I couldn't do it, not entirely. I told him why I was hesitant in the first place and told him about the sleep paralysis episodes, but not the content of those dreams or how the flashbacks have affected me lately.
Perhaps if we didn't already know each other, if he didn't know my husband... I would be more comfortable sharing such sensitive details.
We agreed to keep it on the table, especially since I still have regular eating to refine. He said that I need to be stable before we can do trauma work. What the fuck even is stable? How do you measure that? It sounds like he wants me to do regular eating properly first.
One of the overarching goals, if not the main purpose of this therapy, is for me to detach emotions from eating. That's basically what an eating disorder is. And the regular eating which we're working on, is supposed to help me achieve that goal. I'm trying to perfect it so that it becomes a self-perpetuating habit and so regardless of how I'm feeling, I'll be able to eat like a fucking normal person.
I'm getting better at that. I haven't purged in I don't even know how long. There haven't been any ridiculously long gaps between my meals. The problem is that I am always, always afraid of gaining weight. (Only recently have I accepted and compromised into only aiming for the borderline healthy weight.)
It's difficult to distinguish between that background noise of fear, and the emotions that drive me to skip meals, binge, or purge.
He said, "I don't know if you're ever going to get rid of that fear. That's always going to be a background concern."
"A more realistic goal is being able to live with that fear, than to get rid of it. Because if you aim to get rid of it and you fail... Is it more meaningful to get rid of that fear or to live your life and manage your eating disorder?"
I mean, I would love to get rid of that fear. But it sounds like he's telling me that it's unrealistic. It sounds like that's outside the scope of his expertise, or anyone's power.
I don't know if I'm ready to accept that. It's difficult to wrap my head around. It was something that I thought I knew and understood and admitted. But when I went to therapy I was secretly hoping my therapist would have the answers and that he could magic away my fear of gaining weight. It makes me incredibly sad to resign to the fact that I will always have an eating disorder, that this is just a cross that I will have to carry all my life.
I wish I hadn't ever taken those first steps and entered the deep dark woods of this illness. Was it really a choice? I thought I could easily stop and turn back and find my way out. How incredibly naive of me. But I was young! How could I have known I would still be stuck in this forest nearly eighteen years on?
But in some ways I feel like it was always in the cards for me. That was something that was always bound to happen based on my upbringing, my childhood. I adapted the way I knew how, created my own ways to survive and manage.
It makes me angry that I have to now deal with this shit because the people who were responsible for my well-being, dropped the ball. But I guess if I hadn't gone through that, if I weren't going through this at the moment, I wouldn't know a lot of things that I do now either.
Am I spewing toxic positivity here? I'm just trying to cope.
2021-12-04.6:41 p.m.
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