Can I do better?

I'm not being a very consistent blogger, am I? Today I was on a message board, and someone had posted a link to their blog. And I loved it so much that it made me remember that I have a blog, but I haven't written in it since OCTOBER. That makes me disappointed in myself.

Which reminds me of a conversation I had with my mom a few weeks ago. I was telling her that I hadn't been working out that week, and that I didn't think I was doing my best. And she said, "Sara, everyone ALWAYS does their best!"

At first, I was like, "No way! Why would every one try so hard to achieve 'their best' if they are ALWAYS doing their best?" But then I thought about it. I think when people say "my best", they mean the best that they could do ever. Which would probably mean some other factors were involved, like years of experience coming together, and having the right people around you, and God working in your life. But those things (well, the first two) don't occur every day. But you do do your best at any given point in time given the circumstances.

This realization was such a relief for me. I've always been hurt by the phrase, "try harder," because it's not usually a question of effort. And even if you feel like you didn't exert any effort, I bet there was something else going on that made that lack of exertion your "best" for that point in time.

Anyway, moving on.... Since I've been doing my best all along :) I will be interested to see whether my best in the future will include writing in this blog! I would like it to.

Last time I posted (October), I was telling you about Intuitive Eating. Well, I am still (attempting) to eat intutively, and I have to say, it's going pretty well. I had some trouble for awhile there, though. Here's what happened. First, I had a mood swing, and I got depressed. I should talk about emotional eating in another post. Second, I was reading an intuitive eating message board, and people started comparing alcoholism and over eating. I thought that they had it all wrong, and that I knew everything I needed to know about alcoholism. What you didn't know until now is that my dad is a recovering alcoholic, and I have spent thousands of miles in the car with him going to AA conferences (that also had activities for the kids) discussing alcoholism. So when I read the "misinformed" posts, I called my mom to talk to her about it. (I call my mom 1-7 times a day.) She informed me that I was the misinformed one. So I called my dad and invited him over to discuss AA and intuitive eating.

When my dad walked in the door, I was still under the impression that AA was about control. Apparently I've never paid much attention to the first step: "Admitted we were POWERLESS over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable." You see, I had attempted Overeaters Anonymous, and the first thing they asked me to do there was make a list of my trigger foods, and then simply not eat them (as if that could ever be simple). To me, that came across as, "Step One, Take Control."* I'm not judging any OA group except the one I tried, which to me, had it ALL wrong (based on what I know now). So, my dad explained to me that AA was about relinquishing control, and, as step two indicates, turning your life over to a higher power. He told me that in  his opinion*, AA was no place for anything "psychological", such as thought techniques. He thought that if your head is the problem, how can you expect to fix it with your head?

I took this to mean that I couldn't follow any of the intuitive eating techniques because they were all "psychological". My counselor later explained why this was crazy very well. She said, "If what you were doing was working, why did you mess with it?" So, for the last few weeks, I have been working to regain the progress that I lost in the last month or two. My next post will be about what I'm doing to get back on track.

*AA is a wonderful program that I credit with wonderful things. OA also helps many people. Any person's opinion is just that; an opinion. Please do form impressions of the program as a whole based on what I have said.

And there's progress on the eating front!

I have Binge Eating Disorder. I've been diagnosed twice. I have tried a thousand diets: calorie counting, Fit or Fat, Weight Watchers, South Beach, SparkPeople, the list goes on. I have had a million "tomorrows"- you know, the day when you're going to start taking control. And I have had countless moments in my life where I felt like I was a failure because I couldn't control what I ate.

But guess what? I am now free. I am so excited about the things I don't do anymore: I don't diet, obsess about food, or binge. Even better: I DO stop eating when I'm full, enjoy my food more than I used to, and treat myself with respect and  little bit of love (the love could use some multiplying, but I'll get there). In fact, I haven't gained weight since February, and I've actually LOST a couple pounds.

You want to know what's going on, don't you?!

I have been eating intuitively. There is a book called "Intutive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works," and I've been using what it says. What does it say? In a quick tiny nutshell, it says: eat what you want, eat when you're hungry, and stop when you're satsified. I'll tell you more about it later.

