Monthly Archives: May 2011

May 31 2011

Therapy Recap 5/31/11

J got a new couch. At first I just noticed the new pillows, then when I sat down I was looking at the couch and he told me he got a new one. Guess what color it is? Beige! I wonder if therapists go to a special store to buy beige couches?

We talked about the food issue again, and I told J that I was obsessing about food and exercise. I said that I know what I am doing is ridiculous, why do I need to weigh myself so much, why do I need to weigh myself before I go to bed? There isn’t anything I can do about it. I told him about how I have been reading about other people doing this “Intuitive Eating” thing, but I can’t trust my intuition. I went out with my son the other night, and I thought I wasn’t hungry, but then I thought maybe I am just convincing myself that I am not hungry. I can’t tell anything anymore, and I don’t know what a “normal” meal is. We talked about normal, and I said that apparently the “normal” American meal isn’t such a healthy choice. I asked him what was wrong with ordering a salad with grilled salmon with the dressing on the side, and he said there is nothing wrong with it.

I told him about how I have been thinking lately that women don’t ever talk about their weights. That I think every woman weighs 120 pounds, unless they are really little, then they weigh 110. But I see the women on the biggest loser who look great and weigh in the 150’s, and my cousin when she was in the hospital told the nurses that she weighed 150 and I thought that seemed way too high, she seems like a little thing to me, and a woman who’s blog I read who lost 100 pounds and reached her goal weight of 162 at Weight Watchers. I said it is really surprising to me that women who look good weigh more than 120 pounds. He asked me what would happen if I was at a place like Weight Watchers where you have to weigh yourself in public, and I set him straight about that! I told him that all weights are private, you step on the scale and the number is behind the counter and they write it in your booklet. Weight is a big secret in our society.

I told him about a restaurant I went to for lunch a couple of weeks ago and I was looking at what everyone was eating. Every woman was eating a salad with the dressing on the side, and every man was eating a burger, fries, crabcake sandwiches, etc. He asked me if the women were thin and the men were portly, and I said I didn’t even notice their body types, just what they were eating. Can’t women eat burgers and fries? I can’t – that would be my whole calorie allowance for the day and I wouldn’t be able to eat anything else.

J asked if I could go a day without weighing myself, and I said that I did that once last year, and I didn’t eat much all day because I knew I couldn’t weigh myself the next day, so I had to be careful. Logically I know that is ridiculous. I should just eat the way I eat, the scale doesn’t affect anything.

We talked about how my mood for the day depends on the number on the scale. I said, how else can I judge myself each day if not using weight? He said I don’t need to be judging myself first of all, and how about using different criteria – how I am as a person for example.

Somehow we got onto the subject of if I can relax at the beach, and I said I could. J asked if I could sit on the beach and think my life is good. I asked him if that is his definition of relaxing, because if it is, then, no, I cannot relax. We got back onto the subject of my life not being good, and he asked me again, for the millionth time, about the things that are good and not good. The not good things are the relationship with my husband, my lack of a career, my self esteem issues and never feeling good enough. The good things are my health, my family’s health, my friends, security, living in a safe place, etc.

He asked what would make it better, and I said if I lost 20 pounds right now I would feel better. Of course I know that is ridiculous, and we did talk about what would happen if I lost 4 more pounds, would I want to lose 2 more pounds, and then 2 more after that. I said that if my marriage either gets better or ends, life would be better than it is now. As for the career, I don’t know what I can do about that.

We talked about my dinner with my husband last weekend and how I ate a regular meal, and asked him the question I was supposed to ask. I told J that my husband seemed happy when I told him about the health coach telling me I should go out for a real meal, and that when I asked him about the retirement plan he answered me and answered both of my questions. J said that he was surprised, because based on what I have told him he didn’t think my husband would want to go out with me in the first place, and wouldn’t want to talk about finances. He asked me if I think my husband likes me, and I said that I think he does, and I like him.

J wanted me to ask my husband some more about the retirement details, and I said I don’t really worry about it because I don’t really plan to live that long. He asked me if I plan to die by suicide, and I said I don’t know, maybe. But I told him not to worry, I don’t plan on doing anything today. I really didn’t want to get into the whole thing about getting sick, getting old, etc. That is another can of worms that I couldn’t deal with opening today.

