Not doing such a great job of adult-ing...

I am in kind of a deep shame spiral right now, and it all has to do with a lack of functionality as an adult in some aspects of my life. There is something in my home that needs to be repaired right now. It will not cost me anything to repair it. Being without it is a major inconvenience and has resulted me needing to come up with creative ways to fulfill some very basic daily activities. However, I also look around my home and see nothing but a mess...the kind of mess that caused me to believe I fit the definition of a hoarder. And that leaves me paralyzed...unable to make the call that will result in this repair being accomplished. I have done some frantic "cleaning" this afternoon, in an attempt to make things passable enough that repairmen can come in without me being afraid of their judgment (and I do recognize that there is a very real chance that they will not give a flying fuck what my home looks like), and I think that if I vacuum and then close all the doors to the bedrooms and the bathroom (under the guise of locking up my pets because that also will have to happen for someone to come in but mostly to hide what a shithole it is in here), I may be able to bring myself to send an email tomorrow alerting the maintenance service to the issue and setting up a time for them to come in and deal with it.

I also continue to hang out on some pro-Ana sites, and one thing about hanging out on social sites filled with people who feel very much the same as you do about themselves is that you learn all kinds of other fun ways in which you can be reminded of what a mess you are. I was introduced this week to a word that I did not even know was A Thing, but it was not only A Thing, but it was A Thing That I Do. The word is "dermatophagia," and if you know anything about the roots that make up a word, you know what that means, and yes, it is as gross as it sounds. I asked my therapist quite a long time ago about the condition "dermatillomania," which is similar to trichotillomania, which is the compulsive pulling out of one's hair. I definitely am someone who picks at my skin, especially around my cuticles (although I used to do this on all my fingers and am able to limit it now just to my thumbs), and I thought it was a leftover habit from when I used to bite my nail, but now the idea that it is more than that has taken hold and is doing a great job of fueling my anxiety (which does not need help, really).

So this is not about me self-diagnosing (which is also sometimes A Thing That I Do), but it is about getting an idea out there and mulling it over and deciding whether to investigate it further. I get a little touchy about that because my psychiatrist once asked me, when I asked her about the possibility of me having some OCD-type behaviors, if I thought perhaps I was someone who wanted to have a lot of psychiatric disorders. But I am pretty sure that I don't have a large audience out there, so I guess that disclaimer is for myself...mostly.

Neurobiology

So the other day I got an email from my therapist that said something like this: "I want us to talk tomorrow about the neurobiology of the trauma response." She has said more than once that, while someone who has experienced a very clear event such as abuse or rape or homelessness in their past is usually seen as someone has definitely experienced trauma, it is also true that subtle, insidious events can also add up to lead to one big issue. When she first mentioned this to me, I was very resistant to the idea. After all, I had a good childhood, never wanting for anything material and from an intact family. I was raised with my one sister, and we took family vacations together to popular family spots. We went to college, on my father's dime, and we were given the opportunity to take dance lessons and go to summer camp and take part in extracurricular activities. It was your basic Generation X childhood.

So why did I spend so many years unable to cry? Why, when someone reached out to hug me, did I feel like I was doing it "wrong?" Why have I always let myself get swallowed up in relationships? Why can't I identify my emotions when I am experiencing them? Why do I feel like I have a vortex within me that I am trying to fill with food and stuff and internet games? Why do I feel about myself the way I do?

My therapist: "I think your amygdala is jacked up." So for those who don't know, the amygdala is a little walnut-sized part of the brain that is responsible for, among other things, emotional learning and reactions. As I usually do when something like this is introduced in therapy, I headed into the research to see what the "experts" have to say about this idea. Some studies have suggested that the size of the amygdala may be increased in cases of childhood trauma, as well as its reactivity. In addition, the corpus callosum, which is the primary pathway between the left and right hemispheres of the brain have been shown to be affected by such experiences. This can diminish the integration between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which means that someone who is predominantly right-brained (which I believe I am) does not have her right brain as well-integrated with the left brain, which affects emotional regulation and expression.

Okay, so the research seems to say that she has a point. Jacked up amygdala. Diminished corpus callosum. Lots of thinking. Not so much with the feeling. Insidious, subtle happenings from childhood adding up to what has become a big problem. I come from a family of internalizers. We don't "do" emoting. We don't do communicating, either. We don't do hugging or comforting or feelings. We do grudges and judgment and passive aggressive behaviors. We do white lies. We do shame.

So the other thing my therapist said this week is that maybe we have been doing things a little bit in the wrong order. Maybe the neurobiology has to be addressed before things can get "better." Because right now, things don't feel better. Right now, things feels really, really hard. The money stuff is hard. The food stuff is hard. The emotions are hard because they are coming to the surface, and I am spending some of my time trying not to numb them, and feeling them sometimes feels excruciating. I am trying to stay busy roughly 99% of the time, but when I am in her office or in our group therapy sessions, when I am somewhere safe with people I trust, the emotions demand to be felt. And I am fortunate to have a little village who makes that possible for me.

My Story...so far

I am an adult living with an eating disorder. And there are a lot of us out there. Some of us might not call it an eating disorder…I did not for a LONG time. We might just think that we emotionally eat or need a diet or have weird food “stuff” or LOVE to exercise or any other number of things that keep us from facing the truth. We are not in control of our lives. The shadow lurking in the corner that I call ED is instead.

I first remember being on a diet when I was in middle school. Actually, I would say it was more like I was “on a diet.” My mom was always on a diet, it seemed, and there was a definite focus on weight in my family. However, I say that I was “on a diet” because I have memories at this point in my life of some very definite binge eating behaviors. I remember coming home from school and making big plates of nachos and scarfing them down, eating chips by the bagful, sharing cookie dough with my mom as we watched soap operas, and inhaling food in the cafeteria (especially on days when we had something called “potato bar,” which was really an opportunity to make an entire lunch out of potato skins, French fries, and tater tots). However, I also remember having for dinner meals that came from a Weight Watchers cookbook as my family set out once again on this road to weight loss. I didn’t recognize until just recently how this can lay the foundation for an unhealthy relationship with food.

I have also always been an internalizer. When I was angry with someone, I waited for the feelings to go away. When I was sad, I kept it to myself. When I was happy, I tried not to be too happy because I didn’t want to invite something bad to happen. However, all this was information I was aware of on the periphery. Day to day, I thought things were “okay.” It took a major life change to see that there might be some room for improvement.

I have always been someone who lost herself in relationships. You like football? I like football too. Baseball? Okay. You want to watch that show? I love it too. You want to have dinner with your family every Sunday? Okay…my family can wait. And eventually, this led me right down the aisle on my wedding day. What was once a good relationship probably could not be considered one anymore, but I married him anyway. And then, about six years later, when one of my “nonnegotiables” happened, I dragged my feet for a few months, started seeing a therapist (this was key to my story), and eventually got divorced. I moved back to the town I grew up in with my dog and with very little self-respect and no sense of self-worth. I just didn’t really understand that yet.

Soon after I met my therapist, she mentioned to me that she was an eating disorders specialist. My first thought was, “So?” I had no concept that my weird relationship with food was an eating disorder. After all, I wasn’t skinny. I didn’t throw up everything. I definitely didn’t starve myself. I just ate too much because I didn’t have enough willpower to stick to a diet. If I found a diet I could stick to, I could lose weight, and it would no longer be an issue. In the last two or three years of my marriage, I was being really “good” with my diet and had successfully lost a lot of weight. Sure, I was eating a lot again, but I was stressed. Once my divorce was over, I would just go back on the diet.

Spoiler alert: That’s not really how things unfolded.