Body Perception in Eating Disorders: From Stuff to Stuffing

Well.  It seems like I've developed a new area of body fixation.  I won't identify it here so as not to trigger anyone.  I'd rather work out, in general terms, the process of disordered preoccupation with a particular part of the body, as that process pertains to an eating disorder.

Simply put, there is no physical way that this part of my body can have undergone the change I perceive it to have undergone.  It is always possible I have gained real, physical, non-water-based weight, but even if that is the case, the human body (at least, many of them) doesn't put on weight all in one place.

And yet, that is the experience my mind is telling me I'm having with my body right now.  Interestingly enough, if I look at this part in the mirror, I can see the physical reality that it really isn't all that different, if at all.  But if I look down at it, all of a sudden it seems huge compared to what it was just two weeks ago, or even last week.  I am hyper aware of this part of me, and if I'm not careful, that heightened attention spreads to the adjacent parts, and my mind, my eyes, they start to wonder.  "What are you up to, body?"  e_e

It strikes me as not odd at all that this process occurs at the same exact time that I am finally not having panic attacks or rampant anxiety for the first time in weeks.  A transfer occurred sometime in the very recent past.  Instead of being convinced I'm about to die, my eyes are telling me a part of my body is expanding, expanding, taking over...

It strikes me as yet again not odd at all that this process occurs around an archetypal body area for my time of life.  From a remove I can appreciate that psychological inner workings that picked out THIS body part at THIS time.  It's definitely been OTHER parts at OTHER times, and in retrospect, each of them makes sense for their time.

Of course, I can only self-remove and analyze for so long.  Then I'm back in my body.  With the metaphorical stuff, that my mind turns into literal stuffing, of which I would so very much like to be unburdened.

Ugh.  No dice.