Now J wants me to go out for another regular meal with my husband and talk to him about how I am dissatisfied with my lack of a career and accomplishments. I expressed doubt that my husband would be much interested in this topic, but I said that I would do it, just so I could tell J how my husband reacts.

He asked what would make my marriage better and I said that if we had anything in common, if we liked to do things together, if he listens to me and remembers what I say, if he doesn’t walk out of the room when I am in the middle of telling him something, that would make it better. J said it is like my husband and I have parallel lives, which is true.

Towards the end of the session I got the feeling that J was getting frustrated with me. He was talking about something about how I use the eating and exercising to keep myself in this limbo of never being good enough, and when he paused I said, “Are you mad at me?” He said no, and I said, “Why are you sitting like that?” He had his legs crossed and his arms crossed, and he never sits like that. He said some bullshit thing about being cold, which is ridiculous, because I am always the one who is cold, and I was not cold, I was actually a bit warm probably due to it being 95 degrees out, and he never turns the a/c way down because he knows I get cold.

I guess I am frustrating to him, because I see everything intellectually, but I can’t behave the way my mind is telling me I should. I didn’t really think much about the session this afternoon, but this evening I am feeling down. I am watching the documentary “How To Die In Oregon”, about terminally ill people in Oregon who choose assisted suicide to end their lives. Oregon was the first state to legalize this (there are only two others). It is very sad that there are people out there who are dying and they don’t want to die. And I was reading a clothing catalog from Athleta, full of young, toned, thin women playing beach volleyball in bikinis and doing headstands in halter tops, and it just made me feel kind of sick. I know it seems vain, to not want to get old or sick, to have the body I had 20 years ago. But I think it is more than that.

I read an article in the newspaper this weekend about middle aged women and how their lives are better than they were when they were younger because they have self confidence and so many accomplishments. I wish I could be one of those, but instead my confidence gets worse and worse as I get older. Maybe because I don’t have those accomplishments, and I don’t have much purpose. I’m just down right now. Sometimes I hate therapy.

May 24 2011

Therapy Recap 5/24/11

I decided that today I would ask J questions. I asked him if I could ask him some questions and he said sure.

The first one was “Do you think I am making any progress.” He said I am making progress in certain areas, and others we still need to work on. I am more aware of why and when I think certain things, and I can see that I am doing and thinking certain things. He said that he thought there was a turning point for me when my cousin overdosed (I have to think about that some more). Is that when I started to show emotion in therapy? Maybe.

I asked “Do we have a goal, how do we know if I am progressing.” J said that the goals are amorphous, but to feel like I am a good enough person, and not to feel shame about being me. He gave the metaphor of a road and a car, and he said that the goal is for me to be in control of the car, that there will be potholes, and accidents, and traffic jams, but my hands should always be on the wheel in control.

I asked him if my life would get better as I progress and he said he definitely thinks it will. Of course anything can happen in life, but he thinks I will be more in control and sure of myself. I said that I got the impression from him that I should just bide my time until I become a grandmother, and he said he didn’t mean that, but just that I have things to look forward to.

I asked J if he has treated other people with my kinds of issues and if they got better. He said he doesn’t like to use the word “better” because I am not sick. He asked me what exactly I mean by my issues, and I went through the list. He said that all of those are treatable, and he has had clients who progressed. Then he gave me an example of a woman he saw a few years ago who heard voices, and she got better and she comes in every once in a while to check in and she is doing great. So even people who have more severe problems than me can be treated. That didn’t mean much to me; frankly, I was specifically interested in hearing about people like me.

