It's a Girl!

...*NO* I am not pregnant. Is there another text formatting emphasis I can add that I missed?

But guess who is? T, my psychologist.  It won't affect me since I only have one session left with her before I move, but she gave me the news anyway that she is expecting and will be on maternity leave this fall.  I am super happy for her, partly just because SHE IS GROWING A HUMAN, which should be considered a superpower, and partly because I know she is an ED survivor too, and she has shared that at one point she never thought it possible she'd have a family of her own.  You rock, T.

Another part of the disclosure was both interesting and thought provoking.  She made the comment that she had decided even to tell clients that are leaving soon (there are a lot of university students here so the attrition rate is high at the end of the spring semester) because she wanted them to know why she was "getting noticeably bigger".  I honestly hadn't noticed her expanding waist, even though she's in her 2nd trimester now, she must have been good at picking concealing clothes.  Or it could be that I don't pay that much attention.

It sort of made me contemplate how self-conscious ED therapists might be about their own size/appearance.  Even when a person's etiology doesn't include major thin-envy, it's safe to say a lot (not all) of people body-check other people, sometimes out of honest curiosity or competitiveness or jealousy or whatever you could possibly think when you note someone's size. Probably more during initial sessions than on an ongoing basis. Plus it must be hard to spend all day analyzing other people's eating/exercise behaviors without giving a thought to your own. Given that it's not uncommon for ED therapists to have a personal history with eating issues (again, not that all do), I wonder how that feels for them.

 I'm sure most are professional enough to deal with it, but I guess it's probably hard to adjust to at first.    I have never really cared about my therapists' weight. H. was about 60 and I was 21 when I started seeing her, so there wasn't much temptation to compare. I suppose she was high side of healthy?  A low healthy wouldn't look nearly as normal on a 60 year old as it does younger people sometimes.  The CSW I saw my first year of grad school (she was 36, I was 23) had just had a baby, so that was that. T. is 32 and I'm 25, so that is the closest (she also actually really resembles me in terms of coloration and such, which seems to create the potential for comparison but honestly hasn't) and I've pretty much just noticed that she looks healthy and pretty fit but very well within a healthy range.

Now that I think about it, the post-baby therapist DID offer that information the first session to "explain" her size.  Then again, it soon became clear that she was absolutely not over her own ED issues and had a nasty competitive edge, which is a big reason I quit her and probably doesn't make her the best example.

I do hate that she felt the need to explain herself, because I would never think someone's competency as an ED therapist would correlate inversely with their weight. That said, I do think there are some size-related lines I would draw on the other end of the spectrum. There is a psychologist that works at the same clinic as D. that I see in the lobby sometimes, and she is so PAINFULLY thin that I really don't think I could work with her without it being a distraction and making me really uncomfortable.  It does seem unfair, because she could be a fantastic therapist, it's just my gut reaction when I see her.

Looking at the closing of the age gap with therapists up there, I really need to try to kick this before I start surpassing my treatment team in age. :/ I mean, I am trying, that just made me more conscious of that factor though.

Ookay that is quite enough ramble I suppose.  Thinking about that issue gives me even more respect for people that manage as effective ED therapists after battling the disease themselves.

On an unrelated note, Match and I are pretty much repaired, as of about 1:00 this morning.  We never, ever, ever fight as badly in person as we do when we're on the phone. It is so, so hard to really feel resolved sometimes when we are 600 miles apart. No hand on the leg, no leaning into a shoulder, no holding hands, no end-of-argument hug to help signify that things are okay. Not to be TMI,  but there are fewer options to sort of cement reconnection afterward.

Distance sucks, my friends.  We're making it, though.  At least a big fight opens up opportunities to sort of re-establish how much you care and discuss the best ways to treat each other well. Thanks for everyone that offered support during a really tense couple of days.

Happy Earth Day, love y'all!