Posted by llrrrpp on July 4, 2006, at 5:57:25
In reply to Uncertainty -- I'm not very good at it..., posted by Racer on July 4, 2006, at 2:22:35
Hi Racer,
I know a lot of famous scientists who keep multiple projects going at once. One may be a crazy, risky experiment, if it should happen to work out- it will be quite spectacular, if not, just bury it in the file cabinet and hope you didn't waste too many resources. But they also do work that is merely the next variation in a set of themes that the discipline has been working on for some time. In this case, it's just work. Someone's got to take the next step. Maybe it will work out, maybe it won't. The key is to leave yourself a theoretical back door. If things don't work out, hopefully you won't have invalidated your life's work, and give up in despair. The finest scientists (in my opinion) are those that can take a contradictory finding, and try to understand it as it stands on its own. Rather than bury the finding out of concern that one will get in trouble with colleagues and collaborators, or look silly for wasting vast resources, one uses this novel finding as impetus for a new line of investigation. Ideally this will result in a paradigm shift for the field, but this is rare and special.Maybe you should think of your fertility in the same way. You are doing a risky and potentially very rewarding thing by having fertility treatments. This is made even more riskier in that it places you in a psychologically difficult place of feeling "fat". But at the same time, you may have other ideas about what being a mother means. Other avenues for having a family. Or perhaps you've thought of some advantages to not being a mother? It must be very difficult to spend so much time and energy (and money, I imagine) on this project, but it's not your life's work. It may seem like it's your entire life right now, because it affects how you feel, and you carry physical reminders with you wherever you go. But you have many other things going for you, like grammaticality, kindness, and intelligence :)
I'm not sure what to tell you about body image. Mine is often quite bad. I can tell you though that my mother, who has been obese for the last 20 years has constantly struggled to get her weight down. It's so painful for me to see. I know that she tries hard, but I think she tries so hard, that she allows it to color who she is, as a person. When she fails on a diet, she feels like a failure. This is so hard for me to watch, because I think the diet plan and the advice from her physician, or the latest diet book has actually failed HER. And I love her, and she gives me warm hugs (only for special occasions, though). Her hugs are lovely. I've seen my mom be the victim of cruelty because she's fat. I've seen her punish herself. I've even said hurtful things to her when I was a grumpy teenager. But she's my mom. I think that the last pregnancy really messed up her already cuckoo metabolism. But, seriously, my little brother is a fantastic guy. He's smart, and strong. And he shows his love for mom (better than I do, in my opinion). Knowing my little brother, I guess I would probably make the sacrifice too - a lifetime of fat for a kid like him.
Sounds like you've got some work to do on this stuff. Remember that MOST of the people you see on the street around town don't know you. You feel bad because you're engaging in comparison thinking. You are comparing yourself to how you used to be. What if you were formerly 400 pounds, and you had lost all this weight and now you were at your current size. You'd be proud of yourself, wouldn't you? The people on the street don't keep up with your weight history. We are all used to seeing people of all different sizes, shapes, colors. It's not about your size, it's about how you interpret your size, in the context of your life. I guess you've got some work to do with T about this stuff. Sounds really difficult, but it's worth it to get it under control. When you accept yourself, life is a lot easier to accept.
just a few insomniac musings...
-ll
poster:llrrrpp
thread:663903
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060703/msgs/663923.html