Are You Feeling Invalidated?

Have you ever had a therapist tell you that feeling fat isn't the issue? Or that feeling fat isn't real? Or that eating disorders aren't really about body image at all? That feeling fat is the symptom, not the problem? I've always found all this to be VERY invalidating. I mean, I feel fat and that is a real issue to me. It's very real and makes me miserable.

Dr. K has explained this to me in a way that I never heard before:

Everyone knows that a lot of underlying issues play into an eating disorder. These underlying issues (worthlessness, abuse, dysfunctional families/childhood, etc.) are very real and need to be addressed as part of treatment (in my opinion). Dr. K explained that with eating disorders, feeling fat and body image concerns become just as real as the underlying issues and emotions. Although everything is interconnected, it's almost like body image is a separate problem that has a life of it's own.

Now, many women in America have body image concerns but the major difference is that it doesn't take over their lives like it does with people with EDs. Dr. K explained to me that the reason why bad body image takes over our lives is because it's magnified by all our underlying issues. Body image is always a problem for me - 24/7. But it gets worse when I'm depressed, angry, feeling worthless, scared, overwhelmed, etc. That's partly explains to me why sometimes ED rears it's ugly head and sometimes it's just in the background.

So underlying issues and emotions are a real part of ED, but body image becomes real as well. They are two separate (but intertangled) monsters. Having a therapist that believes that me feeling fat is a really issue and not a figment of my imagination makes me feel sooooo much more validated.

Can you relate? Does this make any sense at all?

Fortune Cookie

My mom, my new roommate, and I went to dinner at P.F. Chang's tonight.  The meal was great (yay for lettuce wraps!), but you can't have a Chinese dinner without fortune cookies.  Although they are always fun to open, I have never really liked the taste of fortune cookies.  The ones at P.F. Chang's are an exception though.  Very yummy.  But more important than taste, is the essential fortune inside.  Here was mine:

To be mature is to accept imperfections.  

Quite profound for a fortune cookie, yes?  This fortune was actually perfect for me tonight because in therapy, Dr. K and I have been talking about how I hold myself to extremely high standards and that that I beat myself up for the tiniest imperfections.  I never considered accepting imperfections to be a characteristic of maturity, but for some reason, that concept gives me hope.  

My Only Friend

I went to my second 12 Step meeting at my church last night.  I really love the group.  I know that if I'm going to recover from ED, I'm going to need to go through the Steps.  But I'm discovering that I am not ready to give up my eating disorder at all.  At least, not yet.  I want to give up parts of it (hello, bingeing!), but I still have this overwhelming obsession with being thin.  I can't even commit to Step 1 right now: 

Admit that you, of yourself, are powerless to overcome your addictions and that your life has become unmanageable.  

Am I really powerless?  Does ED really control me?  Is my life unmanageable because of ED?  I'm sure my therapist and I would disagree about the answers to all these questions.  I feel like I need ED.  I want ED.  ED gives me power and control over my unmanageable life.  I feel like my life is unmanageable and ED is there to help me manage it.  You know, "ED the Manager."  Part of me knows that this isn't true and that ED is really wrecking my life, but it's hard for me to hold onto that.  I know that sometimes ED makes me miserable... but then there are those "highs" that I thrive off of... even though there are few and far between. From all the therapy I've had, I "know" that ED is deceiving me, but I'm still latched onto this belief (however false it is) that if I were just thin enough that I would be happy.  I know that ED is tricking me, but I just can't seem to let go of this belief.  I've latched on, and I've latched on hard.  Maybe that does mean that I'm powerless to overcome this addiction on my own...  (Of course, that would take me admitting that ED is an addiction, a bad thing). I know I'm not going to be able to let go of this belief on my own - that I not going to be able to let go of ED on my own.  But the problem is that right now I'm not ready to let go of this belief...  I'm not ready to let go of ED.  Sometimes I feel like ED is my only real friend... 

