#I reiterate: I AM NOT A THERAPIST AND NONE OF THIS IS MEANT AS MENTAL HEALTH ADVICE

[letsdiscoverkitty]

Treatment/Recovery Update - May 2021

Okay, I will try to ramble less in this one (so sorry!) ^ well that didn't happen!

In terms of when I did leave hospital, as I mentioned a tiny bit in the last post, my EDP was completely AWOL. A month before I was due to be discharged she came to a meeting with myself and my consultant, during which we set up 4 appointments that would be over zoom before I was discharged to help with relapse prevention and the transition home, as well as setting out, in principle, the therapeutic support that I would be getting once home...it all sounded great, so great. But as usual when it comes to my team, it was too good to be true (should have called it). I attempted to contact her when our appointments never happened but I kept being met by a brick wall; no one knew what was happening, all I got told was that she was "off"... Time passed and I was discharged with only a phone call booked in from someone from the general team to check I was safe a few days later (it was literally 5 minutes, long if that) and an appointment to do physical monitoring the next wee....a far cry from the original discharge plan *sigh* Coming home was a bit of a whirlwind. We were approaching Christmas but we were still under a lot of restrictions with COVID, so it was a very strange/messy/weird few weeks.

Time continued to pass and there was still no confirmation around therapy or support, even the ED team didn't know what was happening with L, I just continued to go to two weekly physical monitoring. In the end, with nowhere else to turn, I contacted my consultant from hospital. To say that she was mad that nothing had been in place/I had no support would be an understatement and I thank my lucky stars that she was able to get involved. It took a couple of weeks but I finally had my first session with a therapist in February. In total it took about 8-9weeks from discharge to see someone, which, well, was hard.

Upon reflection, I think one of the biggest things I struggled with with coming home was that I had literally no leave to practice beforehand. This meant that I unfortunately slipped back into old habits very quickly as, well I know it is no excuse but coming back to the same environment your brain easily slips into automatic mode and you find yourself doing what you "used" to do without realising it.

I was in, I would say, quite a vulnerable state when I left hospital (the last few months there were pretty rocky to say the least) and the day before I was discharged (as I mentioned in a previous post somewhere) I was handed 3 different, very conflicting, meal plans and the nutritionist who had previously been very horrible to me and who had been away for a number of weeks, told me that she did not think I could continue to recover at home and that the best possible case would be if I only lost a bit of weight over the next 6 months....I think you can probably guess how badly this was taken and how messy my mind was. So with 3 meal plans in hand, none of which I had practiced, with little to no support from the ED team, I was, essentially, crisis managing, simply trying to get through each day.

I know, I know. Classic kitty - stuck record. failure. mess. making a million and one excuses. trying to make out like she is fine to the rest of the world when in fact inside she was falling apart. sigh.

In terms of my weight recovery I was not discharged at a healthy BMI/weight, which my consultant was sad about, however I was in a much better place than when I was admitted (I think I had gained about half the weight I would have needed to from when I was admitted to get to a healthy weight). I will admit that part of me does wonders whether staying would have been beneficial, because on a very basic level yes it could have helped in some ways. However if I stretch my mind back to when I was still on the ward ,it actually still floods me with anxiety and fear because of how UNHELPFUL the environment had sadly become. It is hard to explain to someone who has not experienced an EDU, but the patient groups can and do make a massive of differences. I was vvv lucky that when I was initially admitted, and for the first good couple of months, it was a v supportive and recovery focused environment. However, by about late Sept/early October ,things turned completely upside down (which was not helped by the fresh COVID lockdowns either) and even staff were saying how terrible it had gotten and how they could not believe the things that they were being asked to manage on the progression ward. There were times when I felt incredible unsafe on the ward and feared for others patients, which is not "okay". I genuinely believe that staying any longer would have likely made my mental health decline further; I had already found the massive shift was negatively affecting me and I think staying would have been unwise. I had also gained quite a lot of weight and was, I hate to admit, struggling with both coming to terms with that along with dealing with everything that you are continually facing when going through treatment/recovery alongside working on trauma stuff. I know none of that is any worthy excuse, but that was how it was...At this time I was struggling a lot with my meal plan and had quite a few lapses whilst on the transition phase of the unit however despite screaming out for help/support from staff, because of the acute situation on the ward, I was just left. They knew I was struggling, I was told time and time again that they had not forgotten me, but did I get help? no. It was actually made worse by the then nutritionist who sat me down like a naughty school girl and basically told me that I was a failure and that I would never achieve anything in life blah blah blah (please see a past post if you want to know more) which made me even more scared to reach out for 'help'/'support'. So no, I don't think staying would have helped much, which is a real shame.

