Posted by Racer on April 10, 2004, at 22:54:29
In reply to Another thing Racer, posted by antigua on April 10, 2004, at 22:33:13
Yeah, I've run into a lot of that sort of, "You just want attention" stuff. Not only about the weight issues, but about a lot of other issues as well. Part of it is the women/doctors thing -- doctors are still learning that women are hysterical, after all, and overdramatize everything.
When I was in my early teens -- surprise, surprise, after the sexual abuse -- I started having really terrible nightmares, and they kept me from sleeping. I told the doctor that I couldn't sleep, and needed some sort of help. The doctor -- female doctor -- didn't even bother to listen. She just told me to take an ASPIRIN to help me sleep. I tried to tell her that I would lie in bed and watch the clock, so I knew that I wasn't nodding off and not realizing it. Nope, she "knew" that I was just seeking attention. (Truly, I didn't know how to get help for what ailed me, but I did try for a while. And got slapped in the face -- metaphorically -- for doing so.)
The weight thing only came up twice with Dr EyeCandy: Once at our first visit, when I said that I had a history of anorexia. He asked, "Was it diagnosed?" I said that it came up in therapy, but was mostly corrected when I gained 70 pounds on anti-depressants. He responded, "So it wasn't diagnosed?" I then made the mistake of pointing out that my periods had never stopped -- I could see by the look on his face that he made his 'diagnosis' right there: making it up.
The second time, I said something about worrying about my weight being too low. I told him that I was trying to gain some weight, because I was within what I consider to be my Danger Zone. I weighed about 15 pounds less than when I got out of the hospital, and about 20 pounds less than the place where I start to feel pretty healthy and stop feeling hugely obese. He nearly jumped out of his chair to yell, "NO!!!" So, I "stopped worrying about it" -- or, more plainly stated, started secretly planning to drop a few pounds, to look better. Right. I'm worried about my weight now, by the way: I can't seem to lose any more weight, and have no power to control my eating, and I am so fat! Grrr. I know better, and I still can't seem to control it. I do things like right now: my dinner is on the counter in the kitchen, but I can't have it until I've finished this...
Sorry, I'm going on again. It all bothers me a lot.
What am I doing about it? I wrote a list of the things that scare me, for my new therapist, and while most of them are about medications and Dr EyeCandy, I did include the fear that I'll never learn to handle stress and still eat. That the hiding portion of this will never be within my control or manageable at least.
(When the therapist mentioned that I was 'very thin,' I let it pass. I couldn't talk about it at all, so maybe I'll be able to talk about it to her after she reads it. Maybe not. Maybe I'll only ever be able to write about it to people who can't see me. I hope not.)
Thanks for sharing, Antigua. I appreciate the comments, and hope we'll both get past this one day.
poster:Racer
thread:333708
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040409/msgs/335058.html