New Apartment Pics. Round One: Bedroom

It took me 7 days, but I finally have my bedroom up and running.  Yay!  I tried to take photos that would all together give you a 360 degree look at my new bedroom so you could see how everything ties together.  I'm super excited about my new room - so if you don't like it, be quiet!  Hehe, just kidding.  :)  Here are the pics:  I absolutely LOVE my bed!!  The bed frame was donated to me by a very generous neighbor and then my parents helped me buy the mattress.  It's a pillowtop mattress.  I've never had one before, but it is uber comfy.  Please disregard my poor job at making the bed - I've always sucked at that.  I loathe making beds so this is probably one of the few times it will be made.  I wish I was a make-your-bed-everyday-person, but I'm just too lazy.   

This is an up close photo of my bedspread - isn't it sweet?  I got it today at Macy's because my mom lost the comforter that I used in college.  I know, how can one possibly lose a freaking comforter???  Long story.  The big circular designs on it are actually embroidered.  

I've had this wicker dresser for ages.  It was originally white, but last week my mom and I spray painted it bright purple - now that was an experience.  I love the way it turned out though.  

 
This photo is so you can see that the dresser is to the left of the bed.  Yep, those are fake flowers.   

This is the other side of my bedroom, on the right side of the bed.  I'd been wanting one of these circular chairs for y-e-a-r-s and I finally had the opportunity to get one.  It's lime green and it's the most comfortable chair of all time.  Gotta love Target.  The decorative blocks that spell out "hope" was made by moi in treatment.  A little weird, I know - I usually don't have things around that remind me of treatment, but I really like these blocks.  Hope is one of my favorite characteristics (Characteristics? Is that the word I'm looking for?  I don't know, but hopefully you get it).  The painting next to the hope blocks is of Venice canals and bridges, which I got while I was there last summer.  The dark wood armour (I think it's an armour) was my grandpa's and now it's been passed down to me.  I love it, but there is one weird thing about it.  There are no door knobs on it to open it (it was made that way).  You just have to strategically put your fingers in the cracks and try to pull it open.  

     
This photo is so you can see how the chair and the dark wood dresser are to the right of my bed.  Behind me in all these photos is the closet.  Not very interesting, so I didn't take a picture of it.  It's a huge closet and one of the doors is made of a full length mirror.  I love and hate that aspect.  

So that's my room!  I said that I took so many photos to give you a 360 degree view, but I was really just trigger happy.  I've never had such a bold and bright bedroom before, but it feels very comfortable and very me.  

Stay tuned for Round II!

A Surprising Lesson from Hannah Montana

Yesterday I was driving in the car and listening to a Hannah Montana CD.  Wait, hehe - let me explain.  I was with C, the girl with developmental disabilities that I work with.  She looooves Hannah Montana.  She had just bought a new Hannah Montana CD and was dying to listen to it.  So I put it on while we were driving to our activity.  As we were listening to the CD, before each new track, C would excitedly tell me the name of the next song.  I wasn't paying that much of attention until Track 6.  Track 6 was called "Life is What You Make It."  Quite profound for Hannah Montana, eh?  It got me to thinking...

I agree in many ways that life is what you make it - ideally, at least.  But that is such an overwhelming thought.  My immediate reaction to the song title was that I don't have the mental, emotional, or physical energy to make much of my life.  Right now I'm just surviving.  I'm not worried about thriving; I'm merely working on making it through each day with the minimal amount of pain and anguish as possible.  I've had a lot of anger towards life lately and frankly, I've been a little angry at God as well.  I believe that there is purpose and meaning to life - but come on, did I really sign up for all this???  I feel like I have a spiritual understanding of many of the "whys" of life, but it's not helping me feel any better about it.  NOT AT ALL.  I went to a 12 step program that is sponsored by my church for the first time on Sunday.  I really liked it, but I am not ready to work the steps.  I don't want to give up ED.  I want to give up parts of it, like bingeing, but I don't want to give up the pursuit of thinness.  I'm not ready.  Right now what I'm making of my life isn't very fulfilling, but it does consume me - there is a big difference there.  Do I really want to let go of ED?  I could actually thrive without ED and "make something of my life," but honestly, I don't know if I want to.  I'm scared to.  I'm scared to let go.  I'm scared to let go and at the same time, pursuing thinness is so important to me.  Logically, I know it shouldn't be important, but it feels paramount to all other things - even my spirituality.  ED is taking me away from important things in life, like God, ambition, courage, freedom, success...  But sometimes I don't even want those things.  I'm too scared.  This has been kind of a stream of consciousness post and it just helped me have a realization:

