Shame

The fist time that I felt this was when my initial therapist turned me away…claiming she couldn’t help me until I dealt with my anorexia, my most plaguing issue. I felt baffled and dumb founded. How could she see inside me so clearly. She was the first person that not only SAW my secret, but had the nerve to call me out on it. And the hardest part was that she was a professional. Even in my denial, a mental professional is someone who is hard to ignore.

I was called out again yesterday….by someone more significant than my therapist.
At my doctor’s appointment I heard the word shame used in reference to how I feel about myself. The hardest part to accept was that it was true.

I’ve looked very hard at myself in the last month. Anorexic people don’t deprive themselves for fun….they learn it as a coping mechanism. I was coping for something…some hole in my life.

I think that I have finally put my finger on what that hole is. I have come to the detrimental conclusion that I am a person who is constantly striving for acceptance and approval. This is something I have consciously chosen to ignore about myself. I strongly believe that all people hide truths from the world….and often times even from themselves. The scariest truths are the ones that you hide from yourself. My truth is that I need acceptance from the world. Every aspect of my life is something that I need people to accept and love about me. I need that external validation because I’m the only one who doesn’t accept MYSELF.

I feel like I am a sham…I’m fooling the world. They all believe that I am someone else….they all believe that I ‘m the person that they WANT me to be.
They want me to be extroverted, intelligent, witty, athletic, well spoken, well educated, fun, and successful….and I know the things to say to make them believe all those things about me. Sure…I am most of those things…but not to the extent that others want to see me as. I feel like I’m the ‘top in show’ when it comes to putting on an act to give each individual person what they are wanting from me. I am my own worst enemy.

I’m the original for saying, “I don’t care what people think about me.” The crazy thing is that the person who is least honest about that fact is ME. Inside my subconscience is screaming,”I SO care what people think about me.” But it also knows that it isn’t socially acceptable. Everyone knows that society accepts those who confess to NOT care about what other people think. So I thought that I was fooling them all…

The person who I was most fooling by not being truthful was MYSELF. All I’ve ever done was damage MYSELF. I’m ashamed of myself inside…so much that many of my motives in life have been done in search of external affirmation because I don’t give it to myself. When it wasn’t making great grades in school and college, being in the best sorority, getting my MBA, getting the best job, advancing the ranks, being the best teacher, or starting my own business, I was seeking the approval of my jerk of an ex-husband or striving to be the hub of my always growing social network. When I had achieved all of that I started to excel at running and began to lean out….which again brought attention and admiration.

The sad thing is that my eternal quest for the next validator lead me to the dead end road of anorexia. Anorexia literally devoured all of those achievements from the past. I lost whatever confidence I did have. No longer did I have the energy to excel at work or to care about maintaining friends. I cared about little in my world. Worst of all I lost the energy to even run. I lost the desire to achieve ANY personal goals outside of ONE…what the scale told me. I allowed the scale to become the only gauge of my personal self worth.

I am worth it. I am a fantastic person. I am intelligent and someone worth knowing. I just need to learn to internalize that wholly.

Research

A great friend of mine found an article on anorexia and sent it to me... Some of the statistics were hard to believe and quite frightning...it has a 15% mortality rate, carries the highest suicide rate of all psychiatric illness, and has a 50% relapse rate in the first year after treatment.

But my favorite part of the article was this quote which touched very close to home... I wish that everyone around me could understand this...

"There has been a little bit of a feeling that all an anorexic needs to do to get better is start eating, but it is nowhere near that simple," he says. "Nobody would say [to a psychotic] that they should just stop hallucinating."

Daily Struggles

I am breaking down today. I went to the doctor yesterday. He basically sat and talked to us for 35 minutes about the fact that my insides are so damaged that my body needs a substantial amount of calories in order to try and repair what it can. In a nutshell he was trying to drill it into me that at this point I can eat a significant amount more than the average person to gain any weight….that I am free to let go right now and just eat.

I can’t do it. I don’t believe him.

He went on about how his really scary, skinny girls have to eat upwards of 4-5,000 calories a day before they start to put on any weight. He said that all excess fat in my diet won’t go to my thighs, but instead to padding my heart, etc.

I’m not buying it. He says that I don’t buy it because I don’t want to believe it.

I ate yesterday… I ate more than my NOW required 1,750 calories per day. I ate a wrap…and then ate some ice cream for lunch. I guess for that second I wanted to believe the doctor and indulged in my favorite food besides birthday cake. For dinner I ate a huge steak and baked potato. My boyfriend then brought me ice cream again after dinner. He said that if he didn’t see me eat the first bowl of ice cream after lunch that it doesn’t count. I ate it to make him happy and because I love ice cream.

I hate myself now. I am crying inside. If I eat I can only handle it for ONE DAY. I can’t keep eating because my world is out of control and OUT OF ORDER. I feel so fat and unmanageable. I melted down crying when my boyfriend made me at a bowl of cereal at 10am. I feel like if I ate yesterday I CAN’T eat today. My fingers and toes are cold and sweaty and clammy with anxiety. The doctor says that when that happens it is my body telling me that it ran out of calories and I need to eat, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m hungry and I can’t eat.

If I didn’t have support right now I know that I wouldn’t be eating on my own…or at least more than 7 or 800 calories.

Clarity and Control

I learned to be anorexic. I taught myself over time that controlling what I ate and how I looked would help me feel like I was the driver’s seat. When nothing else in the world feels UNDER control, I always know THAT is something I’m in charge of.