I asked him about my difficulty in talking to him about certain things, and my difficulty in reacting and responding to things in the session in the moment and how can I get past that. He told me that it is not a problem to have a reaction after the session, that most of the therapy occurs in the other parts of the week, that the 45 minutes is for gathering data. I told him that if he was a regular person and he said something that bothered me, but I didn’t react until later or the next day, I could call the person or see him and talk to him, but with therapy I have to wait a week and then the issue is past. He said that first of all I don’t have to wait a week to tell him anything, and that this is how lots of relationships work, he gave the example of a married couple and how they might have a disagreement. Sometimes they come back to it, and sometimes they just let it pass. And if something happens in session that I feel is a problem, I might talk about it the next week, or six weeks later. He asked for a specific example and I gave him the example of how last week he told me he lost 12 pounds without even trying, after I had told him of my difficulty in losing weight. He asked me if I thought he was disregarding my feelings and I said that I thought he was. But I didn’t want to talk about the actual incident, I wanted to talk about why I couldn’t respond in the moment. I told him how difficult it is to talk about things so far after the fact. That I feel like I am boring him if I talk about the same things all the time. He responded, “And your job is to entertain me.” I said, “Yes exactly.” And this is related to the other part of the question, my difficulty in talking about certain things. I said that I never told him about the drinking I had been doing and how much I was drinking, but I thought it was important to tell him, and I wanted to, but it was too difficult. He said this is an example of feeling shame.

We talked about how I don’t want him to think badly of me. He asked if that is something about me, or if it is about me and him, and I said it is me, that I don’t want anyone to think badly of me. Then we talked about whether the drinking was bad, and he said it was only bad because I determined it was bad. I was still functioning, it was not interfering in my job or things I needed to do. I asked him if there is anything I could tell him that would make him think I am a bad person, and he said there is nothing. He asked if I club baby seals, and I assured him that I didn’t. He said I could try to come up with something, but he doesn’t think I’d be able to.

J asked if he could say something about himself, and I said, “Will it hurt my feelings?” He said he didn’t think so, and he told me about when he gets speeding tickets he feels very bad, but he realizes he is not a bad person and he sends in the money very quickly and then moves past it. He said a part of me that definitely needs more work is moving past things more easily. The Teflon coating. He said he sees progress, but there needs to be more Teflon.

Then, with only 5 minutes left, I asked him if he thought he could challenge me more. He asked me what challenge would look like, and I thought about it and said I didn’t know. I said that there are things that I know intellectually, but I still don’t feel or believe. He said that up until this point in therapy there is no way he could have challenged me strongly, and I agreed. I needed validation and understanding and trust building, but now I think I need real change. I said, “I’d like you to challenge me more even though I don’t want you to and it hurts my feelings and makes me angry at you and makes me not like you.” He said that he thinks my holistic health coach challenges me (he didn’t call her “your lady”!) and I said that yes she does.

So if I write in my blog about how much I hate therapy and J and I want to quit, please remind me that I asked for it!

At one point in the middle of the session J said, “It’s your song.” I didn’t know what he meant. But there is music playing out in the waiting room (I couldn’t even really hear it actually) and the song was “Landslide” by Stevie Nicks, the song I had as the background music for my slide show about my life and getting older and being alone, etc. I was kind of touched that he said that, and he thinks of it as my song. Kind of a weird feeling.

At the end I said, “This was productive” and he said “Well, we’ll see how you feel later!” But I feel good about it. I think it is a good idea to have sessions like this every once in a while, but up until now I don’t know if I would have been brave enough.

May 22 2011

Last Night’s Dinner

I ate normally all day, despite knowing I would be eating a “normal” meal in a restaurant for dinner. I had:

a glass of merlot
spiced cashews
a salad of iceberg, bacon, radishes, and blue cheese dressing that I split with my husband
crab royale, which was a large portion of crabmeat, seasoned and broiled and topped with a shallot butter sauce
mashed potatoes
creamed spinach

We didn’t order dessert, but the waiter brought us over two little pieces of chocolate peanut butter fudge, and since my husband doesn’t like fudge I ate both of them. Then another waiter brought us two more pieces of fudge! But I brought those home for my son.

It was a good dinner. And I asked my husband the question that I was supposed to ask him, and that was no problem.

I consider this a success.

May 19 2011

A Conversation With My Husband

“The health coach told me that I should go out to dinner and eat a normal meal.”
“Great! By yourself or with someone?”
“With friends or family.”
“OK, do you want to go Friday or Saturday? Did she give a suggestion as to where to go?”
“I think Saturday would be good, since I’m running five miles in the morning. And she didn’t suggest a particular place. She also didn’t tell me what a normal meal is. If I put chicken on my salad would that be a normal meal?”
“Don’t get a salad.”
“Can I get one of those little salads before my main meal?”
“Sure, that would be fine.”

