update on the plan

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After getting so upset at the gp's the other day I thought my 'when the sh*t hits the fan' plan would just take over. But it's not that easy. Something deep inside just couldn't let go of my bad feelings and thoughts. I went very quickly from 'that was a bad incident' to 'I'm a bad person' and it was seriously days before I could climb back on top of it.

Yes everything on my plan is great for averting an impending panic attack - especially one with no apparent reason. But is close to useless for helping me through the self-destructive feelings I go through after a confrontation. My plan helps with the anxiety feeling, but not with my out-of-control train-of-bad-thoughts.

So how to stop the train-of-bad-thoughts?

I don't really know is the honest truth.
Part of my ED voice wants me to feel bad because it helps trigger my ED behaviours. If I'm upset and feel bad about myself I don't eat as much. But this is not how I want to live.

I do not want to get to the end of my life and think "well at least I was miserable all the time because that kept me thin".

I think for now, if I really don't have the inner strength yet that I'm going to need in the long run, then I'm going to need to lean on my supports when I the train derails:
1. I need to talk to my hubby, and anyone and everyone on my Recovery Team list that I think can help me.
2. I really like my newly engraved bangle. I really think having this with me when I am out in the world on my own will be helpful. At a glance I see all the encouraging words really important people have said to me - and these words mean so much.
3. Eat. Nothing fuels my bad thoughts like starvation.
4. Play with my children. Their love and acceptance reminds me that I must never just give up.
5. Write. Being able to see just how fast my train-of-bad-thoughts is careening out of control is helpful. I can detach myself from these thoughts and look at them more objectively. Quite often I don't like what I see and it's enough to remind me of how I would rather be thinking and acting.

How do you stop your train-of-bad-thoughts when it's out of control??

published by: http://recoverypjstyle.blogspot.com 

'when the sh*t hits the fan' plan

My homework from my therapist J this week was to work out a plan of action, you know, for when the sh*t hits the fan :) so that I will be prepared in advance and know what to do when I have another *bad* day...

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So here's my plan:

Breathe

I put the question of rapid destress techniques out to twitter the other day and got the great suggestion of breathe in for 5 and out for 7. Not only did this slow my breathing right down but it diverted my attention while I concentrated on counting. And this distraction was very helpful. I really did feel much better very quickly. (thank you Katie)

Remember

I have a list of single words that very special people have either said about me or said to me which have meant a lot to me:

love, loyal, trust, hope, deserve, stronger, awesome

I plan to get these words engraved in my bangle so I can carry them with me at all times and can then look at them when I need support and there's no one around to give it.

Face it

Sometimes I have a panic attack for absolutely no reason that I can think of. But sometimes, deep down, I do know the reason. My dear friend June Alexander says 'action not anxiety' and she is right. Sometimes no matter how hard it is if I can just face and deal with what is making me anxious then I can move past it. 

Listen

I love the song "I can see clearly now" - it has a great deal of meaning to me for where I am right now and for where I am trying to move forwards to. If I am stressing I like to listen to this (quite loudly) on my ipod. 

Talk

The last time I had a panic attack (only mild luckily) I explained to my husband what was going on. I have friends I can email when this is happening and that is helpful - but I had never told the person in the room what was going on. I had just smiled and tried to pretend it wasn't happening, often right up until the point that I just start screaming and throwing things. But this time I told him it is like that awful adrenalin feeling you get when you know you are about to get into terrible trouble for something you didn't do. And to make it worse, the last time this happened there was no reason for it - just hit me out of the blue.
Telling him really relieved me of so much of the pain I was in. I could feel the anxiety, but did not have to suffer it. It was shared, and that helped immensely. So 'talk about it' is definitely on my plan.

Get help

I'm usually not keen on having the kids 'taken off my hands' as this just feeds my feeling of 'everyone would be better off without me' - but I do like company when I'm feeling anxious and afraid. So letting my husband take over as primary carer for the afternoon but still including me in the fun, is what I find helpful. I don't want to be sidelined or left out, but I sometimes just want someone else to field the endless questions and whinging and arguments.

Wait

The feeling passes. I know it does. And I know that I haven't done anything wrong. I need to remind myself of this positive fact. I haven't done anything wrong. I'm not stupid and incompetent. If I have made a mistake, it's just a mistake. I can face it and deal with it, but it's not the end of the world. I am not to blame for everything. Everything is not always my fault.
This feeling will pass.

