Processing

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.

Self-evaluation and self-approval

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.