The last two weeks at group have been focused on body image, which is particularly hard for me. I have always said that I don’t have low self-esteem. I have high self-hatred. That makes having any appreciation for my physical self incredibly difficult.
During week one, I was pretty furious, honestly. We watched a documentary about women’s body image called THE STRENGTH TO RESIST: Media’s Impact on Women and Girls. I fully recognize the impact media has on female body image. It’s terrible and real. But I have two major complaints about the movie:
- There was not a single “obese” woman in the film. The lack of representation of real women and real bodies was really disheartening to me. The one woman who did talk about her “curves” was a professional boxer with arms like Mohammed Ali. I did not feel represented or understood at all by the creators of the movie. How can they possibly understand the emotions that I feel about my body when they do not experience what it is like to be in my body? Who knows what their body history is, but in that time, while make that movie, they were thin. And with thinness comes privilege.
- The movie does not acknowledge the reality of fat-phobia/fat-bias. Not really. Yes, it acknowledges the existence, but it felt sugar coated in a “We are women, we are invincible” kind of way. I am working hard to do everything I can to stop my own judgment of people based on weight (including myself), and when I hear hate speech directed at people, I speak up. However, it is real. And my actions cannot change the world. There was a particular scene that really just pushed my buttons. Gale Dines, an AMAZING lecturer and associate professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Wheelock College in Boston, was speaking to a lecture hall of typical students. During her presentation she uses a lot of slides, mostly of models in various poses. She points out the inherent violence/racism/sexism/etc-ism in each. The audience listens intently, seeming to really appreciate everything that she is saying. And then she puts up a photograph of a woman, who by today’s medical standards would be considered morbidly obese. The woman is wearing a tiny blue bikini. And the audience breaks out in hysterical laughter. To the point where Dr. Dines has to change the slide before she can speak about how awful it is that this woman, no matter how comfortable she is with her own body is ridiculed for her size. THAT, my dear friends, is reality. Reality is that people pretend to not care. People pretend to not judge. People pretend to be truly and honestly interested in the horrors of media bias. And then they see a woman that doesn’t fit the standard that very same media has taught them is attractive, and they break out into laughter. I can’t even imagine what it would be like for the woman in the photo to be in that room when the fits of giggles began.
I will give the movie some credit because beyond the issues with weight bias, they also discussed the media’s representation of women of color. This was where the documentary hit the nail on the head about privilege. (I’m fully aware of my own white privilege, and try to keep that in mind when I get angry about any –ism that I am subjected to.)I will never fully comprehend the experience of a woman of color; I have a great appreciation of Jean Kilbourne’s attempt to shed some light on this media bias. Not trying to “unpack my invisible backpack” or anything here, just acknowledging the one good and direct thing that I saw in this movie.
This week, we talked a bit more about the movie, but it seems that my opinion didn’t change and the group leaders just weren’t all that interested in having a politically charged debate with me. I’m just not willing to swallow the “one person can change the world” pill that they want me to, at least not on this particular topic. I will be judged for my physical appearance. That is just the harsh truth of the society we live in. It sucks. And I do what I can to change myself, and I can try to change my own reactions to the rooms full of laughing college students, but I cannot make anyone else see things the way I want them to. That’s just life.
We moved on to a discussion about all of the things that we have put off or will not do because of our weight/body. My list is immeasurable. But the therapist said two very heavy and emotionally weighty things that made me start really thinking about it.
“The Eating Disorder will not give up until you’re dead.”
and
“What would life look like if this was it? What if you never lost another ounce?”
That second one scared the shit out of me. I cannot imagine being the size that I am for the rest of my life. None of the “future fantasies” that I dream about have ever had me in this body. I don’t know how to go about changing those images in my head.
I have always put off going to school, because I want to become a traditional midwife. I cannot imagine expecting anyone to respect anything I say about their physical health if it is obvious that my physical health is not visually excellent. I’m “obese” according to the medical industry, and I worry that working in a health related field, I should have my own health under control before I try to give advice to anyone else about their health.
So, in my ED controlled mind, never losing one more ounce means that I will never fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming a midwife. I will never catch babies. I will never get to watch the joyous look on a woman’s face when she holds her child to her chest for the first time and know that I was there to assist and witness her own personal miracle.
There are a million other things that I could list that I’m not doing until I lose weight (going to Europe, shopping at real stores instead of thrift stores, etc).
I’m trying so hard to find a way to wrap my mind around the fact that I may never ever be anything other than the size I am right now, but I cannot seem to accept it.
I think the break that I took this last week from posting here really helped me get a little more perspective on things. Did it shut up E.D? No. But it helped me remember that I have a voice and I can scream back if and when I need to.
