I learned very early to single-knot my shoe-laces when first tying them for the day, since this makes it quicker and easier to remove the shoes for the big event. When I arrive, I immediately take them off and empty my pockets in preparation. I feel a lot like I'm being booked in the county jail or passing through airport security. (I've only ever experienced one of these, and I'll let you guess which one.) I feel weird, a bit violated, childlike, distrusted, and angry. When finished with the scale, I tie the extra knot in my laces, reload my pockets, and then make my way to the kitchen for breakfast. Before I came here, my individual therapist back home weighed me similarly before each session. I may have felt just as uncomfortable, angry, or criminalized during those weighings, but I didn't see her five days a week.
We also weigh blindly, meaning that our backs are turned towards the wall opposite the scale, away from the digital screen and its electronic measurement. For someone who restricts their eating, this is not a terrible way to go about it. I stopped weighing myself years ago, because I knew that a pound gained would become two lost in the name of overcompensation. Except for when I initially began to "get healthy and into shape,” my eating disorder has never been about weight-loss. Rather, it has been one way to control something, anything, and I've used it more as a maintenance tool. My fear, on the surface anyway, has been weight-gain; my goal - constancy, predictability, security. Overcompensation is my gut reaction to a hike in the gravitational pull. This tendency can be more or less dangerous depending on how thin you are. Yet, now that I think about it, I've never overcompensated for weight-loss. Indeed, the lower weight has always become the new weight to maintain. I chase my tail only to let go once I've captured it.
So, maybe the eating disorder is about weight-loss - on the surface, anyway. Below the surface, prehistoric beasts are fighting to survive.
curious: is "overcompensate" a term you came up with to qualify your disorder, or was it found in books, therapy, etc.?
ReplyDelete"Overcompensate" is one thing I do. It's the term I use to describe what happens when I give in to an irrational fear - like fear of weight-gain. It's a coping mechanism on HGH (which, if I were taking it, might quicken the process of recovery). I'm sure books, therapy, etc., use the term when talking about the effects of the disorder, but it's a term I naturally think of when I talk about my reaction to distressing food/body thoughts and events. I didn't consciously borrow it. Overcompensation is just one component of the disorder. But a major one, fo' sho'.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading and inquiring. What do you think about the term or the act?
i've heard you use it...a lot. so i was curious. after looking up the definition (i know what it means, but sometimes it's nice to see it in print e.g. overcompensate--to take excessive measures to attempt to correct or make amends for an error, weakness, or problem) i think it works.
ReplyDeletei think it stuck out to me because it sounds so technical and impersonal. it sounds like a term i would hear one use to describe an act that someone else commits. i don't know. it's formal. it's loaded. it's...easy.
i meant "easy" as in it's easy because it is a little word that says so much. in reading over my comment i think that could be misconstrued as me saying that "overcompensation," the act, is easy. not what i meant at all. in no way am i trying to belittle your shit, dude.
ReplyDelete