Alyssa

Some passages for thought

2009-12-07T19:44:00.000-08:00

quotes from the book "Tales from the Scale"

and the more years that pass by, the more adverse i am to buying in to the notion that food is bad. that food, in face, is something to fear. global warming is something to fear. losing you job is something to fear. having your leg shorn off by an errant buzz saw is something to fear. I've yet to see any conclusive evidence to prove to me that a hamburger or two is going to do as much damage as any of these things could. i suppose it is my distaste for treating food like it is an instrument of the devil, and subsequently the culture perpetuating this idea, that accounts for my weight problems as an adult.
you mean i am really less of a person because im eating this slice of cake? explain to me how if i decide to eat a bowl of potato chips, this behavior means i possess little to no self-esteem. how is it that i am doomed to an eternity filled with no one to love me and a sadness the likes of which humankind has never known if i order the crab rangoon from my favorite Chinese carryout joint?

according to the diet lore, "indulging" or "giving in to temptation" is a "sin." strangling a few people is a sin. invading east timor is a sin. ethnic cleansing is a sin. testing nuclear weapons in the pacific is a sin. im sorry, but eating doesnt quite make the grade." --Kaz Cooke, Real Gorgeous

i dont think i'll ever conquer my inner fat girl; i just have to learn to manage her presence. shes like an irritating old friend that you never really liked. somehow shes got hold of your number and she insists on calling you now and then, just to remind you shes still alive.
you can listen to her ramble for a while--as long as you know when to say, shut up, and slam down the phone.

im starting to come to the conclusion that my fat girl may just be around for good.
but im also beginning to have some peace with her. though, now she is only a part of me. instead of dictating my every move, holding me hostage, my fat girl is much like the family member who never lets you forget where you came from no matter how successful you become.

i dont know if its possible, after shes (fat girl) lived in my head more than 25 years, to ever completely get rid of her. i can always feel her hovering nearby, waiting to judge me and what i eat ("ugh, salad? no fun!"). radiating disapproval when i decide to do forty minute on the elliptical trainer instead of thirty, or putting on a shirt that comes close to fitting instead of being three sizes too big.
one would think that with weight loss would come a quieting of her voice, but it seems that she doesnt care what i actually weigh. ive lost 125 pounds? she doesnt care. she doesnt care about the reality, just what she decided years ago is the truth, and she wants to yell her truth from the mountaintop.

we are so focused on numbers. in the weight-loss world, we cannot escape them. we measure our body fat. we feel judged by our clothing size. there are the inches around our waists and necks and calves to be tallied. and there is the number on the scale, the supreme number that rules all.
these numbers in and of themselves dont mean a whole lot. after all, they are just that: numbers. they are arbitrary digests that fluctuate and change and differ from person to person...
...yet what does all this tell you about me, really? does this give you a picture of who i really am? does this tell you that im a democrat or a republican? do these numbers indicate whether or not i have children? can you tell if i volunteer or donate to charity? do you know what car i drive?

anyone who has an ED will surely see the correlation between the struggles with being over weight and the struggles with an ED, especially when it comes to the "fat girl" voice which is just as malicious as the ED voice.

as I was on the second to last chapter, i came across a sentence that one of the contributers to the book wrote which i found quite bothersome. it read:"I always wished for bulimia or anorexia--one of those weight problems that results in fashionably thin malnutrition. at least it doesnt show on the outside, at least not in the way overeating does." now anyone who says the wish for an ED is not only mental, but completely insensitive and ignorant especially when they wish to have an ED so they can be thin. when i read this i immediately had the urge to write to the contributer and tell her off, but then i realized how immature that would be. i was just wondering if this bothers anyone else the way it does me and if anyone thinks i should go ahead and write the contributer--but in a kind, mature way. leave me some comments and let me know what you all think.

Tales from the Scale

2009-12-05T19:05:00.000-08:00

don't worry, this post doesn't sound as bad as it's title...that's just the name of a book i've been reading. i know the name sounds pretty much like an ED book and the book really isn't meant to be that way, but of course that's the way i'm reading it. however, it is actually about obese people and their struggles to loose weight. ya, i probably shouldn't be reading it. but anyway, i'm about halfway through and i've found some pretty interesting quotes that i think are important to think about when us people with EDs judge our self worth and live our lives according to a number on the scale or the foods we eat and their contents. and, come to find out, there are a lot of struggles that people who are overweight go through that are similar to the ones people with EDs struggle with. i just wanted to bring this book up because as i continue to read i keep folding over pages, marking the places i want to go back to so that i can find the passages i think are valuable to all who struggle with body image=self worth. so sometime in the near future i'll have a post with all these passages in it.

in my last post i talked about an interview i was going to do with my psychiatrist from treatment at harvard med school. i was suprisingly not as nervous as i thought i would be. i listened to her lecture about EDs, which i basically knew all the information in since i do have an ED and then at the end of that it was my turn. i was in a ampitheater, so the semi circle, of steep, staggard seats filled with brilliant medical students was a bit intimidating to say the least. AND to top it all off, i had to wear one of those little clip on microphones just to ensure (ha, i will never say or write that word without thinking about the "nutritional suppliment") that all could hear me. i just kept reassuring myself that the students genuinely wanted to hear me speak and learn from me and that they were in no way going to judge me for anything. dr.d sat right next to me and i basically looked at her for most of the interview so it eventually felt like we were meeting in her office just discussing the normal things we do. i became comfortable quickly and the experience became enjoyable.

after a while the floor was then opened up to the students to ask me some questions. i didn't exactly know that that was part of what i signed up for but i figured i could handle it at that point. i wasn't so comfortable with having command of who could ask me the next question and pointing them out, but i managed. after this was over my job was done. dr.d and some other guy who was running the whol shindig said i did a great job, which felt good to hear. i was getting ready to leave and a couple students asked if i would mind them asking me some more questions. i agreed so i spend about another 20 minutes doing that. AND to top it all off, the students got me a thank you card AND a starbucks gift card. how did they know people with EDs LOVE coffee?

overall it was a great experience, one that i didn't think i would enjoy so much. i really do feel like if i'm going to have such a shitty illness then why not at least help educate those who could potentially treat people with EDs and help them understand the complexitites and the actual thinking of people with EDs. and as a sidenote, my friend who is back in treatment :( was talking to dr. d in her meeting and as dr. d likes to do, she was asking who she was close with in treatment last time and she said my name and she said how i told her i was doing an interview with her that week to which dr. d responded that i was less nervous than her and that i performed brilliantly. i feel like i'm boasting but it just feels really nice to get such praise and complements and to know that maybe i actually did help the students understand more about this illness. of course the cynic in me is still struggling with trying to accept this feedback, but i'm trying to ignore that voice and take the feedback for what it is.

but, on the ED front. i'm really not doing well at all. i can feel it getting really strong, like heading in the direction of how it was in the summer. when i got out of treatment last time exercise was fairly easy to cut down on. this time, i've been out for 10 days and have exercised 7 of those days and recently 4 days in a row. i know that once i start this spiral it really can't be stopped. missing one day now would cause me to not be able to think about anything else for the whole day. exercise has once again become a way for me to justify while i still eat (barely). the only good thing is that i'm still doing considerablly less exercise than i was doing in the summer as far as time goes, but even this i know won't last long as today i increased by five minutes and i know the increases will just keep compounding. this is bad and i know it won't lead to anything good. i have also gone to the grocery store (sometimes two different ones in one day) everyday for the past 4 days, not to mention the other days i did it since i've been home. i go down the isles, with no intention of buying anything, and look at the nutrition facts of various foods. some to see what i might consider eating and others just to confirm why i don't eat those foods. it's bad.

i have quite the dilemma at hand because yesterday at my dr's appt, i asked at what weight he would force me to go back in to tx and it was not a weight that i expected. however, if my vitals start to get shitty, then that'll get me back in sooner. i've been blacking out when i stand up so i know things are not good. yesterday my heart rate jumped up 10 points and my bp when down when i stood up. still, that doesn't reach the criteria for being orthostatic, but i know it's coming. anyway, the dilemma. i want to go to school in janurary, but, with how i'm doing, and judging by the direction i'm heading in, things are not looking so good. my doc said he was fine with me going to school and that he would do everything in his power to keep me in school once there, but i'm worried that i might not even make it to school. my next appt is the 21st and i will most likely be at that weight that he'll want me back in treatment. so you say, then just eat more and stop going to the gym, but if it were that simple, then i'd be recovered and clearly i'm not. i can't just go over my daily calorie intact that i have established and feel ok about it. even one calorie over and i feel disgusted with myself and feel compelled to restrict the next day and exercise more to make up for it. so there in lies the dilemma, oh, not to mention i might have a job in the next few days and that'll only mean i'll be more active which means quicker weight loss making my goal of going to school seem even more impossilbe.

there are ways to sort of work the system, as far as weight goes, which i do employ, so that'll by me more time. but as i loose more weight more drastic measures will be needed and that deception can only get me so far because believe it or not, weight loss becomes noticable and when the number on the scale doesn't compute with appearance, a doctor is generally smart enough to know that something fishy (ha, the name of a site about EDs) is going on. but even more telling are my vitals and bloodwork which are the things most affected by malnutrition, so even if my doctor gives me the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the number on the scale, there will be no denying what my vitals and blood work say. of course there are ways to manipulate this too, but i'm not so sure it'll work out so well.

so breifly, i've got some shit to work out. yes i want to go to school, but badly enough to eat more? at this point i'm pretty sure that the answer to that is a no. do i want to go back to treatment yet again? no. do i want to stay out of treatment buy doing the one thing that will up my odds of staying out (eating)? the answer to that question is not a definite no, but almost.

i hope no one else in the world gets and ED. it really does ruin lives and makes everything that used to be important, unimportant. school used to be the most important thing to me, and now my ED is so important that i might just not go back to school so i can be very activly engaged in my ED. recovery does not seem an option at all right now, and by acknowledging that, i also need to acknowledge that that closes a lot of doors for me. i still have the distorted thought that all things are possible with a severe ED. i do doubt it more than i used to but i still think i'm fairly capable of doing many of the things that were once important to me and still have my ED, at least holding a job and going to school. other things may suffer, such as my social life, but i'm not so sure how much that actually matters to me now too. my life has changed dramatically and so have i.

EDIT: i just remembered some thing funny i had to say. so when i was at my therapist's office on friday she said to me "you look like you're having trouble eating." i replied with "ya" but what i really wanted to say was "of course i'm having trouble eating; i'm anorexic!"

Trying to start up again

2009-12-01T10:37:00.000-08:00

so much for posting while i was in treatment.

this post might be triggering for some...these a lot of ED thinking in the end...

i came home from treatment on wednesday...lucky me, just in time for thanksgiving. needless to say i was quite anxious for thanksgiving and for the extended family that was coming to my house for the holiday, but really, i had no one to blame because i'm the one who wanted to leave treatment and i'm the one who chose to leave on wednesday rather than friday.

thanksgiving is probably one of the worst holidays for a person with an ED. yes, most holidays include some sort of feast, but at least the feast is only a component of the holiday and not the sole focus of the holiday. the dietitian at treatment ran a group and talked to us about thanksgiving and said that it is a day where everyone as an ED. the accepted practice on thanksgiving is to starve yourself all day so that you can over-stuff yourself at one meal. but for those of us that have EDs and have been to treatment, it is just another day where we eat all our meals and follow our meal plan, we just have a bit more choice when it comes to our dinner because of the plethora of food offered at the thanksgiving feast. for me though, it was not just another day where i follow my MP. it was my first full day out of treatment--which did not help me one bit this time--which means it was my opportunity to once again engage in my ED. My plan was not to eat with my family but to just basically hide all day, which i succeeded at until my mom came down and asked if i was going to come sit with everyone. i told her i really didn't want to because i knew i'd have like nothing on my plate and everyone would look at me. she said that no one was going to say anything which lead me to believe she already alerted everyone to how hard this day was going to be for me. so i ended up going up stairs and putting some stuff on my plate and ate with my family. that's all i had to get through, because not eating dessert was a given.

since thanksgiving i've been busy redoing my room. lots of painting, moving furniture and cleaning.

i've gone shopping a few times--of course on black friday--and have spotted some places that are hiring for the season, one of which is Michael's. I filled out their application last night.

i had my first OP appt yesterday and don't have anymore until friday. i'm not sure if i'm going to stick with doing OP this time.

while i was in treatment my psychiatrist asked me if i wanted to do and interview with her. i sceptically agreed and then she told me it was in front of 200 med students at Harvard Med school. i got crazy anxiety just thinking about it. i asked who else she was going to ask and she said no one and then i asked why do you want me to do it and she told me because she thinks i do a good job with the interview process. i don't really believe her. i feel like she had no other choice but to ask me, but maybe that is just me being cynical. needless today, that day has come. the interview is at 4pm today but she is giving a lecture at 3pm which i want to go to. i guess this will be a good opportunity; to help educate prospective doctors about EDs. i guess if i'm going to have an ED i might as well do something useful with it.

a quick update of how i'm doing with food...BAD. basically the same as i was doing when i got out of treatment last time. something that is good is that when i went shopping with my mom, i got a tad bit more variety than last time but everything i got did have to follow a strict set of rules to qualify for me to eat them. i'm a bit overwhelmed right now though because i feel like i have too much food in the house that is for me and i feel like i need to eat it all right away which obviously isn't going to happen. i have this fear that it's all going to go bad and i hate wasting food. but i also know that this is a distortion because all the food i bought are non-perishables and the ones that aren't don't expire for a few weeks and those are the things i'm eating first. but still, i have this anxiety around that and it just won't leave until all the food is gone. but, once all the food is gone then i start to freak out that i have no food or that i'm low on food. it's just a loose-loose situation. oh, and i bought some jelly belly jelly beans...why??? i have no idea. in case i wanted to indulge? even though if i had one serving size of them i basically wouldn't be able to eat anything more for the day according to my rules. that means i'll probably have to eat like one a day just for a little taste. ahhhhhhh!

It's been a while

2009-10-24T16:22:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. it has been a very long time since I last posted. There was just way too much stuff going on in the last few weeks of treatment that I couldn't even begin to think of where on earth to start with everything.

I was discharged from treatment on October 5th. I was not at all ready to go which I think I made quite clear to my team and staff--after I was readmitted into residential after a week on partial because I fell out of my range, was loosing weight, and went on a bit of a hunger strike. I hadn't even gotten down to a real maintenance MP before I left. I had family therapy the day I left and I openly admitted that I didn't even know if I was going to eat dinner that night, which I did not. Basically since I've been out I have been restricting more than I ever have before, only eating "dinner." One good thing is that I have cut down on the gym a LOT but I guess maybe that's not so good because I have been compensating by restricting more. With my intake the way it is, I lost weight. Quite a bit in three weeks time. My PCP visits all showed that--even though I did manipulate the scale by wearing ankle weights so even my doc doesn't know how much weight I've really lost--and the labs that I had done also confirmed malnutrition and my declining health. Also, in the last week I developed a rash and when my doc looked at it this week he confirmed it as shingles. Just another sign that I have a crap immune system because of what I'm doing to my body.

My doc told me on Tuesday that he called treatment to see if they would take me back and they agreed so long as I don't treat the place as just a place were they feed me. They also requested that I make a list of how treatment would be different for me this time which I expected because my therapist told me they would ask me for this if I ever needed to come back. My doc really wanted me to go on Thursday but I convinced him to let me stay this weekend and go on Monday so that I could work on the list with my therapist and because I didn't want to go on the weekend when there are no clinicians AND I might as well add that I was trying to avoid one of the resident's birthdays which is tomorow so that I wouldn't have to eat cake at snack. Let's just hope they don't postpone the cake until Monday.

The list (worked on by my therapist and myself):
1. I want to work a LOT more on my traumas--affects social functioning
2. I want to be able to have a longer time on a maintenance MP so I can get used to what normal eating is before I leave and have to do it for myself.
3. I need to have more defined plans for passes--food and activities I will eat/do.
4. I want to challenge myself more at caf--not eat so many safe foods and actually try getting what I want instead of what my ED tells me--INCREDIBLY HARD!
5. Examine relationships--ones that are safe/unsafe and figure out how to handle them.
6. Explore whether there are any other way to work on social aspect--ways to expand social network--ways to engage in regular social situations.
7. Plan ahead for volunteer work/job/classes after discharge.
8. Much more specific planning by me for discharge to provide more structure when out of treatment.
And just a note from my therapist: Alyssa feels she's going back to K in a different place--ED isn't working in the way it used to.

That's probably the most notable thing I think. My ED is definitely not doing the same thing for me that it used to. Before it came so naturally and i got a thrill and a high out of it. Now it's more of a constant struggle to maintain it everyday. It's not so enjoyable anymore. Don't get me wrong, I still do get something out of it and every time I see that number on the scale go down I become more addicted to wanting to lose more, but it's just not the same. One girl at treatment told me that for her, going back to her ED just wasn't the same. She says it's like a drug attic, always chasing the first high. After you've been in treatment it's just not that way. I remembered that and I have come to see that that is very true.

My ED has also been changed by treatment. There were certain foods that I lived on before I went into treatment and I was even able to still eat some meals that my mom made. But now, those foods that were once safe I cannot eat, which is rather bothersome since that was mostly fruits and vegetables. I have only eaten one crab apple sized apple since I've been home and even that was a huge struggle and guilt trip afterwards. I have only been eating greek yogurt, dannon light and fit, and cottage cheese since I've been home. I've also gotten waaaay slower at eating and I take incredibly small bites now. I never had a huge problem with those things before I went to treatment--I mean I was always a slow eater, but not as slow as I am not--but now it's just ridiculous. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle that when I go back seeing as it takes me about 30 mins to eat a yogurt or a cup of cottage cheese and at treatment you have a half hour to eat a whole meal.

I must say my relationship between my parents and I has gotten a lot better and I think it's important that I was able to see that with my time home. I wasn't sure how it was going to feel or if I would like it, but I have to say it hasn't been all that bad. I don't think I mind it.

It was also important that I got to see that my ED is not doing the same thing as it used to. This has put me in a different place. I feel that this time in treatment, with my definite list of things I want to work on, that I am more willing to work. I think this time I might actually give recovery a try or at least hold on to the thought of it.