This weekend has gone alright. I’ve managed to only get on the scale once a day, which is huge for me. I’ve managed to not obsess about food…much. I did have a few moments when I questioned things, but I pushed through and ate anyway. I just hate when I do all the right things but the scale still shows a gain. I know at heart that I need to get my eating disorder under control before I’m going to be able to keep the weight loss going, but it’s frustrating and panicking when I know that my health depends so heavily on me losing weight. I also know that my metabolism is so screwed up from years of restricting, binging, purging, obsessive exercise, and popping pills that it is going to take some time for my body to truly understand what it is supposed to do with food. And that because of that, I might see some gains. Losing forty pounds in five months is still quite an accomplishment and even if I have to sit at a plateau or gain a few pounds back to get my metabolism straightened out, I’ve already made a huge improvement in my health.
I’ve been talking at group a lot lately about the endocrinologist that I see and how focused she is on weight loss. The group has really been pushing me to get a second opinion and find an endo who really understands both the polycycstic ovarian disease AND the eating disorder. But E.D. is loud and has been working on convincing me that they’re just jealous that I’ve lost weight and they haven’t. Idiot. E.D really can be a dick sometimes.
Posted on 2 August '09 by Amelia, under ED, MNCOME, PCOS, balance. 3 Comments.
- The scale shows a four pound gain in something around 20 hours.
- The thought ran through my mind that shaving my head might make the scale drop a bit.
- If it had not rained most of the day yesterday, I would have spent an inordinate amount of time on my bike and the Wii Fit trying to burn off the food I ate.
- I engaged heavily in some fasting and restriction over the last few days and can’t seem to shake the fact that the morning after I gave in and allowed myself dinner, there was a four pound gain.
That is all that I have the energy for.
Posted on 23 July '09 by Amelia, under ED, Having Emotions. 1 Comment.
It’s been a helluva week. Damn, really it has been a hell of a month when it has come to me struggling with this damn eating disorder. See, it’s been….well this month I’ve only managed to lose three pounds. Three measly, miniscule little pounds. (Hello, Mr. Ed. Thanks for popping your head into this post. Try to keep it to a minimum okay?) So, I’ve been struggling. A lot. I can’t seem to focus on what it is that I need to do to stay healthy. Today I’m struggling to even eat. I’ve managed two cups of coffee this morning. I tried to eat some toast but I gagged the minute it went into my mouth and I spit it out.
I’m still attending the groups every week, but ED screams constantly through those and for a good couple of hours after about how much bullshit they are feeding me. And there have been a couple of instances when I can’t keep quiet and it slips out loud and wow does that cause for a kerfuffle.
Realizing just how loudly the ED voice was, I called and made a follow up appointment with my dietitian. I think I want to talk to her more in depth about formulating a meal plan that fits ALL of my medical needs, physical and emotional.
I just can’t seem to find that balance. In order to get my hormones under control and help my body to function properly, I really need to lose weight. But I don’t know how to do that without food completely and totally taking control.
Posted on 13 July '09 by Amelia, under ED, balance. 4 Comments.
I started this post DAYS ago. Wednesday to be exact. I just didn’t quite know what to say or how to say it.
I struggled with my homework for group this week. I was asked to make a list of reasons to give up ED and reasons not to. And honestly, it seemed like every single one of my reasons to give it up were still so mired in ED thoughts. I kept coming back to things like “stabilizing my metabolism”. I did finally manage to list a few that were legitimate.
Reasons for Stopping ED Behaviors
- Being a better role model for The Boy
- With my ED under control, I’ll finally be able to address the underlying issues.
- Honoring and respecting my body
Reasons against Stopping ED Behaviors
- I’ll have to start “feeling” again.
- I don’t feel as in control as I would like to when I’m not using behaviors.
So, I guess, even with that small amount, stopping wins by a slim margin. But a slim margin is the only thing the rational side of my brain needs to grab onto and hold on for dear life during this fight.
Group this week went a bit better than last week. Though I was incredibly anxious about the “experiential meal” portion of the evening, I went. I sat and I listened. I tried very hard throughout the group lecture to replace the words “overeating” and “binge eating” with “disordered eating”. Those phrases just seem to trigger me into restriction and wanting to purge, which does me no good at all. Still not fully convinced that the group is the right one for me, but it will have to do for now.
I ate dinner with the group. It was incredibly hard, but a very nice guy that joined the group this week sat with me and really turned on the paternal instinct when he knew I was struggling. He chatted with me about where I live, what I do for fun, fostering animals….and though it didn’t really help, it would at least distract me for a second or two, which was long enough to get a bite into my mouth.
