Posted by antigua on December 2, 2004, at 9:10:38
I read what Poet wrote above and felt I had written it, so I thought I would step out from behind my curtain.
The concept of purging was introduced to me by my evil stepsister when I was a teenager. How simple! I was a chubby teenager. My first bout of depression after my body developed led to a huge weight loss (down to 68 lbs) because I just gave up eating. By 17 I had learned to starve myself as a way to punish myself.
Over the years, my ED served me pretty well. But now, as someone said above, I have plenty of crowns as physical evidence of the damage I did. I avoided the dentist for 8 years this last time so I'm in debt up to my eyeballs to my dentist and enduring countless work, including root canals, but I just couldn't live with what I viewed as my disgusting teeth as a reminder of the csa I experienced. It was a huge leap to get up the courage to go to the dentist.
I didn't tell my T about the ED until several years into therapy, actually not until after my father died. At that point, I had only a suspicion of experiencing csa so it was a big step. That was 12 years ago.
The only time I was able to keep my ED completely under control was when I was pregnant. Despite the physical discomforts, I loved being pregnant because I could relax, eat what I wanted and help my babies grow. I never gained too much weight with the babies, though. Afterwards, despite my best intentions I would revert, especially when I became depressed.
When I'm depressed, I starve myself. What intriuges me is that when I do lose a ton of weight this way, everyone tells me how good I look! So it's reinforcing. (With the last drastic weight loss, my gp said I was probably in better shape than I'd ever been!) When my weight gets too low I hear about it from my husband and friends. I've never been treated for my ED specifically; it's part and parcel of all of my other problems and I deal w/them in therapy.
On a more positive note, Thanksgiving went really well for me this year. Despite having a houseful of company (my own family, including my mother)I did not overeat at dinner. I had one plate of food and stopped eating because I was full. I couldn't believe that I didn't stuff myself silly as I usually do at the holidays. It gave me hope, one little baby step at a time.
I'm feeling better these days so I have extra weight, which disgusts me. I can't look at myself naked (never can unless I'm thinner), but the real fact of the matter is that when I look in the mirror I always see a fat woman, no matter what my weight.
The other thing that helped me was my efforts to quit drinking. When I was drinking, my cravings for junk food were disgusting, but I find that I eat much better w/o the alcohol, or maybe it's just that I don't eat very much at all, which in fact reinforces the ED.
I'm glad I told my story. Only my T knows.
antigua
poster:antigua
thread:423296
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/eating/20041128/msgs/423296.html