When I say that the program I am in is diverse, I certainly mean it. They are looking after my mind and my body. While the body side hasn’t really started yet (I’m waiting for the next open slot), the mind side is well underway.

Yesterday I took part in my first stress management class. While the content wasn’t much of anything that I didn’t already know (causes of stress, responses to stress, etc), it was a lesson in being in an unfamiliar environment with unfamiliar people. It was very upsetting at first, but I settled in quickly. I have always loved taking classes and learning.

One quick tip I did learn that seems to be going well for taking down anxiety and stress is to step back from the situation just long enough to give it a rating out of ten. Just pausing to think about the situation objectively like that can make it easier to calm down. Or, at least, to start calming down.

I was kind of amused (and a little bit disturbed) that on our break, most of the people went and got a coffee. I was thinking, “Hello, we’re in a stress management course and you’re drinking coffee?” As it turns out, some people geniunely didn’t know that caffeine can make stress symptoms worse.

All in all, I’m very happy. I feel like I’m in the right place where I’m going to set the groundwork I need.

Here’s to all the people who truly need Christmas cheer. To everyone who wants to feel happy but can’t. To everyone who smiles through the pain until they can be alone to cry. To the people who see the joy on others’ faces but can’t quite feel it in themselves. To the people with the invisible ailments that don’t show on the outside, but hurt so much on the inside.

During this holiday season, here is to all of you. Because the most precious gift often is knowing that you aren’t alone.

…when, if you don’t stop, your body will stop for you.

I can’t believe I let it happen to me again, but I did – and yesterday I suffered the consequences.

With the hormones, the demands from work (and a lot of demanding people), suddenly having to figure out how to do Australian income taxes, a stack of Christmas cards yet to finish and send out, financial woes, and just wanting nothing more than to sit down and write… Well, all that stress bubbled up and came out yesterday.

After walking out of the tax office (an appointment we had to put on our credit card), I sat down on the steps and just cried. Poor Bloke was great and helped me to calm down, but I was in full on panic attack mode just trying to breath and not think about anything other than being in that exact moment. Every time I started thinking about something else we had to do, I couldn’t breathe again. So I had to sit and not think about any of it.

Not exactly an easy task for a woman who runs her to-do list through her head almost constantly.

I managed to calm down and make it through the day, but getting the rest of my work done involved frequent breaks because I couldn’t sit for long doing it before I’d start to tear up and have trouble breathing again.

Today is a bit better, but I still have to layer my work with task, non-work something, task, non-work something… (This is one of my non-work somethings.)

I was in denial. I was in denial about being exhausted, about being strapped for cash, about having to declare a no-presents Christmas because we just can’t afford it, about the fact that not having a ‘proper’ Christmas broke my heart because it’s ‘my’ holiday, that I was freaking out over having to learn taxes because we can’t afford an accountant, about… a million and one different things.

I’m so tired of feeling like I have to justify my stress because someone might scorn me for having it better than they do.

So no more justifications, no more denying that I want to give my husband a gift on Christmas even if I have to put it on a credit card and no more feeling like I have to keep my mouth shut when they treat me like crap.

I’m done with all of it.

Since I posted Click a week and a day ago, I have changed my diet, which has calmed my mind, which has prevented binges, which has helped me to lose four and a half pounds.

I love when things click.

I am a firm believer that there are some people who, if they just put their mind to it, can lose the weight they want. And there are others, like me, who must piece together the ‘whys’ of the weight before they can proceed to have a healthier life.

I also believe that the realisations I talked about in ‘Click’ have helped me to take another approach to healthier eating and being. And this time I am winning.

I started by switching to a mostly raw diet, which helps calm my mind and the moods that plague me and encourage binge eating. I then ditched breads and pastas, which always leave me feeling bloated after I eat them. (I didn’t know what bloating really felt like until I stopped feeling bloated.) After that, I cut down heaps on my alcohol consumption, which isn’t easy in Australia when so much revolves around drinking.

Instead of the usual struggle and doubts, I’m feeling good. I know I have a long way to go, but I’m finally viewing this as a true lifestyle change instead of a means to get where I want to go. I can honestly envision a life where I only very rarely eat bread or pasta. I can see myself embracing smoothies once more.

I’ve gotten past the panic period I usually have in the first week by letting myself eat as much as I want whenever I want as long as its healthy, and that plan has seen me settle down into a proper diet with plenty of vege and fruit.

I’ve been here before, feeling confident and getting healthier, so I’m not going to make any promises. I’m not going to expect perfection, no binges and no regrets.

All I know is that I’m feeling calm, if not good, and I’m proud of how far I’ve come in just one week.

Click.

That is the sound of one of my mental hang-up mysteries unlocking and floating into the realisation part of my brain.

Once again Hanlie and I seem to be rocking the same wavelength when it comes to our journies to health. (Really, I do read other blogs, too. I promise.) And once again, something she said has me thinking. (Really! Lots of ofther blogs!)

