My therapists have avoided putting labels on things, rightly so. But terms have been thrown around.
Anxiety
Depression
Eating disorders
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
And all of these terms come with visualizations of what it must be like, but I thought I’d put down in wooooords *how interesting life is with these in the world*
And really, I mean interesting, because it does add a certain spice to life, even if there’s too much at times and it makes the food of life to spicy to consume.
So what does this feel like?
There’s a great picture I relate to of a person talking to a therapist. Their speech bubble is shown as a tangled mess of yarn.
And I think that’s pretty accurate in a lot of ways. All of these mental conditions are like balls of yarn, certain colors, certain thread content. But when this ball is tangled up it can look like a lot of different things. And when it’s tangled with different balls of yarn, it gets even more wild. While many components of mental illness are the same, the way they look from person to person can vary. So then the job of the therapist is to untangle the mess. They really know how to do it, too. Have you ever had headphones awfully tangled and the more you try to fix it, the worse it gets?
Yeah… me too. Well, not really, I can untangle headphones any time, if you need help lemme know.
But that tangled mess of brain yarn.
It’s been a looong time that I’ve been trying to untangle that mess on my own. Which lead to me messing it up pretty badly, eventually pulling out a pair of scissors to hack away at it and then trying to tie it back together in a way that made sense... which didn’t help anything.
So what does this feel like?
It feels like stepping on a scale before and after every meal. Before taking a shower, after taking a shower. It’s knowing how much certain pairs of jeans weigh, how much shoes weigh, how much a glass of water weighs. And no, throwing away the scale doesn’t work because then every thought is consumed with finding ways to escape to the store to use the scale, followed by a walk around the store, and another visit to the scale. Multiple times a day. It’s feels like being bitten by mosquitoes, all over your body, feeling the sting and knowing how bad it’s going to be, but deciding to sit through it. That’s what it feels like to NOT give into this behavior. It feels like letting the mosquitoes suck me dry. My skin crawls and my brain cries out. So I find ways to measure myself to relieve the itch.
It feels like driving to Trader Joes and running through your grocery list when a thought pops into your mind, wondering what would happen if you got t-boned in the intersection. What would it look like, what would it sound like, what would it feel like, what the phone call to loved ones would sound like, what the other car would look like, who they’d be. And shaking your head and realizing that a crazy, sad, random thought that had no place in your brain. But it got there anyway.
And really, I mean interesting, because it does add a certain spice to life, even if there’s too much at times and it makes the food of life to spicy to consume.
So what does this feel like?
There’s a great picture I relate to of a person talking to a therapist. Their speech bubble is shown as a tangled mess of yarn.
And I think that’s pretty accurate in a lot of ways. All of these mental conditions are like balls of yarn, certain colors, certain thread content. But when this ball is tangled up it can look like a lot of different things. And when it’s tangled with different balls of yarn, it gets even more wild. While many components of mental illness are the same, the way they look from person to person can vary. So then the job of the therapist is to untangle the mess. They really know how to do it, too. Have you ever had headphones awfully tangled and the more you try to fix it, the worse it gets?
Yeah… me too. Well, not really, I can untangle headphones any time, if you need help lemme know.
But that tangled mess of brain yarn.
It’s been a looong time that I’ve been trying to untangle that mess on my own. Which lead to me messing it up pretty badly, eventually pulling out a pair of scissors to hack away at it and then trying to tie it back together in a way that made sense... which didn’t help anything.
So what does this feel like?
It feels like stepping on a scale before and after every meal. Before taking a shower, after taking a shower. It’s knowing how much certain pairs of jeans weigh, how much shoes weigh, how much a glass of water weighs. And no, throwing away the scale doesn’t work because then every thought is consumed with finding ways to escape to the store to use the scale, followed by a walk around the store, and another visit to the scale. Multiple times a day. It’s feels like being bitten by mosquitoes, all over your body, feeling the sting and knowing how bad it’s going to be, but deciding to sit through it. That’s what it feels like to NOT give into this behavior. It feels like letting the mosquitoes suck me dry. My skin crawls and my brain cries out. So I find ways to measure myself to relieve the itch.
