I'm Game

Not only did my dh get out with the leaf blower, but he and the girls picked up all of the sticks in the backyard AND my dearest T, who despises yard work, suggested that on each nice weekend we should choose an area and work on it for an hour or two (!) That really makes me feel much less put-upon.

I met with my therapist yesterday, and she's very pleased with my progress. She said it seemed that my ability to be reflective is improving, and she was quite happy to hear that I haven't binged in a few weeks. I told her that I'd had some mild urges that I didn't quite understand. Once last week when T took the dog for a walk, I really wanted to start eating. Yet I wasn't upset, I wasn't unhappy, I wasn't angry with T, and I wasn't having any sort of strong feeling I could identify. She suggested that perhaps many small irritations build up over the course of the week, and just then is when I felt the urge because I had the opportunity. Wow -- light bulb moment. There had been several times over the week when I'd been annoyed because the dishes weren't done or something small happened -- too small to whinge about, but irritating to me. She advised me to journal each night about the things bothering me, both small and large. If I write them down, it's easier to let them go. That makes a lot of sense.

She gave me quite a bit of "homework" to do -- making a list of my triggers and how I can thwart them, making a behavior chain (for example -- I get up late, don't pack a good lunch, feel starving all afternoon, stop at a fast food place, eat too much, feel guilt, binge...whatever might happen), and a sheet on problem solving -- i.e. my problem is that I want to eat dessert every night after dinner. I have to write down what's in it for me, the down side, my options, other options, the option I'll try this week, how many days I was successful, and whether or not I want to try another option. She also gave me handouts on working with feelings and negative self-talk.

We discussed my "not good enough" poem, and though it was obvious that many events in my life served to reinforce the idea that weight and looks were really important, I told her that I realized that my feelings weren't all related to my weight. All my life I'd thought, "If I just lost ___ pounds, I'd be happy." Yet, many of the things I wrote about were unrelated to weight and looks. I would have felt bad whether I'd weighed 300 pounds or 110 pounds. She asked what that said to me. I told her, "Well, it's obvious that I have really bad self esteem and somehow need to raise it." She replied, "Are you ready to do that work?" AHHHH! I answered, "I guess so." I can't imagine how it will ever happen, but I'm game.