She mentioned in a recent post that when she first met her life coach, he asked her, “Why don’t you want to lose weight?” The post went on and I read on, but that question buried itself in my brain and refused to let go until I found an answer.

After all, what a strange question. Haven’t we all proven time and time again that we want to lose weight? Doesn’t the very fact we even have these blogs prove it?

And yet the question gnawed at my brain for days after. Why? Because I knew I had an answer to it somewhere in me.

Today, as I decided to rest my feet after a bit of wandering around the shops, I sat down across from a shop selling tiny tiny bits of marerial for tiny tiny girls for massive prices. My recent weight gain, recent blog posts, recent reading and that damned question all danced around in my head while I looked at that store.

I thought: “Even when I do lose weight and feel great, I will never wear crap like that. It looks horrible!”

Then I began thinking, “Well, maybe some of it. Maybe my fashion sense will change as I lose weight.”

After all, I have been overweight for nearly as long as I can remember. I’ve been wearing mostly overalls, jeans and baggy things for a long time. I don’t know what I’ll feel, what I will want to try on or what I will find I like at a healthy weight. I don’t know… I don’t know…

I don’t know how to be thin.

Bam! Click! Fireworks and the gigantic light bulb above my head.

The funny thing about realisations is that they are often simple, and there it was: I don’t know how to be thin. I don’t know who I am thin. I don’t know how to put a mask on it, so I’ll just have to be the real me, which is a whole different can of worms because I am terrified of rejection.

This isn’t exactly rocket science, but it isn’t exactly to be unexpected from a woman who was rejected (in all the real ways) by her parents.

So there it is. I don’t want to lose weight because I’m afraid. I’m afraid because I don’t know how to be thin. I don’t know how to prepare a mask for that.

While this is a beautiful realisation, it also makes things more difficult. I need to lose weight, find out who I am and be comfortable with that person all at the same time.

But knowing our inner motivations is half the battle, so I’m on the right track.

At the heart of it, my change of direction is not only for my immediate health but to answer the big question in my life:

Why don’t I want to lose weight?

This may seem like an odd question coming from someone who has been trying (and losing, and gaining back) weight for so long, but it’s the question that has been bothering me for a long time now. I can lose weight. I know how to and I know what to do. But what keeps me from doing it?

Why do I, instead of ‘falling off the wagon’ and getting back on, fall off the wagon and roll around into the mud while trying to dig myself such a deep hole that it’ll suck the entire wagon inside, never to be ‘gotten back on’ again?

As much as I try and succeed, there is a part of me that wants to pad itself with weight and never see the light of day again.

I have gotten past all the anger and shame to do with the question, leaving it more of a matter of curiosity than anything.

I’m sure it has to do with control; I don’t want anything being taken away from me. I am also on a journey to learning to self-soothe without food, which is a biggie because food was the only thing I could depend on for most of my early life.

With those kind of things standing in my psychology, I’m attempting to be patient with myself.

Did I mention patience isn’t my virtue?

Start: 277
Current: 274

Loss: 3 pounds (no change)

After the great insights last week, maybe it only makes sense that I need a bit of down time to process. Or many it doesn’t. Either way, this was very much a head down, push through kind of week.

I saw a psychiatrist last week who confirmed the original diagnosis I was given when I was 19 and in the US. It came as a bit of a shock, to be honest. I’m not the greatest believer in the US medical system, so I figured there was a very good chance that the original diagnosis was wrong. That turns out not to be the case.

It shouldn’t have been a shock. I’ve always known I wasn’t quite as balanced as I could be. I’ve always made the best of it, though, and have refused medication ever since a particular med made me want to kill myself. But now, years later, I need to step back and reevaluate.

So this is me, keeping my head down, pushing through and trying to figure out what the heck I am going to do with myself. Keeping on trucking the way I am in this area might not be the best option anymore…

Whenever Australians ask me about the American experience, I am always sure to make sure they know my life has just been one experience of many. I grew up in the country, went to school in a small down and spent a lot of my childhood with hand me downs and canned soup for dinner because we did it tough for quite a few years. I am always hesitant to make any generalizations unless I truly believe it applies to most of the US population.

But the one thing I will fight for with all my heart is how bad the medical system is in the US. It’s horrible, disgusting and favoured toward those who can afford to be sick. The documentary ‘Sicko’ made me cry not because I didn’t know but rather because I do know what it’s like. I know what it’s like to be afraid to get sick, to know – as a child – that I was putting financial strain on the family by requesting to go to the doctor. Yes, part of that is my parents, but more if it is the system that causes parents to have to weigh whether they want to take their child to the doctor or put food on the table.

