Breakthrough

Today was ok. nothing too out of the ordinary as far as groups and meals go. same old for the most part except for the temporary tattoo session we had this morning. somehow i came out of it with five temporary tattoos--a skunk on my left foot, and frog on my right leg, a t-rex on my arm, a t-rex face on my hand, and a raptor on my neck. i gotta say it was quite fun to act like a little kid again though.

today was the first day i actually had a "good" therapy session. well good in the sense as i guess today was when i really started to process, as my therapist says.

today was the day she could say this because today was the day i cried in therapy. today was the day i decided to not push away the emotion when i start to feel it, but rather show it. today was the day i made myself vulnerable in front of another person and did something i find admittedly weak; i showed emotion, i cried.

basically i did some thinking out loud to my therapist on just how strong my ED really is and how terrified i am that when i do leave here, that i will just fall right back into my ED. it is so easy here to give in at meal times and eat and disconnect from the feeling of guilt and shame i would normally feel for eating, because i know i have others around me who are struggling to and are going through the same thing i am. but outside here, i don't have that and eating will no longer have a justification. it is being here that gives me the permission to eat. my motivation is external. outside here i wont take up that responsibility on my own. to this my therapist replied that that is very honest, very scary, very sad and concerning.

it was at this point that the well of emotion began to build up. normally i can block it out or disconnect but i saw the sadness in my therapist's eyes which made it all the more difficult for me to control myself. of course her encouragement to not fight the emotion sort of coaxed me to let it show.

i felt embarrassed and weak for showing my emotions and how upsetting the control my ED has over me is. she in tern told me that it was actually a very courageous thing that i did. to show emotion means you make yourself vulnerable to some one and that causes fear, so to show an emotion shows you conquering a fear. also, you must trust the person to show and emotion, so she thanked me at the end of the session for trusting her enough to show my emotion. THAT felt good.

so after the "break through" therapy session we had a group cooking activity where you either made rice krispie treats, fig newtons, or oatmeal raisin cookies. i made the oatmeal raisin ones, WHICH by the way, i get to have for snack tonight! yummmm. this was a good way to relax after that therapy session and i was quite happy to bake again.

on the gossip/drama front. my roommate--the pants girl--was caught doing suicides on the side of the building today. hearing that made my other roommates comment to me about the pants roommate stretching in our room make sense. also, another girl, a newer girl, was caught exercising last night by one of the CRCs. we all knew it was happening but no one had caught her in the act so thank god that finally happened. that is a major no no in the world of ED treatment centers and it is really aggravating to know that it is occurring as well as triggering. it makes everyone else feel like crap. not to mention that my roommate isn't even on a weight-gain meal plan because she came here in her range. so to know that she is eating the normal amount of calories AND exercising while we all are eating way over the normal daily calorie intake and NOT exercising is even more frustrating. why does she have to be MY roommate???

i did some journal collaging today during visiting hours to try and express another way, other than writing, my feeling of hopelessness that i often have when i think about how i really fear and think i will go right back to my ED once i leave here. it came out ok, but it just makes me sad.