As the week has gone on and I’ve done so well with “behaviors” at home. I was eating three meals a day and a couple snacks if I needed them. I wasn’t restricting. I was feeling healthy. But I started to notice that some of the other mental health issues that run through this big ol’ head of mine started getting a bit out of control.
OCD was searching desperately for something to obsess about, and it found it in some mushrooms that refused to go away in my front garden. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I was having trouble falling asleep at night unless I went outside and dug them up. I couldn’t walk past the garden without kicking the mulch around with my foot to make sure there were no mushrooms hiding under the wood chips. That crazy level of anxiety built up in my head every single day starting with the moment I walked out to the car to drive W to work and had to walk past the front garden and lasted until I drifted off to sleep plotting ways that I could pour gas on the damn things and not hurt the surrounding plants and grass.
I also deal with dermatillomania, aka chronic skin picking. It’s a hard disorder to understand for anyone who doesn’t deal with it, but the wikipedia link there seems to do a good job of describing it. It’s in the same disorder class as trichotillomania and is considered an impulse control disorder. Essentially, I pick at my scalp. In a effort to make the skin on my scalp perfectly perfect, I am constantly running my fingers through my hair. Any swollen hair follicle or small imperfection gets picked into a gigantic wound and I continue to worry and dig at the sore, making it go from something that would normally heal in a couple days to something that stays for months. I had been doing really well with controlling it. I wasn’t perfect and still had a few times a week that I couldn’t stop myself, but it was moving in the right direction. As soon as I started cutting all ED behaviors out, the derma got OUT OF CONTROL. I’m currently nursing nearly 30 spots on my head and it hurts.
I realized in therapy that I was trying to move to quickly with the ED behaviors. And by cutting out all of the control that ED allows me to feel, I was transferring that control over to other aspects of my life. Controlling the fungus in the garden. Controlling the “perfection” on my scalp.
Once again, I need to start trying to find my balance.
Posted on 23 June '09 by Amelia, under Uncategorized. 6 Comments.
So, I went to the intensive outpatient group. And unfortunately, it ended up meeting a lot of the negative expectations that I had. I’m not planning on quitting, but I’m just frustrated.
It’s a BED group, and though I agree that I binge, I also have “compensatory behavior” given that I fast at least three or four times a week and severely restrict almost every other day. In other words, I don’t agree that the BED diagnosis fits me. I went into the group with an open mind that eating disorders, because they are not about food, can be treated with generally the same ideology and I would be able to benefit from the group. But I was a bit skeptical that I would be able to get the support that I was looking for from the group.
Tonight’s group felt more like recovery from Weight Watchers than anything else. There was a very large amount of talk about weights lost and gained, methods and diets followed, binge triggering foods (as in “Oh, I love XXX SO much! I could eat it by the gallon!”)
The therapist and nutritionist running the group kept redirecting it back to tonight’s discussion topic which was mindful eating, but the group was really driven to discuss the other stuff, so even during the mindful eating exercise, it was all jokes about how easy it was to just shovel the food in and no real observation of the concept.
I’m really starting to get concerned that if anything this group is going to be more triggering for me.
I know that I will go back next week, because I have made a commitment to myself that I will give this a shot. I’m just really unsure about how effective it’s going to be for me.
Posted on 11 June '09 by Amelia, under Uncategorized. 3 Comments.
I’ve been alone all weekend. W is at a family reunion and The Boy is visiting his grandmother. I was sick most of the weekend, and today is really the first day that I have felt vaguely human again. Stupid sinus cold!
Anyway, so all day today I’ve been….feeling something. I’m not sure what it is and I’m doing my best to just sit with it, but that’s hard to do when you have no idea what it is you are feeling. I’m doing great about not covering it with food or anything of that sort, but I do find myself disassociating in front of the computer or escaping into useless things like television. I know that is not the most effective use of my time and I feel like maybe if I could figure out what it is I’m feeling, I could do something to work with it, instead of having it work so hard against me.
Well, I sat with it awhile longer. And when I couldn’t shake it, I decided to employ some DBT skills and do some opposite action.
I just wanted to sit on the sofa and just dwell in the feeling bad. So I got up and started doing some cleaning in the living room. Having been sick all weekend, the house had gotten a bit out of control mess wise. In fact, it was messy to the point that I can’t believe it got this bad with just the dogs and myself here. How in the world? Anyway…..it really needed to be done and it was *something* I could do.
While I was cleaning, I realized what has been going on all day.
The house was a mess.
Yep.