I actually have a history with this book. I've struggled with eating for a long time, so when I went to my first counseling session when I got to college, I told my counselor that I wanted to lose weight and that I was on a diet. She immediately said, "NO! Don't diet ever again. Get this book, and go talk to this person about it." So I got the book and talked to the person. I could tell that it was a great book, and the person was super helpful, but something just wasn't clicking. All I can say is that it must not have been God's plan for me to start following the book then, because I wasn't ready.

However, I kept the book. I really liked it, even though it wasn't clicking. Fast forward through countless diets and endless food misery, and arrive in Spring 2010. I am fed up with diets and my failure with them, and I give up. That might sound bad, but you have to consider what I'm giving up on. I'm  not giving up on hope of myself, I'm giving up on DIETS. They are making me miserable. And around the time that I give up, I stop gaining weight. It must be a miracle, right?

Fast forward again, to summer 2010. I remember the book. And I realize, "Wow, I think I might be doing what the book says without trying!" I was. For some reason when I stopped fighting, I won.

I've been working on it since, then and I plan to share my journey with it with you!

I'm back...

Ok, so I haven't posted in awhile. I can explain.

I started writing this blog because I knew there was something wrong with the way I was eating, and I wanted to share my journey of "fixing" that. I had decided that the way to do that was through a partial hospitalization program for mental health. So, when I had to leave that program, I felt like my blog was over. But it's not.

Let's talk about leaving the program. Basically, I'm not healthy enough to go (to the place for sick people...). I know, it confused me, too. However, my psychiatrist said that I really could be too sick to commit to such a full schedule. I agree. And at first I thought that it was a bad thing, but after some discussion with my new counselor (yay!) I have realized that I didn't "quit", I made a healthy choice to leave.

I am happy to give you a positive update on my disorders (Bipolar and Binge). They are both doing considerably better! I am back on a new bipolar medication that I had taken before (but had to quit for insurance reasons) and it's working just as well now as it did then! I am crying much less frequently; down from every day to every couple weeks. My mood is so much more stable, and I have been more active. However, I am still a long way from healthy; I'll tell you more about my recent experience with that in a future post.

My progress with my Binge Eating Disorder has been so HUGE that it deserves it's on post. So I'm going to end this one (happily because I'm back) and start a new one!

Bipolar frustrations

A few months ago, one of my friends asked me, "So does it bother you when people use the term 'bipolar' casually?" I asked him what he meant, and he said, "Well, like when Katy Perry sings 'Got a case of a love bipolar', does that bother you?" Well, at the time I said no, but now I'm rethinking my answer.

Lately I've been noticing a lot of people loosely throwing around the term "bipolar". I had a neighbor call someone he didn't like bipolar. I had a banker tell me "everyone's bipolar". I was searching for blogs by bipolar people and came up with a whole bunch of blogs casually mentioning the word "bipolar" without having a clue what it meant. And, the one that made me feel the worst; I found a blog by an actual bipolar guy who's symptoms are managed by low dosages of two medicines. (I take high dosages of 3 medicines and my symptoms still aren't managed.)

The one that made me the most angry, though, was the banker telling me everyone's bipolar. I have had horrible experiences in my life of people saying that everyone has the same problems I have. Usually this consists of someone saying, "I have experienced what you're going through, and it's not that bad." In high school some of my classmates took this a step further and said, "I'm handling the same problems just fine, you need to try harder." If you want to crush my heart, tell me I'm just not trying hard enough. I hate it when someone says that everyone has my problems because it makes me feel like I shouldn't be struggling because everyone else is fine.

The fact is that I have some very real problems that I'm really struggling with. I'm sure some people truly understand and I know some people have it worse that I do, but that doesn't mean everyone gets it. You know what? As much as it bugs me to have people misuse "bipolar", I would let everyone misuse it every day if it meant I felt like someone actually understood me and what it means for me to be bipolar.