Therapy wise I had a bit of a rough ride in there (god I'm really selling this aren't I?!). When admitted I was not in a place for 'traditional' therapy what so ever; looking back I honestly have no idea how I was even 'functioning' (was I functioning? probably not) and even the group therapies were a struggle but my consultant stuck with me and with time I was able to process a little more. One thing that helped me beyond words was 1:1 Art Therapy. This was not something I had accessed before, only ever doing group sessions in the past which was mostly about getting away from the ward and doing a bit of art. I cannot reiterate enough how different and HELPFUL the 1:1 sessions were. The art therapy, who I knew from the last year and is an absolutely GEM, helped me to begin to process and work through the trauma that I had experienced with dad. It took a lot of time and persistence but I was able to use those sessions in so many ways and I will forever be grateful to P for supporting me (I was so lucky to be able to have 1:1 sessions for the majority of my 8 admission).

The more traditional therapy initially took the form of 30min sessions with my consultant once to twice a week (as much as I hated them, she was bloody good). I also had a review and a few sessions with the lead therapist via zoom (she was heavily pregnant so was working from home) not long after being admitted, but she soon went on maternity leave. This left me to be picked up by her student, who was actually incredible. We did a long extended piece of work on my perfectionism which, again, was SO helpful but she sadly left (for bigger and better things) and I was left hanging for a while as there were no other openings. A new lead therapist started and after a while he did a few sessions with me before leaving suddenly (I think even staff only had a weeks notice, which was ridiculous), so I was back to twiddling thumbs for a few weeks. I then met with a therapist who worked 2 mornings a week that I saw a bit during my last admission but we didn't do many sessions and it just fell away. This was mostly my fault as by this point I was questioning my admission and whether I would self discharge as there were some not good things going on on the ward, so I wasn't really in the headspace to explore things deeply and had been picked up and put down so many times that I just couldn't do anymore. Throughout that time though I continued to see my consultant weekly, mainly focusing on mindfulness and other therapy styles thrown in there too at times.

I will forever be thankful/grateful for the admission I had, especially to be under a different consultant (for COVID reasons they had to split things differently as they would usually do it by area but that wasn't possible at the time I was admitted) as her approach made a huge difference. I still remember one of the first things she said to me was that she couldn't believe/was that I had been placed on the SEED pathway and that she believed that I could be more than that, which honestly, gave me a little bit of hope (something that had been ripped apart and shredded by my usual consultant multiple times).

But back to now.... I have now been seeing a new therapist weekly (when possible) since February and, in a backwards way, I am so glad that L disappeared off the grid because the "support" I was going to be getting under the original plan was just sessions with her to do some self guided self help stuff, whereas with this therapist we have actually been doing some HELPFUL work. In terms of L, I think the last I was told she never returned to work and has now left the team (we have a sneaky feeling that she either had a complete break down or that it was due to too may complaints (mum called this a long time ago as she was not qualified for the role at all and was utterly useless), which, yeah, was strange to not get an ending as I had worked with her for a few years. Anyway, I've been doing SCHEMA therapy with this new lady (I'd not heard of it before) and at first I was a bit reluctant but it's been incredibly insightful. I continue to learn more about myself and the reasons why I may have gone down certain roads each session. HOWEVER. and this is a big however. There has been a bit of a snag in the rope.

In short, yes I have been engaging really well with the therapy side, my weight and physical health has only continued to deteriorate since i was discharged. We are talking classic kitty of slowly slipped backwards, nothing dramatic, nothing to make alarm bells go off or warrant a review, but it's not been good. Anorexia is screaming at me for saying all of this, it shouts "but you weigh so much more than when you were admitted, you are a complete fraud blah blah blah" which is all the same old boring drivel it always spews out. But basically Im in dangerous waters now in terms of losing therapy/not being able to engage with therapy properly if things dont improve. Ive been in classic stuck mode, getting so absorbed by the numbers and the bubble that AN offers, that I have been numb to it all. The HCA I was seeing was really trying to help me to make changes but she left a while ago (she was going back to train as a nurse) and since then I have had the odd appointment here and there (I think it fell to every 3 weeks for a while as there were no available appointments) with people trying to cover the clinic until someone else is hired for the role, which is far from ideal as they literally just do the necessary obs and send you on your way.