That’s what it was. With my family out of town all weekend, my plan was to really thoroughly clean and organize the house. Both W and The Boy have ADHD, so organization is very difficult and I need a free weekend occasionally to give all of our systems a tune up and revamp the things that aren’t working for us anymore.
The cold that I had been fighting off all week started getting pretty crappy on Wednesday night, and was a full blown sinus infection by Thursday at noon when they left. I started taking antibiotics right away and figured I’d be better by Friday or Saturday at the latest. Here it is still Sunday evening, and I’m still pretty miserably ill. I feel significantly better today than I have in the past few days, but I’m still sick. Probably too sick to be doing house work. And here’s where the crazy emotions come in…..
When I was a kid, my mother never believed me when I was sick or injured. I had to beg her to take me to the doctor when I was as young as six. so, when I became an adult, I began lying about being sick in some weird attempt to get attention. I feel incredibly guilty about it, but I know there’s nothing I can do about it other than change my behavior now and not do it ever again. But I do feel an incredible amount of guilt and shame. And so, even when I am really sick, I feel like people are not going to believe me and that I’m really just being lazy. That guilt and shame consumed me today as I looked around my messy house and realized that my family was coming home tomorrow evening and I hadn’t done a single thing that I had told them I was going to do.
They would never expect me to do the work while I was sick, but I set these expectations of myself. Feeling disappointed in myself for not living up to my own expectations, coupled with feeling guilty and shameful for being sick…..well no wonder I felt so shitty earlier.
*sigh*
Now I’ve identified the emotions. (Guilt, shame, disappointment)
I guess the next step will be to figure out how to validate my emotions when they rational, because obviously in this case (illness and a messy house kind of go hand in hand), my emotions were perfectly rational.
One of the very first mental illness symtpoms to pop up and rear it’s ugly head was sleep disturbance. For as long as I can remember, I’ve woken up on a regular basis gasping for breath, screaming, or with all of my muscles tensed up to the point where I physically strain to move them and massage them until they relax. I try to have “good sleep hygiene” and do all the things that you are supposed to do. The one thing that I cannot change is leaving the television on when I sleep. I need the noise to cover up any creaking and settling our house does in the middle of the night, because the slightest sound will wake me up. I’ve attempted it a few times in the last few months and it is really touch and go on whether or not I will sleep in complete silence. So, for now, I leave it on.
I’ve worked with so many psychiatrists trying to get my sleep regulated. I’ve tried every drug out there for sleep.
Ambien made me do crazy things in the middle of the night, like register for an entire semester of college, and when I would wake up, I had no idea I had done anything until I would find some clue somewhere in the house. I drove while I was asleep. Cooked while I was asleep. It was a disaster.
Seroquel worked for the sleep, but it left me a zombie most of the next day and I managed to put on forty pounds in the short three weeks that I was on it.
Rozerem did nothing for me. I laid in bed for hours waiting for the urge to sleep, and it never came.
The little green butterfly of Lunesta never showed up in my bedroom. It was useless for me.
Currently I take melatonin and valerian root. It relaxes me, but it definitely doesn’t make me sleep or keep me asleep.
So, after years of asking for one, I finally got a referral to a sleep clinic. Honestly, the sleep issues are most likely psychological. I know this. My doctors know this. But it’s another step in the process of getting everything goign on with my body figured out.
I have a sleep study tonight. I go in at 8:30. They’ll hook me up to a bunch of machines and monitor me throughout the night while I try to sleep.
Last night, W said she was going to be sad tomorrow sleeping alone in bed and I jokingly said that she could take my place in a bedroom full of cameras with strange men watching her sleep. And as soon as I said it, I started having a panic attack and sobbing. I hadn’t realized how scared I am about this. I can’t seem to get myself to calm down. The idea of sleeping in a strange room, with strangers all around, watching me, able to come and go in my room as they please. I’m feeling so incredibly vulnerable and unsafe about the whole situation.
I don’t know how to make myself feel safe and at ease. I know that the sleep study is an important part of my healing process physically (and somewhat emotionally, because being tired all the time makes it very hard to keep it together), but I’m so, so scared.
Today I’m spending time finding ways to make the night easier. I’m going to buy a new pair of pajamas that make me feel covered and protected. I’m going to pick up the next book in the series I’m reading so that I have good distraction material. I’ve been reminding ymyself over and over that I’m safe and that this is a safe environment. One hour, one minute, one second at a time.
Posted on 3 June '09 by Amelia, under Medications. 3 Comments.
I’ve spent the last few days processing all of my therapy sessions for the last week and a half or so. Between the therapist at Melrose and H, my regular therapist, I’ve been challenged to the bone and left very raw on numerous occasions.