"We must be willing to let go of the life we had planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us." --E.M. Forester

Overload

2009-09-18T22:52:00.000-07:00

this honestly makes no sense. why the hell am i being made to stay here longer when nothing is helping me. i have already made my choice as to what im going to do regarding my ED when i leave here and i am very invested in keeping my life the same in all the other ways as far as my thinking goes. a lot has happened in the past few days and im seriously coming to my wits end. let me list the things:

1.) wednesday my therapist told me that basically insurance gave them an ultimatum and that i had the choice to go on partial either that night or thursday night. i knew that if i waited until thursday all that was doing is postponing the inevitable and would only cause me to suffer another day of anxiety.

2.) in that same session i told my therapist about a thought that has been in my head a lot more often and she had my sign a safety contract which basically said i would ask for help when unsafe, and that i wouldn't do certain other behaviors.

3.) also in that session my team "strongly recommended" that i have another meeting with my parents to discuss these harmful behaviors i take part in because i have said many times i cant always be responsible for myself so they felt my parents need to know about these things so that they can look out for when im struggling.

4.) went on partial that night...didn't eat snack, but family things went better than expected.

5.) thursday my family therapist met with me at about 9:30 and decided to tell me at that point that my family was coming in for a family meeting at 10. thanks for the notice. the meeting went ok, though it was incredibly difficult to talk to my parents about some things that i never ever intended to tell them. my family therapist did help me out a lot in the meeting. thank god.

6.) partial again...no snack. AND i showed my parents the contract that my therapist made up for me. it went well but my mom asked at one point if i would discuss some of the "tips for self care" that my therapist tailor made for me. i responded by essentially saying no because those are things that i discuss in therapy and don't really want to share in any more detail than what they already had read.

7.) the dietitian told me my meal plan might go down on sunday, but then the nurse told her that i don't eat my evening snack so then that pretty much squashed that idea. she told me that if i fall out of my range they wont let me leave and all that crap, so i told her id drink and ensure that night. i even shook on it...i didn't drink it.

8.) early therapy session yesterday. this one went ok.

9.) 11 o'clock meeting with psychiatrist in which she began with a rapid fire of questions. one of them i answered "yes" to which caused there to be further questions. after revealing what i had to her, the rest of the session was difficult and i was once again totally in my head. not too much got through to me in that session.

10.) during the one o'clock group, after we had just started, my therapist walked into the group room and gave me the finger...she wanted to meet with me. so i went into her room and she told me she wanted to see if i could take a day off this weekend. i REALLY did not want to but she told me i sort of have to for insurance reasons and that also i needed to get an appointment with my prospective outpatient therapist for before wednesday. the pressure was certainly being put on me. as far as the day off, if i had to take one i decided to take sunday off because that is the day of the outing to bertucci's and if i could get out of that then i certainly was going to, even though my therapist said i should take saturday off so i could go to the outing, but i really didn't care what she had to say because she was making me take the day off in the first place so i was going to do what i wanted.

11.) before the 2 o'clock group, my family therapist asked if i could talk to her. i replied with quite a reluctant "i guess." she said, "i know seems like you cant get a break today, huh?" that's for sure. she said it was only going to take two minutes but when she told me what she wanted to talk to me about, the conversation ended up being about 40 minutes and mostly consisted of me refusing to look at her and say much of anything. she told me that she had to tell my parents about some information i told my therapist and psychiatrist. i know it is a legal obligation that she tell them, but still, this did not make my situation any easier. i was not looking forward to going home that night.

12.) at 4:40 my outpatient therapist called me and i was able to make an appt for this tuesday with her. i went to my therapist to let her know that i was able to get an appt and she then asked me if i wanted to check in with her since she was planning on checking in with me before she left. i agreed and she said we would talk until about 5, but as usual, the season went longer until 5:20. this session was a pretty pivotal one. my therapist needed to know with a "yes" or "no" answer if i was going to be able to keep myself safe this weekend. for most of the session i only replied with an "i don't know" and didn't say much of anything to her. when she kept pressing for a more definite answer she said, "look it's friday afternoon and i need to know if you can keep yourself safe. if you can't or if you can only tell me i don't know, then i might need to consider sending you to the CEC for an evaluation for a longer inpatient stay. do i need to do that?" i knew exactly what that meant and i did not want that, so i said she didn't need to do that. then she went on to tell me a lot of really important things that really resonated with me. she told me that the reason she wrote me the contract was so that i could have something to take with me and read to create a safe place for myself and that the contract represents a relationship--the one between her and i--and if i valued anything about the relationship at all, then i would follow the contract. she also told me, as she has before, that she will be thinking of me over the weekend and though she will not physically be with me that her thoughts are with me and if i choose to, i can allow her words to be with me over the weekend to help guide me. she also told me that the choice i am tempted to make is NOT a solution to any problems and it is not something that can be undone. it is a way of quitting on life, and she does not picture me as a quitter. but the most powerful thing she said to me was "alyssa, i know how much pain you are in and how much you are suffering. i know. you don't need to show it anymore by harming yourself and making it a reality for you. tears a real too. they are reality."

13.) i journaled after this to help me process that session. though the things sounded great in the moment and though i did assure her that i would stay safe this weekend, i was still unable to really believe any of the things she said to me.

14.) partial again...no snack and went on a 30 minute or so walk.

15.) saturday was nothing too special. my day was going ok until the 3 o'clock therapy group. at one point, the topic of discussion turned toward me. at the end of the discussion around my issues, i was left totally in my head and in not the best place to have to be going home that night. after this group was yoga. this helped a bit but then i journaled after and got to thinking again.

16.) partial. no snack. went on a 30 min walk/run. my mom came in my room later that night and asked if she could lay on my bed with me while i journaled. i said she could. this situation was awkward but at the same time, comforting. i felt like the parent and her the child, a complete role reversal. i know that this was her way of just trying to be with me without being too forceful, which is why she asked if it was ok, so i understood the intention and i appreciate that she asked because that is not something i am too comfortable with, but at the same time, the fact that my mom knew she had to ask to be with me was jarring. it sort of allowed me to see what ive done to her, as far as making her feel on-edge around her own daughter. i do feel bad, but at the same time, it's how i am about all that and i didn't just wake up being that way.

that's basically the run-down. not really as brief as most run downs go. but quickly. i had a day off today. i was quite anxious for it. meals were hard. i definitely restricted and will probably be on warning tomorrow. as far as how the day went...i went to church with my parents and my anxiety was pretty much through the roof the whole time because i was worried about seeing people and all i could think about was how different i was last time i was in church over 2 months ago. my parents and i went to my lakehouse and went for a 2 hour LEISURELY walk around the lake and went for a nice boat ride. the whole day i felt very odd, like i had no idea who i was or what was going on. i felt like 12 year old, but im 19. i guess that's what my therapist meant when she asked me how old i feel. it's really jarring to think that i am no way near 19 mentally and emotionally though my biological age says i am.

sorry, no quote today.

The good mood ran out

2009-09-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

So. As expected. the good mood thing ended after five days in a row of good moodness. sunday night i started to get really down and then it all went downhill from there.

yesterday was pretty tough because my psychiatrist met with me as soon as all the clinicians got out of rounds, and since my psychiatrist NEVER meets with me on a monday like that, i had a bad feeling. i was right. i sort of, but not really, got in trouble for this habit that i have that my team just found out about. i say "sort of" because you don't really ever get "in trouble" per say in treatment. you just get talked to and advised about things and the actions that you team do from there are to "help" you, never to "punish." but anyway, that happened. also, the issue of insurance was brought up again and my psychiatrist said that insurance may very well say they are done paying, even for partial. so ill make it clear that i do not want to be here in treatment, however, nor do i want to be home. it doesn't really matter where i go, i'll still have my ED, but at home is where EVERYTHING is just so much more intense. i hate home for SO many reasons and when i left the appointment all i could think about was home and the idea of possibly having to go straight home, no partial as a transition to make it a little more bearable. after that appointment i sat i front of the nursing station silently crying and thinking A LOT.

then my family therapist came up to me and told me how her and my therapist were going to do a joint meeting with me at 1, but that she was going to come in around 1:15 because she had something to do first. i pretty much knew this couldn't mean anything good either. at this point i was having a lot of anxiety and was seriously considering not going to caf and staying back and not eating lunch and refusing to replace. however, i knew that if i was already in some crap with my team that that would not help, nor would it help my mood at all or get me out of my head. so i went to caf, but was incredibly anxious the whole time not only from my meeting with my psychiatrist, but because of the upcoming meeting and the fact that i was eating.

after lunch and after we all filled out our mood monitors we got our pass requests back from rounds. mine said: "see therapist. could you consider going home for a dinner pass to eat with your family and brother in preparation for PHP." as soon as i read that i reacted quite strongly and went into the day room, lied out on the couch, and started crying. i was not ready for that at all. even the thought of having to spend an hour or two at home was something i couldn't handle, how in god's name would i handle going back altogether??? when i realized the time, pulled myself together in preparation for the joint meeting.

i headed to my therapist's office and we began and of course the "how are you doing question" was asked and i responded "not that good," which i thought was quite obvious from my red puffy eyes but apparently she couldn't tell. so i told her why and as soon as i talked about the pass request form and what they had written i began crying again. not even 2 minutes into the session and i was crying. amazing. THEN as if things couldn't get better, there was a knock on the door and it was my family therapist. "looks like i came in at a difficult time," she says. i'd say. "we just started," said my therapist. "yea we just started and i'm already crying," said i. it was comical to me for some reason, but sucked all the same. basically the whole session was spent on talking about going home and how incredibly difficult it will be for me and what it will mean. then my therapist asked if she could switch gears just a little bit, and of course i was completely agreeable with that. and then they talked to me about the same thing my psychiatrist talked to me about which was really what they intended to talk to me about from the start, but i did a wonderful job of delaying that issue. but it was talked about and not too much came of it.

i gave into a urge after this. i probably should have told my therapist today about it, but oh well.

my family therapy session went ok. basically we talked about going home and how scary that is for me and all that. i cried some more. then i had a pass with my family and brother. it was better than expected, as far as my mood. i restricted as usual. got a couple of pants which im not too sure about yet, it was a pretty difficult thing to do and im not sure if ill regret the decision later on down the road. it was the last time i saw my brother before he leaves for germany tomorrow.

so the rest of the day and basically all of today i was really anxious, awaiting the insurance company's decision. everyone made the reality of the situation very clear to me so i had an idea of what could happen.

i had a session with my therapist again today at 2 and this one was going ok, but then towards the end somehow we got on the topic of the power that i have and how i use it as an abusive power and how that could hurt other people and myself. i was in my head most of the session and at one point she asked me for some feed back and i told her i was in my head and she said, "i know that's why im asking you to come out of it." i don't know what i was thinking with the answer i gave her. obviously she could tell i was in my head and she wanted me to tell her what was going on up there. so i basically told her that i am afraid. and she asked of what. so i told her of what i would do with my power. and she said to who. and i told her...myself.

then the rest is some pretty heavy stuff, but then snack was called. saved by the bell! but of course, since i opened up a can of worms that couldn't just be let go, so my therapist asked me to come back after snack so we could follow up. so i went, ate snack and went back. long story short, i ended up staying in there for about another 45 minutes. i guess what happened in that extra time was necessary, but it still doesn't make anything easier for me. but she told me she is concerned for me and that maybe i need her to be concerned about me. i forgot what i said to that but im pretty sure she replied with something like "well you cant control that," basically the usual response.

then we had group. and guess what? the girl that usually runs group wasn't here today so my therapist filled in. a whole 3 hours with my therapist today. good thing i like her.

dinner was immensely hard today and this was one of those times where once again i seriously considered not eating snack or anything after dinner from now on. of course the fact that one of the girls didn't finish her dinner and then sat with her ensure and didn't replace, didn't help anything. i had a strong urge to purger since last time i had this meal and felt the same way after i did, but i didnt this time. but at least i did accomplish my treatment goal for today of writing my aunt a little letter about how her letter was pretty unhelpful. i had one of the CRCs read it and she agreed that i went about it in a very respectable manner and that i said just enough to make my point when i could have said sooo much more.

so, insurance never got back to my team today, so im here for at least tonight. i guess i'll have to sit with this anxiety for a bit longer before i can find out what is going to happen with my life. all i know is im scared shitless.

"It is possible to move a mountain by carrying away small stones." --Chinese Proverb

A good mood?

2009-09-12T20:04:00.000-07:00

so this is the fourth day in a row that ive been in a fairly good mood which is a very odd and uncomfortable thing for me. i keep reaching for something negative to get mad at so i can be in a crappy mood. its whats familiar to me and to not feel that way is very confusing and feels wrong. i know people are probably thinking, "why would you want to purposely make yourself feel bad?" but the fact is i strive on stress and negativity. i know how convoluted my thinking is, but its how i think. don't judge.

there hasnt really been anything bad that has happened lately, except the fact that my aunt sent me a rather very unhelpful letter. ive thought about the letter a lot and i even spent time in therapy discussing it and practicing how i would talk to her about it--which i will probably never do--and basically what i came up with was this, "i know that you care about me and that you are trying to support me and thats why you wrote the letter. however, i felt that my eating disorder was only understood as being completely about vanity and not feeling as though im 'thin' enough and so i 'starve myself to death' so i can be thin and be the envy of those around me. though wanting to be thin is a part of it, my eating disorder is much more than that. it is about years and years of supressed feelings and issues that i have not dealt with which have now manifested themselves as an eating disorder. i really do appreciate you trying to help me, i felt like i was being preached to, when what i really need is just to know that people are there for me if i need them." so the general idea of the letter was basicallly about vanity and i just felt like i was being called vain, which is really not the case as i just said. i think its important though to quote one line that was EXTREMELY unhelpful: "so my recommendation for you, from me, from Dr.Judy--let it be known that she is not actually a doctor, this is just sarcasm--is that you should maintain a weight of about 112-115 lbs. anything other than that i will find unacceptable. for anyone who ever talks to anyone that they know has an eating disorder, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, do not tell them how much they should weigh.

yesterday i had a rather good therapy session where i was able to talk more about how convoluted, distorted and twisted my thinking is. this doesnt just go for how i view myself and others physcially, but just my thinking in general. at the end of the session my therapist and i somehow ended up having a heart to heart. she said once again that i am a truly great person to get to know, and that she isnt just saying that because she is a therapist (i thought that comment i made to her last time was never going to be alluded to. i was wrong). i didnt really say too much here because i really didnt know what to say. i just kept looking down then at her every now and again. she then asked if that was difficult to hear and i told her it was and that i still dont really believe it and that its hard to not look at her out of the role of a therapist. and she then said that the truth is that she likes being with me. then she covered her mouth and laughed and said i shouldnt have said that. i cant really describe what i felt in that moment. obviously it felt good to hear, especially because i do feel a connection with her and really do like talking to her because she is the one person i can tell anything to without being judged and that is a truly amazing thing to experience. then she continued on saying, "well it is true. and it doesnt happen with everyone." once again it was really hard to believe this so i told her that and then said its just really hard to not look at all this just being said because she is a therapist and thats the only reason she finds me interesting. to this she said, "well i am a person too with feelings and you dont have much control over how i experience our time together." then we just talked a little and the session ended with her saying that she hopes that pending insurance stuff, that we have at least a week or two more together. i became really somber and genuinely sad at this point. i sort of felt a rush of emotion come over me and tears almost came to my eyes, but i didnt want her to know how much i really dont want to end therapy with her. i began thinking about the new prospective therapist i have lined up and how therapy wont be the same and how much i appreciate my therapist now. i dont know that i can ever express that appreciation and sentiment fully. im pretty sure she sense my emotions--shes good at that since it is her job--and she asked if i was alright. i said yea, and then the session ended because she had to run the next group.

before i went in that group i saw one of the girls making a sign for a new person coming in. it was 2 o'clock so it was odd that a sign was being made then since new admits always come in at 10 in the morning and rarely on a friday. i saw the name and then recongnized it immediately and the CRC said that i knew her. i knew who it was and it was a girl who had just left here about a month and a half ago. that pretty much bummed me out. it sucks so much to hear about people who arent doing well and then especially to have someone come back that was here with me before. it struck me later when i was thinking how i always hope so much for other people and want them to do well, yet i dont give a shit about me, at all. and im fine with that. i WANT everyone else to do well and recover, and i want to suffer. i have no real desire to end my suffering with my ED, at least not the way everyone else wants me to.

i applied for a pass yesterday before rounds and also for 18+ walks. after lunch i got the request back and my team wrote: "you are approved for dinner/snack pass tonight but we cannot approve you for anymore priviledges until you demonstrate 100% MP compliance on passes and until you completely stop exercising." so basically that means i wont be getting anymore privileges while here. my therapist asked me about what they wrote and i told her exactly that. she sort of chuckled and said alright then and that they decided that they werent just going to give me privileges but actually make me work for them. perhaps if i cared enough about the privileges then i would do what they say i need to do to get them, but i dont, so thats that.

so i went on pass last night with my best friend and we went to dinner and then the mall and had snack there. as always i restricted. we went to chili's. no need to know what i restricted, not really much different than normal, except that i think this time i got my third starch, so that was an improvement at least. BUT snack sort of ruined it all because i got a small mint chocolate chip ice cream, which was definitely not near the caloric value of my evening snack. i went to CVS to see if they had any yummy ensure i could add on, but they didnt have any different flavors than they have here so i decided to not to that. but its the thought that counts!

i had a lot of fun on my pass last night. i made out with some shirts and a couple other things ;) i laughed a lot. talked a lot. got lost on the way back here on some scary ass road. but i had a great time. i think ive honestly had some of the most fun times ever on these passes with my dear, dear friends. i havent been able to do that in a long time since my ED took over and being with friends, and then enjoying myself with them was essentially impossible. but still, this, dear i say it, happiness, is something that is very unfamiliar and uncomfortable to me. looking back at it now i feel guilty for having a good time and am and mad that i wasnt unhappy. im addicted to unhappiness and negativity. once again, anything other than those emotions just feels wrong to me.

today was nothing special. we had an outing to TGIF which was rather stressful for me. picking out my item wasnt too bad, but once again i had to get something that would be somewhat equivalent to chips, so i got fries, but at least this time i was able to get sweet potato fries, so it wasnt AS bad. the drink i ordered was not at all what i expected and the dessert was a whole different issue. i kept asking the CRC how much i should drink of my drink, how much i should eat of my fries and how much of the two scoops of ice cream that i ended up getting, that i should eat. i told her how i was really paranoid and freaking out about this and she said that its fine but she much rather have me deciding how much i should be eating, on my own. though i probably only needed to eat one scoop of ice cream to be equivalent to a normal dessert at lunch, i decided to eat both because everyone else got way higher calorie desserts so i felt like i would get in trouble for restricting if i didnt eat it all. it sucked, a lot. and i felt really guilty and wasnt really able to enjoy any of the food, as usual. but i did ask the nurse how long till i get in my range and she told me probably 4-5 days, SOOO at least it will only get me there faster and then my meal plan can start going down! thank the lord!

instead of a quote, i have a link that i think you should check out. its from a book im reading that my grandmother got me. it talks about the pain-body, something that i feel i truly have and helps explain a possible theory as to why i, and other people, thrive on negativity.

