AtypicallyRecovering

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The past couple of weeks have been exhausting for no good reason. My activity level essentially never changes with being housebound, but I’ve not felt great. With the colon cancer screening fails, that’s a bit unnerving, but the main areas of discomfort aren’t located in the iffy anatomical neighborhood, so that’s a little bit of a relief. I’ve had what feels like bruised ribs under my right armpit, but haven’t hurt anything there, so I don’t know what’s going on. I have a history of blood clots in my right lung, but that was 18 years ago, and I have no respiratory or cardiac symptoms. I need to make another THC dispensary run, since that’s what allows me to sleep, especially when I’m in pain.

The aftermath of the ex-therapist’s harm continues to be an emotional rollercoaster. I’ve heard and read so much more about her pattern of breadcrumbing and in some cases abuse that can’t be part of any normal therapy. I finally read a book about her, and was surprised but also not surprised. There was one situation in particular that she yelled at me when she called. The way she explained away that type of “therapy” in an interview was that the patients actually want that, so their eating disorder ‘mind’ isn’t as upset over the activity being yelled about, which is generally related to eating.

I’d had a rough day about 7 months into ‘therapy’ with her, and the patient she had talking to me on a regular basis had let her know that I hadn’t eaten what I was supposed to, so when Ex-T was home from her ‘food police’ time with the guy who showed up from Oz, she called me and yelled what I had to eat while she was on the phone, and then “don’t take all day with one cracker” (they’re dry, and I have physical issues with swallowing), “get X and eat it now”, etc. I was stunned, and miserably full when she got done shouting ‘orders’. She sounded SO different than the person I’d spoken with prior to that night. It was frightening.

In an email sent to her a while back, explaining how damaging the lack of contact had been, especially around the 2nd colonoscopy prep my GI doctor wanted done, her only response was how it all impacted her. NO comment about what I, HER PATIENT, had been going through. Then some vague comments about her health (a common explanation for lack of contact), with nothing specific disclosed (her prerogative), which was also a pattern. So, I’m trying to figure out what to do, and she’s having a pity festival over being butt hurt by my email about what was going wrong with the so-called therapy. The health stuff may be true (hope not) but it all fits into the breadcrumbing pattern of toxic control and psychological manipulation, so I don’t know if I can- or should- believe her. She’s still wanting some kind of contact, but I’m so far past wanting anything to do with her that I can’t see a situation where I’d want to talk to her again. At least I could block a couple of ways she could contact me, along with anyone I know who might be used to find out info from me, but I can’t block her on my email, unfortunately.

I am having more days when I’m not as bothered by her behavior, but it’s still hard to come to terms with how much worse this all was than what I’d envisioned. I didn’t think I’d be afraid to speak about her (via blogging), or find so many other examples on videos or in books where she was completely past any type of therapeutic ‘reason’ in what she did. She made up her own ‘condition’ to explain eating disorders, and there are parts of that that do resonate with a LOT of people, including me, though not as much now. She had some very good ideas at times, and when I first heard about her, I was amazed that she ‘got it’. But then having contact with her showed me someone unrecognizable from who I saw on a news program about her clinic. I also found a document on a financial website showing that the clinic had made over $9M CAD. Dun & Bradstreet is a known name, and it just came up when googling the clinic. This corresponds to the comments about how she lost interest in patients who ran out of money. Everything I’d seen in court papers from an investigation into her clinic pans out- and for so long, I didn’t want to believe any of that. That was my foolishness.

The holidays are also rough, not only with most of my family gone (who are around here and with whom I grew up), but with the eating disorder. I have a friend who invites me to every family holiday meal she hosts, which is SO kind, and I truly do appreciate being included. But I still can’t eat around others, and the autonomic disorder makes being inside a space with a thermostat set for normal people difficult, the stuff I’d have to drag with me is nuts, and also the temperature of what I eat impacts my declining invitations. I hope I get to the day when it’s not so hard.

I’m hoping that the pain of not getting well with Ex-T eases consistently in time, and that I get to the point of it being completely behind me. I won’t seek out help from another virtual therapy situation (or any new humans in general), and Medicare won’t pay for much- though I do have a very good dietician, so that helps. In the meantime, I’m exhausted physically and mentally, and am looking forward to possibly getting some snow this weekend. That generally perks me up for a while.