Stalemate

If you don't change, nothing will. Random messages from my therapist will pop up in my head at seemingly opportune moments when I am struggling. This is a message that's been replaying a lot lately.

Since I started seeing my therapist during IOP at the end of September, I really honestly haven't made too much progress. It's not that I expect to make these huge astounding changes, but I haven't made as much progress as I would have liked at this point.

One of my biggest struggles continues to be meal plan fulfillment. To me, I'm not consciously doing it. The thoughts of "You need to restrict" are no longer incredibly prominent when I am planning a meal. Part of it is honestly just laziness. Following my meal plan is such a daily chore. It involves prepping, (sometimes) cooking, reading labels to check that I am getting all my calories in, actually eating, and then recording my thoughts/feelings/food on my phone to send to my dietician. Rinse and repeat 5 times a day. It's exhausting. Combine that with my stomach issues, and meal plans become dreaded chore. So, I have been skipping some, mostly snacks. It's not every day and it's rarely multiple times in one day; however, it's still not doing what I am supposed to be doing. If you don't change, nothing will.

Then, I look at my therapy sessions. I've been really stalling on the emotional component of my trauma work. As I've talked about before, I have a really difficult time feeling and expressing any type of emotion. It makes me feel very uncomfortable, so I just try to avoid it. My therapist is pushing this aspect more than lately. Part of me is ready to do it, because I actually really hate when I shut down, especially within certain relationships. It causes me to become very detached and isolate, which is not helping my depression right now. The other part of me is flat out terrified to do it. I have a difficult time trusting that my emotions are real. I sometimes worry that, when I go off irrational thoughts,  I will express things that aren't real. They're feelings based off of false knowledge. If it's not irrational, it's foreign. It feels like sharing these emotions will ultimately lead to more pain, because I've opened myself up that much. It's not that I don't trust the people in my life, but I've experienced enough times of my feelings not being validated that I just don't express them. If you don't change, nothing will.

I've had this voice inside of me that hasn't been able to come out in 15+ years. It's something that has so much to say, but no idea how to express these things. Even more so, it's worried that what it has to say isn't important. Rationally, I know that that isn't true. I know I have people in my life and the support of my treatment team that it would be okay. It's overcoming that huge obstacle of my fear to getting there. That's not an easy task. But it has to be done.

If you don't change, nothing will.

I'm ready for a change.