Long weekend update

2009-09-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

so the long weekend pretty much dragged here, but i guess that was to be expected. i didn't have anything on saturday as far as passes so that day was by far, the most boring. but on sunday there was an outing to johnny rockets for the girls on caf group and then i had an afternoon snack pass that day too.

i was not looking forward to the outing because johnny rockets pretty much sucks and i had just gone there on pass. and honestly, why would you take a bunch of girls with an eating disorder to a burger place? i looked at the menu before and decided to get the tuna salad sandwich, which is something i can get here at the hospital so that's another reason i was mad we went to johnny rockets. however, there was a huge challenge which was getting something that appropriate in place of the chips i usually get at lunch. my options were pretty much french fries or onion rings, neither of which i was enthused about at all--also needed some more vegetable because the one piece of lettuce on the sandwich was not cutting it for the vegetable exchange. i talked to the staff to see if either of those would be acceptable and after talking to one of the girls i decided onion rings were less scary for some reason. it also helped that i wasn't the only one eating them because another girl who gets chips at lunch split the order with me. i also had to get a caloric beverage, so i got orange soda. i didn't know i only had to drink 8oz though so i ended up drinking 16 probably before i noticed that no one else was drinking more. for dessert we all went to mrs.fields and i got a sugar cookie with sprinkles. i was feeling pretty awful about the onion rings, so i knew pass was going to be extremely hard because of that and because of the fact that the outing and my pass were on the same day. the outing was supposed to be on saturday so i planned my pass for sunday so they WOULDNT be on the same day, but when the outing got moved, that kind of put a wrench in my plans. also, the person i was going with i knew would make my pass difficult and the bad body image intensified by wearing a risk shirt wasn't helping.

as soon as i got back to the hospital my ride was here to leave for pass so i left right away. we went to harvard square, walked around a bit, he got lunch and i contemplated whether i wanted to eat or not. i knew i should though because last time i went with him i didn't at all. my team would be mad, and i was already in the shitter with them and then id have to report back to one of my really supportive friends that i didn't eat and i just couldn't do that. since it was afternoon snack i settled on a smoothie...definitely still restricted since it was 14oz and fat free and my usual snack here is one cheese stick, 4oz of juice and 8oz of ensure. but at least i ate something this time! baby steps, right?

monday was ok. i had another pass planned with my parents for lunch. i was once again having bad body image again but i forced myself to wear a risk shirt again. i was in a crappy mood from the body image so i wasn't the most pleasant on pass. we went to this place called "fresh city" and i got vegetable and tofu stir fry over brown rice with teriyaki sauce. of course i restricted again--i didn't get my caloric beverage, my dessert and im not sure if i ate enough rice. i was feeling reallly full for some reason from breakfast so lunch was really hard even with all that restricting. snack was hard too that day and dinner was incredibly hard also. im not sure why my body was being so difficult.

i was feeling really awful that night and i was seriously contemplating stopping eating. so i went up to the nurse and asked her what would happen if i said i wasn't going to eat anymore. she said they would probably evaluate me for safety and then probably discharge me if i really was going to refuse to eat. i REALLY wanted to do this, but then i decided once again that i couldn't face that friend i have here if i did that AND if insurance didn't approve me for more time here i'd be going home anyway so i could wait another day. also, that friend was going to be leaving on wednesday so i could wait till then too if insurance did approve me.

yesterday was alright. i was anxious all day for my insurance review. turns out they were able to get me another week in residential and they made it quite clear that they want me to go on partial too, but i guess the insurance company said they would review again next tuesday. im not sure if they'll ask for more time in residential or just for partial. it depends if im in my range or not. so i guess that was good, well its probably for the best anyway.

i had family therapy yesterday as well as individual therapy. both went ok i guess. i also met with the psychologist that does body image work with the girls here. it was semi-helpful but body image isn't exactly something that changes to easily, i so still really doubt.

today was pretty good as far as mood goes. for some reason i wasn't thinking too negatively, which is always good. i had another therapy session which i say was ok, but my therapist says was good, so i guess it was good. i just felt like i talked about something completely different from the normal so that was odd.

there were a couple of jarring incidences on the unit today. well, yesterday i was in one of the bathrooms and i smelt vomit and i saw in the sink that what looked like reminisce of vomit was there and also on the rim of the toilet. i alerted one of the nurses just so she could be aware. this morning at the end of treatment planning that same nurse made an announcement that the cleaning lady found vomit in one of the trashcan on the unit. she passed around papers so that we could write our name down on the paper and if we were guilty or not. if no one confessed then we would all be on bathroom/shower supervision again--not a big deal to me since i am back on it again. then later on, i was sitting in a chair in front of the nurses station and i smelt something like vomit. so i looked around the chair and then finally behind it, and sure enough there was vomit behind the chair! i told the nurse and she had it cleaned up by the cleaning lady--tough job. the girl who was purging came forward. it was actually one of my roommates too. how ironic that we both got caught for purging?

sadly, one of the girls who i got really close to, especially in the last few days over the long weekend, left today--about 45 mins ago. im very sad to see her go, but im really hopeful for her. she is the smartest 15 year old i have ever met. she has already achieved so much and i know she will only continue to do great things. she often feels like a disappointment for coming back to treatment for a second time because her parents expected her to be cured after the first time. but unfortunately, this illness does not work like that at all. she is just such an amazing person and she has been a enormous source of support for me. it was really sad to see her go, but i am so happy for her, for all that she will achieve. but i cant deny the fact that it will be hard to cope here without her and without her support and encouragement. she would never let me get down on myself, push me to challenge myself, and help me think more positively.

in the past week about 10 girls have left the unit and a few new girls have come in and we are supposed to be getting one tomorrow. there has been a huge shift in the community. there is only one girl here now who has been here longer than me so it feels odd to still be here. people that came here after me and have been with me for most of this journey are now gone. i don't want to be here anymore and to have all those who were here to experience so much with me makes it that much harder to still have to be here. and to think that i have at least another week in residential and 2-3 weeks on partial only serves to sadden me more. these are certainly hard times.

i don't feel like i am close to anyone here anymore or that i will get close to anyone in the time i have left. everyday is still incredibly hard and life after treatment still isn't looking up.

"You don't have to act crazy anymore. We all know you were good at that. Now retire my dear from all that hard work you do. Of bringing pain to your sweet eyes and heart." --Hafiz

IMPORTANT updates

2009-09-04T20:20:00.000-07:00

A LOT has happened in the past few days. it all started the other day when my therapist switched the time she was meeting with me at from 4pm to 11am. she said we needed to talk about some decisions we are going to have to make. when she took me in she talked to me about how im using treatment here and such and that on tuesday, there is a review for insurance. basically, insurance doesn't want to pay for me to be here in residential anymore so we needed to set up a plan as to what we were going to do. should my team appeal to keep me here for a couple more weeks--since im not in my range--or should they just step me down to partial here or at butler, or do i not want to do partial. this was quite a shocker and not a decision i thought i would have to make yet, since im not even in my range yet and you usually don't even think about partial until you are in your range and on a maintenance meal plan.

my therapist sort of made it seem like i was being kicked out though because she talked about my passes and how i don't really use them to help my treatment so it seemed like she was saying, if you aren't going to use the time you have in treatment right, then is it even worth it to appeal for you to get more time here? honestly i just want to go home, well not home, but leave here. i know im going back to my ED and i hate having to gain weight and eat ALL day. i have the highest meal plan of all the girls here, yet i am the biggest one and they're trying to get me to the biggest weight ive ever been in my entire life. that just doesn't make sense to do to some one with an ED. that's not very conducive to recovery.

but anyway,yesterday my therapist came up to me with my family therapist and the nurse on staff and told me she wanted to check-in. i knew this couldn't be anything good if it involved ALL of them. so we went in her office, quite cramped for four people, and she started off by saying, "so basically we wanted to talk to you because since last thursday your weight has plateaued and we want to know if there is anything we should do to help you with behaviors or whatever you might be struggling with with this." i pretty much knew what this could be attributed to...not getting all the food i need on pass, exercising, and the couple of purging episodes i had. i once again told them about the exercise and then i told them about the purging. i told them i did it on pass--but really i did it here when i got back from pass--and they asked if that was the only time. here i paused because i knew i was already in trouble with one time but if i admitted to doing it twice, then i knew what the "punishment" would be. but, i ended up telling them. so then the hard part came. decision time. "what can we do to help you with these struggles?" i love that. help. its not help. i don't want help. its just an annoyance.

first question: are we locking your room to help you with the exercise. no. ok, we are going to keep it locked now.
second question: honestly, what do we do about bathroom supervision? honestly, if my room is locked what i use to purge would be in there so i cant purge. what do you use? a toothbrush because i finger doesn't work. right, but you can go out on pass and buy a toothbrush and put it in your pocket so we wouldn't find it when we check your purse. ok, so why bother asking me then if you aren't going to listen to what i have to say. it's not that we aren't listening, alyssa, we just want to help you; were putting you back on bathroom supervision at least through the long weekend then we'll reevaluate tuesday.
third question: so what do you want to do about the pass. i don't care--staring at the floor now, not even giving a shit as to what will happen. do you want us to make a decision? i don't care, whatever. ok well why don't we keep the pass for now.

great. awesome. i cried, of course. i was angry, of course. but not so much that they took the privileges away, that i really don't care that much about. its the whole idea that i don't want to be helped because i think its pointless and the fact that they STILL keep pushing and caring really pisses me off. this is how i always work when people start to care. i don't want any of it. there is a lot more to it. but that is the basic premise. my team knows how i feel so they get that this is the same dynamic that plays out with my parents, which they find to be very "interesting" since it is now happening with them.

so that made yesterday kinda of suck, EXCEPT for my pass. i was pretty pissed and was just wanting to do anything to piss my team off, so i decided that i was going to walk to the bus stop instead of taking the shuttle. when christie got here we dilly dallied for a bit before we left, took a couple of shots of vodka--OOPS! AGAINST THE RULES--and then began our 20 min walk. i had a bad feeling that one of the CRCs would be on break and would see me, but i didn't give a shit. i knew what i was doing and i was doing it for a reason. to get in trouble in hopes that my team would really get through my actions, that I DONT GIVE A SHIT ANYMORE.

so of course, as i was walking out of the hospital entrance, i see a car and look in side and it was one of the CRCs on duty. i just laughed and continued on. christie and i stopped at a park and swung on the swings for a bit and talked. then we decided to continue back on to the bus stop to where the dukin donuts and basking robins is. i checked my phone and there was a missed call from a restricted number and a voice mail...wonder who that could be?

so i listened to it and my suspicions were confirmed. the message: "hi alyssa, its the CRC from klarman. i was on break and, oops! i saw two girls walking to waverly place. do yourself a favor and do us a favor and take the shuttle when you come back." i tried calling them but couldn't get through so i continued on with the rest of my plan to get my snack.

it took me about 20 mins to decide what i wanted...this attracted the attention of some asian dude who said, "is it really that hard to pick ice cream?" to which i replied under my breath, "actually, when you have an eating disorder it IS that hard to pick ice cream." im not even going to go through the struggle i had over that but let me just summarize by saying there were many voices and things being yelled at me in my head, to which i compromised with in the end. i didn't eat all of my snack but that was because they switched our evening and afternoon snack yesterday, so i was paranoid about not eating the right things and the right amount.

christie and i just chilled for a bit then we went back to the shuttle stop and threw some rocks at the passing trains and waited for the shuttle to come get us. when i got back to the hospital i had to face the music. i came up with a good lie. that i thought it was ok to walk since it only took 20 mins and im on walk group and that is a 20 min walk so i thought it was fine. the CRC said "well that is walk GROUP, you are supervised." to which i replied, "well i went on a walk with my parents yesterday when they came to visit," and she said i shouldn't have but the nurse that said i could do that was right behind her and she said that she said i could. so the CRC said, "ok so you really thought it was ok to walk?" and i said ya, and she said, "well you are suppose to take the shuttle so take it next time" and i told her next time i would. settled.

SO, today. i had four meetings which is a lot. i met with my psychiatrist first, then my family therapist whom i did not talk to at all about my family, but just more about where i am with everything and my anger toward my team, then my therapist, which was a strange meeting, but she told my family therapist that it went well, so i guess it went well? and then i met again with my family therapist, but this time the meeting was triggered by a phone call put into her from my mom.

basically my mom called for a few things but the foremost thing was how she has noticed "marks" on my wrist. i knew this was bound to happen some time. so my family therapist wanted to know what i was ok with her telling my mom. i really don't want to talk to my parents about this. this, over all things, is NOT something they would ever understand. not many people can understand this behavior unless you use it. basically, we decided that she would call back and say that my team is aware of this and that it is something i have worked on a little in therapy but that its not something i am comfortable with discussing right now. as if i didn't have enough on my plate already. there is just A LOT going on and A LOT going through my head. this only added to it.

these days are incredibly stressful. im still finding way to get some exercise in, though the means are a bit more inconvenient now. but im fighting against this process as much as i can. the only thing i still value is the therapy, but if i want the therapy i HAVE to do the other part; there are some strings attached. hopefully insurance will kick me out tuesday so that i wont have to make much of a decision.

oh, just wanted to share something funny that happened in therapy. my therapist said, "alyssa, you truly are a fascinating person," to which i replied, "ya, to a psychologist." there was really no reply to that.

"Part of the problem with the word disabilities is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walked or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can't feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren't able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities." --Mr. Rogers

An unfortunate event

2009-09-01T20:09:00.000-07:00

the past couple of days have shown no change as far as my motivation and body image.

family therapy went better yesterday, but i still am reluctant towards the whole thing. bottom line is that im not ready to give up my anger. i feel like if i let it go then i'll forget, and so will everyone else, that i was so unhappy. i feel by letting the anger go that i am invalidating that feeling for myself. im so used to living with anger, i don't really know how to function any other way and at this point im not sure that id want to since it is comfortable and it is what i know. good emotions such as happiness just scare me to death. i don't know how to handle those emotions nor can i imagine a life where those emotions are part of my life. anger has been my comfort, besides me ED, the one thing i can fall back on to be there. in some ways it serves as an excuse for some of my actions and reactions, but most of all it serves as a reason to have my ED. if i let my anger go, then i feel like i'll be expected to let go of my ED too and im just not ready for that yet.

i put in a pass request for a dinner/snack pass with my parents and brother yesterday. i was really hoping they would deny me since i did so poorly on friday, but part of me knew they would give it to me since i was going to be with my parents and i did well with them before. i even wrote, "id be fine if you just give me dinner or snack if you think dinner/snack would be too hard. i know either way it's going to be difficult so...and if my family meeting goes poorly, i'm not going." so i tried to give them a reason not to approve me; i was almost begging them. but alas, they approved me for dinner/snack, and of course, my family meeting had to go ok. so there was no backing down.

we went to the rain forest cafe. i primarily went there because i heard it was a cool place and had never been, but also because it is a very distracting place which i thought might make things easier for me as far as getting out of my head was concerned. i already pretty much knew i was going to restrict, but not too badly. i only ended up not getting my third starch and a caloric beverage, i probably didn't have enough vegetables, but that's not a big deal.

i was very anxious about having to eat in front of my mom, dad, AND brother. i was totally beginning to zone out during the end of our family session because i was in my head thinking about having to eat and how awful i was going to feel. this feeling didn't go away during the car ride, once we got to the restaurant, while looking at the menus, while ordering, or while waiting for our food. surprisingly, ordering wasn't too difficult. i wasn't too worried about taste because i knew i wouldn't taste the meal anyway.

when the food came and everyone had their plate in front of them, only then did i feel semi-ok, but that was only because i was beginning to disconnect. the mechanical part of me took over and allowed me to eat. i ate slowly though of course and with some ED behaviors. i had a wrap, which is always particularly difficult for me to not eat without ED behaviors present. the way i eat a wrap is just incredibly EDed. my third starch actually conveniently came with my meal--potato chips--but i wouldn't eat them. there were a few reasons for this 1.) because i decided before i got there that i wasn't going to eat my third starch 2.) i cant remember the last time i ate chips in front of my mom and i would have felt like a fat pig for eating them, even if i only ate them for the sake of following my meal plan 3.) if i ate them, then that would mean i ate my entire meal and the only other person who didn't leave anything on their plate was my dad. to do the same thing would have meant i was like my dad, and my dad is rather large...i would not have been able to handle all that. but mostly, the whole eating them in front of my mom was the major issue for me that really was the deciding factor to not eat them, and the fact that she left basically half her meal uneaten.

after dinner we walked around the mall and shopped for a while. i got a shirt and some bermuda shorts. both fit me and i am comfortable in both. i was very reluctant to try on pants because im not sure if my size will stay the same and no sense in wasting money. i only tried on shirts that would hide my "refeeding belly." it was ok, but a rather depressing and anxiety provoking experience.

i was hoping i would get off the hook for snack, but alas, once again, my family remembered. we went to hagaan daas and all got some sort of ice cream-ish dessert--except my dad but that was fine, he doesn't really bother me too much with that stuff. it took me a really long time to decide what kind of ice cream i wanted--my ED was yelling at me a lot--or if i should restrict more and go with the sorbet, the smoothies, or even just a yogurt parfait--my ED was yelling at me about this too. somehow i decided to get cookies n' cream ice cream. i think i remembered how my mom used to get that kind for us a lot when we were younger so i decided based on that.

i ate it slowly--though i was the first one to get my snack, i finished it last, and quite a while after everyone else was done; ED. i hated eating this in front of my family too. i felt huge and embarrassed. it had been a long time since i last ate ice cream in front of them, not counting the other time on pass. when sat down in the car, feeling my stomach made me sick. i felt uncomfortably full, and then the idea came in my head to purge. the internal conflict began.

once i got back to the hospital, i talked to the CRC about how it went but all i could think about was purging. i was very anxious and really couldn't focus on the conversation. when it was time for bathrooms to open i got my stuff to clean my face and brush my teeth and went into the bathroom. i purged.