Okay that sounds like yet another excuse, which is probably is, but it's not been an easy ride since I left hospital to say the least.

BUT this past week things have begun to shift a little. I was honest with my therapist about the whole food/meal plan side of things and we actually spoke about how we can't focus on therapy things until I am in a more stable place, which is both really hard to hear but also exactly what I need to hear. I am actually being more open to change, which is a shift from where I was just a week ago. It is bloody painful, even just thinking about it all hurts/is exhausting and I am still very much in the darkness /struggling with it but there is now a little part of me that is screaming out and trying to be heard. There is a little part of me that WANTS to get out of this endless messy limbo that this relapse has been and wants to start stepping back into "recovery". There is part of me that wants a chance. And I've got to start listening to that side a little more.

I promise, the next update will be a little more positive Stay tuned.

[happyhealthyanna]

Five Words

TW: lots of weight talk (no numbers)

Over the weekend, I made a doctor’s appointment in a panic over chest pain. I had the appointment yesterday and was very open about the fact that I was pretty sure this was due to anxiety, but I needed reassurance that my heart is okay. My doctor reassured me that the chances of having heart disease at 27 are slim to none as it progresses over time, but she offered to do an EKG to give me peace of mind. It came back normal.

Let’s rewind 20 years.

Exact ages are muddled after so many years, but I believe I was 8 years old when I put on a significant amount of weight in a short amount of time. My parents took me to our family’s physician. I don’t remember if it was at this point or a couple years later, but regardless, at some point during my childhood I was told by this physician that I was at risk for heart disease and diabetes due to my weight. 

To reiterate: I was a child. 

I recall not being allowed to have the snacks that my classmates had. Chips and candy and ice cream, while already in limited quantities, were no longer permitted. Meanwhile, my brother was on the football team and had to eat a lot to keep his weight up. I remember coming home from school one day and seeing him eating Pringles. I asked if I could have some - he & my mom exchanged a look, then she responded that those were for him and I should go get a healthy snack like carrots.

It hit me at that point that there must be something bad and wrong and gross about me, that I had to have these gross healthy foods because I was bad and wrong and gross. Again, I was a child, so I didn’t have the critical thinking skills to understand that my parents were more afraid than I was about my weight. How were they to know that I would get my period two years later, meaning that the weight gain was most likely due to puberty? They were afraid that they did something wrong, so they chose the method that most physicians seem to recommend: cut calories, increase exercise.

Again, timelines may be muddled, but this is what I remember: I think I was ten or eleven first year I had to do “Speed Camp” - a summer program that my future high school offered to athletes to keep them conditioned for sports - under the guise that it would help me train for the summer sports I was already enrolled in. I was twelve when my dad started taking me to the gym before middle school to see a personal trainer. The summer before high school, I was enrolled in a Children’s Hospital program called Shapedown - I had to do a few screenings to make sure I was overweight enough to qualify. Which, to my fourteen year-old brain, meant that I was bad and wrong and gross enough. 

I lost a lot of weight via the Shapedown program and for the first time in years, I felt like I was doing things right. I entered high school thin, braces off, and with freshly dyed red hair. I got attention from boys and people liked me and my parents seemed nicer to me.

But during all of this time, from the moment I realized I was no longer allowed to eat what I wanted, I developed B.E.D. It didn’t matter how many times my parents screamed at me for eating the last of the ice cream, or finishing my Halloween candy in two days. I internalized the shame and ate more. I gained all of the weight back, plus some. 

In New York while attending acting school, I did a crash diet that the rest of my family was participating in and once again lost a lot of weight. This was encouraged and praised. Again, over the years, I gained all of the weight back with interest. 

I moved back to Colorado in 2013 to seek treatment for B.E.D. My weight has been steadily increasing ever since and I am currently at my heaviest. All of this despite a moderately active lifestyle.

