MRT
Below is a personal blog of the experience for this last week toward the end of the MRT program. The MRT program challenges residents to really face themselves. It pushes them to realise just how disloyal they have been to themselves and others. It asks them to face themselves and truly evaluate what is going on and it puts them in front of a group of judges and their peers and asks them to be vulnerable while being evaluated. They can either pass and move onto the next phase or get a fail and have to redo that section.
The MRT program is an excellent program that really highlights the difference between those that really want to change and those that don’t. It does create an atmosphere of discomfort and of course it does unsettle the house. Addicts in the process of recovery do not want to experience emotions and difficulties and when they do it often comes out in negative behaviours and attempt to escape or project. This makes it challenging.
What is very interesting is to watch the phase termed “climbing out of the box of disloyalty - out of the box of opposition”. The opening paragraph which is read to the community at this step clearly indicates that at this time you are either going to fall back into disloyalty and feed into your need to oppose the process or you are going to accept the process and choose to change. We unfortunately lost two residents to RHT (Refuse Hospital Treatment) at this stage - they could not make the connection that it was the program pushing them to become oppositional and despite all the attempts to convince them otherwise they were not prepared to change.
Below the blog from a current Resident
Uncertainty and Opposition
Who am I? Is the question clouding my mind this week. What am I without that which has moulded and shaped my identity up until this point? I am twenty-one years old, and only now am I beginning to figure it out. Peeling away the masks and layers that have defended my inner self, my true self; to ditch the facade, to cut the lies. That is no easy feat. Rigorous authenticity: that takes courage. To be completely vulnerable and to openly share my deepest shame and guilt. To unearth that which has been buried. That is what I have been tasked with this week during a specialised program called Moral Reconation Therpay or MRT for short. An emotional rollercoaster that has left me in either extreme highs (relief, humility, free from shame and guilt) or adversely, extreme lows (sadness, confusion, shameful, guilt, self-hatred). Each day has been a gamble, not knowing on which side the coin will land.
Although it has been challenging, I know wholeheartedly that change is underway; positive change for the betterment of my life. Slowly but surely, I am freeing my true self. This week, on top of all the therapeutic work we have been doing, a cyclone dropped in from Mozambique, causing huge unrest in our little community and only compounding the anxiety that I already carry. Luckily it wasn’t too bad; just some winds and rain. No damage was done. A false alarm if you will.
The attitude in the house has been that of opposition, opposing one another, the counsellors, and the program as a whole. This past week, two people that I had grown close to me decided to walk down the driveway. Not ready for the world and ill-prepared for what life will throw at them. Which really saddened me. One of them was my best friend here at Jahara. It just goes to show that no matter how hard anyone tries, you cannot help someone that does not want to help themselves. This is something that I have realised; rehab is one of, if not the only place where you can be one-hundred percent selfish. To not invest myself in the recovery of others, but to focus on my own recovery first and foremost. The sad reality of it is this: Not everyone will get through. People are coming in and leaving every day. For now, I focus solely on today; what I want to achieve and how I will achieve those things. Not settling unrealistic expectations on myself or others. I want recovery, with every fibre of my being. And with that, the betterment of my life and the lives closest to me.