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.