Program

Treatment is never as simple as we make it out to be in our heads.

I started attending the Eating Disorder Program at St. Joe's on Monday of this week (I found out I had insurance authorization on Friday). I'm relieved and frustrated and suffocated and secure all at the same time. 6 hours of therapy a day can wear on a person, especially when everyone is trying to pry your fingers off of something you are:

a) not quite ready to give up yet and,

b) convinced on some level that it is keeping you afloat, keeping you alive.


Already, I'm back on a meal plan, back on scheduled journaling, back on weekly weight checks, and back on meds. Its a blessing and a curse. When you have an ED you need structure. But, the more structure you have, the more your disordered brain fights it. It feels strangled and starts clawing its way to the surface.

Program gives me a safe place to go for 6 hours a day though...those are 6 hours that I would easily be spending at home either not eating or eating too much and then compensating. The question is, what do I do for those 18 other hours where I am not safe? Where my ED can get me at any time?

I guess that's why we're there-to answer that question. What do we do instead of ED?

Perhaps the most frustrating part in all of this is that I am faced with triggers every day when I'm there: emaciated bodies, girls that don't want to get better, food, and feelings. ugh. Thinness and an unwillingness to recover are probably the two most triggering things on the planet for me, and now I'm facing that daily, AND I'm having food forced down my throat and having to dredge up emotions I've stifled for years. This makes my brain scream "SHUT UP AND BE SKINNY!"

Ultimately, I have a choice to make.

And my choice is this:



Or this:



Yeah ok, no contest. Recovery is definitely much, much prettier.


Tomorrow is Family Day. This will be the third time I've forced my sister to come and sit there for two hours and listen to the dietitian and therapist say the same thing every single time :) I am lucky to have her in my recovery.

Couldn't get my mom to come, though. Hopefully, next time.





Always hoping.




P.S. This is the best resource for ED literature on the planet. If its about eating, its here: http://www.bulimia.com/index.cfm