Which brings me back to yesterday’s appointment. After our discussion of my normal EKG results, my doctor said goodbye and she made the comment, “Don’t worry about your weight.”

I felt the world shift beneath my feet. I thanked her and as soon as I stepped outside, I burst into tears.

At no point in this 20 year history has any medical professional told me not to worry about my weight. Sure, my dietitian and E.D therapist harped on the fact that my weight was far less important than getting my mental health in check. But that’s part of their job and the context in which I was being treated by them. Here I was, with a general practitioner doctor, whose job it is to monitor my health, and she is telling me not to worry about being the heaviest I’ve ever been. It’s difficult to imagine a reality in which this can be true, but here I am.

I’ve been thinking a lot over the past 18 hours since that appointment, and what mainly comes to mind is that it’s very likely that the way that my weight was discussed and treated early on is a huge contributing factor for most of the other issues I have had. Of course I’m going to develop anxiety when I’m told as an elementary schooler that my weight is going to give me heart disease; when I am not allowed to eat what I want; when I am encouraged to go to the gym while my classmates are watching Sailor Moon; when every single day since that fateful day in the family physician’s office, my body and what I’m eating and how much I’m exercising has been at the forefront of my mind. There has been no peace with my body since that day.

I don’t hold ill will towards that family physician - she was treating what she saw as a serious illness in the way that she was told to treat it. There were far less conversations happening at that time about how the approach they used can be more damaging than helpful. I wish I had been treated differently, but I wasn’t, so it’s not a good use of my energy to wallow. 

I’ve been treated for anxiety since 2016 and still struggle every day. It’s natural to want a blanket answer for my problems. I think this is as close as I’m going to get. 

Here’s how I am seeing it now: as a child, I became anxious about my weight and health. I dealt with the anxiety by eating, which made me develop B.E.D and increased my weight. When I sought B.E.D treatment, that coping mechanism went away, so I was left with the anxiety and thought that I was, at my core, bad and wrong and gross. The anxiety skyrocketed and my body continued to hold onto weight to protect me. The amount of anxiety that I felt caused the digestive issues I’ve had since I stoped binging, which increased the anxiety even more, causing this vicious cycle that I’m still trying to climb out of. 

But if I don’t have to worry about my weight, what does that look like? Who am I without this struggle? 

I’d like to find out.

[candycoatedmary]

I’m so lucky

Hello.

It’s me. You might recognize me from my many online diary sites. 

Or not. I tried my damnedest to make them anonymous. On the off chance that you do know who I am and recognize my words.. get a fucking life dweeb and use those sleuthing skills for something productive you’re wasting your talents. 

Anyway. 

My heart is a crab apple never picked. Full of worms on the soil by the roots. Is that really sad though? I bet those worms are really happy in that apple. Moist and fed. The roots will also benefit from the nourishment that those billions of bacteria will turn that apple into. So Maybe it’s ok?  

Well, what would that apple have been if that apple had not fallen? What if it had been plucked when it was bright and shiny? Some kid up the tree plucks it and eats it? 

Eh. who cares.  I’

Should I delete everything I just wrote? Usually, that’s what I do.  I let out a stream of consciousness and delete it if I run out of steam before it’s something worth sharing.  He’s a thought though, no one gives a shit what I write. I just like doing it. 

You know.. as a kid, I was a fucking awesome writer for my age. I’ve been writing since I could hold a crayon. I can still remember the visuals in my little 5-year-old head as I wrote about a family loading up their covered wagon. I continued writing off and on through elementary but it really blew up in high school and I filled notebook after notebook with stories and journal entries and fantasies. Lots of people enjoyed it what I wrote. It was the only thing I felt confident about. I wrote out essays for Language Arts like it was nothing. They were easy and fun. 5 paragraphs, intro with 5 sentences 

how did I feel about the subject

3 factual sentences

reiterate the first sentence so that it sounds like an outro.

Then I wrote the 3 factual sentences again so that they were drawn out into 5 sentences each.. then the whole Intro paragraph again but with more opinions because now that my reader had the facts, I could introduce my perspective on it without seeming uninformed. It was amazing. 

It was so fucking easy. and fun. Like running full tilt at recess. So easy and so much fun. I miss my mind. 