Since my divorce I think that I have been desperately looking for some foundation on which to chart out my future. I have been grasping for some road map to gauge the direction on which my life is moving. I’m almost 31 years old with no marriage prospects, questioning my desire to have children, with a challenging career that can feel somewhat stagnant. Anorexia has helped me to cope with that feeling of disorientation. The pain of anorexia deflects me from thinking about the pain that I feel in my life about my lack of direction.

In my marriage I experienced quite a bit of emotional abuse from my ex-husband. The experience left me in a place of self doubt…am I beautiful enough to be loved?, do I have reason to be as self confident as I am? Anorexia has also helped to fill that hole. The more that I lost weight, the more positive attention I got. This is attention that I desperately craved from my ex-husband that I never got. Finally I was getting the affirmation that I so badly needed for years.

Where does this leave me? As a woman who bases her self worth on her weight and size and who is petrified to eat in the fear of gaining weight and returning to my old self. At this point, that overwhelming personal desire is bigger than my fear of death. No matter what people say to me about me looking better heavier, etc…I can’t hear any of it because I am the one who assigned this “worthy” label to myself at 125 lbs. If I am here I am safe and I am attractive and I am WORTHY of attention….positive or negative.

I have the most supportive and loving boyfriend who MET me 15 lbs heavier and who prefers that woman. He makes me feel like the amazingly beautiful woman my ex-husband should have made me feel like. But I am so far gone that no matter how much he begs me to gain weight, I don’t believe him. I don’t believe anyone who tells me that I look better heavier. I feel like everyone is just saying that to make me feel comfortable to eat.

I know that I’m sick. I just can’t unwire and I’m too scared to give up the control. I’m too scared to have to start feeling that pain of my disorientation in life.

Giving it to God

A very wise friend of mine met up with me today for lunch. He suggested that I give my disorder to God. Just trust enough to turn it over to him. That way, each time that I revert back to the familiar pain of my anorexic tendencies it shows God that I don't have faith that he will "catch me". I am so scared to get better because I am petrofied of the outcome. Until I lose the fear I guess I will never get better, so it is time to just trust that God won't let me down. Every time that I get anxious I should just have faith that God will catch me and teach me.

That is my new credo for today.

Old Habits Die Hard

The patterns that I keep repeating and the "wellness" that I am fighting is kind of like my disability. Michael J. Fox once said that if he had a room full of disabled people, and they were able to all throw their disability into the middle of the room and pick up any one that they wanted..that they would all pick their own because it is familiar. The unknown is scary. I am too scared to let go of my anorexia because it is a pain that I am familiar with. I know the outcome of this...regardless of how miserable it is.

But what I need to start understanding more is that one of the outcomes I am NOT familiar with. That my disability can kill me.

Fighting It

I’m tired of being controlled. I’m tired of hearing all the damage I’ve done to my body. I’m tired of doctors. I’m tired of all the attention I am getting and anxiety surrounding meal times. I’m tired of people asking me what I’ve eaten. I feel fine. I just want all this to GO AWAY. I want to be left alone for a while to give myself some time to process and see what kind of progress that I can make on my own. I need some time to come around on my own…not forcibly, but consciously. I know that I can do this, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. Every day that goes by I get stronger and eat more. Every day that passes where I have evidence that my body hasn’t changed even though I’ve eaten, I get mentally stronger. But every time that I go to the doctor, I root my feet into the ground a little more feeling defeated.

Prozac

The doctor has me on Prozac. He says that I am obviously clinically depressed and that needs some help. The Prozac is yet to enter my system. My stress reliever is exercise and that isn’t allowed. I won’t drink because of the extra calories. The problem is that I am experiencing SO MUCH anxiety related to me eating! My boyfriend is forcing me to eat….and not just eat something…eat heavy foods. He says that is what normal people do. I disagree. I think that it is somewhere in between. There is a whole big world of people out there who eat healthy. Once upon a time he was only making me eat one meal with him. Now he is trying to sneak in 2 heavy meals if the situation allows. In a way I resent that. He had a deal. The reason it is such an issue is because he needs to understand that I don’t just get fixed overnight. The amount of anxiety that I experience in preparation for eating that meal is unmanageable at times. This is specially true if it is food that I really would NEVER splurge on. I also suggested just being forced to eat half…but me makes me clear my plate. I can’t manage everyone’s expectations….his and my anorexic mind. It feels like too much to handle.

Close Calls

Ever since it this all got bad I have had night sweats. Meaning....I wake up in the middle of the night or the next morning totally drenched with sweat. My sheets are wet, my pajamas are wet...if they are still on...and my skin is soaked. I never thought TOO much of it. I never thought that it was tied to my self starvation. I like to keep it warm in my apartment because I am always SOO COLD...I just assumed that was what it was from.

Turns out that it means that my glucose level dropped so low that I was on the verge of falling into a coma. I guess that means I had close calls 3-4 times a week for MONTHS. This was one of the things that I heard the loudest from the doctor.

I had another one two nights ago. I couldn't sleep for 2 hours after that due to fear.

I have been telling people that no matter what I hear from the doctor, I still am not internalizing how bad a physical condition I have put myself in. Just hearing it has done nothing to trigger my desire to indulge. I need physical evidence.

What happened two nights ago WAS physical evidence. In the middle of the night it scared the sh*t out of me. But has it REALLY affected me?? I guess not... Ive gotten better. I know I have...but it scares me to think that ALL THIS still isn't as powerful as the spider that I have sitting on my brain.