when it was time to fill out my pass return and i got to the question "did you purge?" i really didn't know what to say. i have always been very honest on my pass returns and i already had answered "yes" to "did you restrict?" i stared at the paper for a good five minutes and then decided to be honest. i replied with, "yes--a little." which was not a lie. at this point, i feel like my team knows where im at and doesn't really get affected when i write on my pass returns that i restrict so to add this too it didn't really seem like something that would phase them too much.

consequently though, i had rather bad body image from the moment i woke up and i was thinking about the night before and what i did. breakfast and lunch were ok. i felt full after both, but particularly after lunch this feeling of fullness was accompanied by even worse body image.

the rest of the day was rather uneventful. i had no meetings today, only groups.

dinner was fine as far as me eating goes...it generally is fine since i disconnect. however, the incident that occurred did not make dinner so easy towards the end.

a girl that i really respect made it pretty clear when there were 3 minutes left to dinner that she wasn't going to finish eating since she had half of her meal left. a couple of her friends tried to encourage her but she just kept joking, acting like nothing was wrong. they said to her that she was going to have to replace and she said she wasn't going to drink it--which she could refuse to do since she is not medically compromised. when time was up, she booked it out of there to call her therapist to see if she could leave, avoiding the whole replacing thing altogether.

myself and her two friends were rather upset by this especially after she was on warning today since she hadn't eaten much of anything all weekend during her stay on another unit AND since i saw her replacing for her lunch today. i told one of the girls that im worried about her and she replied that she thinks shes trying to get a head start on her ED. this was not a comforting thought at all.

then in post meal, when it was her turn to talk about her day she said how it went and how dinner when and her reason for not finishing was that this weekend on the other unit, she proved to herself that her body really doesn't need that much food. to hear that was EXTREMELY triggering and upsetting. this is a girl who i greatly respect and really held in high esteem. to see her basically fall apart after this weekend was just a huge blow. i looked up to her as a role model. there had been sooo many times where ive wanted to not eat, not finish meal, or not eat on passes, BUT i always--except on passes--ate or finished because i always worried what this girl would think or say. she has a tendency to give people the third degree for not finishing so for her to not finish and then continue to joke and not worry at all about how she was affecting anyone else was just a huge slap in the face.

mostly though i am just sad and worried for her. im worried because these are not good signs at all. im worried because she is the type of person who lets something get in her head and then she becomes overpowered by it; she cannot fight it. im worried because i really fear that she will go back to her ED once again. but most of all im sad. im sad because she is such a great, beautiful, smart, and compassionate girl who cannot see how much she is valued by others and cannot value her own life. im sad because she seems to have made the choice to go back to her ED

ever since last night the idea of purging has been in my head. after the incident at dinner, i decided once again to purge. once it was time for the bathrooms to be unlocked after dinner, i purged. im not sure yet if i plan on doing this after snack too. i don't think i will tell my therapist. i don't really know what im doing right now.

im still engaging in another ED behavior too. one that most people know about but one that i haven't been able to stop.

all i do know is that im fighting like hell to keep my ED and i am trying to make it clear to everyone that this is not over for me yet by any means.

"You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it."

A tough decision

2009-08-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

yesterday i went on my first outting since being here. the outing planner decided we were going to go to a crepe place in davis square. we printed out the menus before hand because it is almost impossible to go to a resturant with 12 girls with EDs and not spend at least an hour contemplating what to get. i was mostly worried about volume so i choose a crepe that would have a smaller volume but still fulfill my meal plan requirements. there were some simple rules for the outing: follow your meal plan--no restricting!--you could not make a "build your own" crepe, and you had to eat the whole crepe regardless of your meal plan. the idea behind the last one is that it is not considered normal eating to portion out your food at a restuarant and one of the main goals of being in a residential place is to learn how to be a more normal eater.

i had heard many horror stories about outings so i was a bit leary of how it was going to go or what i should expect. i knew who i should sit with--the more positive people who dont blatantly restrict and engage in obvious ED behavoirs at meals. so basically that meant there were three people to DEFINITELY NOT sit with. i ended up sitting with two positive people and our conversation wasnt to bad and our eating was all fairly normal so that part went well.

but of course, rules are always meant to be broken and the first person who ordered a crepe got a "build your own" crepe. the CRC was right there when she ordered and i said something too, but she still got the "build your own." her defense was "its basically the same thing" but obviously its not the same thing as some of the other crepes because then she would have just gotten a regular crepe. also, another girl just got turkey on her crepe, so no fat or vegetable--RESTRICTING! not surprisingly, these are the two people who are ALWAYS caught restricting on cafe and one of the almost always restricts on passes too, and ends up on warning the next day--at least when i restrict im still on projection :/ also, not surprisingly, the three people who you wouldnt want to sit with all sat together, so at least all their ED behavoirs were confined to one table so it didnt make it too bad for the rest of us.

for me, the outing was ok. i didnt really realize what i was doing when i was eating. i just ate. i had a nutella and strawberry crepe and a chocolate chip cookie for my desset, but i was unable to get chips so i had to have an extra 4oz of ensure at afternoon snack to make up for it. while i was eating the thoughts were blocked out though i know they were there because when i was back here and filling out my mood monitor, i began to hear the thoughts and feel the emotions i would have while eating if i didnt disconnect. i felt fat for eating what i did and i felt like everyone was looking at me wondering why i was even eating, especially a nutella and strawberry crepe AND a chocolate chip cookie. i felt like i had dessert for lunch and i felt incredibly guilty and awful about myself after this. like ive said before, its really hard to enjoy my food and even taste it because eating is so mechanical. i dont like to do it anymore. the only meaning food now holds for me is to gain weight because i eat so much of it here for that sole purpose.

since friday's pass and after the outing, i was having a hard time deciding if i should go on my pass today. i knew that if i went i would restrict if i even ate and i knew the only reason i wanted to go was for that reason--to be able to restrict and feel good about myself. but i also knew that if i did that my team would not be happy with me, especially since i ate nothing on my pass friday night, so to restrict or not eat again wouldnt really make my team to proud.

if i didnt go, then i know id obviously eat because id be here and if i want to get out of here sooner then staying here and eating would be a surer way of doing that. but, staying here and eating when i know i could be on pass restricting would only make eating that much harder, my body image much worse, and raise my anxiety.

i talked to a CRC about this last night and she said that i need practice; but i say, it's not really practice if im going to restrict, i dont need practice restricting, i know how to do that. the whole point of going on passes is to eat on your own, if i know im not going to do that, then why bother going. it will only prolong my stay here and get me in trouble with my team. i still wasnt sure when i went to bed last night what i was going to do so i talked to another CRC this morning. she basically told me that if i think its best to stay here because i wont eat if i go, then i probably should stay here.

i decided to stay here, but i was very anxious about making the decision, eating lunch, and now. like i said, knowing that i could have been out and restricted was a hard thought to deal with while eating lunch and it still isnt sitting well with me right now, nor do i expect it to get any easier and meal and snack times for the rest of the day.

im nervous to talk to two of my team memebers tomorrow and face them about friday night and to inform them why i didnt go today. i'll really need to have their approval or respect for not going today in order to feel ok about not going. i need them to tell me it was the right thing--i need the external validation. if they dont tell me either way, or say something like "well if you think it was the right thing for you, then you did the right thing" that will still leave me anxious about it, wondering if i did the right thing. but even if they do tell me that i did the right thing, i stil have my ED yelling at me that i did the wrong thing and that im stupid for not taking the chance to restrict. that voice is much stronger and louder than any other voice, my own or someone elses, so even if i hear what i want from others, it will still be nearly impossible to believe or accpet.

there isnt too much else that is going on here. yesterday felt like it went on forever and today is just blah.

i have family therapy again tomorrow so that should be interesting to see where my dad is at and what he has to say after he has had a few days to think things over.

im still incredibly ambivalent to this whole thing and am still on the negative side of the spectrum.

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

Nothing much to say

2009-08-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

this is something i wrote in media and culture group yesterday:

I'm so fucking sick of people focusing on people's bodies, shape, weight, appearance. It wears a person down; it causes so much pain, so much hurt. You lose yourself. You cannot live when you are constantly worrying about what others will think of you or where the next bite of food will show itself on your body. You cannot think when all you can think about is the next meal you'll have or if you'll even have one. you cannot breath when you are physically pushing your body to its limits. You cannot be when there is nothing more left to you--when you have become so devoid of all emotion, when you can no longer think for yourself, when your heart no longer beats.
I don't know how to say how I want people to see me. I have lost myself to this illness, to everything that has caused it. I am now the pain and anger I feel inside. I no longer care about myself, about what happens to me. None of it matters. I cannot take control of my life; I gave up that power a long time ago. I've given up, I've given in. I don't want to fight anymore. I don't want to try. None of it ever works. There is only disappoint to wipe out any glimmer of hope that may have still existed.
This world is not kind and most of all, not fair. I only wish that others can hold onto themselves in the way I have not been able to. No one should have to suffer this much. Life should not be this hard.

Family stuff has gotten worse and i honestly dont know what is going to happen with the relationship between my dad and I.

I am still feeling as unmotivated as ever--i hate my body, i hate eating, i hate being and doing nothing.

i talked to the dietician and found out my range--it is a weight i have never been at. the one thing i did not want was to come out of treatment larger than i have ever been in my life and that is exactly what the plan is. i wont be able to handle that.

i went on a pass last night and did not eat. i knew thats what i planned on doing because it would have been impossible for me to eat in front of the person i was with. some people i can muster up the strength and courage to do it, others it is impossible. also, the fact that i know i dont want to eat for myself does not make eating any easier.

ive made it pretty clear to my team how i feel but they continue to hold on to this hope for me, that my mind will change. it angers me that they still hope. i want them to stop hoping and let me go.

i feel like shit for being here for many reasons, but mainly because i am the negative voice of the community. i dont want to bring others down who really want to get better and most of all i dont want to waste people's time and money being in treatment if i dont intend to get better. i know there is someone else out there that really wants and deserves to get better. they should be here, not me.

"Tears stream, down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace"

A couple more passes and life

2009-08-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

ive had two passes since i last posted. one on monday night where i went to harvard square with my parents and one last night with my college roommate, maria.

i had applied for a dinner snack pass with my parents but since i had trouble saturday night i was only approved for a snack pass again. i was fairly nervous about this pass because anytime i spend with my parents is stressful for me so when i have to eat in front/with them, the situation is only more stressful. i knew this time i really didn't have much of a choice of whether to eat or not because i was with them. there option was still there to restrict though.

we went to urban outfitters and got a quilt and a couple pillows for my room, since ive been looking to redo my room for a long time now. after that, as i kept close watch on the time, we went to j.p.licks for snack. i don't know why i keep deciding to get ice cream for snack since it is a huge fear food for me. but anyway, we went there and my mom said, "go order what you want," and i immediately freaked and said, "are you not eating with me?!?!" and she said, "ice cream, are you kidding me? of course i am." this relieved me because if they weren't going to eat too then there was no way i would eat. but at the same time it was encouraging and nice to hear someone say something like about a huge fear food for me. it helped me realize, even if for a second, that ice cream shouldn't be considered a fear food, that it can be enjoyed once in a while without guilt. but even though i had that thought to hold on to for a second, i realized that ice cream is a fear food for so many more reasons than just the calories and its nutritional content; its also a fear food because of my behavior that is connected with it.

i ended up getting a medium--a very very large medium--cake batter ice cream. no restricting for me that time. i ate it, but i cant say i was really there for it. i just ate it mechanically, not able to enjoy it at all. all i could think was how i felt like a fat pig for eating that. i hated ordering it because all i could think of was how the workers must have been thinking that im fat enough already and why would i think its ok for me to eat ice cream to get even fatter. i felt like everyone who saw me with my ice cream too was thinking this. it was the most embarrassing thing ever. with all those thoughts going through my head it was impossible to be present with what i was doing.

as far as getting mad at my parents, i really didn't get mad at them that night like i usually do. it felt really weird to not get mad at them; so weird in fact that i was purposely reaching for things to try and get mad at them at. one time in particular my mom said something about how she got low-fat ice cream, but it wasn't said to me or very audibly. so i asked her what she had just said and she replied by saying nothing, but i knew what she said, so i pried and said, "wait, did you just say you got low-fat ice cream?" and she said, "yea, i had to for my stomach because low-fat is much gentler on it." generally if anyone else said this comment my ED would flip out and yell at me for being so fat and getting the full fat ice cream, but in this instance my rational mind was much stronger than my ED and i understood my mom didn't get low-fat because she was worried about the fat content in terms of weight, but she was worried about how it would affect her stomach since she has trouble with dairy. i couldn't get mad and that was aggravating. its sad to think that im so used to getting mad at my parents that when things go ok, i cant stand it. i cant stand the uncomfortable feeling that something going well causes me to feel. ive become so accustomed to feeling crappy, that when i don't feel that way i need to find a way to make myself feel that way so i can feel normal.

the ride back on the bus from harvard square was pretty silent. i was in my head. i felt awful for eating the ice cream, i was embarrassed, i wanted to purge, and i couldn't stand feeling my fat moving around on my body with every bump of the road. i was angry that i had eaten and i was angry my parents were probably on cloud nine seeing that i HAD eaten, and especially that i HAD eaten ice cream. its been so long since they've seen me eat anything like that at all. but i wish they knew that while they were happy, i was hating myself.

i had also applied for a dinner pass for the next day and whether i got it or not was dependent on how i did on the pass with my parents. i talked to my therapist and asked her if she was going to give the pass to me and after reviewing my pass return from the night before, she approved me for a dinner pass. she asked where i wanted to go, and i told her the place i want to go is a place she already said she doesn't really want me to go--the rainforest cafe. once again she said she just doesn't think it is a good place to be present during a meal. the only way to get used to eating is if i can be fully there for it. but i really wanted to go!

so maria came and got me and i was still debating on where to go--the rainforest cafe like i want, or johnny rockets which would be more meet my therapists wants. i knew too, that if i did go to the rainforest cafe that i would get a veggie burger and a water, both of which are off limits because that is restricting. so i decided to do what my therapist would want me to do and i decided to go to johnny rockets. i ended up getting a grilled chicken sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and mayo, but i did not get my third starch--which would have been fries--and i did not get a caloric beverage, instead i got water. so i still ended up restricting, and though i knew that would get me in trouble, i was able to justify it more because i didn't go to the place i really wanted to go to.

the rest of the pass was fine after the whole eating part and feeling really fat and awful for eating, and then eating in front of maria. we walked around the mall for a bit and went into yankee candle and smelt the whole store. After that we went across the street to a gigantic, two floor, barnes and noble so i could get a new journal. We left there, came back to this place, hung out for a bit, made some origami and put on some cool tattoos--thanks nicole <3

i had a good time, but i knew i didn't have a "successful" pass.

needless to say when i applied for walk group today i expected to get turned down during rounds, which of course i did due to my restricting.

today was rather uneventful. there was a little incident at cafe that involved one of the girls here and another one--obviously. i was the second one at the table and the girl that was already there seemed rather upset and i asked if it was ok if i sat near her and she said "yea that's fine, i just don't want to sit near XX." (i don't use names in this for privacy reasons, lol). so of course XX comes strolling along and scoots down the bench right next to her and she looks at XX and said, "um, XX, i really don't want to see you take small bites." just like that. so XX moved away, clearly upset over the comment and allowed others to sit in between them.

i felt pretty bad for XX because it was said in a rather blunt way that was probably not easy to take, and it doesn't help that XX is rather sensitive. BUT, XX does really need to stop that ED behavior. she has been here for several weeks and has not really improved on it at all, and once you are on cafe, actual EATING behaviors should be pretty minimal, but they clearly aren't with her. on the other hand, the comment had to be said because the other girl needed to advocate for herself and realize what was best for her in her treatment. it is not easy to be around others who are engaging in obvious ED behaviors when you are trying to work on yourself.

so that happened.

then i had therapy. that was interesting. i don't really feel that it was productive at all, but for some reason from the beginning i felt like my therapist was expecting me to bring something up, but i really didn't know what she was expecting. maybe it had to do with her asking me right from the beginning if there was something i wanted to bring up with her. i thought she meant my pass, so i talked about that, but i found out later that that was not what she was talking about.

there was an incident on monday where four of us girls, including me, were pulled aside and talked to by the nurse that was on and one of the CRCs. apparently there was a bit of some mean girl action going on and we were the culprits--parents had been calling complaining that their kids feel targeted. the group of us decided to bring it up in post-meal to try and get to the bottom of it and it turned out that the girls that felt this way were all made to feel that way by someone who wasn't in the room--there was only one girl who was on pass at that time so we knew who it was.

but today, when i had about five minutes left in therapy my therapist said, "well i guess i wanted to bring up how things are going in the milieu" and that was pretty vague so i didn't know exactly what she meant so i asked her and then i got a response that gave me a bit more direction and so i told her about the thing on monday because i was fairly certain she was talking about that. then she continued to tell me how it was discussed in rounds today and she made it seem like i was the only one who was talked about and that i was the main mean girl. i took extreme offense to this because there IS a click here, but i am not part of it. im like switzerland. im pretty damn neutral in this community. i am not a part of that 4 girl click, but then again im not really a part of the other group that there is. and that other group isn't really even a group. its just a hodge podge of girls who don't really have a certain place where they belong, but since they are not in the definite click they feel left out and like they are being bullied. like i said, im in the middle of these two groups, not really aligning with either one, so i was pretty upset that my therapist was bringing this up in therapy and essentially accusing me of being a mean girl.

i told her how i was aggravated and she told me that i should try and figure out more from other people what the deal is. but, without direction as to who to begin to question--because i thought it was all taken care of that night in post meal, but apparently not if it was being brought up in my therapy session--then i really didn't know what i was expected to do or accomplish with that. she encouraged me to talk to a staff member.

so lucky for me, snack was immediately following therapy. just the place i wanted to go to make myself feel even more amazing. the only good thing was that one staff member who i knew was in rounds was supervising snack so i asked to talk to her and i told her what happened and i asked if i was being talked about at the one instigating all this and such. she basically assured me that it wasn't that way, but she said she would talk to my therapist to clear up the air.

next was therapy group, and about five minutes into therapy group, i saw the staff member i talked to go into my therapists room. about ten minutes later, the staff member came out and told me to go in.