Other goals my health coach and I came up with for the next two weeks:

Organize part of my basement
Make the Thai Quinoa recipe (already did!)
Have dinner with my husband and ask him about the IRA or 401K (repeat from last time since I never did it)
Do this dialogue thing she told me about, where I talk to a problem
Strength training two times per week (bought some workout DVDs yesterday!)
Have a “stress free” meal two times per week (don’t think I can do this, I’m aiming for one time per week)
Go out for a meal with friends or family two times per week
Exercise one time per week just for fun
Get some digestive enzymes and buy more probiotics since I ran out and never got more

May 18 2011

The Food Essay

Yesterday was a day filled with thinking about food issues. First my session with J, then writing my assignment, then meeting with the health coach. I always feel so good when I leave my meetings with her, so unlike therapy. But, of course, she isn’t doing therapy, so that is to be expected. Working with her is very goal oriented, unlike therapy which is very scattered and nebulous. She is also very encouraging, she told me not to worry that I didn’t enjoy my birthday dinner, how could I? I need to continue to practice this, and eventually I will come to the realization that nothing “bad” will happen if I enjoy a meal out, eating things I don’t normally eat, and then I won’t be stressed by it anymore.

I’m not sure J likes the idea of my health coach. I told him that she isn’t a therapist, and I explain everything we are working on, and he helps me with it. It’s like a team. But when I was leaving my session with him yesterday he asked me, “When are you seeing your lady again?” “Your lady”? I don’t refer to him as “My guy”. I thought that was somewhat derogatory. Granted she doesn’t have a degree in dietetics or anything, but he could at least call her my health coach.

So here is the essay I wrote about food. I woke up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, and sent J another email saying that this essay makes things sound very bad, when actually I do remember many dinners with family that were fun. I think I am being over dramatic here, so take this with a grain of salt. When I mentioned to J that my food issues weren’t about food he suggested they are about control. I thought I would expand on that idea.

Here is what I think about food:

I think food is used by people to control themselves as well as others.

I grew up hearing my mother say (about my father), “He can’t eat that!” My father had high blood pressure and cholesterol problems and he was on a restricted diet. He was a totally passive man who was willing to let my mother control everything he ate, not to mention he had no idea how to cook or prepare anything except his daily morning bowl of Rice Krispies and milk. Anywhere we were, home, at someone else’s home, restaurants, if something “bad” was offered to my dad my mother would say “He can’t eat that.” This got even worse after my father had kidney failure and was on dialysis. The list of foods he could eat dwindled, and so there was a lot more “He can’t eat that!”

My mother’s second husband unfortunately also had kidney disease. She was an expert on the kidney diet at this point, and the “He can’t eat that!” continued. I asked my sister, who is a registered dietician (yeah, I think I mentioned she had an eating disorder – interesting issue for a dietician) if the kidney diet truly prevents a person from eating these things, and she told me that people on dialysis can eat the restricted foods in certain small quantities, but some people find it easier to cut out the foods completely rather than try to remember how much they have had of each thing every day. When I told my mother this, she responded that no, her husband could not eat these things. Luckily for her, he was passive as well, and she could control everything he ate.

Not only could she control what her husbands ate, but she could control us by restricting us to prepare only the foods that they could eat.

My mother spent my whole life battling her weight, being fat and thin and everywhere in between, and trying every popular diet. She really had no trouble losing weight, because she was totally in control when she made up her mind, but she had trouble keeping it off. I’m sure you’ve heard people say when they are on a diet, “I was so good, I didn’t eat any of the dessert” or of course, “I was so bad, I ate every dessert.” My mother considered herself good when she didn’t eat the bad stuff and bad when she did.

Our family holidays revolved around food, as do all families. I didn’t get the feeling this food stuff was loving and nurturing though. It was more about controlling people. My mother would do most everything herself, but would also sometimes assign dishes to people. She would complain that certain people weren’t helping in the kitchen – “What’s wrong with her?” was her most common statement. Our extended families spent every holiday at our house because the rest of the women in the family were too dysfunctional to plan anything as complicated as Thanksgiving. My mother was the opposite though, so functional that she criticized anyone who wasn’t as competent as her, so family get togethers were more like a battle of wills than a warm loving dinner. I’ll never forget one of my grandmothers criticizing the other, “Why are you using that knife?”