I would love to never have another *bad* day as long as I live, but I suppose that's just too much to ask for - so hopefully I am prepared to get through the inevitable when next it hits me from out of the blue.

PJ's spectacular slipathon continues...

Am trying really hard to get over this slip.

I'm not as desperately frightened as I have been in the past though. Which is either because ED is shielding me from the real danger, or because I know how to do this. It's the latter that I think really applies in this case. Even Dr C reminded me this morning that I've done this before. Sure, I've gone down this path, but I've been strong enough to pull myself out.

So I will.

And I'm comforted that I've have a lot more tools in my recovery tool box this time too:
Like support. So much support on which to draw. Just today my brother has emailed me, my PT has phoned me, and several friends have emailed, tweeted and DMd. And all this has happened because I reached out and asked for some support.

I also have Hope. I know I can do this. I know I really want to do this. And I didn't know either of those things even two months ago. But now a slip is not such a scary monster - even though I would rather never have one again.

I have insight. I know that I used this slip. I used it to get through a difficult appointment today which was causing me a lot of anxiety. And although it may have gotten me through, I need to stop doing that. I need to find a better way of dealing with stress that is not harmful to my health. I also know that if I don't eat then things go to hell in a hatbox very quickly. Not eating does not make me stronger, braver and able to think more clearly. It makes me a flippin' basket case.

Slipping and being imperfect is okay. My friend Poppy recently confided in me that she has an eating disorder. So I did what any friend a year further down the recovery track would do - reassured her that recovery was worth the effort. That there is a light at the end of the tunnel and things really do get better - even if she can't see that yet and might not see it for a while. So I worried that by venting I would frighten her and put her off trying. But I think the opposite is true. By showing her the truth - that everyone slips - I'm not only letting her in on the reality of her path, but also showing her that slips are not the end of the path. A slip is not the same as failure. Slips are just another chance to learn and get stronger.

I also made a big decision today which I am feeling okay about. I went back to see K and talked with her about why I was upset (you know, once I unfolded myself and stopped crying long enough to breathe).
And after I left I decided I would not go back.
K is extremely kind and patient, but it just doesn't seem to be a good fit - or perhaps it's just me? I don't know I've never done this before (I'm so not a talky-talky person). But I won't know unless I give someone else a try. And when I first met D she recommended the name of a therapist, so I think I'll start there.

Even after a year of trying, today feels like a new begining.

holding pattern

I think what I realised from writing my bravery post was that I'm okay with where I am now. Yes, I have big plans, but I'm not ready yet.

Patience, PJ. Patience (hmmmm)

So let's take stock. Where am I and what's working for me right now?

1. Support

• I try to add a new person to my growing list of supports every week. I have learned the important lesson of 'support not secrecy' and because I hate the thought of being a burden to anyone the more supports I have, the less likely I will feel like I am constantly boring just a handful of friends with my problems. 
• Also means that when I have a specific problem (like I did the other day with my jeans not fitting) I knew who to turn to. My regular friends wouldn't understand why that was such a big problem for me. I know that even though they love me and want to be there for me, their first response would be "that's not a problem, look at how tight my jeans are, I'm the one who needs to lose weight". So I rang D - she gets it.

2. Safety
I am not weighing myself at all as this would definitely cause me to panic and I know this for certain. And I know that panicing is not good for my safety.
I am not exercising because my body would not cope with it and I do not want to have a heart attack.

3. Meal Planning
I have realised that I have been having trouble especially with dinner. Once I've wrangled the pickups, struggled with homework, and cooked dinner amidst whining, bickering and a leg clinging toddler it's so easy to come up with 1001 excuses why I'm not hungry and couldn't possibly eat dinner (note: that's excuses, not reasons). And after reading the list of suggestions compiled by June Alexander for mums with ED this is what I came up with:

• All meal planning is done ahead of time (on sundays). I have a basic plan from my dietician, but the actual dishes are up to me.
• Pre-cook five dinners on sunday night
      - this frees up my evenings so I can eat with a much lower stress level
      - also means that the cooking is done at a time when I won't actually be eating the food so there's much less pressure
      - my husband is in the room with me while I'm cooking so it's all a bit friendlier :)
• If I go out to dinner I choose someone else (my husband or a friend) to pick off the menu for me. And whatever they choose is it. No swapsies.

4. Relapse Prevention
I've decided to go back to my counsellor at least one more time to try to talk about ways to deal with conflict better. I know it's something that I am hopeless at and avoid like the plague, and I know that getting upset is my biggest relapse trigger - so I really want to deal with it for my own benefit.

