The Struggle is Real

wrote about my struggles with an eating disorder earlier this year, in May, but haven't mentioned it at all since (which is rather unusual for me) but that means I have major life updates, which will, as usual, cause me to add stuff that could be educational. (The educational part isn't guaranteed, I'm adding it because I don't plan on doing much editing, really just spelling so it's a guess.)

I have been struggling with body image and a relationship with food since I was 16. In that time, I have had periods of my relationship with food being okay by my body image has always been very bad. I have struggled with a lot of behaviors associated with eating disorders in the last 7 years, eventually leading the a diagnosis of bulimia. At first, I was told it was binge eating disorder but that had to do with me lying about purging, as if I would be reprimanded for it.

I told my first therapist ever when I really noticed my behaviors surrounding food. She had me keep a log of behaviors, not specific foods, and told me that I didn't meet criteria for an eating disorder but I wasn't fully honest on the paper because I didn't want there to be an issue. I was scared of what she would say had I been completely truthful. For example, if I binged five times, I only mentioned two of them. One that I lied about even more was purging. I did it about six times and only put one of them. I was still in pediatrics and she could talk to my parents so I didn't want them to find out that I forced myself to vomit, especially that many times. I ended up shoving the feelings down and not telling any of the next six therapists I had. It was that many for a long reason so I'll try to summarize...

I did a group program that was a general depression/anxiety/et cetera program where I saw five people in the span of only two years. I started working with a neuropsychologist for my functional neurological disorder but his title for me was "therapist." We focused on me learning to feel my feelings rather than suppressing them, so I could gain control of my psychogenic non-epileptic attacks, so I never really was honest about my issues with food. It didn't feel appropriate to me. When he moved, I started back with traditional therapy (you know, talking about everything that's bothering you) and after being with him for seven months, I told him.

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He wanted logs of when I ate and behaviors. I had no actual paper to fill out from him so I made my own. On the paper I made a chart, here's the description:

Vertically: day of the week and meals with an additional line for any snacks that I may have had.

Horizontally: binge, purge, restrict even if I want food, how I felt before, during, and after eating, if I weighed myself, and if I body checked. For anyone who may not know, body checking includes stuff like looking in the mirror excessively and pinching what you think are problem areas. I'm sure there are others but those are what I'm aware of since those are what I do.

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He agreed that it's a major issue that I need help with. We monitored it for a while since neither of us wanted me to have more appointments. Eventually, he put in a referral for an eating disorder partial hospitalization program. I had the two hour intake appointment on October 14th and I found out the next day that I'm starting tomorrow, October 17th.

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I wanted to publish this sooner but I had to stop multiple times because of panic attacks from not knowing exactly what it'll entail, though I have been told some pretty universal rules from a really close friend.