why you have an eating disorder and restoring weight. Php starts to help you get reintegrated back into your life. However, for me I didn’t live in Eugene. My life was back in Bend. So I felt like php only helped me adjust to life outside of a residential facility, and not prepare me for life back at home. So when I went home, I felt like I was given a false sense of security because I was hit with my real reality. Not treatment reality anymore.

They (the therapists) say the first year out of higher level of care will be one of the hardest. They got that right. Obviously it is easier to eat when you’re “forced” to 6 times a day in residential. On my own, way more difficult (even in php). Also life gets busy and it’s difficult to make the time to eat that many times. Especially when I still don’t get hunger and fullness cues regularly.

In the year I have been home, there have been high moments when I’ve been able to maintain my weight for a few weeks at a time, but for the most part it is a constant battle of trying to maintain for one week. This isn’t to say every week is a terrible week. Or every day is a terrible day and I’m restricting heavily. I’ll have days (sometimes most of the week) where I do really well with eating and following my meal plan. Yet there is still always at least one day that is difficult which unfortunately alters my weight. While it isn’t all about the food and weight, for insurance purposes and body purposes, it is.

At the beginning of the year when I got back, I was with a different therapist and was involved in an eating disorder focused group with her. We weren’t the best fit, and half way through the year I changed and am now with a therapist who is an amazing fit for me and works well with my treatment team. I am now doing a DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) group that she runs which I enjoy more because it’s practical and I don’t have to talk about my feelings in front of a group. So that’s always a plus.

Am I where I thought I would be a year later? No. Is that okay? It’s going to have to be. Am I still willing to work at it even though it’s hard? Most days. Some days honestly seem impossible and I don’t always know why which is frustrating. Or I start “shoulding” on myself. I “should” be farther along than I am. Or I “shouldn’t” be affected by x, y, and z. That obviously gets me nowhere.

I have been really lucky though to have an incredible treatment team, who calls me out on my bullshit, but also can remind me of how far I’ve come, and encourage me to keep moving forward after I take a few steps back. Parents who have listened to me and are willing to continue to do family therapy with me. A mom who’s office I have cried in after an appointment that didn’t go the way I wished. Siblings who I can call to distract myself to get a few moments of relief from what’s going on inside my head. Friends who have been my middle of the night call or text because I’m freaking out or who have helped me when I have opened up and I tell them that I’m struggling. I know I haven’t made it easy on both my family and friends. My hope is that they know I appreciate them more than I could ever express. As much as I want to be able to get better on my own, I know I can’t do it without the people in my life, so thank you.

Here’s to 2020, another year to work on my recovery.

Always Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

I’ve been home for almost a full year from a higher level of care. Super weird to think about. Every month that goes by, I can’t help but wonder how soon am I going to have to go back? While I understand that the recovery process is not linear, it feels to me in ways going downward in a linear way. They say the first year getting out of residential and php will be the hardest. They’re not wrong. First there’s the adjustment back into like regular life. Then life just happens.

I feel like (gross, feelings ha), since I’ve been home I’m always waiting for my treatment team to just say, alright it’s time to go back to a higher level of care. It’s been a topic of conversation since after the first month of me being home. Looking into different treatment centers, looking at different options, and me fighting myself to keep myself out of going back to a higher level of care. I don’t want to go back.

Honestly. If I had it my way, I would wait until I got as bad as it did when I first went in. Not saying that’s what I want, because I definitely don’t. But I don’t think I’d be willing (at least right now) to go back to a higher level of care until things got that bad. What I mean by that is, I would have to be passing out, my weight would have to be incredibly low, my levels would have to be completely off, my brain would go offline because of lack of food intake, etc.

Currently, things are going fairly well. My levels are good, my brain isn’t going offline, and I haven’t passed out in over a year. The only worry that my treatment team has is the steady drop in my weight since I’ve been home. I’m not in the danger zone, where they’re worried my brain is going offline. I know because I can tell. I know my attention span is better. I can retain information from class better than ever before. I am doing well in classes and not struggling which is a new thing for me. So things are good, yeah?

But, I have this feeling inside me just waiting. Waiting for “the other shoe to drop” as we would say in treatment. I’m waiting until I let myself go too far in my eating disorder again. Again, I’m not saying this is what I want. I’m saying, when my eating disorder takes over at times, I can’t help but think this is it. This is what screws me over. I gave in too much, because fighting against it was too hard. There’s days when I restrict or I have over exerted myself and didn’t eat enough to compensate. That’s when I know I screwed myself for the week. It’s hard to not be too hard on myself about it because then it puts me in a spiral.

