ahhhh

It's my Friday. It always feels good walking out of work knowing it was my last day of my work week. I love my Monday and Tuesday off days. At the same time I dread everyday. I am not doing well with time of any sort. I see the clock and dont know how Im going to make it through "x many more hours" b/p free. Im honestly thinking I might need to just avoid looking at clocks but that is damn near impossible with the amount of times I look at my phone when receiving a text or call. I also have my "to-do" list on there, as well as other lists. I have random reminders here and there that alert me. I guess another good idea, so that I wouldnt have to think about hunger or fullness and times to eat, is to take a treatment approach since I am having trouble with it. After I eat breakfast, I could set up time intervals on my phone to alert me when it is the next scheduled time. I spend so much time calculating in my head when I ate, how many more hours are in the day, how I should spread my meals out in those hours, what Im going to eat, am I hungry, am I still full? If I was in treatment, none of those questions would really matter because when it is time to eat, I had to eat. If I am full, I am unable to know if it is purely physical or if emotions is playing a role and the same goes for hunger.

As nice as having days off of work is, I also dread it because of the impending doom of the b/p that is laying over my head. Im meeting with Sam tomorrow for coffee and yoga. This is turning into our Monday morning routine. It is cute. Annie teaches tomorrow. I mostly only go to her classes but will go to someone else's when Annie's does not fit into my day's events. Michelle is in class until 4 and is then coming over and we are heading to Macy's at the Nicollet Mall to see the Christmas display: A Day in the Life of an Elf. Im assuming, if she has no plans, we will stay around there for a while. Nicollet mall has a lot of shops as well as entertainment and dining.

I feel like I am really establishing my life up here in the cities, finally. Over the past few years I have done so much bouncing around, moving from place to place, treatment center to treatment center, boyfriend to boyfriend, friends to friends. Now however, I feel some sense of stability. Of course, I would love to have more. I know that would come with eliminating the b/p cycle. That is what makes me feel the most unsettled. However, finally, all of MY life is in one area. I have great friends all within 10/15 minutes of me, all of my mail and accounts are officially this address (for a long time I had to keep them as my parents' address because I was bouncing around so much and going into treatments so often), I am a face at the gym and yoga (esp yoga), I have my coffee shop that I frequent and hold conversations with my favorite baristas, I talk to the managers at Rainbow when I go get groceries and compliment them on their friendly service, my treatment team is within 10 minutes of driving, my friends and I have our weekly traditions and we all freak out to classic rock, I work 10 minutes away from my house...the one thing throwing off my zen is the eating disorder. I know this, it is no shock to me and I can say that i am ready to let go and I am just going to deal with those feelings. I am not dense. It is and is not that simple.

Transitioning, I am officially beginning CBT-E (Enhanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) on Tuesday when I meet with Laura. I have been told I am going to want to quit, I am going to want to run away and avoid therapy. I have been told it is a very hard process and most clients hate it because of the in depth look at what is going on to create these thought processes. It is a very linear therapy. I did this, I was here, I thought this. The patterns are tracked. On top of it being hard, I have the most loving/harsh hardass therapist of all time in the history of ever. I am ready for this. I am excited for this. I am scared as heck for this.

Things that will be different:
-I will not see Hilary (OT) or Sarah (RD) while I am in CBT-E (20-40 sessions of CBT-E)
-I will see Laura 2x/wk
-I will practice normal eating and not be on a meal plan
-I will be weighed before my appointment with Laura and she will tell me my weight and we will talk about it, right there, in the moment
-I will graph my weight with Laura so that I can see the trend. If it goes up, I am possibly emotionally eating(I mean, I guess if i am eating and then b/ping possibly too), if it goes down, I am most likely b/ping or emotionally restricting out of fear. My restriction is out of fear, my b/ping is out of anxiety (usually).
-I will have food/thoughts records. On these sheets I will write down the time, where I was, what I ate, any bx used and the thoughts. This is one of the most dreaded aspects of CBT-E. I will have to focus on my feelings/thoughts immediately following eating. These need to be done in real time (also realistically what is doable) so the thought patterns recorded are most accurate.

It should be (a good) intense.