Strengths and Weaknesses According to T.

I have my last D. appointment tomorrow, and I'm a lot more nervous/apprehensive about that than I was about the final T. appointment last week.  T. was great and I connected a lot with her, but the ED stuff actually consumed the minority of our discussion time, so I didn't feel like I was losing as much of a sounding board with her as I will with D. I've known D. for almost 3 years now, the longest I've seen any treatment team member, even if you do subtract the year in the middle when I was away.  I don't feel like I'm totally dependent on her to keep me on track, but I know having her metaphorical boot on my ass a few times a month is a big dose of reality that helps to keep me from letting my eating stuff fall through the cracks.  Also, I just plain like her, bluntness and all, and will miss our talks. :(

I'm also afraid D. will be upset at me at our last session, because the food records I had to send to her this morning showed that I definitely got off track over the weekend and went the opposite direction from the XXX cal boost she wanted.


 I always underestimate how much physical energy moving is going to consume. I haven't felt this drained in ages.  It was my day to do strength training at the gym this morning, but decided to totally forgo it.  After hauling boxes and cleaning for hours every day all weekend, it feels like I'm being run over by a car every time I stand up.  I also think this weekend lends testimony to D's hypothesis that my headaches are related to energy imbalance, because they've been especially bad the last 2-3 days.  I also, paradoxically, tend to have a lot less motivation for food and such when I'm exhausted, which hasn't done me any favors.

Back on the wagon with eating today, even added some to my baseline intake, although I haven't gotten up to what D. wanted yet. Tomorrow is my last day here, and then my daily routines are totally obliterated, so we'll see how all that goes.


Anyway, that's that.  By the way, apparently T. uses her last session with clients to go over what she thinks their strengths and weaknesses are.  It was a little bit uncomfortable but also pretty fascinating to hear her verdict on me.

Strengths: She praised me for being 1) "highly functional" (gee thanks, I guess) and 2) also very pro-recovery.  I know it's normal for ED patients to sometimes even question whether they want to recover, and I definitely went through that stage too.  But now I truly do just want to be free and get on with my life.  I think that most of the things keeping the ED behaviors in my life at this point are more anxiety and OCD related than by any motivation to stay underweight.  She also said I'm fairly intuitive, capable of healthy introspection, and am better at describing emotions than I give myself credit for.

Although weight gain does still kind of freak me out, I think it's more because it's an unknown (I've never been an adult at a normal weight in my life) than anything else, which is an anxiety trigger.

Weaknesses: 1) Managing my anxiety.  I still don't have a ton of distinct established coping mechanisms for this, besides exercise of course.  She has continually pushed me to take up meditation, which I have pretty much blown off over and over again.  She also thinks the anxiety might abate a bit with some weight gain, as it definitely did slack off once I got out of the danger zone physically. 2) She really wants me to find ways to increase my flexibility, as a lot of my ED behaviors are pretty much just entrenched routine more than anything else. 3) I still tend to isolate rather than reach out when I'm upset, and she encouraged me to try a lot harder to establish a real-life support network in my new city.  Not necessarily to tell those people about my ED if I don't want to, but just have more of a social net.

My Master's degree city is really the first place in my life where I haven't had a big group of friends, and I've been pretty miserable.  I do have some friends, but not to the breadth/depth as I usually do.  I can think of some reasons for that 1) grad school is a lot more isolating independent than undergrad, 2) I started dating Match almost right away when I moved here and let that consume most of my socialization time my first year, then left for fieldwork my 2nd year, and 3) I was so disappointed in this school compared to my undergrad university that I wasn't nearly as involved in departmental/community events as I could have been.  So the main message is to suck it up and start liking people again when I start my PhD, LOL.

I sat down not knowing what to write about but wanting a break from packing/cleaning, and now I've written a book, as usual.  Happy Monday, love y'all.