I know so many people who have gone back to a higher level of care since I’ve been out, and I can’t help but wonder if I’m going to be next. Obviously, if I need to go back I will. I just don’t want it to be an option. Whether that’s my eating disorder talking or maybe even my pride. I don’t want this past year to feel as if it was a waste. But the option of going back up to a higher level of care is constantly in the back of my head. It’s ringing in my ears every time I see my dietician or physician.

I’m tired of always waiting for the other shoe to drop… Maybe this time it will be different? The other shoe won’t drop completely.

One Year Later

Exactly one year ago was my first full day at Rain Rock. I came in on the last day of August, but was only there for about half a day. Weekends are a bit boring at Rain Rock, because they give us a break from so many groups in a day which is nice. But since I came in on the weekend I was incredibly bored and confused.

Walking into Rain Rock was probably the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. It was new, uncomfortable, lonely, confusing (so many rules), and I didn’t know what to expect. I was in denial with how “sick” I was. I went into it believing I would only be there for 30 days. By the 2nd or 3rd night, I realized that wasn’t going to be the case. After being in residential for 2 months, then PHP for 2 more months, I have now been in out patient for 8 months.

One year later, I still feel some of the same things. And this isn’t to say, higher level of care didn’t work, it helped a lot, and I needed it to stabilize myself and learn what some of the core issues were. Which I have, but doesn’t mean that fixes everything.

One year later, I am still working through my past traumas. I am still learning how to eat enough to keep myself stabilized. I am still learning how to use other coping tools instead of restricting. I am still working with a treatment team so they can continue to monitor my weight, vitals, etc.

One year later, my migraines are worse than ever before and I’m sleeping less than I have since I was in treatment. I thought my doctors appointments would decrease, but instead they’ve only increased (thank God for health insurance).

One year later, I thought eating wouldn’t be a struggle anymore. The hardest part is accepting when I’m struggling and asking for help. Now that I have the knowledge of what eating disorders do to our physical and mental health, you would think it would scare me enough to not want to engage in behaviors. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. It depends on how strong the eating disorder voice is. It depends on if something triggered me. I get frustrated with myself though, when I do engage in a behavior because I know what it’s doing to my body. But sometimes I feel like I’m in autopilot and there’s nothing that’s going to stop me.

One year later, I am still connected with some amazing women who I was in treatment with. I didn’t know I was going to make friends when I went into Rain Rock. But you have to in order to survive there. It’s helps a lot to have friends who have been through the same process. Who understand the struggles of eating disorders and treatment centers. Who understand that you can be doing great for a few weeks and then all of sudden, you slip again. I am incredibly grateful for the friends I did made. It makes me feel less alone in this process. It makes me feel less crazy. Because honestly, if people could hear the inside of my brain sometimes, they would think I’m crazy.

One year later, I am going back to school, working for my favorite families, and managing. While I’m not to where I want to be, I am farther along than where I was a year ago.

I Am Ok.

I have an eating disorder
it is not had or did or used to
it is present tense
I am Learning
it is learning to love myself
it is learning to let others love me
it is surviving when they don’t
it is that I damn well deserve that love
I am Trying
it is trying to listen to my body
it is about ups and downs and all arounds
it is trying to give myself what I need
it is letting others give me what I need
it is trying to recognize the needs of others without hurting myself
I am Going Slowly
it is being patient and gentle with myself
it is going through the day hour by hour, sometimes minute by minute
it is not being everything to everyone not even myself
I am Accepting
it is accepting drugs as a way to heal myself
it is accepting the words depression, anorexia, bulimia as tools to describe, not label
it is accepting the help and care and fear of others
it is accepting food as a necessity not an enemy
I am Beautiful
it is beauty irrelevant of size or number or grade
I am Alive
it is fighting to remain that way
I am Pain
it is trying not to hurt myself
I am on a Journey
it is laughing, crying, cartwheeling, eating.
It is ok.
I am ok.
Andrea Smeltzer

My therapist gave me the poem above in our last session and normally I hate these kinds of things and roll my eyes at them. But I read this one and I could relate. I am learning. I am learning what triggers me, I am learning what helps, I am learning that it’s not going to be perfect. I am trying (even when it looks like I’m not). I am going slowly, because I can’t quit habits as fast as I would like. I am accepting that it isn’t linear and there are going to be ups and downs. I am alive because I am eating. I am pain because I feel things, I didn’t feel before. I am on a journey, but who isn’t?

