Learning Some Hard Truths

I had a really hard therapy session today.  My therapist told me some things I didn’t want to hear, but in the end, they were exactly what I needed to hear.

To make a short story long, I have to give some background.  Here it is.  I am lazy.  Ok, I hear people protesting.  “Minna,” says you.  “How can someone who writes eleven-billionty words for NaNoWriMo be lazy?”  I’ve heard variants of this retort ever since I started trotting out the “I’m lazy” line.  My therapist nailed it in one, though.  She was telling me about research that has discovered that if kids are told they are smart, they tend to quit if they don’t get something right away.  On the other hand, if a kid is told, “Wow, you really worked hard, and you made that happen,” they were more apt to persevere.  When my therapist told me this, something clicked in my head.  See, if there is one thing I’ve been told repeatedly in my life, it’s that I’m smart.  Fucking smart, really.  When all else falls by the wayside, I cling to that truth.   That’s good in some ways, but when I run into something I suck at, say, badminton, I refuse to play because I think I look stupid doing so.  My therapist pointed out that for many people, not knowing how to do something does not equate looking stupid.  I told her I’d have to take her word for it because it meant the same thing to me.

In my entry yesterday, I wrote that the five-year-old in me was saying, “I don’t wanna!” when it came to dealing with my eating issues.  This fits in with what my therapist had said.  She said that many times when I come across a situation that is difficult, I don’t want to put in the effort necessary to deal with said situation.  It was the same when I was a kid.  I was good at several things–dancing, playing the cello, and softball, to name a few.  However, I would reach that point where I would have to put in several hours a day to become truly excellent, and I would quit rather than put in the effort.

So, back to my issues with eating.   As I detailed yesterday, I have been dealing with them for, well most of my fucking life.  The actual eating disorders started twenty years ago, but the issues came waaay before then.  I realize, though, that when I say I’ve been dealing with them, I mean I’ve either been ignoring them or giving into the disordered thinking–neither which is really dealing with them.

When I am in my ED phase, I have complete control over my eating and exercising.  Everything is regimented and rigidly controlled.   I am in total fucking control, bitchez, and it’s such a high.  What’s more, when I binged and purged, I got in a zone, a trance that allowed me to groove on it for the five, ten, fifteen minutes it took to complete the cycle.  I had a marker food (the first thing I ate so I would know when I reached the end), and I would gag until the blood came up, too.  I can’t throw up naturally, so it takes a lot to make myself throw up.  Then, afterwards, I would drink some tea or water or whatever to soothe my throat.  That would be the end of an episode.

When I was ‘dieting’, it was all I thought about.  I planned what I would eat, when I would eat, how I would eat it, etc.  I never thought about if I was hungry or if it was what I wanted to eat.  No.  It was about whittling away my body and the high I got from not eating.  It was about having a concrete goal and having complete control over every step of the way.  It was about pushing my body and punishing it for–what?  I couldn’t even articulate why I was punishing my body; I just knew it deserved to be punished.

For failing me.  For not protecting me.  For…finding pleasure in the pain.  Inchoate anger at this thing I have to be lodged inside.  Punishment reinforced with societal approval.  This was all about control and had nothing to do with dealing with the core issues.

On the other hand, when I am not trying to whittle away my body, I eat everything and anything no matter if I’m hungry or not.  I am rigid in my complete abandonment of healthy eating.  In this mode, I am still not dealing with my eating issues at all.  I am stuffing myself senseless, trying to numb out the ugly emotions that bubble to the surface.  It’s comforting; it’s safe; it’s familiar.

Both these modes are well-known to me.  With the nausea that I am suffering, it’s tempting to turn to the former and just run with the not-eating thing.  However, this is where what my therapist said really hit home.  In twenty years, I have not really dealt with my eating issues at all.  I have done everything I can in order to avoid dealing with them.  It’s difficult, and therefore, I do not want to put in the effort.  Or, as she said, I have to be ordinary about it.  I have to struggle with my ED, make mistakes, and fail from time to time.  I have to look stupid in my view and learn a better way in her view.   I don’t want to do it.  I would rather crawl into bed and not come out again.  But, as my therapist said, I don’t have the luxury of not putting in the effort this time.  I am not that five-year-old, and I am in dire straits right now.  I know the old ways won’t work, so I have to try something new.

And, the new thing I have to try is the scariest thing of all–I have to…listen to my body.   Not only do I have to listen to my body,  I have to sit with my body and just be with it.  I have to say, “I hate you.  I don’t want to hate you, but I do.”  If I can, I have to thank parts of my body for what they’ve done for me–and for all the abuse they’ve suffered at my hands.  I can cut myself or burn myself, punch myself, smash my head against the wall, or make myself throw up without flinching, but the idea of being kind to or tender with myself sends me into a sheer panic.   Just thinking about it makes me tense up.  My breathing becomes more shallow, and I can feel a band tightening around my chest.  In my crazy, mixed-up, upside-down mind, being gentle with and loving to myself scares the fuck out of me.

My therapist laid down the gantlet.  She said that I could continue doing what I have done in the past and continue to get the same results, or I could dare to try to do the hard work of being with my body.  She said I would make mistakes and nine out of ten times, I would probably end up being mean to myself, but if I can manage a little tenderness one out of ten times, just a little bit of love, that is more than I have shown my body in the past.

Another thing she suggested is that I try to figure out the different kinds of nausea I’m experiencing (after I noted that the nausea wasn’t always the same).  Then, I could say something like, “This is nausea from the sexual abuse.  I am going to set it aside for now and eat.”  She said if I threw up after that, it would be something other than a bulimic response.  In other words, the more attuned I am to the different causes of my nausea as well as the different responses that happen for each one, the more I become aware of what my body is trying to tell me.

She ended by saying that my mind is in my body.  My mind is not above my body or existent outside of my body (to which I retorted, “Unfortunately!”); it is part of my body.  She was incredibly compassionate as we talked, which made the hard truths somewhat easier to hear.

Afterwards, I went to the co-op and tried to buy things I really wanted and not just what I normally bought.  I am lactose and wheat-intolerant, but I have been stridently ignoring that for the last few months.  I know that my body feels much better if I excise those products from my body, so I did not buy anything with wheat or dairy in it.  I was saddened because  I adore cheese and pasta and all that good stuff, but I was also a tiny bit relieved because I knew that overall, my life was better without wheat and dairy in it.   I have some leftover Mexican that will be finished tomorrow, and then no more wheat or dairy for me.

So, how has my nausea been today?  It’s still there.  However, just talking about it in therapy has helped me be more aware of what kind of nausea I’m experiencing.  As I was eating my lunch/supper (bison chili with bacon and half a baked potato WITH skin, thankyouverymuch), I could tell it was ‘my life is in shambles’ nausea.  After I finished eating, though, it was ‘I am going to throw up nausea’, but I didn’t.  For an hour after, I felt the ‘I am really going to throw up’ nausea, but I still didn’t.

This isn’t going to be easy.  It’s going to take effort.  And, as I noted waaay back in the first paragraph, I am lazy.  I don’t like to do things I’m not good at, but I have no choice this time around because, as I keep reminding myself, the other option is to die (or go back to being numb and frozen, which is the same thing).  I wish I had something uplifting to say at the end of this entry, but I don’t.

P.S.  The video is Evanescence’s Breathe No More.