I married into a family of women who would fight over family dinners. All of us wanted the control. No one would ever ask anyone else to bring a dish to a family dinner, that would be admitting that we couldn’t do it all ourselves. Over the years we gradually gave up, first me, then my mother-in-law and finally my husband’s sister. So now all family dinners are run by my husband’s brother’s wife, which is the way she always wanted it. I don’t get the feeling she does this out of love. She wants to be in control. There have been family dinners at her house where she has gotten angry and stormed out of the house and drove away. That was always kind of uncomfortable.

Then there is the issue of Jews in general, and the guilt thing.

“Why aren’t you eating that, I made it just for you?”
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough already?”
“You don’t need that.”
“Fine, don’t eat it, I don’t care.”

And society’s part in perpetuating the control. How do you get people to show up for meetings? Give them food. How do you ensure that your child will be treated well by his teacher? Give her food.

And the individual issues. How do I get people to be impressed by me or think I am competent? Make something spectacular. What do I do if it doesn’t come out the way I expected? Throw it away and start again. I will spend a whole weekend cooking so that I can hear people tell me how good everything is. And my mother and mother-in-law, who never compliment me to my face, will tell other people what a good cook I am.

My son has had food issues his entire life. He has an anxiety/panic disorder, and I suppose the only thing he felt he could be in control of was his food. He ate very little of very few items. It got to the point where he believed that he truly could not eat certain foods. My husband is the same way. He cannot eat onions. He doesn’t say it is because he doesn’t like them, he claims he is allergic to them. If he is anywhere near an onion or the smell of an onion he has to leave because he will gag so much that he will throw up.

When he was a child he was a very picky eater. Whenever his mother would make a dinner that he didn’t like, she would throw a steak under the broiler for him. Who was controlling who here? And why did his siblings put up with eating franks and beans, when their brother got steak?

And so now the ultimate control, food, or restriction of food, used as punishment. Yep, I’ll prove it to everybody, no one can hurt me as much as I can hurt myself. And the rewards I get from people, “You’re so good! You eat so healthy.” I’ll take a compliment however I can get it I suppose. But then there is the opposite, “Harriet, you are eating dessert? But you eat so healthy!” Now I have a reputation to uphold. If I eat dessert I’m not good anymore.

So that’s it. Control. You did it to me as a matter of fact. After we had talked for a couple of weeks about my food difficulties and wanting to lose weight and how hard it is for me, etc, you tell me that you lost 12 pounds in the last few months “without even doing much, just adding some cardio.” What was that about if not control?

May 17 2011

Therapy Recap 5/17/11

J and I talked about food issues today. I told him about my birthday dinner with my friends, and how anxious I was about it, and how I ate a little salad while they ate pizza and burgers. But we did order dessert and I did eat some of it. I didn’t feel good about it though.

We talked about my history of weight issues, which only started about 5 years ago when I lost the weight I had gained from being on zoloft. J spent a lot of time on the logic of eating, and how logically I should be able to eat in more relaxed fashion without gaining a lot of weight, since the only times I ever gained weight was during my pregnancies and while on zoloft. I’m obviously not a binger or an out of control eater.

We talked about how I feel about my current weight and why I want to weigh less, because it definitely won’t matter to my health or even how I look. I’ve lost about five pounds in the last six weeks and would like to lose five more.

Towards the end of the session I told J that I don’t really think this is about food at all. He said that he agreed, he thinks it is about control. I said that I’m not even sure it is about control, I think it is about punishing myself. It’s like cutting. He said that cutting is related to guilt, so how is the eating issue a punishment. I told him that it is the same thing, I don’t think I am a good enough person and so I hurt myself in whatever way I can think of.

Then I asked him if he wanted to hear a story, and I told him the story of my mother and how she knocked the cake out of her friend’s hand the first time she met her. We talked about if my mother ever did anything like that when I was a child, and I told him that she didn’t, but when I got older she would sometimes say “You don’t need that” when I was eating something. But I remember eating a lot of junk as a child, ice cream, yodels, snowballs, etc. She didn’t restrict what I ate.