I feel like since I went into a higher level of care almost a year ago, that it’s assumed I’m all “healed” or “recovered.” I think I thought that was what was going to happen, but that was a very unrealistic idea. I wish I was fully recovered. I wish I didn’t still restrict at times. I wish I didn’t think about restricting at most meals. I wish recovery wasn’t really hard. I wish I could skip this process. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Right now I can’t say I was anorexic, because I still am. And that’s OK because it’s all a process and one day I won’t be. Recovery takes years and it isn’t easy. And that’s OK.

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week: Types of Eating Disorders

FACTS:

Anorexia Nervosa–“characterized by weight lost; difficulties maintaining an appropriate body weight for height, age, and stature; and, in many individuals, distorted body image” (NEDA).
Bulimia Nervosa–“characterized by a cycle of binge eating and compensatory behaviors such as self-induced vomiting designed to undo or compensate for the effects of binge-eating” (NEDA).
Binge Eating Disorder--“characterized by recurrent episodes of eating large quantities of food; a feeling of a loss of control during the binge; experiencing shame, distress or guilt afterwards; and not regularly using unhealthy compensatory measures to counter the binge eating” (NEDA).
Orthorexia–“and obsession with proper or ‘healthful’ eating” (NEDA).
Other Specified Eating or Eating Disorder aka OSFED–“encompasses individuals who do not meet strict criteria for anorexia or bulimia but still have a significant eating disorder” (NEDA).
Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder aka AFRID–“involves limitations in the amount and/or types of consumed but does not involve any distress about body shape or size, or fears of fatness” (NEDA).
Pica–“involves eating items that are not typically thought of as food and that does not contain nutritional value” (NEDA).
Rumination Disorder–“involves the regular regurgitation of food that occurs for at least one month” (NEDA).
Unspecified Feeding Eating Disorder aka UFED–“applies to presentations where symptoms characteristic of a feeding and eating disorder that cause clinically significant distress or impairment predominate but do not meet the full criteria for any of the disorders in the feeding and eating” (NEDA).
Laxative Abuse–“the repeat and frequent use of laxatives to eliminate unwanted calories or weight” (NEDA).
Compulsive Exercise–“extreme, excessive exercise that significantly interferes with areas of one’s life” (NEDA).

Those are just the basic definitions of each disorder, but below is the link to find out more of each disorder.

https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/information-eating-disorder

Anorexia Nervosa: What it is & What it did for me

According to the National Eating Disorder Association, “anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by weight loss (or lack of appropriate weight gain in growing children); difficulties maintaining an appropriate bodyweight for height, age, and stature; and, in many individuals, distorted body image, [and intense fear of gaining weight].”

My brain held tight to the distorted body image. I was small and underweight since I was born and got it in my head that’s how I was supposed to be. Skinny. Skinny meant underweight to me. That’s how everyone knew me. That’s what I thought they expected from me. I knew eating more would mean I’d gain weight. Gaining weight scared me. I knew I was already underweight, but I was doing fine at that weight, so why would I have to change. I was getting my period regularly so I was healthy.

I was pretty active in sports growing up, which looking back now I think helped me keep weight off without it seeming like an issue. It was normal. Especially in high school, during volleyball season. In the winter and spring I’d probably gain back a few pounds. But I was still underweight. I used to joke that I would only break 100lbs once I was pregnant at full term. (In my head, that was the only time that seemed reasonable for me to be at that weight).

There are many factors that can play a part in someone who has anorexia (or any other eating disorder). It is never just one thing. Our society fixates on women and men have skinny, fit bodies. Skinnier means beautiful. Unfortunately, we see that idea being rewarded constantly in the media and just by the people around us. There is also a genetic component to eating disorders, like all mental health disorders. If you have a blood relative who has struggled with an eating disorder (and it was also a because of the genetic component), that gene can be passed down to the next generation. How often this happens, I have no idea. I don’t know if that was a factor for me. I don’t have medical records from my birth parents, so I don’t know if that was something that could’ve been passed down to me. I like to think it wasn’t. Trauma can be a huge component to someone with an eating disorder. Eating disorders give people a sense of control. Anorexia gave me a sense of control. At times, especially when I was younger, I didn’t know exactly why I was restricting myself from food it just made sense. Eating is something we do every day. Probably one of the easiest things to manipulate and control. When something traumatic happens to you, you’ll do whatever you can to find a sense of control. Some people go to drugs, alcohol, obsessing over something; I went to anorexia. It seemed the safest, easiest at times to hide, and allowed me to numb out from my depression and anxiety.