My first FULL week... brings struggles

Last week was my first full week of PH, and I faced some struggles. I mentioned in the beginning that I have a "quitting complex" where I will be very excited about something new in the beginning, but I soon lose motivation and quit. Well, the appropriate amount of time has passed and I've tried to quit PH. I sent an email to my psychiatrist to ask for advice, and it summed things up nicely:

"I have been going to Partial Hospitalization for a couple of weeks now- 5 days so far. I am having some feelings that are typical for me. I was really excited about going when I first started, but the last few days I've decided I don't like it and that I'm not sure if I want to continue participating. There are a lot of things I like about it, and I can't come up with a very good reason for why I want to quit, I just know my brain is telling me loud and clear that I don't have the energy for it and that it's not going to help me anyway.
I don't know what to do. I've already called in sick once and left early once. I have no motivation to go. I've tried going even when I didn't want to but I hated being there and that was the day I left early. My brain says I want to quit but my heart doesn't want to lose the hope I've put in going. What should I do?
Also, lately I've had absolutely no energy. I'm not sleeping more, I just feel so depressed and void of energy."

I think that the most important part of this is that my heart doesn't want to lose the hope I've put in going. After much sleepy deliberation, I called in sick again today, but I had a huge internal struggle because I desperately wanted to go, I just couldn't find the energy. (The good news is that my lack of energy is likely to respond to medication. As of yesterday, I have some new med changes, and I feel hopeful about them.)

I hope that Wednesday I will write a new post about how I went and had a great day.

Day Three

Well, my third day of PH went pretty well. We begin every day by coming up with a daily goal, then sharing it with the group. When I got there, I felt like I had already accomplished a major goal just by showing up, but I managed to decide that my goal would be to take cold medicine. I have a cold, and I'm extremely stubborn about adding anything to my (already high) number of nine pills a day. My husband gets extremely frustrated because I'm a big complainer, but I won't listen when he tells me that medicine will help. Unfortunately, despite the goal I forgot to take more medicine when I got home. Oh well.

While I was sharing my goal, I told the group about something else. I went to see my psychiatrist on Tuesday, and although I was sure of the opposite, she said I am actually doing better. She's really proud of me for seeking out PH and following through with it for awhile now. When I shared this with the group, everyone nodded and smiled like they were proud of me, too!

It was the last day for two of the patients, and we did "Dove Chocolate Therapy". It's not as fancy or official as it sounds, but it's way delicious! The leader passed around a bowl of Dove chocolates. We all saved our wrapper as we enjoyed the chocolate, then we went around and read the quotes from the wrappers to the departing patients. The funny part is that many times the quote is best for the person who opened it! That was true for me. My wrapper said, "Celebrate the small victories in your life." I said that this is really hard for me because I'm such a black and white thinker. To me, black is failure and white is the big successes. The small victories fall in the gray, and I just overlook them. Someone piped up and told me that they remember me saying on the first day that I quit a lot, and they thought it was a huge victory that I had been going to PH for two weeks. I thought it was so sweet that the person not only remembered what I said on my first day, but wanted to give me positive feedback!

At the end of the day I was feeling confused, and I shared it with the group. I was confused because Wednesday I was so resistant to being there that I called in sick. Later on Wednesday, I really missed PH and regretted not being there. But by Friday when I was there again, I was feeling depressed and unhappy about being there. Another patient told me that a lot of people aren't so sure about it in the beginning, but you move past that and learn to appreciate PH. That sounds hopeful to me!

I'm never doing THAT again!

Yesterday was the first day back at PH after the holiday weekend, and I didn't go. Do you want to know what happened? Ok.

I was snoozing along with my alarm, and I just couldn't seem to wake up. I hadn't gotten to sleep in for a few days, and I was worn out. As I was trying to wake up, all I could think about was how I wasn't going to be able to handle the walk home in the afternoon. So I called and told them I had a headache. I really do get bad headaches, but I didn't have one yesterday.

I immediately felt guilty, though I was too tired to feel the effects fully. What I did feel was guilt that my husband had already gotten up and showered so he'd be ready to take me, and no longer needing to do that, he had over an hour to wait before he needed to go to work. So I stole sleep from someone I love.

Hours later, when I finally woke up for good, I started to feel worse and worse. The thing is, I really like PH. Since I've started going, I've felt less lonely and bored. I've had something to do. Not being there made me realize how much I want to be there.

So the lesson learned is that I need to not worry about making it through the day and just think about how much I'm going to miss if I don't go. I really hope I remember that, because I don't want to make the same mistake again.