Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Progress - maybe

Well she is still out of orange, which is a good thing. What was real interesting was apparently this past week she has been working quite a bit. Even to the point where her family rep remarked how she was actually responding appropriately when in group sessions. The example she gave was when the therapist had asked them about things they were ashamed of, and then after a girl talked about it, he asked others for examples of this in their lives. She managed to be clear, answer just the question honestly, and not go into stories or try to make it all about her. This is a good thing.
We have passed the 1 year mark now, and I'm personally frustrated. But we have a Keys seminar this weekend, and I hope to get a bit more energized there. I just hope it is a good one, and not a lot of lecture.

M-

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Once more out of orange - for now

We had our therapy call last night, and Katie got to participate as she was out of Orange. It went ok, not great. We challenged her a lot on working the program, and not expecting that doing one thing right would erase all the mistakes she had made in the past.

She has finally said that she doesn't like it there and wants to be home. We are hoping this will help to motivate her to work he program. Since she changed groups she has already managed to completely alienate the new one, killing any trust there.

I have a call tonight with my Focus family, and that will be good to touch base with them again. I really miss some of them. We also have our next keys seminar in a week and a half - that will be great to see people again and get our own program moving once more.

M-

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Back to Orange again - and not happy about it

We talked to our family rep again this week, and Katie went back to Orange on Saturday. Too many Cat 1's again, though the others were down. The one different aspect though is she isn't happy about it. She has finally gotten to the point where she doesn't want to be in Orange (there was a time months ago when she asked to be put back in Orange). And she is finally starting to complain about the place a bit, and say she wants to come home.
Why is this good? Before she had never asked to come home, never said she wanted to. We felt she was getting too comfortable there, working the system. Now she isn't happy there anymore. And we are really hoping this will motivate her to begin working.
I'm really worried about he ongoing costs. We have another 6 month loan, but don't feel real comfortable about if we can get another after that. They dropped it down from a full year becasue of the amount of outstanding debt. We hope that a part of that was because we have a debt consolidation 2nd mortgage that we just took out - but the stuff we paid off haven't been closed yet. So we hope that in 6 months things will look a lot better as we are getting rid of most of our credit cards (keeping a total of 3, Sears (because that is so hard to get, and supposedly looks good), and two smaller limits general ones (Diane's is a VISA, mine is a MasterCard), one for each of us just to have. The big (14K) VISA, BP, Best Buy, Home Depot, Victoria Secret are all getting closed, plus the van was paid off as well. So we traded a bunch of revolving debt for a single mortgage debt, which is also supposed to look a lot better.
With Diane not being able to get clients lately, and the Real Estate market around here in the dumpster, I'm really concerened about how much she can help out with the monthly budget. It's ok for now, but in six months when we need to get another loan - well I don't know what will happen.

M-

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Doing better, for now

Well talked with the therapist and Katie yesterday. She is still out of orange at least. We are hoping she can stay that way. She wants to go to Focus - but has a long way to go, if nothing else just to earn the points to get to level 3. The call went well, we got into the issues she was having with her new roommates, which mirrors the rest of her life. To me it all boils down to respect for other people. Not just lip service, or kissing butt, but truly respecting others and realizing that you are not the center of the universe. We talked about how she would fidget during group and during PC1 when others were speaking - and I challenged her on how often she spent the time when others were speaking thinking of what she was going to say, instead of listening to them. I also challenged her in the next few weeks, whenever she was in group, to NEVER talk about herself when giving feedback - no comparisons to her life, no stories. To truly listen, and talk about the other girls.
We'll see how it goes.

M-