soooo we had a nice little chit chat in which my therapist told me she didn't mean to come off as accusatory and that she wanted to hear more of my side of things since we really didn't get a chance to talk about it much. i basically told her how i feel like there is definitely a click, but that i am not part of it. i told her im like switzerland, and that i too even feel sometimes i am not welcomed by that click. it was all talked out but i still feel now that i cant associate with any person without my actions or the people i hang out with being misconstrued as to, "oh shes hanging out with them so she must not like me." i like both "clicks" if you will and i try to spend equal time with both, and when there are conflicts between the two, i try and act like the peace keeper. its a pretty stressful situation to be in. to try and make everyone happy and be good to everyone, yet still for all that work end up getting caught up with the wrong people in the wrong situation and be labeled as the bad person. i try so hard to be fair to everyone and never say hurtful things. im not perfect so sometimes i slip in the moment, but i have started to apologize to people, which is BIG for me. when things like that happen, i feel like all the good i have done is discounted and makes me feel like crap again. i guess all i can really do is try to be even more vigilant and conscious of the group dynamic and try to not get myself in a situation where i am labeled the "mean girl" by association.

oh, p.s. i got a new roommate today. she's 21 and is quite unique. we shall see how this goes.

and with that, i'll leave with a short quote from the front of my new journal:

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." --Confucius

First pass

2009-08-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

yesterday was quite a stressful day. i was in my head basically all day thinking about my pass and the decision i had to make. to eat or not to eat: that was the question. i had gone over in my head what the pros and cons were for eating and there were obviously more pros than cons. however, not eating fed into my ED in a very big way and the satisfaction i would get out of not eating almost ousted all the pros that would have come from eating. i knew i did not want to eat, but in terms of treatment and getting out of here, not eating could possibly mess that up. if i didn't eat the possibility of being on warning the next day was much greater in which case a meal plan increase could be in order, and THAT i knew i could not handle. also, my team would find out and would probably take away my caf privilege and not give me any other passes, so that would be no good.

this whole week i have been in my head and really anxious and engaging in some behaviors that feed my ED. in therapy group one of the girls actually mentioned how she wanted to confront someone about something for a while now but wasn't sure how to do it. i had the slightest inkling that this could have to deal with me and i was right. in group she said, "im just really worried about you, alyssa. ive noticed youv'e been isolating a lot more and that you've been really negative over the past couple of weeks and i don't know if this is true or not but i heard you've been exercising," that made every one's head's turn, "and im just really worried because i miss you." basically i had nothing to say to that one. what could i say. the exercising was true but the other reason i had been so upset and isolating all week was something i did not want the girls to find out.

the group leader then spoke and said, "alyssa, i was just thinking about something you said in group earlier today; how the girl in the poem we read made the decision to save her life and you said that you have made a different decision. is that what you have been upset about?" and i told her basically, yes. she asked if i wanted to expand and i said i really didn't. at this point i was crying, which is hard enough for me to do ever, never mind in front of all the girls. so it basically came out that my ED is controlling me, that im really struggling with motivation and that i feel like i have no option but to go back to my ED. having that out in the open sucks, but i guess it feels a little better to not feel like im lying so much now to all the girls.

after that i was pretty upset and really just wanted to go into my room and cry, but yoga group was next and i knew that i should force myself to do that so i could ground myself, relax and not think for a while. all i really wanted to do was talk to my therapist though, which ironically, she came in for about an hour yesterday. i was going to ask for an emergency therapy session but then i decided just to do yoga and see how that worked.

it worked well.

during dinner and post-meal the anxiety came back. dinner was hard for a few reasons which made me really not want to eat snack on my pass.

7 o'clock rolled around and it was time for pass. i took the hospital shuttle to Waverly place and then from there took the Mass transit bus to Harvard station and went up to Harvard square. the bus ride was an extremely triggering experience because it brought up memories of riding the RIPTA to visit my caitlyn at RWU. i engaged in a lot of binging at RWU on those nights/days i spent there as well as some purging, but most recently i restricted and had to face many temptations and deal with constant intrusive thoughts from my ED, making my visits painful. having these memories made me even more anxious.

once at Harvard square i went to CVS first then to urban outfitters and just looked around. everything was way too expensive and i was not really feeling all that great about actually trying anything on. i did find a quilt that i think i want for my room so hopefully i can go back there with my parents and get that since we've been planning to redo my room for a long time now. anyway, i kept watching the time every few minutes seeing the clock creep closer to the time i would have to find a place to eat if i was going to. eventually i forced myself to leave and try and find j.p.licks, and ice cream place highly recommended by the girls.

after a while of searching i couldn't find the place and i decided just to go to Ben and Jerry's. i didn't want to get lost and i was running out of time to eat, and i knew i'd need to allow myself plenty of time for this task. i got myself in the line and ordered a small, half-baked frozen yogurt in a cup. i sat down and mechanically ate. i tried not to disconnect but i couldn't enjoy what i was doing. i honestly cant tell you what it tasted like because i was in a zone at that point. the fact that i was eating was very bothersome, and the fact that i was eating ICE CREAM was even more bothersome since i had cut ice cream out of my diet and if i did happen to eat it i would ALWAYS purge after. so needless to say, i took a huge risk. but i realized on the bus to go out that whether i decided to eat and apple or ice cream, i would still feel the same afterward. the fact was that i ATE, not what i ate.

after i finished i walked around and went to The Coup--Harvard bookstore--to fill the rest of my time. i "bought" three books--"girl, interrupted," "appetites," and "tipping point."

i returned to Harvard station around 8:45 to catch the bus back to Waverly and then took the shuttle from there back to the hospital. the same guy that picked me up when i went out brought me back and we had a nice little conversation, of which i obviously didn't start. he was nice, probably in his twenties, and talked to me like i was a normal person, though he clearly knows that the unit he dropped me off at is the EDU. it was nice to know that even though it seemed like my ED was a giant elephant in the van, life still went on and i had a normal conversation with a person i had never met or talked to before.

i would say my pass went ok. i really didn't enjoy it and having the responsibility to eat. every one says, "you should be proud of yourself!" but i really don't want praise for eating. i feel like crap about it and no amount of praise or affirmation from anyone will make me feel good about it.

i started "girl, interrupted" which was about a girl who stayed at McLean hospital for a year and a half in the adolescent unit, and finished it today, and i have already begun "appetites." i really liked "girl, interrupted" since i am staying at McLean, so i can really relate to a lot of the places she talks about and rules she mentions. just a little fyi, McLean is a pretty famous psychiatric hospital. Ray Charles, James Taylor, Robert Lowell, and Sylvia Plath all stayed here. there are a few pages that i folded to mark the places where i found quotes i liked or things i could really relate too. i'll end my blog with this today.

"Scar tissue had no character. It's not like skin. It doesn't show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It's like a slipcover. It shields and disguises what's beneath. That's why we grow it, we have something to hide."

"For many of us, the hospital was as much a refuge as it was a prison. Though we were cut off from the world and all the trouble we enjoyed stirring up out there, we were also cut off from the demands and expectations that had driven us crazy. What could be expected of us now that we were stowed away in a looney bin?
The hospital shielded us from all sorts of things. We'd tell the staff to refuse phone calls or visits from anyone we didn't want to talk to, including our parents.
'I'm too upset!' we'd wail, and we wouldn't have to talk to whoever it was.
As long as we were willing to be upset, we didn't have to talk to get jobs or go to school. We could weasel out of anything except eating and taking our medication.
In a strange way we were free. We'd reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose. Our privacy, our liberty, our dignity: All of this was gone and we were stripped down to the bare bones of our selves.
Naked, we needed protection, and the hospital protected us. Of course, the hospital had stripped us naked in the first place--but that just underscored its obligation to help us.
And the hospital fulfilled its obligation. Somebody in our families had to pay a good deal of money for that...if our families stopped paying, we stopped staying and were put naked into a world we didn't know how to live in anymore. Writing a check, dialing a telephone, opening a window, locking a door--these were just a few of the things we all forgot how to do."

a rather humorous one to end with:
"The hospital had an address, 115 Mill Street. This was to provide some cover if one of us were well enough to apply for a job while still incarcerated. It gave us about as much protection as 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would have.
'Let's see, nineteen years old, living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue--Hey! That's the White House!'
This was the sort of look we got from prospective employers, except not pleased.
In Massachusetts, 115 Mill Street is a famous address. Applying for a job, leasing an apartment, getting a driver's license: all problematic. The driver's license application even asked, Have you ever been hospitalized for mental illness? Oh no, I just loved Belmont so much i decided to move to 115 Mill Street."

Hopless

2009-08-21T19:17:00.000-07:00

things have not been easy recently by any means. there really is no other word to describe how i feel but hopeless.

after family therapy on monday, the fact that my family, specifically my dad, really might not have the capacity to change is something that is incredibly concerning for me. specifically with my dad, if he cannot admit, and own that he is imperfect and that those imperfections have affected me as much as they have, then i cannot see how i can let go of my anger. if i cannot let go of my anger then i will never be able to begin to heal.

i have also realized that the situation i am going back to when i leave is a worse situation than the one i was in when i left home for treatment. i will not be returning to school, but home; all of my friends will be at school so i will have no one; david will be in germany for the year--the one person who i felt sometimes understood me or at least validated my experiences; joel will be home, which only brings into my situation another relationship that is not helpful and causes me a lot of stress and anxiety; i will not have a job when i get home so i will have nothing to do all day; my parents and brother will be at work all day so i will be left alone; but mostly, nothing with my dad will have changed and that is something that NEEDS to change if i have any home for recovery.

when i talked to my psychiatrist about my situation i said that i feel like im basically screwed and she said, "well alyssa, you are screwed." that felt just great to hear. i was getting by on the thought that maybe all these thoughts were crazy and only made sense in my head and that my situation really isn't that bad, but hearing my psychiatrist say it really confirmed and made the screwed-ness of my situation real. i told her that it sucks hearing that from her and she said, "well isn't it better to know what your situation really is?" to which i said "yea, i guess so."

i had been doubting the possibility of recovery from the moment i came here since i didn't really come here out of my own free will or for my want of recovery. over the past couple of weeks, but especially since that meeting on tuesday, the possibility of recovery has essentially dwindled down to zero. i admitted today to my therapist that i have almost 100% decided to go back to my ED. i honestly feel like there is nothing left for me to do. if the underlying issues cannot be reconciled--most especially the family stuff that i would need people to own up to so i can begin to let go of my anger--then i have nothing else to turn to but my ED.

there does come a point when you have to realize that the people around you may not have the capacity to change. i realize this may be the situation with my family, and that probably is the situation with my dad. in that case i then have to turn back on myself who is already changing so much just with the insights from my individual therapy, and i have to ask myself to change again so that i can find other ways to deal with the CONSTANT disappointment i will experience with my family. i open up in family therapy, truly showing emotion and ripping myself apart to tell my family how i feel and the things that have been done to me to hurt and anger me, hoping that they will understand why i have so much anger and where things went wrong, but especially hoping that they will own their part in it all. but every time i do this i am constantly disappointed by the reaction i get from them. no one ever admits that they could have possibly done anything to make anyone this angry, especially me, leaving me to feel like my anger is unjustified and just popped out of thin air and that there is no actual cause, but that is just me and my anger and that i have to find ways to cope and manage it. once again i am asked to change and understand the limits of my family, while they get away with not understanding me or trying to change for me. i don't have any ways to effectively deal with this disappointment except my ED.

admitting what i did today was not easy, not only about my ED but also about my mindset as far as things with my family. seeing no progress made in family therapy on their part makes me seriously doubt whether any will ever be made. if i don't see any or get any sense of any brewing changes from therapy sessions before i leave here, a relapse seems my only option. i cannot wait forever for a change and even if they do eventually begin to change i know have the mindset of "too little to late." its really hard to describe the place i am at right now. it is not an easy place to be nor do i foresee an easy way out. the only solution i have is an incredibly harmful one.

since i got on cafe this week i am now eligible to apply for passes. i wasn't going to until next week because i was going to use the weekend outing with cafe group to gauge my readiness for a pass. since we are not going on an outing due to some technical difficulties with the programs credit card, i applied for a pass--two actually. i was only granted one pass for tomorrow, by myself. this was brought up in therapy after i revealed my state of mind and my therapist said, "well you have your first chance to restrict then..." and i told her i certainly know that and i have thought about it and am already really worried and anxious for it and she the said "well that urge is only going to get stronger come saturday; and you have made a decision..." and i said well not really yet. i told her that i would love to not eat but then again that will only keep me here longer because if i don't eat the likelihood of not making projection the next day is lowered. if i eat, which i don't want to, then that will help me stay on projection and get out of here faster to be with ED. this is honesty in its truest form and my therapist recognized and told me that. that i really have almost for certain, made the choice to go back to my ED is something i know will definitely harm me, but it provides a sense of false happiness. but a sense of false happiness is better than no happiness at all, even if it is a lie.

I need more time to find the real me...
to fly like the birds... to be set free.
Why couldn't I stop until I had died?
It was hate for myself hidden inside.

stinky day

2009-08-15T20:28:00.000-07:00

today i was on warning and when i saw that i was obviously happy because that means i did not make projection so i didn't gain as much weight as i was supposed to, but this is a double edged sword because whenever im on warning, even for one day, they ALWAYS increase my meal plan, so i began freaking out about that. sure enough the nutritionist aide called me in the kitchen and told me that i was just under making projection yesterday and again today so that's why i was on warning and that ill probably be on chair rest tomorrow. so i had to add 8oz of ensure on to my meal plan. i chose to do it at lunch. it went ok today.

the rest of the day was pretty laid back; since its a saturday, groups are pretty relaxed. we did tie-dye in the morning which was fun, yet stressful--don't ask me why something as simple as tie-dye stressed me out. and boy was it HOT out there. i got to tie-dye two shirts. tomorrow we will wash them out so i hope mine turn out ok!

today was a bit depressing for me in general though. today was the day of my family's annual clam bake. everyone from my moms side and most of the people from my dad's side come to my lakehouse and indulge in a feast of stuffies, clams, oysters, clam chowder, lobster, hamburgers, hot dogs, and lots and lots of dessert. there is tubing, boat rides, skiing, fishing, a big camp fire at night, and roasting marshmellows. a lot of my cousins end up sleeping over and we have a big breakfast in the morning usually. it's a good time all-around.

im not going to try and deny that if i were there i WOULD have been freaking out the whole time and would have been in my head all day. so it is probably a good thing i did not go. but its just the point that i cant be there, with my family. instead i am stuck in a treatment center for an ED. maybe it is better that i am here though. i would have felt isolated from my family as always, if i were there. i say it is a fun time all-around, but i didn't necessarily mean for as for all the other people that are there. i just like to be at my lakehouse and away from everything, but it definitely would have caused me a lot of stress and anxiety to be there.

not being able to go on the outing was a bit tough today too just because of the place they were going--the rainforest cafe. i have been wanting to go there ever since of the other girls went on a pass there and told me how cool it was, so to hear that was where they were going sucked. this is the 5th weekend ive been stuck here while everyone else goes on the outing. that itself is aggravating.

dinner tonight sucked, to be blunt. it was only me and 4 other girls. 3 of which i cannot stand and one who is fine, but did not eat her meal. that just made things perfect. having to sit next to someone who does not eat their meal while i have to eat a crap load of food at dinner and throughout the day--i think im on the highest meal plan of everyone here right now--just really did amazing things for my self-esteem. i began comparing myself and counting calories. i got very in my head with the negative thoughts and basically felt like shit after that. as a result, for snack, i gave into my ED and choose the lowest calorie option, even though the calorie difference between what i wanted and what i got is 10 cals per serving. but that is saving calories so i did it. i also did this at lunch too.

i thought getting ice cream would be easier as far as volume goes since i added my ensure at lunch today than getting a normal dessert. but then when i found out that everyone else was getting the little rice krispies and only one--90 cals--i decided to switch to the rice krispie which not only has less calories, but way less fat calories.

so that sucked that i gave in twice with my ED today and i also did two really bad things that are against the rules. i repeated the same behavior that got me in trouble with staff earlier this week and another one. i guess today was a rather bad day overall.

"I have accepted fear as a part of life--specifically fear of change...I have gone on despite the pounding in the heart that says: 'turn back.'" --Erica Jong

Distortion

2009-08-14T20:17:00.000-07:00

yesterday started out with a meeting bright and early with my psychiatrist who is pretty much told for telling you like it is and is very up front. i don't generally like my meetings with her because she kinda just puts me in a bad mood and makes me feel dumb sometimes. yesterday's meeting was no exception.

basically from talking to her she pretty much understood that with my mindset right now that i probably wont do to well once i get out of here. to put it in her words, "you're basically setting yourself up for relapse, alyssa." and i was like "yea i kind of feel that way." and she replies, "well so long as we both are on the same page." very blunt. its one thing to think these things in your head but to actually have it confirmed and my my psychiatrist no less, does not make me feel any better. it essentially dashes any sense of hope i did have. so after that i was feeling pretty crappy. i feel bad about being here if i really am just setting myself up for relapse--im wasting countless peoples' time and money as well as taking up a spot for someone that may really want to be here and definitely wants recovery.

in the meeting dr.d--the psychiatrist--was trying to get me to own my recovery and being here. she has asked me several times, "so why don't you just sign yourself out?" and i always tell her, that i really don't have that option and shes like, "but you do. you are the one who is making yourself eat. you are the one who puts every calorie in your body that makes you gain weight." i continue to say that i only do that because im here and i have to do it, but she always says, that i don't have to do anything, that i choose to do it. i guess i really don't want to own this, but at the same time i cant just sign myself out. the main reason being that if i did that and i do need treatment in the future, insurance wont pay for it. not to mention that my family would not allow such a thing to happen and god knows if they would even let me live at home if i did that. so really, dr.d, signing myself out is NOT an option. the only one i really have is to just stay here and do what i need to do to get out. i don't mind the therapy part, but the weight gain part is just unbearable.

after that, i was in a bad place. lots of negative thoughts in my head and i just kind of felt like i was betraying everyone else that is here for recovery. i don't think anyone should be here if they don't want recovery and that they are selfish for staying here if they don't want recovery. isn't that exactly what im doing? so this is what is going on in my head and i really hope its just a phase and that i still can try and find the motivation to want to get better and the hope that recovery is possible, but after being here for five weeks, i feel like i should already have found that.

a new girl also came yesterday, so lunch was a pretty anxiety provoking, and therefore, difficult meal for me. whenever someone new comes i always get worried about what types of new ED behaviors they will bring and how those will affect me. my biggest worry is that the new person will be someone who just refuses to eat their food, which is never and easy thing to have to deal with when i am forced to eat massive amounts of food. it makes me feel awful about myself, even worse than i already do. luckily, this girl is very nice and easy to talk to AND she is from RI! so that was pretty cool. i was able to talk to her during the meal a bit and i explained some stuff about after meal proceedings, so that made her not so scary and me not so anxious any more.

the rest of yesterday was alright.

however, today there were two instances that caused me a bit of aggravation.

my family therapist came up to me and asked if we could meet, which i found rather odd because we only meet once a week to discuss my agenda for family therapy and then once for the actual family therapy meeting, and we already had the pre-therapy meeting. she took me outside and told me how my dad called her, so immediately i was like OH GREAT. apparently my parents were worried because they are finding me to be more "into myself." not so much like im all about me or w/e, but that im being distant and not talking much. personally, i think that is nothing different than how i normally am with them. so my therapist tried to explain how they were asking if that is normal for people who come here, to seem more withdrawn, and if im ok, and what they are supposed to say to me and such.

this irritated me for a number of reasons:
1. if we are trying to work on better communication, why wouldn't my father just ask me outright about how im doing rather than calling the family therapist--might i add this is not the first time he has called her/emailed her asking stuff about me. AND if he is worried that asking me outright would irritate me, then he probably shouldn't be asking in the first place, and he CERTAINLY shouldn't go behind my back and ask the therapist for the information.