ED is making me fearful of life.  

I don't know what I'm going to do with that new piece of information, but I think it's important that I realized it.  Thank you blogger for helping me come to that.  

Is ED instilling fear into you too?   

Consumer Whore Post

JB has inspired me to do a consumer whore post of my own.  Here is the new drink I'm into - Peach Mango Propel Water.  It's delish!  And it has 3 grams of fiber - and I'm the type of person that could use A LOT of fiber.  Don't worry, I still love my Diet Sunkist and Diet Dr. Pepper, but I need to be drinking more water and this Propel is actually good!  I know I'm a consumer whore, but these little things brighten my day... does that make me shallow?  Hmmm....

The Price

I'm lying in bed.  I'm so comfortable on my new mattress and bed in my new apartment... about to fall asleep... my mind is in that in-between state  before it gets swept away into LaLa Land... when all of a sudden: RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE CLATTER RUMBLE CLATTER CLATTER.

What the hezzel??!!

It's the effing Metro train!!!  We are so close to the metro that I can hear it in my room!  I never really noticed it until everything was quiet and I was trying to fall asleep my first night.  It comes by every 12 minutes.  Some trains are louder than others.  Most of them are pretty quiet, but every once and a while there is a doozy.  Thankfully it doesn't go all night.  This is a major flaw of my wonderfully perfect apartment.  I think I can get over it though.  (After all I must.)  I bought ear plugs last night and although the whole earplug experience was weird (I'm sure that anyone who has worn earplugs knows what I'm talking about), it helped a lot. 

So maybe we are a little too close to the Metro... 

There is always a price for convenience.  Heh.    

New Place

Today is the first night that I'm going to sleep in my new apartment!! Yay!

Moved in? YES

Unpacked? Hellz to the NO!! (I hate unpacking.)

Excited? Yeah baby!

Nervous? Okay, maybe a teeny little bit, but shhhh don't tell...

I'm going out to dinner tonight with my new roommate, R.  We go to the same church but don't know each other very well.  We are going to lay down some ground rules for each other.  She seems pretty cool though so I'm not worried.  

Once I get unpacked I'll post some pics!! 

GRE

I literally just walked in the door.  I've been crying for an hour straight.  You guessed it - I totally B-O-M-B-E-D the GRE.  This isn't just "Kara-the-perfectionist-didn't-quite-ace-it" -- this is outright horrible legitimate bombage.  I did worse than I ever have - even worse than before I started studying for the stupid thing. Ha!  What gives?  Here are the worst parts about this:

1. I actually thought I was doing okay while I was taking the test and had a shot at my goal score.  (Boy, was I WRONG!  Let's just leave it that I was close to 200 points off my goal -eek).

2. This is the ultimate worst: It's still not over.  I have to keep studying and cramming my brain so that I can take it again.  Ugh.  I wanted the stress to be done.  But I guess it's not meant to be...

GRE = Major SUCKAGE

Die GRE, Die!  

Now I'm going to go wallow in my misery and self-loathing while watching Season 8 of SVU.  Just bought it this morning - and it's a damn good thing I did - otherwise I'd have nothing to take my mind off things.  Maybe Olivia Benson can save me...  

