Maybe there’s hope for me…

In today’s New York Times, the lead article in the Sunday Review is titled Where Have All the Neurotics Gone? by health reporter Benedict Carey.

Where are neurotics today?

It seems they’ve become a thing of the past. An old, dying breed. According to Carey,

“For a generation of postwar middle-class Americans, being neurotic meant something more than being merely anxious, and something other than exhibiting the hysteria or other disabling moods problems for which Freud used the term. It meant being interesting (if sometimes exasperating) at a time when psychoanalysis reigned in intellectual circles and Woody Allen reigned in movie houses.

“That it means little now, to most Americans, is evidence of how strongly language drives the perception of mental struggle, both its sources and its remedies. In recent years psychiatrists have developed a more specialized medical vocabulary to describe anxiety, the core component of neurosis, and as a result the public has gained a greater appreciation of its many dimensions.

“But in the process we’ve lost entirely the romance of neurosis, as well as it’s physical embodiment – a restless, grumbling, needy presence that once functioned in the collective mind as an early warning system, an inner voice that hedged against excessive optimism.”

There’s a mysterious, somewhat strange-sounding convention in psychiatry, I think. I’m not sure. I’ve never imagined it would apply to me, so I’ve never bothered to investigate it.

I’ve steered far away from. It scares me.

Leaving therapy…

Here’s how it was explained to me at the Eating Disorders Outpatient program I just completed. And remember, an eating disorder is a psychiatric illness.

For a minimum of two years, I was told, I could not go back to see my social worker, dietician or any of the practitioners who helped me begin eating normally for the first time in my life.

A follow-up might be possible, but now I have a psychologist to help me.

I suspect psychiatrists work in similar ways. I don’t know…

Once you say good bye. Once you receive your psychiatric “seal of approval.” Once you have your psychotherapeutic “walking papers.” Once you leave, is that it?

Do you venture off into the world on your trembling feet, vulnerable, alone? Independent?  Do you never see your therapist again? Or at least for a minimum of two years? That never seemed to be the case with Dr. Bob. It seemed he would always be there for me.

As anyone acquainted with me and this blog knows, I see a psychiatrist regularly for my mood disorder. We started seeing each other in 1991.

He’s an unusual psychiatrist…

Dr. Bob is not a psychoanalyst like my first psychotherapist back in 1960. She was Jungian and probably one of the only therapists to treat children like me in Toronto.

“A very, very, very difficult child,” I’ve been told time and again all my life. “There was something wrong with you.”

You hear that long enough and often enough and you begin to believe it, Dr. Bob reflected this week.

His orientation to psychotherapy is eclectic. We talk. I sit facing him and he sits behind his desk facing me. There’s a couch in his office, but I doubt anyone uses it. And an intriguing piece of art that says, I need you which I’ve written about here.

I wasn’t there.

I cannot attest to the factual accuracy of what I’m about to share with you.

But according to a very close relative with whom I visited this weekend, I was given “everything” ~ all the love and attention in the world ~ but “there was something wrong with me.”

“From birth,” the relative pronounced with profound authority, “you were a very, very, very difficult child in every possible way.”

That is one truth. But is it the only truth?

Take a gun. Aim it at my heart or head. Then pull the trigger. I have heard this from this relative and others in my family more times than I can remember. It is in “the family record.” It IS the family record.

And I am not buying that particular truth anymore. It’s old. It’s out of date. It’s been disproven. It’s no longer valid or real.

Perhaps I was difficult. So?

In 1948, the year of my birth, perhaps I was difficult ~ compared to other children and other “norms” of the period. Who knows? For sure?

Perhaps there were other expectations of me. Was I a bad child? Did I hurt other people purposely? I don’t know and it’s all history now. Ancient history.

We all long for unconditional love, but what about unconditional worth?

Musing on this question will take more than one blog post, so consider this a beginning.

Glenn R. Schiraldi, Ph.D. concisely describes this concept in The Self-Esteem Workbook and when I first encountered it, to be perfectly honest with you, I was stunned.

A new concept…

I’d never considered it before. Perhaps it’s a new concept for you, too.

So I thought I’d share some of Schiraldi’s wisdom, research and insights with you today because just reading about unconditional worth made me feel better about myself.

I have been writing my little fingers to the bone.

Not here, I’m afraid…

Though I’d love to be here with you, instead, I’m writing reams about body image ~ mine.

It’s exhausting and triggering. Working on recovering from my eating disorder with psychologist, Kim Watson, Ph.D involves reading two workbooks ~ on body image and self-esteem.

Every day, for at least one hour ~ usually more ~ I do challenging writing exercises that resonate in places I don’t really like going.

I spent last week in the past…

For me and my body, the past not a pretty place.

When I graduated from my six-week Eating Disorders Program on January 6th, I knew much more about metabolism and normative eating.

I had a fresh, liberating understanding of what “normal” eating is for me. For everyone. We need a minimum number of calories for our bodies simply to function.

That number is always ignored by the diet industry. Though I no longer count calories or weigh food or even weigh myself, I know that my body needs 1,400 just to exist.

Because of my broken arm, I’m not doing any exercising. Not yet.

Risking a fall isn’t an option right now…

Furthermore, exercise is an activity I must work back into in a safe way, since I have used exercise as a form of purging. That kind of thinking, exercise in order to control weight or change body shape is no longer an option for me. It’s not healthy or realistic. It’s a specious way to try to control your weight. You can’t. Your genetics determine your optimal body weight. That’s a whole other story.

It’s been a while. And a struggle. But I am definitely on the mend.

Happy 2012. I have resolved not to make any resolutions, other than to be more empathetic with Marty, my husband, who has a completely different temperament than I do.

My mind works faster than my left forefinger, so writing this blog is not easy for me. Living with me is not easy either, but we’re doing much better. Couples therapy is wondrous if you find the right therapist and, happily, we did through my eating disorders program.

Today’s big news? 

My cast comes off today ~ I hope.

In the meantime, to make life easier for Saint Marty, I had all my hair cut off. Every little bit helps. I love it and when both my hands are working, I’ll send you a picture.

Since we last spoke, I was on Day 31 of my Eating Disorder Treatment Program.

You may be wondering where I’ve been since November 30 ~ Day Three ~ of my outpatient eating disorder treatment program.

Read the comments to that last post. You’ll see some of my progress.

Since then a few things happened…

I snapped the picture you see, this morning. It’s a tight shot of my right hand.

Note the discolouration on my thumb. Not dirt. It’s a bruise, black and blue.

Also…

I am very right-handed and not, as I have discovered ~ in the least, whatsoever, in any remote way ~ ambidextrous. The plaster cast you see goes up to my elbow. It weighs “a ton.” Feels like it, anyway.

After a stupid fall on Wednesday, December 14 ~ all falls methinks are stupid, right? ~ and an x-ray revealed that I had indeed broken my right arm above my wrist, the technician in the ER fracture clinic said I would be able to have a yellow fibreglass cast in a week. Mmmmmm. My favourite colour.

I am exhausted. I can’t remember feeling so emotionally and physically drained and depleted. As soon as I finish this post, I’m going to bed.

It’s Day Three of my five-week Eating Disorders Day Treatment Program.
My goal for tonight was to write to you, to let you know what’s happening.

To be honest, mealtimes are hard for me. Right now, I feel nauseated. This happens after every meal there, and not because it’s hospital food. After breakfast, here at home, today. I became nauseous.

Is this normal?

Yes. Apparently, for someone with an eating disorder at the beginning of treatment, nausea after eating is normal.