2. is it not obvious from where i am that i am going to be a bit more withdrawn, distant and have nothing to say??? this is just stupidity on their part. i have told them numerous times that i live the same thing everyday, and that when they come they shouldn't expect me to talk much because i do not want to talk about life here during the little bit of free time that i do have. i live this shit daily, and to have to talk about it to people ON TOP of that is just not something i want to do.

3. being withdrawn and distant IS how i am with them and it has always been that way, so im not sure why being in a hospital makes that seem out of the norm to them. this behavior/mood is no different than normal, but all of the sudden since im in treatment for an ED it becomes a concern, but never before.

4. why is my dad the one to always be calling and trying to figure stuff out about me through the family therapist. he never cared before or at least never cared to show it before so why the hell is he deciding now that he wants to step in and make an effort. it kind of just proves that something bad like this had to happen before he realizes how damaging his lack of involvement and caring was.

so as if all that and all those thoughts weren't aggravating enough, i got my application to get on cafe group back. i knew i didn't get cafe group because my place was still set up in the kitchen for lunch but getting the application would have the reason on it from my team as to why i did not get it. it read:
"alyssa, you are not yet weight-eligible. Potentially in one more week. re-apply next week.
love, your team"

this set off quite a reaction in me. let me explain about cafe first. to get cafe group you have to be 80% of your range. i applied a couple times last week and was told i was not weight eligible. so the second time i applied i asked them to tell me when they think i would be weight eligible so that i could re-apply then rather than continuing to apply and being told no. so on that application they told me to apply again friday--today. which i did and to only find out that once again i am not eligible but that only POTENTIALLY in a week would i be.

now, WHY THE FUCK WOULD THEY TELL ME TO HAVE RE-APPLIED TODAY IF THEY WERE JUST GOING TO SAY THAT MAYBE, ONLY, POTENTIALLY WOULD I BE ELIGIBLE NEXT WEEK??? that would mean the time span from the first time i asked for a more specific date, to the next POTENTIAL time id be eligible would be like 2 weeks. no way can they tell me that they didn't have some inkling that i wouldn't be the weight i needed to today to get cafe. do they honestly enjoy torturing me. im so sick of applying and being told no. not to mention this is the 5th weekend i will be STUCK here because i cant go on the outing UNLESS im on cafe group. im sick of it. and someone please explain to me how the hell i am not at 80% when i got to 70% like 2.5 weeks ago AND have been on projection for everyone of those days except one??? i can see no possible way that im not at 80% unless my range is like 140 pounds, in which case i would shoot my entire team and i would most definitely sign myself out. so needless to say, all those thoughts caused me to start to mistrust my team.

if i think logically though, i know that i was doing some major catastrophizing with the range being 140. also, my team ISN'T trying to make me anything over my ideal body weight, so i just need to trust that. but still, i want to talk to the dietitian and get some concrete numbers out of her.

i feel like i am at a normal weight and when i look at myself i look huge. however, i know this is just my EXTREMELY distorted body image. this was confirmed when one of the girls here who i really respect and has been in numerous treatments--and has been in this one for about 15 weeks, she knows her stuff--said that, not to be mean, she and many of the other girls honestly didn't think that i was going to get cafe because i don't look like im at 80% yet. they can see me clearly but i cannot see myself clearly, so i just have to use that and remember that it really is all in my head and that what i see is not at all what i really am.

after that i got more discouraged and angry at myself. how can my brain seriously be that fucked up. i look at people who are really close to, or are in their range and i truly believe with my whole heart that i look bigger than them. yet they look at me and see me as still pretty thin, but i look at myself and see nothing but huge. i know what i say probably seems like the most ridiculous thing that anyone has ever heard, but people don't understand that is my reality. when you have an ED, so absolutely believe and feel that you are larger than people who in reality larger than you. i look at those girls who are on cafe and think to myself "they look like they are anorexic skinny. how in gods name are they at least 80% but my huge ass self is not at 80%?" and of course i start thinking that my team is trying to sabotage me or that the scale is broken only when it weights me and reads much lower than my actual weight. all these yes, ridiculous and crazy thoughts follow, but these ARE the thoughts i have and i BELIEVE them with every part of me.

somehow after all that being in my head, i cooled down. i talked about my issues in therapy group and the girls helped me realize just how distorted my body image is, but that doesn't mean i believe them. but to just be able to recognize that my thinking IS incredibly distorted helped me to calm down.

i ate my snack, went to some groups, ate my dinner, went to post meal, and now im here. i just want to add quickly that i only felt very full after breakfast today and that i have been at an ok fullness for the rest of the day after that. that could be due to food choices or it could be due to my body getting used to ALL the food i am eating. in which case i will start to worry and freak out about the fact that my body is getting comfortable with the thousands of calories i am taking in on a daily basis. that is NOT ok.

however, once again i know the thought behind me saying that its not ok and that is that i am constantly thinking about going back to my ED and that having a body that is used to sooo much food and have a stomach that is stretched out to accommodate a lot of food will take A LOT of hard work to get used to eating next to nothing. so once again, not a good thought to have and it pretty much shows the negativity and ambivalence i feel around this whole recovery thing. but i guess, once again, it is good that i can at least recognize where that thought is coming from. though it is a hard thing to admit and and very honest thing to say, my ED is still really strong, it and it pretty obvious from my thoughts that im not so willing to give it up just yet.

p.s. i added the "love" from the message from my team for sarcastic affect.

"If you live your life with a shield up, even the good things in life will pass you by."

I want to believe

2009-08-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

I want to share with everyone an activity that we did in drama group today. the instructions were to write to ourselves from another voice--basically we are writing to ourselves now from a different age, a younger self.

i like what i wrote to myself, yet i can't believe it. i wish i could...

you're not me. there is no way that you and i are the same person. No way that time could have changed me that much to become what you are today.
I mean sure, i hope one day to be as successful as you are and were in school, but that's about the only positive quality you, or should i say I, would believe is something i want to have. but you have nothing else. i dont want to grow up to be miserable like you, and it scares me to see that that is exactly my fate.
unless i cant do something about it now to change the course of events. obviously it's too late for you now to go back and change whatever things happened to make you end up this way, but from my vantage point, not so much retrospect as prospect, i can make the appropriate decisions to avoid becoming you.
im sure when things were happening for you, you never thought of the reprocussions and how each experience you had would affect you, ultimately making you who you are. but seeing you now makes me see that everything DID have enormous reprocussions and power in making you the person you are today. a person that i CANNOT reconcile myself with as ME.
i dont want to be like you, and since you and i are one in the same, there is no way you can want to be you, nor can you possibly be happy with what you are. those life changing events that caused this transformation have not yet happened to me and look at me. im still happy and carefree; able to enjoy and feel life.
i know it's hard because those things did happen to you. but if you look at me, at your former self, and see my happiness, then you MUST realize that you ARE capable of feeling the way you once did, because i feel that way now. you just need to believe and work hard to reconcile yourself with your past and gain a valuable insight about yourself from it. it's hard work, but if you commit yourself you can do it. you can regain the spirit you once had. The spirit that I still have. The spirit that is truly you.

i really hope one day i can and will believe this, but right now it just seems too hard to imagine a life that is free from my ED and one filled with happiness. there IS so much work to do and i dont know if im ready to do all the work that is required of me and if i am strong enough to do the work. i am trying to work toward at least some improvement and gaining insight into what has happened to me so that i can try and learn from the past, but a complete change just seems impossible.

"You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it." --Margaret Thatcher

Breaking the rules

2009-08-11T19:02:00.000-07:00

though the past few days have been ok as far as mood and such goes, i have still done a few very bad things which are definitely against the rules of being here and have seriously contemplated doing even more things that would be against the rules and cause my stay here to be much longer. of course im not going to incriminate myself and come right out and say what they are nor would i say these things in a public arena such as this blog. but just know with probably the worst thing i did, people saw, and staff found out.

therefore i am on 24 hour restriction which does not matter much since im not on caf and i don't get passes yet, but still.

a very triggering situation happened about a week ago with one of the girls here that put an idea in my head. this behavior which was triggered is something i have not done in a while and would never have done it had it not been put in my head again by what i saw. ever since then, the behavior has been on my mind and even though my days have been ok like i said, i still had the intense urge to partake in this behavior.

i knew i would only be disappointed if i did this and yet i knew if i didn't i would never be satisfied. however, i did do it, but as i say, i "half-assed it" so now i am left feeling unsatisfied still and with an even stronger urge to do it again, and the right way.

unfortunately a call was put into my therapist, and though i know i will have to talk to her about this, i still feel greatly ashamed and that she too will feel that way or think im horrible. this however is just me mind reading because i know she is a therapist and i present my feelings and experiences to her in a non-judgemental environment. BUT, she IS a member of my treatment team and she DOES control the privileges i get. so in a way, she does take on a parental roll, and therefore, i am even more reluctant to open up and tell her what i feel than i was before, if that's even possible.

so today hasn't been bad. it just had some tougher moments in it. and i did cry a couple times which is BIG for me. but im not mad at anyone. the right thing was done and that is good, though my feelings are still unresolved around the urges i feel. i don't know what i will do. i know i say i wont partake in this behavior again, but i can do it and easily get away with it, so knowing that makes the urge that much harder to deny and fight.

when i really think about why i did what i did, i can definitely pin-point one reason, but another reason is a bit harder to admit to. part of me things i am only doing this so that i will get in trouble with my team so that the process of getting on caf and getting passes takes me even longer, thus increasing the time i have to stay here. there is a certain safety and comfort in being here and i have become accustomed to that now and feel that i cannot return to the "real world" or the "outside" as it is commonly referred to here--which does not help a feeling of hope to be instilled in anyone that they can return to those places after being here, which i guess is kind of a "fake" world then? so if i do things that would cause me to get in trouble or delay the granting of privileges, then i can stay here longer and be protected from the real world and everything in it.

also the idea of defiance which is something that strongly drives my ED is one thing that is driving the urge to still want to continue this behavior. i KNOW its wrong and harmful and that it wont get me anywhere for treatment, which is precisely why i want to do it again. to do the wrong thing. to defy what is right. but in the end, as with my ED, though i am trying to defy those around me who want the best thing for me, i am really only hurting myself. but the gratification i get out of the behavior in the moment seems to outweigh the harm i do to myself, so i continue to partake in these behaviors.

anyway. as far as meals go:

breakfast was ok. i had much less volume today because i had my 2 fruits in the form of juice so that made it easier to finish with some time so that i could enjoy my coffee for once and not suck it down in the last minute.

lunch was ok too. nothing really challenging, but i still eat the wraps in my weird ED behavior way.

afternoon snack was ok. not hungry for it at all. but glad there were raisins today so that made the volume bit a tad easier.

dinner. where to begin. i was not hungry in the least for it and it was very overwhelming as far as volume. the food itself wasn't too challenging except i was expecting the meal to be vegetarian and when i lifted the lid i found there to be chicken in the mix--other people did get tofu; i guess you had to specify. but that was minor, while the VOLUME was not so minor. my whole freaking plate was fully of white rice and i just had no idea how to attack it. so of course i used some ED behaviors to ease that anxiety. i picked each type of vegetable out one at a time until all vegetables were gone and then i was left with rice and chicken. then after thatt i didn't have much time less so the behaviors became a little less present since the main priority then became finishing my meal on time. but i did have to rush a bit and as a result i was even fuller than i had expected i would be with a meal that was already large in volume.

evening snack didn't happen yet but i anticipate it will be difficult because of the sheer volume of food i have to eat. it is never easy. i am never hungry for it; as a matter of fact im usually still full from dinner. and i am ALWAYS full after.

on the bright side, my lovely college roommate and friend is coming to visit tonight! so hopefully i can be distracted from being full and try to work up an appetite with some talking!

there was a quote book on the unit the past few days with quotes girls have contributed and i wrote a bunch down in my journal. i figure ill finish each entry with one until i run out of the ones i wrote down. here goes!

"Your wings may be a little damages, but you can still fly. You can still touch the sky. You're hurt but you can still dream. You can still try. You might have to do things a little differently, but you can do them."

Some updates

2009-08-09T19:56:00.000-07:00

quick updates for today:

1. i was on warning today after 4 days of being on projection. i could have told anyone this was going to happen after my lovely stomach ache i got after lunch yesterday. i must confess though, i was happy i was on warning and not projection, a thought i know is from my ED.

2. because i was on warning, my meal plan went up AGAIN. so now i have an extra 4oz of ensure at afternoon snack along with what i already had and 12oz of carnation instant breakfast at evening snack along with what i already had. RIDICULOUS! they don't even give you a chance to see if maybe tomorrow i would have been on projection again.

3. LUNCH: basically everything was a "risk" food or had some element of a risk food to it. risk foods were: salt n vinegar chips, jelly on the PB sandwich, pineapple juice and ICE CREAM. the chips, jelly and juice were all minor though. ive been having chips and juice here for a while, just not THOSE kinds but the jelly was something i haven't had in a LONG time, but it wasn't a lot so it was ok. the ice cream was a rather big deal since i haven't had ice cream in a LONG time and the times i had had it before i cut it out of my diet, i ALWAYS purged after. needless to say, it was a big deal, but since it was only a little hoodsie it was manageable. the little hoodsie was a step, but it's the "real" ice cream i fear and that will be a big challenge.

4. the usual person who runs creativity group was not here this weekend so one of the therapists--my individual one--filled in. group still turned out really fun, but only because us girls thought of some great games to play. yea MAFIA!

5. for the 4th weekend in a row i had to stay here while the rest of the girls who are on caf got to go on an outing. there were only 4 of us here for dinner tonight...the four of us who are not on caf yet, but of course i am the one who has been here the longest out of all of us. hopefully i can get on caf this week--that is if i am weight eligible, i have to be 80% of ideal body weight--and go on the outing this coming weekend.

6. finished my sister's keeper today. that is the fourth book ive read while here. i also started the third book in the twilight series today, eclipse.

7. finished my cross stitch yesterday that i had originally planned to give to my parents for Christmas last year. its the biggest and most intense one ive done so far--15x9.

8. im having a smores pop tart for snack tonight. what?!?! i have not had one of those in a long time and would NEVER think of allowing myself to eat that under normal circumstances. of course im having this plus my two granolas and 12oz of CIB. oh the joys of weight gain.

9. tomorrow i am anticipating a tough therapy session because i think im am going to bring something up that occurred a long time ago that has really affected me in SO many ways. i had my mom bring me my diary from a long time ago so i could read what i wrote about. i think i am going to read some of these entries in therapy. i hope it can stir up some emotion within me because i know how important it is to connect with those feelings and really feel them.

i guess im ok other than that. ta ta for now!

Helpful changes and constant stuggles

2009-08-08T19:34:00.000-07:00

I had a couple of really bad days this week where i was in a horrible mood all day, very isolative, negative thoughts about body image and my weight kept repeating in my head, and by the end of these days, i had a tension head ache and i was incredibly tired. i knew the trigger for these bad days and i knew one definite thing i could do to possibly make these bad days a little better.

the common link: every morning when after i give my urine sample and get weighed, i take a shower. before i get in the shower, while im waiting for the water to heat up, i undress and look in the mirror. i body check. i see the physical differences from my body when i came here, and these differences have become especially pronounced over the past week and a half. so for the past 3 days, i have not body checked and what do you know? my mood had also noticeably improved.

when i, or anyone else for that matter, body checks, only negativity can come out of the situation. of course you don't look at the areas that maybe have not changed, but you focus on the parts you know have and therefore you are setting yourself up for disappointment right there. also in my situation, i KNOW that what i am going to see is going to be different and not something i am happy with, so why do i decided to scrutinize myself in the mirror and magnify that which i already know and thus magnify the negative feelings by body checking and confirming these things with a head on visual? i have also tried to decrease body checking by body shaping, which is when you touch areas on your body to feel how they have changed. this is something i would do throughout the day in groups or wherever because it is less noticable to do around people. but this too does nothing but to make me feel worse.

meals have been ok. i had a really bad dinner the other night in which i had to ask for a fat that i was missing which was a very hard thing to do. i knew i was missing it and i wasn't going to ask for it but then i realized one of the girls at the table noticed and once i realized she knew my guilty conscience then started going. so as hard and anxiety provoking as it was, i asked the CRC for the fat i was missing. also, a previously mentioned, i had to face chocolate milk again. since they put the syrup in the cup already i had to drink it which only caused more anxiety. then, i turned this anxiety into ED behaviors as far as the way in which i ate my meal went. because of this, i did HORRIBLE with pacing and was left with half my meal to eat in 5 minutes. i debated whether i should have just said "fuck it. im not going inhale all this food. i'll just replace with ENSURE." but then i remembered how many of the girls were talking about replacing one night and how it was their to never have to replace, and i immediately felt horrible for ever considering replacing as an option. so i inhaled the meal.

i was not present mentally at that meal at all. physically, yes, i was there. i ate. but i tasted nothing. i heard none of the conversations going on at the table, only the one going on in my head between me and my ED. i ruined what could have been a potentially good meal which i found rather sad when i processed what happened later in my journal. i allowed my ED to ruin a meal i would have normally enjoyed for the taste, texture, and the company.

the next day i gave into my ED again my asking one of the nutrition staff members to cross off chocolate milk from all my menus. failed attempt #2 at incorporating chocolate milk back into my diet. ED wins again...

i don't want to talk to much about the other intrusive thoughts about calories that have occurred and how i still have to constantly debate about which snack i want vs. which snack my ED wants because that happens daily. but i will tell you about another struggle i had which left me feeling rather disappointed in myself.

snack time rolled around yesterday. i always get one fruit, one yogurt and 4 oz of ensure. i new i wanted raisins that day--that choice was made completely on taste and volume considerations because i wasn't feeling the least bit hungry and a pear may have put me over the edge to the uncomfortable range of fullness. the CRCs put out 4 yogurts--two peach and two strawberry. i grabbed a peach one. i saw the nutrition facts on both though and the peach had 150 cals, 15 from fat, and the strawberry had 140 cals and 15 from fat, but i managed win that battle with my ED over 10 calories, because after all, it is only 10 calories. BUT THEN...and this was my downfall...someone decided to switch their yogurt for the stoneyfield vanilla one. so of course i wanted to too, but this WAS STRICTLY FOR THE TASTE. when i went into the fridge however, i saw that there was a stoneyfield FAT FREE blueberry yogurt. so why did this start another conversation in my head between me and my ED? because the vanilla flavor is only LOW FAT, not FAT FREE. so the great debate began. do i get what i really want OR do i get what my ED wants? i almost made it out of this mess because one of the girls wanted a blueberry yogurt and that was the only one so i told her she could have it. phew! but then she said she doesn't like the stoneyfield blueberry one. DAMN! so the conversation continued and eventually i ended up getting the blueberry FAT FREE yogurt.

