I’m still thinking about the HDRM way of doing recovery, and in my nursing brain, it makes sense. My eating disorder brain is going apoplectic. I’ve been struggling with food intake for a long time (starting when I was still with my ex-therapist, after getting to a bit more of a mechanical vibe to eating, but never getting to the goal calorie target). I WANT to rip the bandaid off of the fear of food, and yet I don’t know how. I’ve thought of challenges to ‘break me in’ to eating more, but haven’t been able to do that.
I’ve thought about trying to eat one meal in the higher calorie ‘zone’, but freeze up when I try to figure out what that would look like. I’ve thought about a single day of “whatever sounds good”, and suddenly nothing sounds even tolerable. I’ve thought of eating old favorite foods, and that doesn’t happen either. I’ve told myself that I can stop if it’s too hard, so my head has an ‘out’, not that I’d want to stop if I was doing OK, but to reduce the pressure to be ‘perfect’.
The ED voice has gotten louder, and I’ve gone backwards. Calorie limits reign supreme. I’m back to single ingredients, fruit cups, and the occasional frozen sushi (thawed, of course) or stuffed grape leaves. The ex-therapist offered to help again, but I am still not trusting any of that process after 3 1/2 years did nothing to get me well. I got more food in- more than in the rest of my life for that long of a period. And it doesn’t feel great, but it doesn’t feel great to be sliding backwards, either.
To be honest, I quit trusting the former process after I was asked to pay double for six months for more intensive contact with the ex-therapist, and within a week or so, she went MIA with a new patient who moved in with her, and left me wondering where in the hell everyone was for over a week (this was after daily contact of some sort, either a message or call), and got in contact with a patient who was further along than I was, and she let me know that everyone was OK, but there had been an unexpected situation (turns out that was the new patient ). So, other patients were set off to the side, and I was one of them.
Though I’m no longer a patient, there has been some email contact, which is benign enough. The ex-therapist suddenly found several emails from many months ago. I wonder why it took so long to see them. If she had, she wouldn’t have had the “I didn’t know you felt like this” reaction. I’ve been telling her for months what the impact was on me, as well as prior to the final 9 months. And she didn’t even see the emails. She always saw the ones regarding money.
When I disagreed with her on a specific topic that she’s brought up before (and when I disagreed, she asked “what the fuck is wrong with you?”- so therapeutic), coming from totally different frames of reference, this is a direct quote from that email – “you have seen some horrendous things that may have challenged your mind about what was right or wrong ” …. SERIOUSLY? It’s MY flippin’ opinion. MINE. I get that. NOBODY tells me what I’m thinking is wrong just because it disagrees with them. What I saw that related to that topic (patient self-determination about when they ‘opt out’ after debilitating and unsurvivable medical diagnoses) was the gift of being allowed to go in peace, like we do for our pets when there is nothing left to be done other than to extend the final kindness. She insisted that everyone wants to live (speaking from a mental health vs medical POV), and that simply isn’t true. I’ve known too many people who have opted out AND who have had to suffer until the bitter end with no relief in sight from both medical and mental heath diagnoses. I’m not saying I like the idea of people being so desperate for peace that they off themselves, but I get it. Nobody wants to hurt indefinitely from mental illness, either. But somehow I’m morally wrong… ?
Anyway, I’m still working on finding some way to try HDRM, and have sent the basics off to the dietician I used to see for her opinion, and I’m sure I’ll hear back. But I do know that HDRM follows the same principles as those I watch on YouTube who have gotten well. Like ALL of them. I think it sounds good from a research and scientific info I’ve seen. There does need to be enough calories for organ and tissue repair. Now to work on the terror of those calories. The folks on YouTube had weight to gain, though HDRM says that’s not relevant to needing calories for repair. I still have a lot of trouble justifying feeding what I see in the mirror.
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