It feels like driving to Trader Joes and running through your grocery list when a thought pops into your mind, wondering what would happen if you got t-boned in the intersection. What would it look like, what would it sound like, what would it feel like, what the phone call to loved ones would sound like, what the other car would look like, who they’d be. And shaking your head and realizing that a crazy, sad, random thought that had no place in your brain. But it got there anyway.
It feels like walking into your babies’ room multiple times a night to put your hand on their chest and make sure they’re still breathing. Burying yourself in real life horror stories of the worst thing imaginable happening because you feel like if you know everything there is to know about it, then you’ll be prepared for it if it happens, or maybe knowing it all will stop it from happening. But watching it happen over and over again in your mind’s eye, and you change the channel, but the same show pops up on that channel too and so the only thing you can do is to turn it off. To turn your brain off. To escape your body and feel your soul drift away into a place of emptiness and nothingness because it’s the easiest way to get away. So you sit still on a chair and the world passes you and you don’t hear it or see it.
It feels like your fingers and toes jumping with energy but the weight on your chest is heavier that day. The thought of doing anything is exhausting. Talking to people would surely drain you. You question every word you’ve ever said to anyone and eventually it’s just easier to not talk at all. To cut off friends and family and neighbors because you don’t have the energy to maintain relationships anymore.
It feels like your fingers and toes jumping with energy but the weight on your chest is heavier that day. The thought of doing anything is exhausting. Talking to people would surely drain you. You question every word you’ve ever said to anyone and eventually it’s just easier to not talk at all. To cut off friends and family and neighbors because you don’t have the energy to maintain relationships anymore.
It feels like needing to be perfect. Those mosquito bites again. You need to prove to others that you are fine, because if they believe it then it’ll be true. So you don’t go out of the house wearing sweatpants even though you want to so bad… because that may make people worry. Your makeup is always on. You’ve got the smile and voice down to a perfect science so no one would ever expect it. But when you start talking about your insides just a little bit… it’s very shocking. Even though you’ve felt like that for herm… over a decade… it’s a shock because no one saw it before.
It feels like begging to cry. If you could just cry, the rain would cause the dam in your heart to break and everything would flow out and you could feel well again.
It feels like enduring so much abuse in an ex relationship that you had to learn how to save yourself. And that savior looks like lying, manipulating others, and gaslighting yourself into believing that things didn’t happen. You know you don’t need those tactics anymore but it feels easy and safe when you feel weak and tired. And scared. Because you know you’re safe now. You truly do know that. But after a time in life where you were so scared… that feeling lasts.
So you sit in your therapist’s office and see it written down on paper that you were truly abused in every way possible for your situation. And it starts to make sense a bit more.
And I didn’t have time to process and heal then, truly. I thought I did. I was scared out of my eating disorder through the abuse. I thought I had beaten it, but it just was pushed down as I tried to emotionally survive. And the relationship ended so so so abruptly (thank goodness) and I found my best friend and safe place so soon afterwards that I never did process it.
Those wounds last. They sit there and I try to heal them through cutting that ball of yarn and tying things up until nothing makes sense anymore. And my body and mind feels it is in danger all of the time, so it finds relief through just not feeling much of anything anymore. It’s a light switch where one side is feeling panic and the other side is sitting in darkness.
Woof.
This feels like a lot.
It feels like begging to cry. If you could just cry, the rain would cause the dam in your heart to break and everything would flow out and you could feel well again.
It feels like enduring so much abuse in an ex relationship that you had to learn how to save yourself. And that savior looks like lying, manipulating others, and gaslighting yourself into believing that things didn’t happen. You know you don’t need those tactics anymore but it feels easy and safe when you feel weak and tired. And scared. Because you know you’re safe now. You truly do know that. But after a time in life where you were so scared… that feeling lasts.
So you sit in your therapist’s office and see it written down on paper that you were truly abused in every way possible for your situation. And it starts to make sense a bit more.
And I didn’t have time to process and heal then, truly. I thought I did. I was scared out of my eating disorder through the abuse. I thought I had beaten it, but it just was pushed down as I tried to emotionally survive. And the relationship ended so so so abruptly (thank goodness) and I found my best friend and safe place so soon afterwards that I never did process it.
Those wounds last. They sit there and I try to heal them through cutting that ball of yarn and tying things up until nothing makes sense anymore. And my body and mind feels it is in danger all of the time, so it finds relief through just not feeling much of anything anymore. It’s a light switch where one side is feeling panic and the other side is sitting in darkness.