J asked me to write about what food means to me. He said as a psychologist he sees food as a form of love and nurturing. I thought this would be a difficult assignment, but as soon as I left I figured out what food means to me, and why, and I wrote it all up. I’ll probably post that tomorrow.

There were two things J said that rubbed me the wrong way. I was saying that even though I lost all the weight I had gained on zoloft, my weight seemed to be distributed on my body differently. He said, “Well, that is most likely normal, judging by the old people that I talk to.” I think he knew as soon as the word “old” was out of his mouth that it was a poor choice of words, and I told him so. He apologized, but it really irked me.

Later on he asked if he could talk about himself for a minute. I told him that was fine, as a matter of fact I would like him to talk about himself all the time. So he said that over the last six months he has lost 12 pounds “without really doing anything, just adding some cardio”. This was related to what we were talking about, somewhat, but it really bothered me that after talking to him for two weeks about how I am struggling to lose weight, he tells me that he lost 12 pounds without even doing much. I don’t think it was really necessary to prove a point that he wanted to make by telling me this about himself. Maybe I’m just too sensitive.

It was a good enough session. I think the food issue is way deeper than food, or control, and I’m not sure J can go that deep. I’ve had this issue with him before. Maybe it isn’t necessary to go that deep, maybe I just need to change my attitude. Change my thoughts, and my behavior will change, right? Easier said than done.

May 10 2011

Therapy Recap 5/10/11

Today at therapy I talked to J about the goals that I worked out with the health coach. He and I haven’t talked much about the food issue, but he has gotten the idea because body image stuff has come up in the past, and the exercise issue has been discussed a little.

I told him that I did the filing (yay!), I’m getting my nails done Thursday night, I made the Moo Shu vegetables (Sunday and today), I’m working on eliminating distractions while I eat dinner and making dinner last 15 minutes. I also told him that I am supposed to go out with my husband and ask him about our retirement account, and go out with friends and eat “without concern.”

We talked for a while about being mindful about eating, and that the health coach told me to think about where my food comes from. This is a problem for me, because I start to think about where it comes from, and I picture my vegetables growing in a field, being harvested by migrant workers who live in tents and have hungry children that they can’t afford to feed, or cows in factory dairy farms being milked every day to make cheese, and food being trucked and flown into my city, using up valuable oil and natural resources, etc etc. He told me to try to think of a strawberry growing happily in the sun, and leave it at that. Don’t start to think about poor Jorge in Mexico with his starving children.

I told him that next month I am supposed to exercise “for fun” once a week, and I don’t even know what that means. I came up with the idea to walk with friends. I never do this because none of my friends can walk as fast as I can (I happen to be tall with long legs, not that I am particulary athletic), but I said that walking slow wouldn’t even be considered exercise. J assured me that it is still exercise.

Then we talked about my dinner tomorrow night with my friends, and how I plan to order a salad with the dressing on it. I said that I don’t think I will enjoy it, and he said that I shouldn’t order that if I won’t enjoy it, I need to do something that I will enjoy. He suggested ordering the usual salad with the dressing on the side, and then ordering dessert, since it is my birthday dinner, and eating three bites, sharing it with my friends. I think I can do that.

He did say one weird thing – that I deserve to have something that I will enjoy. Not sure what deserving has to do with food, and I doubt he would tell me that if I was overweight.

It all comes down to how I am too hard on myself. I am like this in all areas of my life, so why would food and exercise be any different? It’s all part of the package, and it takes a lot of work to change this.

I had this idea that I do this to myself to avoid being hurt by other people. No one can hurt me as badly as I can hurt myself. Does that even make sense?

May 7 2011

Health Coach Recap 5/4/11

Wednesday night I met with the health coach for our first “real” session. She asked me if I had come up with any goals, and I told her that I had some ideas, but they were too all-encompasing, so she helped me narrow it down.

We had three categories: body, emotion, relationships. The first month my goals are to add strength training once per week, allow myself to eat without concern for one meal per week, and go out with friends or family for a meal one time per week.

These goals will increase each month (ie; two times per week, etc), and month two also has a goal of exercising one time per week just for fun – no watch, no worries about pace and distance.

Month three has a goal of only getting on the scale once per day.

