Knocking down those walls

Today I followed through on my commitment to myself and went to the appointment to begin therapy.  This is an important part of my journey.  Not everyone will have need to take such a step, but I find that my road to getting healthier is not just about having a more fit body.  It's about healing the inside as well.  I don't know how much of this process I will blog about versus writing about in my private journal.  I think time will tell on that.  I do know that I will be writing about it here, but how personal or detailed I get is really dependent upon how comfortable I feel.  Right now, it was just a big deal for me to go to the appointment.  I knew it was going to be hard because I try to do my very best to stay strong, to be there for other people or the kids I work with at the high school.  I decided, though, that I was going to be all in during this process if it was going to benefit me in any way.  So, before I stepped foot in the therapist's office, I vowed to knock down the walls as best I could so that I could be as honest as possible.  Today's appointment was about seeing where I was at and then making a plan moving forward from here.  I do have to say that the conversation was difficult for me because I was trying to hold it together at first.  I just didn't want to cry.  That lasted all about five minutes. 

Before I had gone into the building, I sent a prayer up to God to give me the strength to do what I was there to do.  I didn't know what that meant at the time, but I soon realized it was about just letting go, completely letting go.  As difficult as it was, it felt very good at the same time.  I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be doing exactly what I was supposed to do. My next step is to begin individual therapy and meeting with a doctor.  Unfortunately, I won't be able to do those things until the last week in March since I'm new, but I'll be calling in for cancellations.  And, if I can't get in sooner, then I at least know I'm continuing to move forward and that's the most important part to me.  Today's appointment was very difficult and I confess that I cried a lot, but it was one of the most healing and positive things I could have done for myself.  Hopefully I'll be able to get some sleep tonight.  I didn't get any sleep last night and very little the night before, so I'm due.

Stepping out of the comfort zone

I have discovered that the best way to find out why I was overeating was to put down the food and the causes would become abundantly clear.  Now that I have done that, the reasons seem to attack at me from several different directions and it is my job to actually deal with them instead of constantly running.  Otherwise, I will inevitably run right back to food.  As a child, I felt very unsafe.  I was living with a mother who physically abused me for years and then I was sexually traumatized by someone I trusted.  That led to going to a very safe place ... food.  That was my drug of choice to numb the pain, express my anger, punish myself and keep people at a very comfortable distance from me.  I did not trust people and, as a consequence, I had an extremely difficult time forming intimate relationships.  I do not want these events in my life to be what defines me.  Yes, there is tragedy and heartbreak there but I have a fighting spirit.  While events of the past are in the past, they still can affect the present if they are not dealt with.  There are times, however, that I feel like a fish out of water as I attempt to find healing.  One such thing is the issue of confrontation.

For most of my life, I avoided confrontation.  I certainly did that with my mother because the few times that I was brave enough to tell her she was hurting me, she would only hurt me more.  If other kids were making fun of me for being large, I wouldn't confront them because they would only ridicule me more.  So I learned rather quickly that to avoid those feelings, I just simply would not confront anyone.  Confrontation is a part of life, though.  If someone is stealing from you, you must confront them to recover what belongs to you.  If someone is hurting your children, you definitely will be a bear and confront them.  And for me, if someone is treating me in a way less than I deserve, I must confront them as well.  Today I was given the challenge of confronting someone.  I must admit, in the moments leading up to having the discussion with this person, I was feeling the anxiety inside that normally would have been soothed by some ice cream, chips, cookies and other forms of toxicity that would convince me to just not say anything.  When that little voice started going on in my head before making the phone call I had to make today to deal with this other person, I had to tell myself, "Kathy, you have to deal with this.  Just stay calm and know you will be very proud of yourself for being as strong as you know you are." 

Okay, yes, I was talking to myself.  But you know what?  It made all the difference in the world.  I had the conversation I didn't want to have, yet it turned out much better than I could have imagined.  My voice was not shaky, I was not letting the other person off the hook and I did it with peace inside.  It helped me remember that as human beings, we are more than what we appear to be on the surface.  Have you ever been at the beach, swimming in the waves and been out so far that you could no longer touch the bottom?  Below us is a vast sea that is so grand in size and contains such depth that a glacier is much larger than it ever appears.  The Mariana Trench is over 36,000 feet below the surface (never realized my high school oceanography course would come in handy here!).  There is more depth to me than a person who ate too much in her life.  How do you cope with not only the trauma of certain events in your life, but the residual affects such as lack of trust of other people, even those with good intentions?  It was just easier to not deal with things, to go to the food and put on a smile, hoping and praying I could just shut the door to feelings.  That doesn't work.  Who knew that when I decided to embark on this journey of improving my health that the true healing would not come in just the physical transformation but something much deeper.