Broken Record

I'm a broken record.  Dr. K agrees.  I keep playing the same song over and over.  I tell myself every day that "today will be different," and "I'm not going to do  ____ ED behaviors anymore."  I wake up every morning with good intentions and then something snaps during the day and I literally don't care about withstanding the pressures of ED.  That's what I don't understand - how can just not care anymore?  I don't know why I have that on/off switch.  It's like I relapse every day.  The ED song is on repeat and even if I try to change it to another song, the record breaks and it's back to ED.  

What I need to do is put on a different record.  But how....

Target Run!

I went to Target today for one thing - a bookshelf.  But you can never go to Target and just buy one thing....  I bought much more than a bookshelf - I ended up spending an extra $140 - oops.  Ha.  Here's what costed me $140.  Was it worth it? Hellz yeah: 

I've been wanting a yellow purse F-O-R-E-V-E-R.  I finally found one that I like.  It looks bright yellow in the photo, but it's actually more of a subdued, mustard yellow.  It rocks!  (And no, I could not figure out how to rotate the pic.)

I wasn't planning on ever really buying any more DVDs since I have Netflix and it's much cheaper than buying DVDs, but when I saw this one, I had to had to had to have it.  I saw "He's Just Not That Into You" in the theaters twice (and that's saying a lot for me).  Sooooooooo good I just had to own it! 

I've been needing a water bottle for a while now because I keep just reusing the plastic bottles from the grocery store.  I saw this cute one in the camping section and I just had to have it.  It's hard to see from the picture, but it has a cute bird and some branches on it.  Love it!

 I've been wanting an iHome of some sort to play my iPod nano (that I got FREE when I bought my MacBook - yeah baby!).  I wanted something small and I found this Skull Candy one that plays the music off your iPod and charges it at the same time.  

So I bought all this fun stuff AND I also found a bookshelf for 60 bucks.  I'd say that this was a good trip...

Very therapeutic.  

I Can't Wait

It's 3:15am and I can't sleep.  I wen to bed early around 9:30pm, but whenever I go to bed that early I tend to wake up for long extended periods of time in the middle of the night.  Oh well.  I went to bed so early because I just didn't want to deal with anything anymore -- and I was freaking tired.  

I did want to update you all from my last post.  Last post was definitely a Debbie Downer, but I'm feeling slightly better.  Telstaar mentioned in a comment that it made sense that my eating disorder was acting up so much because of all the things I have going on in my life right now with the GRE and moving, etc.  I'm so glad that Telstaar made that comment because that never occurred to me, but I feel like she hit the nail on the head.  Thanks, Telstaar.  And thank you everyone else for your supportive comments.  You all are so good to me.  :) 

I've just been feeling so out of control with food lately.  I want to be losing weight, but I just keep G-A-I-N-I-N-G.  Gaining, gaining, gaining, gaining.  Blargh.  Dr. K says I'm gaining weight because I want to lose weight so badly and it keeps backfiring.  You know, the whole restricting/bingeing cycle.  I'm a pro.  Ha.  I really really really want to stop bingeing, it just that it sounds like such a good idea at the time that it's hard to resist.  And I think I've let my guard down because I've feeling so hopeless and like I want to throw in the towel.  I need to start fighting ED.  I can't wait on this.  

Before I sign off, I have some random, exciting news: I bought a mattress for my new apartment.  It's a pillowtop and it is great.  My neighbors are donating a bed frame so all I needed was a mattress and box spring.  The apartment is getting professionally cleaned on Monday, which I am soooo excited about.  Since that's on Monday and I have the GRE on Tuesday (eeeeek!), it looks like I'm going to start moving in on Wednesday of next week.  Three words: I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!  

Wounded Heart

I'm having a really hard time tonight.  I hate fat.  I hate my fat, blubbering body.  I hate how much I hurt.  The pain is like a knife twisting in my heart.  The eating disorder is taking over my life and making me miserable -- but I can't seem to let go....