She had me take a test with yes/no answers. There were 100 questions, divided into four areas – Environment, Well-Being, Money, and Relationships. I did worst in the relationship section. We used this test to choose another goal from each area. These goals are:

File the pile of papers that has been sitting on my desk for months
Get my nails done
Go out with my husband and ask him if we have an IRA or 401k retirement account
Download the relax phone app and use it for five minutes each morning
Breathe in and out through the nose ten times before eating
Eliminate distractions while eating and make meals last 15 minutes
Cook the Moo Shu vegetable recipe that she gave me

Filing, cooking and getting my nails done will be easy. Strength training for 15 minutes per week will be easy. Allowing myself to eat without concern could be difficult. I am going out to dinner with friends this week (for my birthday) and what I plan to do is order a salad with the dressing actually on it instead of on the side, and eat it. I talked to pdoc about this since I saw her Thursday and she said that sounds good, baby steps are the way to go.

I downloaded the phone app, but haven’t used it. I do the breathing before meals, and I have had two meals without distractions, but I can’t seem to make them last 15 minutes. That is a long time! It makes me crazy to sit there eating with nothing else to do. I can make it about 10 minutes.

Speaking of breathing, I almost had a little meltdown while I was with her. She was talking about breathing a lot, going on and on about it, and I have a problem with breathing. I don’t like to think about my breathing, this goes back to when I was a child. I have panic attacks when I think about my breathing. So the whole time she was talking I was trying not to listen, but this is difficult when she and I are the only ones in the room. Finally she said, “So let’s try the breathing.” And I said, “NO! I don’t want to.” She asked me why and I got a little teary and told her it’s just a thing of mine, and it goes way back. She was very kind and told me that I don’t need to talk about anything I don’t want to talk about, and I don’t have to do anything that makes me uncomfortable. Whew. She did get me to admit that it might be possible that one day I will try the breathing exercises. Anything is possible, right? And actually I have been doing the breathing before eating, so I hope she will like that.

OK, off to do my filing.

May 4 2011

Therapy Recap 5/3/11

I had a good session yesterday, yay! Remember that “letter to my T” that I wrote here on the blog last week? I modified it, took out the ridiculous parts, and added in the stuff from “My Lightbulb Moment”. I gave it to J, with the caveat that he had to promise not to get angry or defensive or think I am a mean person, because the letter is kind of mean. He promised. I asked him if he was him today, or his twin brother J, and he said it was regular him.

He read it and said it was an excellent letter and really conveyed my feelings. He said it wasn’t mean, he kept waiting for the mean part, but there wasn’t any. He apologized for using the word “introverted” when he said that a positive change in me is that I am less introverted. He meant to use a different word, which I can’t remember, but which means that one keeps all of their thoughts and feelings inside and doesn’t communicate them. That made more sense.

He also apologized for the comment about growing is ok for a 6 year old, but not an older person. He said he was being a wise ass and it was wrong. I said it was stupid, and he said yes it was.

We talked a lot about how I get these distorted thoughts in my head, that when I tell him that I am running and biking he thinks “How can an old fat woman do that?” We discussed why I must compare myself to people, why I think I feel good about something until someone else does it better and then I suck. I told him that I get my validation from outside sources rather than from internally, and that needs to change. He asked me if I frequently have a goal or a plan when I go out running, like to go a certain distance or a certain pace. I said that I do that 100% of the time, and once my watch battery died and I had a horrible run because I didn’t know how far or how long I had run. I told him that I don’t want to be like that because it isn’t like I am training for a marathon, I should enjoy my exercise.

J assured me that his plan is not to make me think like he thinks. And we got into a discussion about how I am grateful about things, and I do try to stop to smell the roses. As a matter of fact on my bike ride yesterday morning I stopped to take pictures of a great blue heron. But I said, “Seeing a bird isn’t going to make my marriage better. I could see one hundred birds and it won’t make my marriage better. I could see the movie “The Birds” and it wouldn’t make my marriage better.” Then we got into a discussion about perception vs behavior. Both things are changeable, and the difference between them.

We didn’t talk about how I think the therapy part of therapy is my reaction to what he is saying, but I still think that is true.