AND YOU KNOW WHAT?!?! IT REALLY DID SUCK! so once again i gave into my ED and ended up getting something that tasted less than good, all for the sake of ironically saving 10 calories. i think i just contradicted myself huh? but somehow the 0 calories from fat factor won out.

I cant deny i am still struggling and these thoughts are a constant thing at every meal. sometimes i can fight through them or block them out, but i often block them out at the cost of blocking out all other emotions and am therefore unable to enjoy meals. this is something i NEED to work on and master if i want to be able to managed this ED. i need to find the balance between blocking out these intrusive ED thoughts/challenging them and disobeying them, and being able to stay connected with other emotions and subsequently the world around me.

This goes for feelings in general. i need to be able to acknowledge and FEEL the bad feelings before i can have any hope of connecting and feeling the good ones again. this is the focus of my therapy. it's hard work and i feel like im not making any progress. i am told i am though. just because my work doesn't produce a tangible product, doesn't mean im not doing work and making progress. I have to remember this too if i want to keep any sense of motivation to continue the work i need to do in therapy to work on helping myself.

Just a quote i want to share with everyone and one that i should keep in mind more often and really listen to...

"The day will happen whether you get up or not."

Bad days

2009-08-04T19:42:00.000-07:00

These last few days have not been good. i've been in a really crappy mood which is related directly to how i feel physically and how i feel about my weight gain.

To sum it up: I feel HUUUUGE! when i look at myself, i see nothing but huge, especially in one particular area. i hate it. and today, while i was reset which is good as far as not being on chair rest for a day or two, being reset is also one of the most depressing things ever. as i said before, to be reset you have to gain weight three days in a row, so clearly, by being reset, my concerns about my body were only confirmed in a very definite way.

because weight gain is such a sensitive issue and something i DO NOT want to have to do and am VERY resistant to, i am basically in a bad mood all the time. negative thoughts constantly run through my head as far as body image goes. also, before i was able to take some enjoyment from the meals here because if im going to have to do it i might as well try and make it pleasurable; however, that was before i actually started to gain weight and feel and look fat. now, i cannot even find enjoyment in meals here because food is seen as a thing just to make me gain weight, because truly, that is now it's only function. the food choices cycle through, so there is no excitement as far as variety, nothing tastes amazingly good, it i only get more things added to my meals as my meal plan goes up, increasing the negative connotation of food. i feel as though being in treatment is only making my relationship with food worse because now, food is strictly seen as a means to gain weight.

something i found rather disturbing happened at breakfast today and decreased my mood even more. i always save my banana with peanut butter on it as the last thing i eat for bfast since i follow the "save the best for last" motto. today, i did the same thing as always, but today, i didn't enjoy my banana as much. the taste of the peanut butter and banana was just not as strong as usual. that that one true pleasure is not becoming less enjoyable is really disconcerting.

another reason why i cannot even enjoy meals here anymore is because i disconnect as meals even more than i did before. meals used to be associated with some sense that i would eventually gain weight, but the feelings that would accompany the weight gain had not yet been felt. now that i AM gaining weight and the feelings are there too, i block the feelings out by disconnecting so i don't have to feel the negative feelings. i am not longer there mentally at meal times. i am simply there physically, eating the food. if thoughts or feelings do break through they are only negative and are basically centered around how each bit i take equals more weight gain and then i begin to think about how the next meal or snack is coming in a couple of hours for the same purpose.

my motivation is essentially nil right now. i feel like i am being set back by being here. set back from progress with my ED that is. because i have that thought i know that my ED is still my #1 priority and it is still in control though i am able to disconnect from a lot of the feelings that would drive me to engage in ED behaviors because i know being here it does no good to feel those feelings since i cannot act on them. the psychiatrist here asked me today why don't i sign myself out? besides from this not really being an option because of family pressures and wants/expectations, i feel now like i would have SO much work to do to get back to where i was before that it is almost an impossible feat.

The truth is, and ED is A LOT of work. it didn't take a day to get to the point where i was at as far as weight loss, dedication, control, commitment, mindset--which mind you my mindset has not changed that much. it took months of very hard work. to know that i wasted all this time here to go back to have just gained weight, and then to have to work so hard to get back to that level of intensity is something i cannot fathom doing right now. i feel at this point i would develop a new eating disorder of over eating because i feel that at the weight i am right now, it would be impossible to gain the control i would need to to get to where i was before and since i basically lost control by being here and submitting to treatment, i might as well keep going in that direction and loose total control and binge eat all the time. but that is really not an option either. i DO NOT want to get fat, and if i binge eat, that is SURE to happen.

i just feel like i have taken so many steps back by coming here and that if i did leave--sign myself out--i would not be able to get back to the place where i was, as far as with my ED and how i functioned in life with it then. i don't even know how i would go about assimilating back into life with work and just daily living and life with my ED at the same time. if i could i would make the choice to just live with my ED and not have to work or have any other obligations whatsoever. however, that is not conductive to any semblance of a productive life either. so basically im screwed. no options is really viable.

well, one option is viable but i don't know if i want to do to the work that is really involved in what i would have to do for it to actually serve as a viable option.

Blahhh

2009-07-31T13:07:00.000-07:00

so i take back anything that i ever said in earlier posts about being uncomfortable. yesterday was the day for feeling full and uncomfortable and i have nothing to look forward to but many more days like this and even worse ones.

it all started with breakfast. i always drink my water first when i get it at meals because i don't like plain water nor do i generally drink anything with my meals so i don't really know how to incorporate a glass of water into my meals. so after the water i had my pear, after which i could already feel the fullness AND i still had to eat my raisins, yogurt, GIGANTIC bagel with cream cheese, rather large and straight banana with peanut butter. basically i paced really horribly and had to wolf down my bagel, banana and coffee in the last 8 minutes. so needless to say i was quite full and uncomfortable after breakfast.

then lunch came, and it was a lunch i had had before but because breakfast had gone so awry lunch did not sit well at all so i was stuffed and feeling physically huge and so the negative thoughts and body image began.

i was then called in to the kitchen to be informed that my snacks were being increased but the full meal plan increase would start Sunday. so for snack in the afternoon have one fruit, one yogurt, and 4oz of ensure--that is the new part--and at night i have 8oz of milk, my choice from the snack list and two granolas--that is the new part. so needless to say, i am never hungry and i was constantly uncomfortably, full yesterday.

basically it really sucked.

so far today breakfast went much better. i felt full afterwards but i was distracted from this feeling by cross stitching and group in which we made a picture with a partner. however, i think today i am EXTREMELY hypermetabolic, which is the opposite of yesterday. an hour before lunch i started to feel increasingly shakey, and i was getting hot flashes--a sign of hypermetabolism--and i just felt weak and i was actually a little hungry. i swear, refeeding is just like going through menopause. so i had the nurse test my blood sugar but it was 74, so it was ok. i just waited it out until lunch, which i just had, and now i feel much better. a bit full, but much better. however, the nurse that was in the kitchen with us wasn't quite happy that i finished basically right as the clock turned 12:30, which is the end of the timed meal. she told me and this other girl that if we do that again while shes watching shell put us back on supervised tables AND make us replace. her rationale was that they are trying to get us to normalize our eating and we take "mouse bites." yet, when we started lunch she was talking to other people and shes like "yea, you really don't need a half hour to eat. the half hour is more for the people on meal plans 4, 5 and higher. everyone else should be done in like 15 minutes." so ask me what meal plan im on...OH, that's right. meal plan 5. so why i cant take the whole time to eat is beyond me. and what meal plan is the other girl on who finished at the last minute? OH, that's right. meal plan TWO. so really, im doing fine and SHES the one who should get in trouble. whatever. its stupid. if i rush, then id be even fuller than i am now, so taking my time is what i need to do to feel semi ok after i eat.

not too much else has been happening. ive been doing some collaging in my journal lately and i got some other images yesterday from magazines to actually make a bigger one to put on the wall in my room.

everyone who is on cafe group is on an outing right now :( this is my 3rd weekend here that i ha vent been able to go on the outing. its a little sad, but you have to be on cafe group first and for that you have to be 80% of your ideal body weight, which i am not yet, so i cant even apply. so that's kind of sat that i have to sit here with a lot of the newer people. since i came in at such a low weight it is taking me longer to get certain privileges. a girl that came in 5 days after me has been on cafe for a week, so that sort of puts into perspective how much weight i have to gain and the slowness of my progress. but hey, we all are in different places, have different situations and different treatment plans. i just need to keep that in mind and focus on me when i get discouraged because of other people who came here after me getting privileges before me.

just something interesting i want to share before im done writing for today. so i always loose hair in the shower, but over the past week i have been loosing RIDICULOUS amounts of hair in the shower. at least double, and maybe even triple the normal amount i lose. i figured this has something to do with the refeeding process so i asked the nurse today and she said it was normal. i guess the new hair follicles are pushing up now--the ones that are developing from the recent nutrients that has entered my body--so all that older crap is falling out now. there are a lot of other physical things that are happening from refeeding which has really made me notice my body and think about how it functions. i guess it kind of makes me think a bit about how much my body was deprived of before and how malnourished it really was.

that's about it for now. hopefully the rest of this weekend isn't too boring. Saturday always seems to go by smoothly and then Sunday drags and i cant wait for the week to start again. but once the week comes, i want the weekend again!

Breakthrough

2009-07-29T20:19:00.000-07:00

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.

I'm beginning to understand how it feels

2009-07-28T19:55:00.000-07:00

So since I last posted my meal plan went up yet again, yesterday actually because I am still on chair rest so that means I am not making projection. So as part of the game plan, the most logical thing would be to increase my meal plan so i eat more. Before i was never really hungry. it was possible that from breakfast to lunch i would get a little hungry but once they raised my meal plan on Saturday this pretty much ended and when they raised it again yesterday it did end. now i feel satisfied from breakfast to lunch, but after lunch until bed, i'm pretty much in a constant state of feeling full. i always heard the girls say at post-meal how they feel full and uncomfortable and at the time i couldn't understand this feeling because I was on a lower meal plan, but now that i'm moving up in the world, i am beginning to feel those feelings they felt. and to think that there are still five more meal plans i could potentially move up to!

pretty soon the weight gain will start. i can already physically see it and that is a bit difficult to deal with but i think i am able to put it into perspective still so that i am able to not think about it too much now. i know what i "see" now is hardly anything compared to what i'm going to be seeing so i try to realize that and not let it affect me too much right now. when i get closer to my range then i know the negative body image thinking and feelings will come and those feelings will be more justified. right now i'm just trying to not get to overwhelmed by negative body image because the changes right now are minimal and i need to be ready for when they are much more prominent.

I've also been thinking a lot about how scared i am for the outside world. it is so easy, well not easy, but EASIER, to eat here and not feel too horrible about what i ate. But, this is ONLY because i have the comfort of others around me who are going through the same thing. knowing that "we are all in this together" or that we are "all going through the same thing" makes it easier to eat and deal with the negative feelings afterwards. however, i know that when i get out of here--which is still a ways away--i wont have that comfort and eating the right things, or even just making the choice to eat will become 10000 x s more difficult and will be a struggle. i know this because of my experience with partial. when i went to partial it was fine to eat during the day at the hospital, and even when i went home i followed my meal plan because i knew i had some structure of the program to go back to the next day. but as soon as my week was done it became and instant struggle to follow the meal plan. the next morning i only half followed the breakfast portion of my meal plan and after that i was right back to what i was doing before and i actually continued to get worse. this scares me immensely and makes me seriously doubt whether i'll be able to do it when i get out of here.

i know i'll have family who will support me and try and make me eat. but that's the thing, they are going to try and MAKE me eat and when i feel like i'm being forced i get angry and want to comply even less. the whole idea of DEFIANCE is a huge thing that drives me ED. the more people cared about me and the more they told me things i should/need to do to get better, the more i wanted to defy them and do those things that would result in more ED behavior. this is a scary thought that runs through my head throughout the day and really makes me question if recovery will actually be possible for me once in the real world again.

there have been some other instances too that show me how strong my ED still is. i don't really want to get into them too much because that's something more for me to know, but it just shows me that though it is easier to eat in an environment where you know others are struggling too, i still have my personal struggle with my ED to contend with daily. it is especially hard when snack time rolls around to decide what i want. i often start thinking an hour before afternoon snack what i want, considering how full i already am, calories, volume, which food i could make last the whole time period we have to eat, what i want vs what my ED tells me i want vs what i should get to try and start making projection. and then for evening snack i often contemplate for the 2.5 hours after i sign the snack list if i made the right choice, once again according to the things mentioned when deciding about afternoon snack. I still am very much consumed by the thought of food and thus consumed in ED thinking.

I feel like this post is so negative and it is probably extremely triggering and i wish i could write about something other than my stay in treatment. but obviously treatment is my life right now so that is all there is to write about. I guess on a semi-brighter note, family therapy went OK yesterday. i don't really think my goal going into the session was accomplished, but at least i presented some things that were very important to me, and although these issues were not explored to the depth i wanted, i think that the therapist was able to gather some important information that will be helpful in our construction and planning for our subsequent sessions. my brother also came to the session yesterday which i think is great for the family and i was really glad he did come!

OH! i know a happy note i can leave on! i was once again awarded the you go girl box on Sunday. i had a good weekend and really made an effort to open up and hang out with the girls more. i can definitely say this was facilitated by not being in the wheelchair and having to wait to be pushed everywhere. i often had to sit secluded from the group because the group all went into another room and none of the staff was around to push me. BUT now that i'm out of the wheelchair that is no longer an issue and i'm able to migrate with the group and be more a part of the community!

That's it for now. nothing else too exciting or important i can think about saying. i think i'll go sit outside for a little before snack. hopefully it is cooler than it was earlier today!

I'm playing the game

2009-07-26T07:47:00.000-07:00

So the funny thing is about treatment centers is that it's all a big game.

There is a definite terminology unique to the game, a few key players, and a definite game plan/strategy. Some terms include "projection," "warning," "range," "chair rest," "reset," "cafe," "passes," "staff supervised tables," "peer supervised tables," to name a few of the most important ones. The players are: yourself, nutritionist, CRCs, personal therapist, family therapist, dietitian, nurses, and psychologist. The strategy/game plan, well that all depends on weight gain and how fast or slow it's occurring but mostly if being on/off projection is what matters most.

there are daily weigh-ins as well as specific gravity tests done on urine samples and then vitals are taken mon, wed, fri. These weigh-ins hold the most precedence however when deciding the game plan. yesterday it became quite clear to me that i AM playing the game now.

when "the list" was put up which shows who is on "warning" and "chair rest" and such, i found that i was on the list for warning. this means that i am not on projection for my weight gain and that i better not move around much because if i don't make projection the next day, then i'll be on chair rest until i am reset or starting making projection. so seeing that my personal game plan for the day was to not walk much up and down the hallways and to sit as much as possible. however, my team--therapist(s), nutritionist, and dietitian--all had there own say to add to the game plan and this came in the form of a meal plan increase. the nutritionist pulled me into the kitchen and said outright "ok Alyssa, your meal plan is going up today because you are on warning." here it became very apparent that i AM now playing the game. in order to try and make projection and gain weight, what is the next most logical thing to do? EAT MORE! how does that happen? MEAL PLAN INCREASE. granted they can't increase someones meal plan every time they are on warning but this is a start for me since i am still in the earlier stages of the process/treatment.

it just seems rather odd/funny to me. i feel that as far as the weight-gain goes, it totally turns into a game. people are constantly planning if they have passes to eat more when they are out so they can compensate for the increased amount of walking that is bound to happen on a pass so that they don't get on warning the next day so that they don't lose any passes they may have planned for that day.

example: one of the girls here had an elton john/billy joel concert to go to. everyone on her team knew about it well in advance and she really wanted to be able to go. but in order to go on passes you must be 85% of your range and not be on warning. so a couple of weeks before they increased her meal plan so that she could get into the 85% of her range so that she could start applying for passes. this worked, even though she had to eat a lot more and deal with feeling uncomfortable and full. then once the day before the concert came she had a dinner/snack pass. however, she needed to shop for an outfit which would require walking around in a mall or at least many stores. so in therapy we strategized with her what she could do to minimize the walking so that she wouldn't be off projection the next day and be put on warning and subsequently lose her pass for the night of the concert which would then have defeated all the work she did as far as eating a lot more to gain weight faster. so we came up with ideas like "get a wheel chair and have your mom push you," "have her drop you off at the door and pick you up at the door," "map out your route so you know what stores you are going to and pick a path that minimizes walking," and the most obvious of any plan "eat more food than normal when you go out to eat so you will have a better chance of making projection."

it's all a game when it comes to the weight gain. as much as it sucks to gain weight and no one wants to do it, it is the most vital part of treatment for so many reasons when treating some one with anorexia nervosa. it just seems a bit ridiculous at some times because you hear people talking about adding all these "extras" to the meals so that the can get into their range faster and hopefully lessen the time of their stay in treatment.

this being my first time in a treatment center, i didn't know what to expect when i came in here, but i am quickly learning and i have definitely begun playing the game.