Woof.
This feels like a lot.
I don’t know why I thought to write it all down. There’s so much more to it than this. Last night I scrolled through articles, looking for someone who could explain how I feel, someone who could put it down in words. Nothing touched it quite right. I’ve got a jumbled mess of genetics and history that puts me into a sticky tar pit in California that is tough to move in and pretty gross.
This isn’t to cause concern though, truly.
I laugh with my babies. We roll around on the ground playing and laughing until our sides split and tears are running down our faces. I love my husband so deeply that it’s just become a part of me that I don’t even have to question. Such a place of profound security. I look forward to family visits and I get excited about cooking and I sit down and read a book and truly soak it in. I sit in my backyard in silence, under the Arizona sun, feeling my skin drink it in while the wind brushes my face and I take in the world with a mind silent from all of the confusion. I lay down and listen to music and feel my heartbeat change to match the pulse of the song.
I laugh with my babies. We roll around on the ground playing and laughing until our sides split and tears are running down our faces. I love my husband so deeply that it’s just become a part of me that I don’t even have to question. Such a place of profound security. I look forward to family visits and I get excited about cooking and I sit down and read a book and truly soak it in. I sit in my backyard in silence, under the Arizona sun, feeling my skin drink it in while the wind brushes my face and I take in the world with a mind silent from all of the confusion. I lay down and listen to music and feel my heartbeat change to match the pulse of the song.
But the wounds are there. If exercise could have worked the turmoil out of me, it would have. If the hours spent on my knees in prayer could have cured me, it would have. If blocking out everything that caused me undue stress or the reverse, taking it all on and learning how to manage it could have helped… it would have by now.
Sometimes these things are just more complex than that. And sometimes you need a true professional to take the balls of yarn as you feed it to them, so they can roll it up nicely and untangle the mess.
The truth is I can’t just magically walk away from it all. Eating disorders will probably be a part of my mind forever. The memories of abuse won’t go away. But having those parts of me rolled up tightly makes it easier for me to put them into a box and fill my mind and my life with the present, which is so wonderful. Medication has helped the process move along quicker, and finding a therapist who knows what they're doing, and who I truly felt guided to through a series of such fortunate encounters has been a saving grace. I don't ask family and friends to cure me or solve me or carry this for me. I'm at a place now where I don't need advice unsolicited. I've found a beat that works for me and I'll walk it until it stops working.
The truth is I can’t just magically walk away from it all. Eating disorders will probably be a part of my mind forever. The memories of abuse won’t go away. But having those parts of me rolled up tightly makes it easier for me to put them into a box and fill my mind and my life with the present, which is so wonderful. Medication has helped the process move along quicker, and finding a therapist who knows what they're doing, and who I truly felt guided to through a series of such fortunate encounters has been a saving grace. I don't ask family and friends to cure me or solve me or carry this for me. I'm at a place now where I don't need advice unsolicited. I've found a beat that works for me and I'll walk it until it stops working.
And all of these, I don’t consider them to be weaknesses despite the way they make me feel. At least, I wouldn’t call anyone weak for battling them. There are strengths to be found in the mess. I’m perceptive of my environment and dangers that may be there. I am constantly ready with escape routes from any situation that may grow dark. I can relate keenly and empathise deeply. I’ve learned to look for light in new ways.
I’m getting better, I truly am. It’s exciting to see the small changes adding up and to feel the knots inside me undoing.
I’m getting better, I truly am. It’s exciting to see the small changes adding up and to feel the knots inside me undoing.
And to everyone reading this. Thank you for your unfailing support and patience. I’ve got a memory that won’t quit (literally) and I will never forget things that you may have brushed off as being easy nothings, but that meant the world to me. All I ask of people is to continue what you’re doing.
And to anyone else who needs a support system, I fancy myself a good listener, and my work hours are crazy enough that I’ll probably be available whenever you need it. You’re not alone, and there is help and happiness ahead. You’ve got this.
And to anyone else who needs a support system, I fancy myself a good listener, and my work hours are crazy enough that I’ll probably be available whenever you need it. You’re not alone, and there is help and happiness ahead. You’ve got this.
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