We talked about redefining “health” about a week ago and this week we started out with talking about how changing that definition is going to take away my “finish line”. That by giving up a predefined idea of where I would have to be physically/emotionally to be “healthy and happy” I’m leaving things up in the air and more spontaneously flexible. Part of what has made me feel safe for so long is having a “finish line”. It gave me a way to add protection and structure and planning into my life. If I had a goal to work towards or some distant horizon, it was easier for me to focus on that instead of the every day. At that point, I would be at ease and “better”. Without a plan, there is no protection. It leaves me feeling so vulnerable.
That vulnerability really makes me feel unsafe and open to a lot of pain and that is why I have always lived this way. The “plan” keeps me safe. It keeps people at a distance and it makes life more predictable.
We talked through some hard stuff about how I deal with people and how i always feel like a victim and that when the people who hurt me take advantage of me, I assume that it is something fatally flawed about me, instead of something about them. And that in order to get to the level of peace and happiness I want, I’m going to have to start being real with people. But that means that I am vulnerable to being hurt. Because literally everyone I have ever trusted has taken advantage of me and hurt me in some gigantic way, I have come to think that everyone will always hurt me because I deserve it. By blaming myself, I’ve always been able to maintain the idea that people as a whole are generally good and safe, since it was my fault. By taking the blame off myself and putting it on the people who have done it, I start to feel like everyone is unsafe.
So, I guess I’m in the place where I’m trying to figure out how I can let people in, because I’m not “flawed” and I deserve to have people in my life, without constantly getting hurt. And I’m trying to figure out how I can re-adjust my thoughts about the world as a whole, because right now I’m feeling like if I’m not the unsafe/unhealthy/broken person causing all the problems, then everyone else is unsafe/unhealthy/broken, and not to be trusted. I’m feeling like without the safety net of my overly planned life and “finish line” in the distant future, I have lost the only thing that helps me feel safe, and then I’m also trying to be “real” with people, which leaves me even less protected.
I started thinking about it some more this morning though and I realized that I have locked myself inside this little box of perceived safety, and in reality…that box is made out of lead. I’ve been slowly poisoning myself with my own protection. Time to open the box, as scary as that is. Maybe I can replace the walls of the box with screen and let some air in.
I received a fairly angry email this morning about the fact that I call this an eating disorder recovery blog and yet I keep track of my weight on a seperate tab. First, I want to apologize to the reader that was offended by this. That is in no way my intention. I know that weight can be very triggering for women with ED. I was hoping that by putting the weight tracking on a seperate tab that could only be reached by conscious decision, it would be okay.
Here’s the situation though. I’m going to track my weight. One of the problems that my personal experience with ED has caused is an incredibly messed up metabolism. I have health problems due to my weight and I’m losing weight with medical supervision, as well as while working with my ED therapist and a nutritionist.
Okay. So now that I’ve gotten that taken care of, what I really wanted to write about today was the appointment that I had with my ED-therapist yesterday. We were talking about the panic I was having over making sure everything was perfect this weekend for the barbecue that we were hosting and that everything is perfect for our upcoming camping trip. I was going to such an extreme that I was cleaning like a madwoman and going overboard with things as though I thought I was Martha Stewart. It’s not OCD related, because I’m really able to recognize when I’m having obsessive thoughts. It was totally anxiety about being perfect and not wanting anyone to judge me. Throughout the session, I came to realize that it all makes sense.
I was born to a young teenager who gave me up for adoption to her older sister: Rejection
My adoptive mother became a heavy drug user and stopped taking care of me when I was just barely in junior high. I went to live with my grandmother.: Rejection.
When I hit my pesky teenage years, my grandmother decided she “couldn’t handle it” and sent me to live with my sister. : Rejection.
My sister and I fought continuously until she kicked me out when I was fifteen. I lived on the streets and bounced around among the friend’s houses until I met my first husband. : Rejection
Now of course, I’ve had amazing and wonderfully supportive people in my life as well, but for the most part the schema of my entire life has been rejection for things that I perceived as my fault. I wasn’t “good enough”, “special enough”, “important enough”, “pretty enough”. I just wasn’t enough. In my mind at least. Who knows what was actually happening, but I now have a very strongly held core belief that I am not enough.
Nearly every action I take in the day, is trying to prove that I’m enough and when I fail, as all human beings do, I fall apart.
So, I binge. Or I restrict. Or I obsess over clean cement in the backyard and a shiny Coleman cook stove.
I guess the next step is learning how to find that approval inside myself and not look so much for external validation.
