Columbine 10 years later

[moderndayhippie]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-04-13-columbine-myths_N.htm?se=yahoorefer

So, I guess I just never paid much attention the the follow up after that crazyness happened. i still thought the killers were goths who were atleast affiliated with their "trenchcoat mafia".

Honestly, reading this was more scary than what I originally thought had

Comments

[brandyeileen]

For me, it's not just turning into a zombie. When I tried Lamictal, I sat on a couch for almost two weeks straight before I refused to take it again. I mean, it stabilized my mood, sure, right down to "I couldn't care less about anything." Completely ruined that summer semester for me. I mean, I didn't care if I ate, slept, went to the bathroom, showered, or anything else so going to classes and doing school work was right out.

There are two types of behavior therapy out there - cognitive behavior therapy and dialectical behavior therapy. They have some differences, but both work to help a person identify why they react the way they do and to understand it such that the next time a similar occurrence comes around, that individual can modify their reaction to it based on that understanding. I'm not sure I'm explaining it well, so here's an example:

Before I started DBT, people who didn't return my phone calls were obviously either upset with me or didn't really like me. Now, people who don't return my phone calls are either upset with me, don't really like me, or have a lot of stuff going on that they are trying to juggle. Maybe that's a bad example. ;) I don't really want to go into the nitty-gritty of why I thought people who didn't return my calls were abandoning me forever or how that made me feel.

Anyway, it's really a self-awareness process. It's long and painful and totally worth it if you are wholly committed to changing why you react the way you do to certain situations. It's usually group and clinician driven, but most of the work is done by you. So, as far as exactly what they are, it sort of varies by clinician from what I've seen.

Everyone likes to run their groups differently. The one-on-one aspect of it also varies somewhat from therapist to therapist, though most of them want some sort of diary or record of target thoughts and feelings that are considered a priority. Those priorities are decided in conjunction with the patient, but preservation usually takes precedence over quality of life. It can take awhile to feel effective, though people around me started noticing differences quicker than I did. I mean, I was still having a lot of the same reactions, internally, but the time I took to try to process and work through them resulted in people not seeing me really react, if that makes sense.

Both of Wikipedia's entries were sound, the last time I read through them all the way (which was probably at least over a year ago). It used to be really hard to find a DBT group anywhere in Texas, but times are achangin' so I figure you might have decent luck down there in San Antone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavior_therapy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy

[brandyeileen]

Oh, and CBT is something I am not as familiar with but is similar in a lot of ways to DBT. They kind of have different goals and work in different ways, each with their own target group of potential patients. I'm familiar with DBT because of being borderline, but CBT may be what's right for you so I included it. You may have even been using some of CBT's or DBT's core techniques without even realizing it, by the way.