Posted by Racer on October 28, 2006, at 17:23:42
This has been a recurring issue lately. But, of course, it's complicated...
I don't know what I want, but I get to feeling so isolated sometimes, alone because people around me don't understand. It's much, much worse when they think they do, too.
Even my former pdoc, Dr CattleProd, told my current T (a specialist in eating disorders, CEDS, and she lectures on the subject all over the country) that she didn't need to worry about my eating disorder because my weight was just fine! People in my family seem to think that I must be "all better" because I'm not so thin. Even my husband doesn't have a clue about what's going on inside me.
Last night, I was invited out to dinner with some friends/acquaintances. I called my husband, to see if he wanted to meet me there, but he said no -- he wouldn't, but I should go. So, I came home. He thought it was because I thought I wasn't allowed to go, but really it was because the reality had hit me: if I went, I'd have to pick a food from the menu, in a restaurant I'd never been to, and then eat it. In front of people, no less. And I knew, if I picked something I felt safe eating, someone there would comment -- and probably pressure me to eat more than I felt safe eating.
I also find myself feeling completely at a loss in other ways. I don't really understand what it is that makes me anorexic. I know what it does for me, that makes it so seductive, but I don't understand how that happens. I do know that I can't get it just by not eating, though. Something has to switch in my brain for the good stuff to start. (I guess the "good stuff" is really starvation-related, so that's a bad name for it...) Whatever it is, though, I can't make it happen. It just does. Something changes, and I go back into it. It's distressing, because it's as though I'm taken over by something alien. Even while it's going on, I can watch, and say, "That's just not right..." But I still can't stop it, once it starts.
I've caught myself thinking, though, at times over the years, "Can't any of you *see* how badly I'm doing?" That does make me think that there's at least some part of this that is related to creating a visual representation to communicate my distress. Of course, that's why one motto common to ED treatment is "Use Your VOICE!" Use your voice to communicate that distress, not your body.
Anyway, one thing that brought this up was starting Zoloft. My experience on SSRIs is that I gain a huge amount of weight. I'm very frightened of that, and I'm also afraid that people will think that's only my ED making me afraid. It's not. Or, if it is, it's still a real fear, and it's not distortion that I've gained that weight. I didn't tell the new pdoc about my ED the first time I saw him, and I don't know why. I think, though, that part of it might have been my fear that he'd look at me, at my current weight, and think, "she's too fat to be anorexic, so she's either bulimic or delusional." (I don't think he did. He asked for three numbers: my lowest weight, my current weight, and what my goal weight had been. I was concerned, because I answered him honestly, that he wouldn't continue to prescribe Ritalin to me, but he did.)
After that, I got to sit in a room with people discussing mental illnesses, including bulimia. Now, I know bulimics. The group therapy for EDs that I go to twice a month is virtually ALL bulimics. (I'm once again the only restricting AN there...) So, I hear things that I can understand, even if I can't totally relate to them. Listening to that conversation, I felt so alone. I finally got up some courage and said, "I have a friend who's bulimic, and she told me..." But even that was misunderstood. (Dr CattleProd was kinda pompous when he said something like, "well, anorexia is only about control." Even trained mental health professionals don't necessarily know much.)
And there have been recent posts here that I have also felt upset after reading. I have been feeling as though what I'm experiencing is not considered real, somehow. That's a bad way to explain it, but the feeling is complex. I have been feeling kinda invalidated, I guess is the overall theme. I want to communicate my pain, but it feels as though no one out there really understands it, as though everyone I try to communicate it to is so sure they understand that no one really listens to me. That's it: I've been feeling unheard again. And you know what? Part of the anorexia is in response to not feeling heard.
OK. I learned something typing this. Thank you all for your patience...
poster:Racer
thread:698537
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/eating/20060628/msgs/698537.html