Went to the doctor yesterday and my weight was down from the last visit. This wasn't surprising, since I weigh myself weekly at home to at least keep in touch with reality, even if I'm not having such a good go at controlling reality. My weight yesterday was the same number as it was when I went to a doctor's appointment in February 2004 and was mistakenly told my weight by the nurse for the first time since I went into treatment for my eating disorder in February 2003. In '04 the number announcement elicited surprise: I couldn't believe I didn't weight at least ten pounds more. One would hope I'd made some progress in the dysmorphia area, but apparently not. I found myself pondering today, in the shower, that if I didn't have my scale on hand, I'd have been just as shocked by yesterday's doctor's office scale. (I won't get into the nurse telling me, upon noting that this weight was a loss, "Good for you, baby!" That's a whole other post. One I've already written. At least five times.)
In possibly related news, I totally had a Naked Anxiety Dream last night.
It's frustrating, of course, because I know that this is Not A Good Thing. (The weight and dysmorphia thing, not the Dream thing. Dreams are neither here nor there, except in the sublime moment of waking in which you realize that, no, you did not just parade in front of half the city stark naked, or, no, truly, you didn't just murder the Pope and hide his body and the police aren't just one clue from catching you and throwing you in solitary confinement for life.) (What? You know you've had that dream too.) Anyway, check out Olympe up there. She's hot, nay, hawt. She is pretty much what I expect to see in the mirror. (She even has my color hair. Win.) Now, that's not ACTUALLY what I see - BDD* is not hallucination, as is too often pictured in caricatures of a skeleton standing in front of a morbidly obese mirror image. I don't ACTUALLY see flesh in excess of what's on my bones. But I don't see things quite as they are, either. It's not that I look bigger to myself than I do to other people, but I look, I suppose, more appropriate to me than I do to people who know me. BDD is an experience of sight and wanting to see. The experience of the body in an eating disorder (as distinct from body dysmorphic disorder: the two are not synonymous) can be described as feeling appropriate in one's skin, versus looking. BDD and BN/AN* basically rely on the sense of sight or the sense of feeling, respectively, from an experiential point of view.
*BDD - Body Dysmorphic Disorder
BN - Bulimia Nervosa
AN - Anorexia Nervosa
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ReplyDeleteMarzie should see the typos BEFORE hitting publish....
ReplyDeleteYour entries on the topic always leave me sort of speechless. I don't know what to comment other than that I want things to be easier, better, clearer, as to how to battle the BDD demon. I guess I just want it to be different from what it is. Like easier to "fix" or to "change". Not unlike your own battling with your situation, even when you see the unrealistic aspect of it, I still just want it to be okay. :(
i know what you mean, except mine's opposite. my clothes fit, i show restraint sometimes, and think i'm not as big as i am, until i get on a scale (rare) or worse, see a picture of myself. i can't possibly be as big as others see me, but i don't know what part of me i do accept. some days are better than others. meh.
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