Then we moved on to how I feel about the future, and we had a serious discussion about something that I can’t write about here (nothing to do with sex, don’t get excited.) I got a little peeved during this discussion, but we worked it out in the moment and I was able to explain my feelings and I think he got it. I asked him if he thought I had OCD, and he said it is somewhat irrelevant, but if I want he can slap that diagnosis on me. He talked about the difference between OCD and OCD personality disorder, and said that normally personality disorders are more serious, but in this case OCD is more serious than OCD PD. I have to read up on that. He said it is all related, my anxiety, my obsessive thoughts, my compulsions, etc.

At the end of the session I told him about the health coach that I hired. For some reason out of all the things we talked about today this is when I got most emotional. When I told him that I had told the coach that I would like to eat a piece of pizza every once in a while I almost started to cry. (Yes, crying about pizza, how ridiculous.) I told him that she is going to help me be able to go out to eat with my friends, so that I can start to have better relationships with them again. J said he thinks this is good. That he knows I eat a healthy diet, I exercise (I said, well I’ve only been doing this since the beginning of April, and he said, “There you go again, putting yourself down”), I eat organic, so in general there is no need for me to write down every morsel and every calorie. He compared it to a wealthy person who sits home all day checking every penny in their bank accounts.

He asked me how it would work with the coach and I said that she normally gives two goals or challenges at every session. I told her that I don’t like goals, because it is too easy to fail, and J said he thinks I do like goals, as evidenced by the fact that I have one every time I go out for a run or bike ride. He said he bets she won’t be giving me goals like that, he seemed to have an idea of what type of thing she is going to do for me. I told him that she promised she wouldn’t stop me from weighing myself or writing down my food. I told him I would fill him in on it next week.

So it was good, connected, we covered a lot and cleared some things up. Whew.

May 3 2011

The Holistic Health Coach

I met with the holistic health coach last night. At first I thought that she was talking to me on an elementary level, but as she got to know me and my level of knowledge she adjusted, which I really appreciated. I suppose she gets a variety of clients, some overweight, some underweight, some not concerned about weight, some with a great deal of knowledge about nutrition, some not so much, etc.

We talked about what I would like get out of this process, and after she explained her philosophy I was able to articulate some goals. She talked about the synergy between food, eating, spirituality, emotions, and one’s life in general. I started to talk about how my food issues are interfering with my relationships, I don’t see friends because I don’t want to go out to eat. People think I’m weird because I bring my own food, etc.

I also expressed my frustration about my age and not being able to take in many calories. She suggested the first thing I do is get a complete blood workup. So I will do that, as soon as I find a doctor. My doctor stopped taking insurance at the beginning of the year, and I have gotten a lot of referrals from friends, but none of these doctors are taking new patients. It is very frustrating.

I did not talk about my mental health issues, or my therapy or meds. I might in the future though, it’s just that I hardly know this woman. I did tell her that I gained a lot of weight on zoloft, and that is what started my difficulties with food. She asked how my moods are now, and I said they are fine. (Lie.)

I told her that I would like to eat a piece of pizza every now and then. Or some ice cream. How I am afraid to eat these things, and the reasons why. She explained about the 90/10 percentage of eating. 90% good stuff, 10% anything else. I told her that is scary to me, and she said that is fine. I asked her if she was going to tell me not to weigh myself three times a day, or write down everything I eat, or all of my exercise and time and distance. She said she would not tell me to stop doing those things, but I might want to stop on my own at some point as I get more comfortable with food.

So we worked out some general thoughts – body (weight, fitness, body fat, endurance) and emotional issues (attitudes toward food, relationships). I hired her for a three month period (it’s more expensive than therapy!), and I will meet with her every two weeks, with contact in between and lots of reading and handouts. She recommended a book called Women Food & God by Geneen Roth, so I might check it out.

Our first meeting will be tomorrow night.

I was afraid to tell my husband that I did this because I thought he would laugh at me. His first response was a chuckle, but I told him that she is going to help me eat more, and be able to eat pizza, and he got very serious and said he thought that would be good for me. He said he doesn’t understand why I can’t eat very much since I exercise a lot, and I told him I am going to see a doctor to be sure everything is normal. This does happen in middle age, so it could be perfectly normal, but it can’t hurt to get it checked out.

Maybe having a normal relationship with food with help me have a better relationship with my husband?