Day 18

Just finished with psychotherapy, and I have to post this right now so I don't forget it.  It was a great session.  I brought up my mistrust of and reluctance to seek support from staff members, especially when it is offered to me.  I am not sure what exactly my intention was by bringing this up; whether it was to work on the trust piece, or explore the difficulty in asking for support.  Quite possibly a bit of both.  After going checking in with all of the group members about what the facilitators could do to help, the two therapists chose to "just sit".  This prompted the group members to jump in right away to take over and offer help.  This was then pointed out to us; we were asked to consider what our roles are in the absence of facilitated settings.  In real life, do we dive right in to help?  Or do we sit back and wait for our turn to speak?  Or wait for someone to call on us?  It was so interesting!  It was a little experiment created by the facilitators to challenge what we would do.  In so many of these group settings, there are facilitators who lead us in a discussion, but in psychotherapy, it is supposed to be participant-directed.  But even still, we tend to sit back and wait for them to say something, or to tell us what to do.  This makes a lot of sense that they would just sit back - if I am telling them that I don't completely trust the staff, and then ask the staff for help, how can they possibly help me?  In the words of one of the therapists "The only 'we vs them' that can exist is 'we' the staff and patients together versus the eating disorder.  If I come here to dive into the ocean of feelings, and the staff are the lifeguards, then they can't possibly help me if I am too afraid or untrusting enough to dive in."  Beautiful.  Makes so much sense.  From there, we discussed what help and support looks like to each of us.  I had mentioned about how the other day before baking that the diet tech (Sharon) had asked me "What if we do something different" about baking the apple crisp, and that I had said "I didn't know I had the option to do something different".  She didn't mean "why don't we bake something different", but "why don't we approach this in a different way?"  Which parallels with something that was brought up at the beginning of the session today.  I am afraid to ask the staff for support because I don't have complete control over what will happen.  They might force me to go to a place that I am uncomfortable with, and
I might not like that.  So it seems that for me, I want help from people only when I know they can
support me in the way that I want.  On Tuesday night, I vented to Tony, who listened and made me laugh about the situation.  Then I got online and posted on here to an anonymous audience (I generally know who is reading this, but venting on a blog is quite different from venting to a live person).  So much to think about!! Time for lunch now, I'll be back in a few hours!

I forgot to follow up with this post.  The rest of the day went well; in the building strengths session we explored things that we are ready to let go of, and how not letting go of certain things might impact recovery.  I have to admit that I was falling asleep while working on the exercise, so I didn't get as much out of it as I could have.  I'm not really sure what I am ready to let go of, but I think I need to put more time and thought into what I am not ready to let go of.  Things like ideal weight and shape, perfectionism or food rules do get in the way of a complete recovery, but I am not willing to let go of these things.  I really believe that I cannot live the healthy life I want, or achieve the ideal weight and shape without food rules.  I need those rules to get to where I want.  Eating whatever and whenever I want has given me a body that I am unhappy with, so if sacrificing sugar and bread gets me what I want, then so be it.  I have learned to live without cigarettes and cocaine, I am quite sure I can live without sugar too.