You can not imagine the fucking hatred and rage that has been building up towards myself and the fucking bullies I knowingly KNOWLING let into my life and I let them tell me not to write. me. me not write. Jesus. and i let them. I thought I’d just pick it up later. That I’d always have this beautiful golden butterfly/glowing lunar moth keeping me safe from being completely worthless.

I never wanted to write professionally, I didn’t want deadlines and career stress to ruin what I loved. This art that I had was truly mine and it made me feel connected to my parents and all the geniuses that I idolized.  

Then some guy started paying attention to my lonely ass. I was a typical albeit emotionally neglected teenage girl. I thought I was fat. I thought I was so ugly, and stupid (yes, even with the hyper-confidence about writing I thought I was dull as sun-bleached plushies in the read window of grandmas Buick). I would expect that it has a lot to do with being afraid to find out that I’m not as good of a writer as I thought I was and having the general public tell me so. I don’t know man.

I was told to put my pen down by someone giving me attention, so I did. After we broke up, I picked it right up and things were pretty good. Although I had switched to a fully digital medium.  

Then I dated/married a computer nerd and he could get into any website I was posting on and read what I wrote. He said I wasn’t allowed to write there either. 

I tried to go to school. I wrote an essay about butterflies for an aptitude test. I don’t even remember what it was about.. the life cycle maybe. But I got a letter asking me to be on the school newspaper team. That was nice. I didn’t go. 

I wrote my husbands essays for school, they asked him to be on the school paper too. He said that his teachers said he should be in honors English, he told me to tone it down and make it more believable. 

Yeah. I edited my best friends college papers and my mother in laws work papers.. I don’t know what they were for. I just checked it for errors because her English wasn’t great.  Later after my divorce, I wrote my ex-sister in laws papers for English and they also asked her to be in honors classes and to join the school paper. 

Somehow, none of this meant anything to me. 

God. damn. s/he/me/it.

Whatever. 

I did eventually go to school for a quarter. I even passed Math. That was a first for me. I wasn’t allowed to take advanced English in school because I was in remedial math. The schedule wouldn’t work. 

Anyway, the essays didn’t pour out. The page requirements were horrifying.. I wrote so many essays and deleted them before I finally forced myself to settle and just print one out so I could turn it in.  My hardass college English professor asked me to join her Honors class. 

I didn’t.

I dropped out of school because I needed a job and no one wanted to hire me with such a crazy full-time schedule and I desperately needed a job because I needed rent so I could have a home. I didn’t have a goal in college anyway. I never had goals or career dreams so going to school was just so that I didn’t feel like uneducated trash. 

anyway. That’s how I stopped writing anything besides sporadic journal entries a few times a year. 

I had a real gift. I really did. I was touched by a muse and but I am grown from a dry neglected patch of dirt. I was a mistake and I never should have been born. but I was blessed for some reason. 

and I threw it away for some abusive assholes. But hey.. that’s what daddy issues do to a girl. I guess. 

I’m sure it’s a hundred percent my fault after a certain age. 

I am an empty Snickers wrapper. on the side of the road. 

My therapist said I should think positively.

I am a recycled snickers wrapper.  Now I’m just a housewife. I learned to cook and clean and do laundry and I don’t write but he doesn’t hurt me. Emotionally or physically. I have a home and a kitty and I don’t have to see my abusive ex-husband except when we meet to transfer my son from one house to another. He has full custody by the way.. He really fucked me over mentally. but that’s another problem for another day. I’ll write it out on mothers day. 

Won’t that be fun? 

[letsdiscoverkitty]

27.02.2020//There is nothing quite like a little “surprise review” with your consultant...

So last week I ended up having a “surprise review” with my consultant. Okay it wasn’t a COMPLETE surprise, I was told about it about 6 days in advance, but for the service I am with that is VERY rare and reviews are usually planned weeks, if not months, in advance due to how little the consultant works in the area. 

I am not going to lie, I got myself quite worked up beforehand as I definitely overthought about ‘why’ it had been called, which in the end was so unnecessary as it ended up being a complete waste of time (hence the late posting about it as it was that uneventful).