Same old with a new lesson

2009-07-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

so nothing too exciting has happened over the past couple of days. been feeling fuller after meals and during the day. had a couple of good--i guess?--visits. however, i did forget to mention in my last blog that i got the "you go girl box" one night and it was awarded to me from my roommate who i'm quite intimidated of but admire so much at the same time. so to get that from her was quite a special thing for me. oh, and the allusive "you go girl" box is a box of random things that one girl gets to choose from every night after our post-meal meeting after the girl who got the box the night before picks a deserving girl for that night. it's basically awarded to someone who is working really hard or just dealing with some hard stuff and is still being positive or something of that nature.

BUT today good things happened to me. i was informed that i am finally able to be out of the wheelchair!!! I CAN WALK! i seriously never thought i would ever be this excited to be able to walk! going from being an exercised obsessed person--still am obviously just cant do it here--to being ecstatic about being able to walk??? is that possible? also, i got off staff supervised tables which is quite nice. i can finally sit with my peers and not have staff staring at me while i eat. granted they still watch but there isn't one staff member directly looking at me. sadly, i am still on supervised bathrooms. its stinky but i can understand why. i am still at a pretty low weight, although i did reach the weight required to be out of the wheelchair, and my vitals are still on the lower side, so it is a danger to not be able to know if i'm on when they can't see me behind the door of the bathroom--even though in the morning i take a shower unsupervised where im standing for like a half hour? haha oh well.

there has been a bit of drama in the community relating to a certain new member who has been discussing numbers, sizes, food, and ED things extremely openly. she has made comments to girls about looking "fuller" and to me about looking "healthier." this girl also happens to be my roommate which is where a lot of the issues come in. not only are her comments at therapy extremely triggering, but she decided to go through my things without asking me. last night she said "i don't mean to pry but i was looking at your pants and you have some really good ones and i was wondering if i could try them on to see if i could wear some some time." me being who i am, though i felt EXTREMELY uncomfortable with this said, oh yea sure i guess if you want. so she proceeded to try two pairs on--my favorite ones mind you. they fit, but somewhat tightly. so:
#1, i was NOT ok with her wearing my clothes. i don't like to share clothes with anyone, whether it be me wearing theirs or someone wearing mine.
#2, SHE WAS STRETCHING OUT MY PANTS. pants that are already too big for me right now and that i wanted to wear again when they fit.
#3, ILLEGAL to do in this place and not cool for ED stuff.
THEN she proceeds to ask if i want to see how she measures if shes "ok" as far as weight goes when she doesn't have a scale to go by--i.e. when shes here because they do blind weights. so she takes out this pair of black shorts, puts them on, and examines herself. when she fits without any "muffin top" shes "ok." if not, she needs to loose weight. so i kinda told her how those are probably not good to have here at all and how that is not helping her ED at all.
THEN today. i walk in the room and shes is putting MY pants back into my closet. i just kind of ignored this and went on my bed and read. she then went on her bed too to read and finally said something like:
"so i feel really bad that you walked in on me today going through your pants again. ive just been feeling really horrible about myself and i knew your pants were a size 0 so i wanted to try them on to feel better. i fit in them, so i felt better about myself. but i guess it's good that you came in cuz i probably really shouldn't be doing that."
UM NO YOU SHOULDNT BE! but me, once again being who i am just nicely said something like "yea, you really shouldn't be comparing yourself to me. its not going to help you get comfortable with you and it doesn't help your treatment or your ED."

i was quite bothered by all this and discussed it in therapy today and i checked-in with a staff member tonight. long story short. i confronted her about the incident and about the things she says to girls and how open she is. she took it well and was very receptive. it felt good to say this to her and finally say something to someone when they do something to make me uncomfortable since in NEVER speak up, but just deal with my discomfort instead. hopefully now she will be more conscious of how what she says really does affect and trigger others in the community.

so some good things and some bad things and obviously there are ED struggles along the way that don't really need to be discussed but are for me to sit with and challenge. i am glad that i finally took the initiative to say something about my discomfort with the happenings of late. im always so afraid that when confronting someone i will make the situation between me and that person awkward and that rather than having just me feel uncomfortable, both of us will after the confrontation, so i just figure one person uncomfortable is better than one. as a result, i continue to feel uncomfortable and the situation only escalates as well as my discomfort. and then a whole other barrel of fun begins with anger and resentment. however, this experience showed me that some people are extremely receptive to being confronted. though it didn't go as perfectly and poetically as i would have liked, i took the step to try and assert myself and do what i needed to to explain my discomfort. maybe ill try this out more often and will find that i don't have to live in a world of discomfort and fear of how other people will react. after all i cant control how people will react to what i have to say but at least i can try. and maybe, a lot of people will be like my roommate and appreciate and learn from what i have to say.

It's all catching up

2009-07-19T20:21:00.000-07:00

I've been having a lot of thoughts about restricting in the past couple of days. I know it's my ED telling me to choose the lower calorie choice when really i might truly want to enjoy the higher calorie one. choosing snack last night is an example of this. i really wanted the granola, but there was also the choice of the chocolate rice krispie treat, which i knew was lower in calories than the granola. so then the great debate began in my head. i was somehow able to rationalize though that i should go with the granola because ultimately i am here to gain weight and if i can make choices that will help that process then i should. i was ok with that.

i've also been having trouble deciding on getting the usual apple or go with the pear which i have picked on a few of my meal plans thus far. i decided i like the pear for a change but i know it has more calories than the apple. so once again the debate began between my thoughts and my ED. but today, my challenge food came up...a banana. now, i used to eat bananas like a monkey until a friend was like "why do you eat bananas. there are like 100 calories in one. you can eat way more carrots and have like 25 calories." so from that point on, bananas were banned. but i purposefully planned out for the banana to be on my meal plan one day so i could confront the fear head on. however, this challenge came sooner than expected when i had a banana on my plate for breakfast instead of the raisins i ordered. now this was quite overwhelming because i was not ready for this, nor was i asked if i preferred another fruit when it was discovered that the staff did not have enough raisins. so i had to eat the banana which was a challenge. then lunch came, and THAT was the meal i had picked out the banana for. so i ate it. though i felt guilty and uncomfortable, i had already faced the fear earlier in the day so it wasn't as bad.

then dinner. i had 1% milk, but with chocolate syrup to put in it. as i looked around, i noticed no one else decided to do this, so the guilt began. i immediately began thinking of the extra calories in that syrup. then i began thinking about the TWO bananas i had today and how i could have cut out calories by having something else. and THEN i thought about the golden ghrams i had. i know they have 110 calories per serving and i could have chosen KIX which only have 60 or even rice krispies or corn flakes which have 90 each but rice K have less from fat. these thoughts came flooding in my head and sent me into a panic. my ED was overwhelming me and i began to feel horrible about myself. i already decided i'm not drinking the chocolate milk anymore. that was a bad decision on my part. never did i drink milk at home so why would i think i'd be ok with chocolate milk. i'm not, well my ED isn't but i cant challenge what he is telling me. i feel horrible for making the higher calorie choices that i have made and i am beginning to feel less able to challenge my ED--obviously by giving into no chocolate milk. i hope i can keep it together and keep choosing the cereal i really want. but i know now that i gave into the chocolate milk the temptation to restrict is only going to be that much easier to give into all together.

i hope i can find the strength again to challenge my ED. for now i think i need to take a break and not try so often and hard to challenge the thoughts. i know that seems counter productive and i'm probably just letting my ED talk me out of it, but i'm letting him win right now. it's sad to admit. i'm just really discourage about a lot of things right now and am feeling generally in a weakened position. i hate having these thoughts and knowing that i AM giving it. but my ED is strong and unfortunately i am not stronger right now.

It's that time of day again

2009-07-18T13:51:00.000-07:00

For some reason i cannot stand the time between lunch and bed which presents a bit of a problem because this is essentially the entire day. i don't mind the whole being woken up to pee in the cup, to get weighed and do vitals, then shower, back to bed for a nap before waking up at 10 of 8 for b-fast at 8. the time from bfast to lunch always passes quickly, but from lunch on always seems to drag. i think it has to do with the increased focus on food. we eat lunch at 12, finish at 1230, then usually have groups until 245--except on Saturdays when we have visiting hours from 1-230--and then snack until 3, then groups again until dinner at 530-6, then groups again until visiting hours and then snack 830-845, then free time. for some reason trying to get over an ED is complicated by the constant thought of more food coming in a couple more hours. this makes it really hard to concentrate on the moment and really hard to get through this part of the day. also, i hate dinner. and evening snack is a concept that all together boggles my mind. i NEVER ate snacks at home in the first place--my ED said not to--and i NEVER ate after 8 at night--my ED also told me never to eat past 8. so i feel no need to eat this snack, nor am i ever the slightest bit hungry for it.

so i had a visit with my dad yesterday which was not supposed to happen. i originally called the house a couple nights ago to talk to my mom and respond to their question of whether i would be ok with them visiting. i decided my mom could, but i rather my dad not visit. obviously i wasn't going to tell my dad this so i called the house intending to talk to my mom. but as luck had it, my mom was out for the night so only my dad was home. i couldn't tell him what i had originally called for so we ended up talking and it was ok. the question came up though of whether he could come see me on Friday--last night. i said "well if you want to" but he responded with "well its up to you." i didn't have the heart to say no, so i did the next best thing. i told him what i definitely did not want to talk about--school, what is going to happen when i get out of here, my motivation, my day here. i live those thoughts throughout the day and am always contemplating about those things, and i don't need it to be the only thing that is discussed when i do get to have a visit which is the highlight of my day. so dad came last night and i had a feeling he would bring the dog because he pretty much knew there would be nothing to talk about. this was a good thing. at least there was something to stare at and distract rather than sit in complete silence. we did talk, don't get me wrong, but there were many more quite moments than one filled with words. i didn't even care so much to see my dog, i was just glad she was there to take our attention away from the obvious awkwardness.

my dad also kept his hand on my wheelchair and would occasionally rub my back. every time he did this i got a feeling of annoyance and anger that surged through me. i don't know what it is when people show me affection and that they care through gestures like this, but they erk me like you wouldn't believe--especially when it is my mom or dad who does this. instead of pulling away though, which i DEFINITELY wanted to do, i allowed myself to sit with the uncomfortable feeling and allow him to show that he cares. i did feel happy that i allowed him to do this because i'm sure it made him feel good to not have me refuse his touch, but it was uncomfortable for me nonetheless. well i guess that's what exposure therapy is all about...maybe one day i'll be entirely comfortable with gestures of affection. perhaps i'll be able to show others affection with such gestures one day too?

not too much else is happening here. a new girl came yesterday, but this is not her first time here so she is pretty much already in the swing of things. she is so nice and sweet and not annoying at all--THANK GOD!

i've got to paint my nails at some point today as my act of "self-care." it's part of one of my weekly contract's "action steps" so i've got to make sure i accomplish that goal today. it's always hard for me to find the motivation for this simple task because it takes me so long being the perfectionist that i am. also, it's quite muggy and humid today so i know my nails will take extra long to dry, a fact that isn't exactly helping with the motivation factor. but i've already got the time picked out for when i'll do it so it WILL get done.

something funny happened a couple days ago that i wanted to share. it makes me chuckle every time i think about it.
some girls were having a bit of fun at a meal one day and this conversation ensued after dinner before post-meal.
"if you want dinner and entertainment just come to Klarman...it's completely free."
"well not really free; but your insurance will pay for the rest!"
i just found this quite funny and i hope you do too.

Therapy is good

2009-07-16T19:02:00.000-07:00

So things with my parents are understandably a bit more tense than usual. it is to the point where they called to ask if it's ok that if they come see me. truly i have not decided yet. i feel like i could handle my mother coming but not my dad. there is just so much built up anger toward them that i harbor that I'm not sure them coming would do me any good. my dad especially causes me so much anger just with his presence. also, all they ever want to talk about is my ED or things relating to treatment, motivation, my day--which is always the same and if things did happen they are related to anxious situations that i really don't want to have to reiterate--what is going to happen with school, which is a situation i really cant give them answers for. i understand they need to pay a huge tuition bill, but where i am right now and what i need to do before i can get out of here doesn't exactly have a time limit on it. so it's hard to say what will happen. so i've been struggling with this today a lot and i have tried to journal some thoughts and also, therapy with Toni helped. not so much with them, but with some thoughts that i need to focus on and things that i need to do.

basically i know that a lot of my ED is my form of a "high risk" behavior that i take part in. since most of my life i spent following the rules and not exactly experiencing or enjoying normal teenage things, such as high risk behaviors including drinking, partying late, and anything of that sort, i have found my own way to do this through my ED. it is the ultimate form of a high risk behavior, ultimately risking my life in the process. it is the one thing i and only i can completely control. no one can stop me and i can only get help when i want it. it also serves as a way for me to defy everyone and defiance is a main motivator for me. the more people get concerned about my condition, the more they care and the more they give me input as to what i should/need to do. the more this happens the more i wish to defy them. the more i wish to defy them the more i engage in my ED and the sicker i get. which begins the cycle all over again with people showing their concern the worse i get. thus, this would have continued until i possibly died had my doctor not gotten me in here.

what is really accomplished by all that though? i am ultimately just hurting and killing myself and ruining relationships in the process. if i die, what does that accomplish. that certainly does not fix relationships. to sit with the thought that i would have made the choice to kill myself through my ED is something that would cause my parents a hopeless feeling--a permanent one too since death is a permanent thing. is that what I'm really trying to accomplish with all this. obviously not, but that's what i would have done. doesn't make too much sense, but the gratification i get is what drives me. clearly I'm thinking irrationally, but, as you become increasingly malnourished these thoughts increase and become more irrational because of the effects of malnutrition on the brain. anywayssss

it also came up that the only thing i do is constantly give to people. i give and give and give. it is just what i do. it is the only thing that makes me happy--but only for a moment. it was brought up that there is no way to keep giving to others without somehow replenishing myself in some way. but for this i need to know what makes me happy. however i am so disconnected with feeling any emotions that i don't even know what i could do to do this. self care acts were suggested, but i need to figure out what i can do here to do this. if i can identify for even a moment with something that provides me pleasure, then i can begin to be mindful of feelings again and identify others as well. the only one i can seem to identify right now is anger. though this is a start, its not the best feeling to be the only one to feel. it's true though. i have been told for many years that i am a rock. at some point i must have felt only bad feelings that it became so unbearable that no good feelings were ever felt that i just blocked all feelings out and became disconnected. ever since then, i have felt nothing. I'm guessing this happened sometime in high school when ALL i did was school. there were no good feelings then. i did not enjoy life. happiness diminished day by day, and it just become pointless to only feel anger and sadness, so i stopped feeling. i must recover and connect with these good feelings again!

lots of work to do. there are a lot of other daily stresses with a new girl, who is my roommate too, that i would like to discuss, but others need the computer. these thoughts are more important i suppose anyway to express. i have lots and lots to work on. but lots of time to do it here!

First Post

2009-07-14T19:55:00.000-07:00

So im not exactly sure how to go about this whole blogging thing since this is my first time doing it. I figure i have a lot of time now and a lot of thinking and will be going through a lot of struggles over however long im in treatment, so this may be a good avenue to just relax and keep people updated as to what im going through.

yes, i am in treatment for an ED at McLean Hospital in the Klarman Center. it is still very hard to believe i am here and that i need to be here but i am just trusting my PCP and everyone else that this is really where i need to be. obviously this causes a bit of a problem for me finding my own motivation to be here--which i have not really found yet--but hopefully i will soon realize how sick i am. the doctors here told me that i barely qualify to be in an inpatient treatment center like this and that i should be on a medical floor of a hospital with IV nutrition. that was a shocker but it doesnt make being here or realizing that i need to be any easier. but that is a hallmark symptom of this disease--not having the ability to realize how sick one really is. so once again im trusting that i need to be here and hopefully i can find some motivation along the way to want to get better for myself.

i do however just wish i could eat normally. i wish i could indulge in food like everyone else. i wish i could eat the massive amounts of ice cream i once was able to eat and not feel horrible about it and purge; i wish i could go to a Chinese buffet and pig out on noodles and rice with crap loads of duck sauce on it; i wish i could just go out and not order the lowest calorie meal on the menu and have to spend hours online before the dinner pondering what to get; i wish i could go out and just enjoy people and not have the thoughts of my ED consume me. I wish all these things so badly but i dont know how to get them back. those days seem so far away and the thoughts that i have from my ED now are so strong, that recovery to a good place like that seems virtually impossible.

then there is the whole issue of nutrition and being medically well. obviously right now i am neither medically well or nutritionally well. i am in a wheel chair all the time because my vital signs are too low and i need to rest and i was on the lowest meal plan here--0.5--until today where they increased it to 0.75. mind you, the first REAL meal plan is meal plan 1.0. this is because i am being "re fed" and this process if done too quickly can be damaging and dangerous to ones health. my body is still trying to regulate itself at the cellular level and my body is still struggling with re feeding syndrome. i get labs done as often as possible and i take the proper vitamins and supplements prescribed by the doctor based on these labs.

but anyway. there is much more i could discuss but everyone should know im doing ok. im working on getting nutritionally and medically better with the help of my team. the psychiatric part will be difficult and that hasnt begun too much, but rest assured, that WILL be worked on in depth. andddd i have nothing to do here so feel free to visit me! send me mail! text me! call me! well only when the hours permit, lol.

as far as today. it was ok. ive been anxious. i think that has a lot to do with the meal plan kinda of fluctuating today and also a lot of community issues going on. issues with people restricting, hiding food, calling people out on this, the general vibe of the group and lots of other stuff. all things that need to be worked on and can be worked on the make the environment for recovery a much better place. it's all about challenging your ED while here and we all need to help each other along in that process even if it means stepping out of our comfort zone and confronting someone about an ED behavior that they are engaging in. it may make us uncomfortable by doing so, but by saying nothing, we are only encouraging ED behaviors.

im not really sure where im going with this but its time for me to get off the computer. only two here for everyone to use and ive been on long enough. ill try my best to keep posting and maintaining this blog. once again, im new at this so if i suck...im sorry!