Happy page 666, y'all!
In my experience these are the kinds of classes that aren't that expensive because there's a social payoff into making broken people into functioning human beings.
DBT tends to be a little cheaper the more DBT-trained therapists are in an area.
The DBT therapists are hella more expensive than the classes - because that's one on one. The classes are cheaper because when you get a room of at least 5 and not more than 8 people (per guidelines) paying $80 each week, that easily pays for the time of two therapists to lead the class. The reason they recommend simultaneous DBT therapy is to make sure you get it enforced in one-on-ones, because the rule in the classes is: you listen, you don't talk until it's time to go over your homework, briefly (because in a room full of borderlines the attention competition gets intense, fast, and the PTSD / dissociation patients are terrified of them.)
How much face to face human interaction does Ali actually get per week? It seems she doesn't talk to people much. Just ordering coffee, takeout, or a dog walker, and occasionally interrupting other peoples' conversations at the coffee shop.
Zero, because she's scared off everyone in her personal life and has spiraled down far enough so that she's unable to scrape up the charm to get them enmeshed with her. While she's lost everything one would normally be struggling to keep by taking DBT classes - a marriage, friends, a job - she seems to be getting lonely enough to be considering it again. But of course, displacing the blame for why she hasn't been making these steps already by claiming the total cost over 14 months is too expensive, not that she's spending money on many things that could go to therapy if she chose to.
She appears to be an unfixable case, though; therapy / DBT only works for BPD when they're rather low on the Borderline scale, enough so that they both have the desire to get better, and can see that they are the root cause of at least some of their problems.
Does Allison have a legit BPD diagnosis? A lot of psychiatrists especially the male ones won't treat patients with BPD due to the risk of stalking, fake abuse claims, and all the other fun stuff associated with BPD people.
She seems to; when she was writing the "BPD Diaries" shit on medium it sounded like an exercise for therapy, where she was supposed to lay things out and analyze why she did them. She also got Karen as an ESA. But she likely quit therapy around the time she quit writing those Medium posts. And she can't be seeing anyone now, because a therapist would take her to task over her treatment of Karen and her flipping the script on why Karen is in her life.
I've explained this before, but the ESA isn't there to comfort you (for BPD; PTSD dogs are trained differently, they can clear your apartment or house room by room for intruders, and act as a guard dog as well as emotional support.) It's to force you to care for something that's not yourself, build a relationship with that being, and to get you out of your own head and become less self centered. It also encourages social interaction and light exercise because you have to walk the dogs. By passing the buck on walking Karen, Ali has eliminated a major function of her "ESA" - Karen is supposed to be a way for her to make connections with people while she has Karen with her.
Anyway, this turned into a rant, so enjoy Ali describing her pets and their utility to her last night. It reinforces what I said about Karen - Karen's purpose is that fact that she IS needy, and that Ali is supposed to attend to those needs. But I'd bet cash Ali posts yet another dog walker report card later today, and plops Karen in front of her fetch machine so Ali can fart and watch TV.