She was a little mellower than usual, which I think was thanks to her being shadowed by a student, but she was still quite, idk how to explain it other than being quite de-humanised? Anyway, all that came from it was that I am on “thin ice” and that if things deteriorate then they will have to send out more referrals as there are apparently no beds in the usual places and unlikely to be any anytime soon (I really don’t want to go down the route of another admission as I don’t see how it could help) and it was reiterated that if it does come to an admission it will only be to “thicken the ice slightly” i.e. get your weight up a little. She did ask how I was managing with my parents being away and I was honest about my mood/isolation/loneliness/just focusing on getting through the days/surviving, which was hard as I very rarely let down some of these walls and tend to put on a front/act without realising it. She didn’t really say much other than to then ask how I spend my days and said it sounded very sad/lonely and that they want me to ‘thrive’....*great*. She has not put in another review meeting yet as she wants to take “my case” to discussion at the next Sussex Hub meeting (whenever/whatever that is). She reiterated that I know what I need to do and that it is not an intellectual/“meal planning” issue that I have, which yes we have talked about numerous times, and agreed on. She suggested maybe looking back at my MANTRA workbook, which I will try to remember to do, and reiterated (yep there was a lot of repetition in this meeting) that she thinks that my home situation perpetuates my illness....as for where we go from here? *shrugs* there was no plan. No forward thinking...They are leaving things to me. I am going to be seen every 2 weeks by the HCA for monitoring - if things deteriorate then yeah it might be a top up admission, otherwise it has to come from me and I have to make sufficient changes and motivations to change and willingness to commit to recovery to be able to get any more support. So nothing new.

I feel paralysed. I WANT to want to get better. And I DO want to get better.  I DO. Yet....well here I am?  I keep wondering if there is something more wrong with me? if I am just being pathetic? if I am simply not meant to get better? if this is all there ever will be? They say that recovery is possible for everyone yet no matter how hard I have tried before, here I still am. It is disheartening. And makes me feel like I am an exception/that the rules don’t apply to me/that this is all there will be...which I just can’t even....sigh. These past few weeks have been exhausting and I feel like my head is a million miles off the ground. I so desperately need some grounding as I feel like I have just being goinggoinggoing, trying to hold things together just that bit longer, but where is this leading? where does this get me? ultimately nowhere. I feel like I am a million miles away. Disconnected from reality/myself/everything. only able to focus on the next 5 minutes and getting through. The more I keep giving into anorexia, the stronger it gets. I am not full on relapsing but neither am I in recovery or trying to recover. I feel paralysed. Stuck. AGAIN. I am a stuck record through and through. repeating myself years down the line. I feel so incredibly alone/unsupported. I know that is very ungrateful of me to say and that I have had a lot of input over the years from services but I feel so at a loss as to where to turn anymore. what to do. what will help. what I need. sigh.  I know that it has to come from me at the end of the day, that no one is going to magically come and save me, that there is no magic/perfect plan or way or admission or therapist or professional or dietitian or programme that will make things magically better. I KNOW IT. but I suppose there is always that part of me “searching” for that alternative that does not elicit so much fear or anxiety, one that skips the messy and horrible part, but the reality is that there is no such thing is there? You cannot jump ahead and skip that part of “recovery” and suddenly be better/fixed - it is impossible. It simply does not work like that. Recovery is not meant to be neat and tidy and easy and fun and nice and happy; I mean yes it brings back life etc but if it were simple and easy then, well, none of us would be in these places would we?

The truth is that I am tired. no, I am beyond tired. Exhausted. Sick to death of sickness. Of illness. Of mental health. Of barely surviving. Of loneliness. Of everything really. I am so tired that even just thinking about change knocks me for seven. How can just thinking about change be so exhausting? 

I honestly hate everything that my ‘life’ has become; the hurt and pain that I have caused to others; the time that I have lost and wasted and ruined; the things I have missed; the “person” that I have become....I hate it.I hate it.I hate it. YET here I still am. Feeling more lost and disconnected from reality than ever before.

I am sorry. This has turned into a bit of a self-pity party, I am not really sure where that came from but I needed to get it out. I think I might try to have a look back at a few things and try to remember what has helped in the past/maybe look into my archive online from when I have gone through the messy difficult initial stages of “recovery”....sigh. I hate this. I really do. I just don’t know what to do anymore.