Eating disorder behaviors are addictive. Anorexia is an addiction to doing behaviors that can cause you to lose weight, eat restrictively, purge, excessively exercise, count calories, and many other behaviors. I got a “high” off of it. I would weigh myself multiple times a day to make sure I didn’t gain any weight. I would get excited when I didn’t. I would get excited when the number on my scale got lower and lower. It became my focus. It’s was in the back of my mind everywhere I went. I check myself out in mirrors to see if I look too big. Of course the eating disorder part of the brain, the distorted body image part of my brain wants me to think that I am. So I would restrict even more. I used to restrict all day and then eat dinner. It gave me a sense of pride that I could have the self-discipline to restrict all day, when I would see others eating throughout the day. It seemed like the only thing I could accomplish and control. It made sense.

My First Day at Residential

Friday, August 31, 2018.

My parents and I packed up the Rav with my clothes and some books and journals and drove across the mountains so I could get the treatment I needed.

I had never been to a treatment center before. I had done therapy and appointments with a nutritionist, psychiatrist, and primary physician. Three days prior I had received a phone call saying I needed to be there by Friday because a spot had opened up.

I was scared. Excited (maybe?). Full of anxiety.

We arrived to Rain Rock just after lunch and that’s when it really hit me.

Oh my god. What am I doing? Why did I think this was a good idea? Why were my parents okay with dropping me off here? What was my team thi-nking? My anorexia isn’t that bad.

Ha. I love that even on the day I was going to treatment, I was still trying to convince myself that my anorexia wasn’t that bad. I don’t think I was in denial. I had put off treatment all summer, that it was hard to believe it was actually happening. Not just something me and Natalie (my nutritionist) talked about.

I didn’t know it when I walked into Rain Rock that my whole world was going to change.

We went through the admission process with one of the staff members which took a while. My room was small, with a bathroom, and a closet. I had a roommate who was amazing. Everyone was so nice and welcoming.

It was almost afternoon snack time and my parents and I were left in my room for a few minutes so we could say goodbye. Even though I wasn’t on the best terms with my parents, I still cried when they were leaving. I was about to live a life without their constant presence. I was afraid. I didn’t know what to expect. You can only prepare so much for something like this when it’s your first time.

I met my therapist who was so incredible and worked so well with me and my family. My first snack was carrots and hummus. Not sure why I remember that, but I do. We did introductions at the table. Not quite sure what I said. Or what anyone else said other than their names. It was all so overwhelming. I had to learn new rules, new acronyms, new people, make sure I didn’t say anything that was TI (table inappropriate).

The rest of the afternoon I just observed. I didn’t know what to do, what to say, or who I should talk to. I would move from the couch to the fireplace and observe. Talking some if someone engaged me or if I had question about something.

It may have only been my first day, but I was in it. My parents had gone back to Bend. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know if I wanted to know anyone. I remember dinner being really difficult. I believe there was 12 or 13 people sitting at the table. Everyone played table games. They explained it to me, and I was completely lost. I think I may have zoned out and just focused on the food because I didn’t know what else to do.

That evening (an outing we did every Friday night) was going to Walgreens and Dutch Brothers. Which was good because I needed shampoo because I didn’t pack enough. I didn’t really talk to anyone still. When we got back from the outing, we did some sort of activity, I don’t remember what it was. Then we had an evening snack.

I was exhausted and just wanted to go to bed. Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to go to my room until almost 10:30pm. Once observations were over, my roommate and I hurried off to our rooms so we could go to bed. Even though I was mentally and emotionally exhausted, I wasn’t sleepy.

I remember my roommate and I talking some, getting to know each other a bit more. It was nice to have someone to talk to and it was easier one on one to start with. She was very kind and we had a good arrangement. She showered at night and I showered in the morning. She didn’t mind if I stayed up late reading with the lamp on. She also was able to explain to me how the morning schedule works and let me tell you, it was very nice to have someone tell me that I would be woken up at 6am to have my vitals checked.

On my first night at Rain Rock I wrote a letter to a friend. I stayed up pretty late either writing or reading. Sleeping in a new place is difficult for me.

As I lied in bed that night I thought:

Well, here I am. My first night at Rain Rock. I had expected to only be there for a month. I didn’t have my phone. I was away from all of my friends, my family, and my dog. What did the next day hold for me? What was I going to do? What was this next week going to be like? What was treatment going to be like? Was I going to like my therapist? Was this a big mistake? I want my own bed. I want my dog. I want to be home.

Eventually I drifted off to sleep, completing my first half day at Rain Rock.