5. Future Improvement
I still restrict while I'm at work. I hate eating in front of people, and it's just so easy to be too busy and 'forget'. So I really need to come up with a better strategy for dealing with this one.

Grey day

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I've read the words 'black and white thinking' a lot lately. It seems to be an apparently common trait among people with restricting eating disorders. And I thought I knew what it meant. All or nothing, right.

But knowing what it means, and being able to see it in your own actions are two very different beasts.

I was hell bent last night on sabotaging everything. Don't ask me why. I'm not really sure. All I know for sure is I felt rotten, and the only way out was to restrict (oh, and a really long run would have been nice too).

Yep, that would have solved everything.

So those were my *only* options; recovery or relapse.

B&W - get it.

And after all, grey is such a dreary colour, why drag grey into it anyway. I'll tell you why - because it is really relaxing. It is funny and it doesn't care if the washing is done or if the kids all get their homework finished. It just says "this will do for today".

Grey also says it's okay to be grumpy and crap. Grey doesn't make you feel like you have to pretend there's nothing wrong - after all, grey is not sunshine and rainbows

ALL. THE. TIME!!! 

And funnily enough, when I let myself be Little Miss Grumpy Pants today - I got so fed up with myself after about 20 mins of sooking that it actually became quite hilarious. Just trying to hang on to my grump became an amusing distraction (thanks to @weightinghelp @Junia87 and @akaMemily for playing along with me on twitter).

So I'm going to add this to my recovery checklist:
1. nutrition
2. support
3. wide variety of tasty foods
4. aim for grey thinking

I think I'll have to have a few more grey days in the near future - today was pretty fun! - and since I live in Melbourne, that shouldn't be too hard :)

food challenges

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I read a really interesting article* the other day from the Journal of the American Dietetic Association:

Food Choice and Diet Variety in Weight-Restored Patients with Anorexia Nervosa

(sorry this is the abstract only)**

The study found that weight-restored (as opposed to recovered) anorexic patients who maintained a diet which included both a wide variety of foods and also highly palatable foods, were significantly less likey to relapse than those who ate only limited number of less palatable foods.

Huh? Well, I basically interpret this as: if you can break out of that anorexic mind-set of
"I mustn't eat very much and I must make sure that what I eat is boring to stop me over-eating" then you are going to have a far better chance of preventing relapse - and fully recovering!!

So I'm going to add this to my recovery checklist:
1. nutrition
2. support
3. eat a wide variety of tasty foods

And I'm also going to add to that, the challenge of trying new foods - even those which make me feel sick. Because at the moment that's pretty much everything I can think of, so I can't trust my own judgement.

...this should be fun...


*thanks ViR for the article link via twitter

** thanks to my big brother for sending me the full text version :)

the times they are a-changin'

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

I recently gave my gp a list of my options as I saw them. What is to follow, wasn’t the list, but rather the thinking behind the list:

1. continue on doing what I want (restrict and over-exercise)

2. find a middle ground where I can continue on as I am but without doing myself as much harm

3. change what I am doing

this was the actual list of options:

1. die

2. exist

3. live

Pretty confronting. But it made my decision so much easier. And yet so much harder.

I chose ‘live’. But by doing so I also chose ‘change’.

So how to change? Am I afraid of change? Yes. But what if I reframe change and view it as challenge? Does that make it less intimidating? Well, I’m not afraid of any challenge – I have three children after all. I have three degrees and work two jobs. I welcome challenge as the daily excitement of living. I am constantly inspired by those who embody challenge; scientists, adventurers, astronauts, athletes, engineers, artists…

…no one ever wrote a song about how great it is to stay exactly the same.

So I have started where I feel most at home – education. By reading and listening and asking questions I have been equipping myself with as much knowledge as I can to formulate my plan. I like a plan.

So what have I learned so far?

Firstly that change will not happen without nutrition. No amount of introspection will compensate for starvation.

And secondly I will need help - this is a huge change for me. Never before in my life have I ever uttered the words “I can’t do this alone, I need your help”. But I do.

So, big deep breath…it’s time to embrace my change. I’m not promising I’m going to like it. But change happens regardless of how hard we try to stop it – and this is my chance to direct and drive that change…

 

…and my time to me is worth saving – and I’m a strong swimmer.


 
this post was inspired by medicinal marzipan and her word by word series