Thinking about Body Image

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

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.

Feeling the frustration

I’m consumed with frustration and almost a feeling that this all just isn’t going to work. My brain working the way it does, I know that there has to be a deeper root to the frustration.

My heart has just felt so heavy since I left Melrose this morning. See, after the initial assessment, I also have to have an intake with a therapist, a dietitian, and a physical therapist. Today was my therapy assessment….

I actually had to walk away from this post on Monday night because I was so fiercly flustered.  I was wrapped up in the irrational part of my brain that refused to see anything but the negative.  After a day of reflection and relaxation, I’ve remembered that I can take what is helpful and leave what is not out of any situation.

I went into the therapy assessment thinking that she was going to tell me all the answers, that she’d have some sort of insite into who I am and who I want to be, and that she’d say some phrase or concept that would instantly make me have some faith in the process of ED recovery.  And she didn’t.  It broke my heart at the time, but my expectations were irrational.  I don’t need to have a sudden bright light of clarity.  I can walk through a fog of confusion and uncertainty for awhile and eventually it will fade.  It may be a slow fade, but it will happen.  .

Changing Pace

The decision to start this blog really was weighing on my mind for days now.  I’ve worried it to death truly.  That’s a change for me and definitely showing some growth, because usually…I would have obsessed the food, the calories, the exercise to death when I was starting something like this.  But this time, I’m really aware that there is something absolutely wrong about my relationship with food and weight, but mostly my body.  There is something deeply and completely dysfunctional about my relationship with my own body.

Initially, this was going to be a diet blog.  You know, talking about what I’ve eaten, what exercise I’ve done, how much weight I’ve lost.  And if it were to follow history, eventually whining and crying about how much weight I’m not losing and then slowly how much weight I’m putting back on, which would also turn into self-hatred and excessive blathering on about yet another failure.

After a lot of crying and talking to my therapist, Monday I went to my initial assessment at the Melrose Institute.   They have diagnosed me as having “eating disorder NOS (not otherwise specified).  I’m really not up for talking about the details of that right now, but suffice it to say that I am beginning to get some treatment to deal with these issues.  The doctor at Melrose is willing to let me continue seeking treatment from MN-COME, as long as I continue to see a dietician and maintain open communication with both clinic.

So, my plan at this point is to change the focus of my blog.  The focus is still “losing something”, but now perhaps I’ll try to look at it more as losing my self-hatred, my negative feels about food, the sense of control that my food problems have always given me.  And losing the fear that food will always control my life.