I also "turned off" a lot of inner stuff before I started going to therapy, including awareness of certain instincts and visceral emotions. It now seems ridiculous to expect someone who came into therapy doing that to integrate the previously disowned stuff with no help other than a therapist once a week. I especially liked this:
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Many persons with serious psychiatric disorders require intensive treatment. Medication or individual psychotherapy alone—or even their combination—won't always do. . . . Crucial to such treatment is a social environment that provides support, a feeling of belonging and ample formal and informal opportunities to confide in peers and learn from them.
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Not just in-patient or IOP programs, but on-going resocialization programs would do a lot for people with moderate and chronic mental health issues, such as those related to trauma and possible personality disorders, I think. The 2 IOP programs I went to did nothing long-term for me. People like me may need new social experiences to effectively mentalize things differently. But with our (existing) problems we stay away or otherwise don't get those new experiences. Once a week with a therapist is NOT enough and, as we see in this forum over and over, may just be unresolved re-enactment of old patterns. That's something that is a lot more prone to happen in a one-on-one relationship than in a group, although I don't discount the importance an individual therapist or counselor might make in helping to process, and mentalize, the new experiences. As long as they approach things as a friend or peer, not an "expert".
There's a lot of focus on severe and persistent mental illness but not so much on the moderate and chronic, and what might be done to help us participate AND be a more functional member of society -- that's for our benefit and happiness, but also for the society as a whole.
But that's just me and the way I see it.