Sometimes, you need to start over. You might have a mindset that hasn’t been serving you, a career that isn’t working for you, or a relationship that’s doing more harm than good. But it might be more encompassing than that.

Before going to Lifeskills, every part of my life had been ruptured, and I felt like I was at the end of my rope.

I arrived straight from the hospital after a six-hour drive. It was the second time I’d been involuntarily hospitalized that summer, and my family knew I could not go home. As I came down from the mania in the hospital, I started to see the damage I had done to myself and the people around me. I wasn’t sure if I deserved a second chance, but I knew I couldn’t go on living this way.

I did have some concerns. I was eager to rebuild my life, and while I knew I needed a lot of help, I thought it would be better to do that at home, in the context of a “normal life”. This was my third time going to treatment over the past six years. It is fundamentally uncomfortable to check yourself in and take an extended “time out”, and if it didn’t work the last time, why would Lifeskills be different?

Ultimately, I didn’t fight the decision. After an intense depressive episode followed by a 3-month mania that escalated into psychosis, my career was in shambles, my relationships had been severed or strained, and it felt like even my thoughts had not been my own for many months. Whether I thought it would work or not, I needed that break. I needed help, and I needed to restart.

---

Starting the treatment journey

I was in no state to handle an admissions process, but Lifeskills worked with my family to get me in immediately. My best friend rode down with me. When I arrived, I was given a room in a house with four housemates who were further along in their recovery. We had a kitchen, and this was a pleasant surprise for me—-most treatment centers do not let you make your own food. This ended up being instrumental in my recovery. Being able to shop for myself and determine my own diet gave me a sense of control and independence that I desperately needed.

Soon enough, I met my primary therapist, Sandy, and my family therapist, Esther. This was also something I hadn’t had in treatment before: a dedicated family therapist that I met with every week to help specifically with my relationships. Esther has an Orthodox Jewish background, just like me and my family, which was a huge help in the therapeutic relationship. Through her, I began to understand what my parents went through that summer, building the perspective I needed to strengthen my relationship with them.

Adjusting to life in treatment

Residential treatment centers are generally restrictive: you can’t leave the property alone, there are techs keeping track of your whereabouts, and you have limited phone and internet access. Lifeskills has a phone use policy: you don’t use your personal phone but you can register for a 15-minute phone call slot daily. This structure felt restrictive at first, but through my family therapist, I could have hour-long conversations with the people that most matter in my recovery. Before coming to Lifeskills, I had developed a toxic relationship with social media. When I was depressed, it gave me every excuse not to get out of bed; when I was manic, it overstimulated me and gave me feeds of people to get mad at. Staying silent online was crucial in developing a better relationship with technology and also in giving space to the people I’d hurt.

Lifeskills has a very “voluntary” approach to treatment. It is on you to wake up on time, to show up to groups, to take your medications from the nurse. And it’s on you to handle conflicts, stand up for yourself, and request what you need. There are also plenty of additional activities Lifeskills allows you to do, but you don’t have to: you can wake up early and be driven to the gym every morning, you can go to a yoga group, you can swim in the pool, you can go to church on Sundays or Chabad on Friday nights. You can even organize your own events—we put on a movie night and a talent show where I got to perform. It’s an environment where the guardrails are on, but you learn to take responsibility for your own recovery.

Experiencing treatment at Lifeskills

Groups are led by counselors but they’re filled with peers, and there is so much I could say about the benefit of being surrounded by others who are going through what you are. This alone could be the only reason you need to go to Lifeskills. There were clients of every age, from late teens to early seventies. With those younger than me, I could commiserate and share what I’ve learned so far. But as someone who mainly interacted with college-aged friends, I got to learn so much about life from those who’d been going through it for much longer than I have. I got to learn what bipolar was like in your thirties and forties- and I got to learn what was at stake.

Substance abuse and mental illness are not the same thing, but they have a lot of overlap. There’s the comorbidities: you’re more likely to have one if you have the other. But I did not have a substance abuse issue, while many other clients did. Nonetheless, I learned a lot from their experiences. At the start of my stay, my primary therapist urged me to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, despite, in my view, not having any reason to be there. I heard the stories of those who had become someone so far from who they really are and done things they regret so deeply. I was no different. I left that meeting in tears.

The most personalized, direct work at Lifeskills comes from your primary therapist. I’d previously had a lot of therapists, before and after I was diagnosed with bipolar, and I never had much success. The therapist would often let me talk my way out of doing the work without making any change. Sandy was not like this. She called it out when I said something that didn’t make sense. In many ways, we were really starting from scratch. She helped me figure out my values when I felt I had no direction. She taught me how to make healthy friendships, even to the level of reminding me what a friend actually is. The biggest lesson from working with her is that my illness is my responsibility. It is not going away, I cannot leave it alone, and I must put guardrails in place and make sure they stay intact. I am not alone, and I have the skills and support to help me through it. But this isn’t fun and games; this is my life, and I cannot risk it again.

Navigating life after treatment

That responsibility is what I’ve been reckoning with over the past year since I left Lifeskills, since completing 90 days at Residential and 63 days at PHP. How do I rebuild my life, and how do I protect it? How do I recover what I’ve lost, and how do I deal with what is not recoverable? And if I know I don’t want to be who I was, who do I want to be? I went back home, went back to school. I started writing songs again. It’s been a journey of building habits, restoring relationships, starting new projects, and making new friends.

As an alumni of Lifeskills, I continue to interact with clients who are on their journey of recovery. We have a group chat, online alumni meetings I can go to, and even a dedicated support group organized for Jewish alumni. I was resistant to all of this at first- I just wanted to move on. But it is such a powerful reminder that recovery is, at its best, a communal journey.

Treatment is not always necessary. But sometimes, you need to start over. Sometimes, you need help. And the person you can be on the other side is worth the work it takes to get there.