Insurance? Insurance is for the birds. It’s a heaping pile of bull manure that touts itself as the saviour of all the poor unfortunate souls. I wouldn’t let insurance kiss my rear end lest I be corrupted by the contact. “Insurance” let the hospital charge me $25 just to have a nurse insert an IV into my arm (that’s the needle, not the contents of the IV bag. That was, of course, a separate cost my “insurance” didn’t cover.) “Insurance” didn’t cover my prescriptions, my emergency room visits, and decided three months after an emergency room visit had been signed off on, that I wasn’t really covered after all. They posted me a bill for thousands of dollars I couldn’t pay. Why? Well, that’s because nearly all of my pay went to paying for medications that, gasp, insurance didn’t cover.

It is a crap system that needs adjusting, if not a complete overhaul, and no one will ever be able to convince me otherwise.

Today something beautiful happened. Something that puts another layer of concreted on the conclusion that socialized health care, while still having its problems, is an amazing and wonderful thing.

Something I don’t share a lot is that I have mental health issues. Most people probably wouldn’t guess because I try very hard not to let my mental health issues get in the way. But they are there and have been there a long time. After having a bad reaction to a medication I should never have been given, I went off all drugs and instead navigated my issues with natural remedies including St. John’s Wort, Valerian Root and a supportive husband who handled things better than I ever could have asked.

But due to recent events, my abilities (and disabilities) have come into light, and I have chosen to cautiously move forward once again into the world of medication (that I have been assured is gentle) and therapy. I am nervous, but the prospect of living a better life has proven to be enough to give me the confidence.

The beautiful thing? Today I went to pick up my meds. I mentioned how nearly all of my pay went towards my meds when I was in the US. That’s because I was paying $300 per prescription. The meds I picked up today? $5.60.

If that’s not enough to show that Australia genuinely helps take care of their people, I was told that, when I’m ready, there is an employment agency that works with people who have problems like I do. I never would have dreamed that something like that existed. Now, I don’t know if something like that exists in the States, but no one ever bothered to tell me about it in years I spent trying to find help.

No person, system or country is perfect, but damn if I don’t feel like I have come to an amazing country when I need help – and get it.

Without throwing me into near poverty.

I think it’s funny how much we go through life not really experiencing things. Not funny laugh out lout but funny kind of sad.

As part of my food diary, I record not only what I am eating but other things as well. It’s not just a diary of intake but a diary of experience and acknowledgment. Before I eat, I record my level of hunger from a 1-5 range. I also record what emotions I’m feeling at the time.

Before I started this food diary, I would have said that I have my bad times and my times of dealing with depression, but I’m overall a happy, content person. Little stress. Well, apparently I was wrong – even about my own feelings.

Through recording my meal and snack time emotions, I have come to see that I am a lot more stressed than I thought I was. More often than not, I am feeling work stress, anxiety, sadness… And I am left feeling shocked. Low level anxiety and stress have become the norm, so no longer am I basing my opinion of how I’m feeling as compared to happiness – which should be the norm. I compare it to the stress and anxiety I feel nearly every day.

Now, some of it is unavoidable. We all have bad days at work or have to deal with things/conversations/people that don’t jive with us on the given day. But for that to become normal is unhealthy.

As I unravel the intricacies surrounding my food addiction and reactions, I see that this is a bigger can of worms than I could have ever anticipated. But, weirdly, it’s my levels of anxiety facing these things that tells me I’m on the right track. True healing never was easy.

One of the things I’ve had to acknowledge is that a big cause of my weight is because I don’t know how to process emotions properly. I’m a very empathetic person – to the point that some people call me a S/sensitive. Emotions that don’t even belong to me can make me cry or angry. When The Bloke has had a bad day at work or one of my friends is hurting, it’s a process for me to detach and remind myself that it’s not my stress, not my sadness.

This sort of empathy and difficulty establishing walls is the reason behind a lot of my ‘issues’. As you can imagine, if I’m dealing with other people’s emotions, I don’t take a lot of time with my own. When I was a little girl, my parents decided I made a great marriage counselor. When I was older, I ran into some ‘friends’ who had very little give and a lot of take. As an adult, I’m now quite an introvert, but my emotions are still something rather foreign to me. After dealing with other people’s feelings for so many years, you’d think I’d picked up a few coping mechanisms…

No such luck.

Last night, I decided to open the can of emotional worms and see what I got from it. I’ve been experiencing a very deep depression for a while now, so obviously there were some things I needed to get out, right? I went to the back verandah, looked up at the stars and just relaxed.

And wouldn’t you know it, I started crying almost straight away.

Letting go of holding all that crap I was holding in was letting go of half the battle. Feeling what I’m feeling, crying and truly acknowledging that I’m miserable right now – and telling myself there is no reason to be ashamed of that – let me feel vulnerable. It gave me the strength to tell The Bloke that I’m in trouble and I need help.

Right now, it’s not psychiatric help and I doubt it will ever be. I know what I need and it’s not rehashing the past. Part of it is letting myself feel instead of ‘eating’ emotion. Part of it is working hard toward my goals. And another part is accepting that I am at a vulnerable point in my life. But being vulnerable isn’t such a bad thing if it helps me learn to build the barriers I need to protect myself from others’ emotions as well as from the self-sabotaging habits I have.

Onward and upward.