Had an appointment with E this morning. I hate going to see her when I haven’t been doing well at managing my behaviors. Or, as she so bluntly put it, “Anna, you don’t like to be held accountable.” Yeah. That’s pretty much what it boils down to. Another reason I hate to see her when I’m binging and purging is that she doesn’t even act surprised or disappointed anymore. It’s like she just assumes that I’m going to come in and tell her that I had a bad week, and that that is just the way it is. Like I’m a hopeless case. I’m sure she doesn’t mean it to come across that way, but I can’t help but internalize it as such (mind reading yet again).
I told her about my parent’s gift and how that means I’ll be able to see Dr. S regularly and that we can afford my meds. Then I started listing all the reasons I don’t want to see Dr. S — he is so far away, it takes the whole day, gas is so expensive — and E told me, “none of that mattered when you wanted to get well.” She went on to say that I’ve run out of excuses: we can afford for me to see Dr. S and to get my meds, I don’t work on Monday’s so I have the time to see him, and I have the skills I need to get healthy.
Any excuse I make now is really the equivalent of me saying, “I do not want to recover.”
Hopefully, one we get my meds straightened out, I will become fully devoted to recovery. If we can get this deep depression lifted perhaps I’ll feel like recovery is something that I can do. Right now, with the ways things are, I can’t even imagine being “normal.” Yesterday was so hard that I took THREE valium (for a total of 15 mg) and I still managed to binge and purge once. I guess depending on how you look at it that was an accomplishment of sorts: I wanted to binge and purge three times and only did so once. But I really can’t take credit for it, because it is hard to binge and purge when you are out cold because you have overdosed on valium.
E had me make three goals for this week: no binging and purging, write every day, and email E and T every day with a summary of how I’ve done. I felt like such a phony when I made those goals because I KNOW that I can’t follow through with them. When I told E that she said, “so you are planning on making self destructive choices this week.” Ouch.
Why do I keep going back to E when I know she is going to call me to account? Why have I made an appointment with Dr. S even though it will take all day to get there and back, gas is expensive, and he will challenge my distorted thinking? Why do I keep taking my medications when we could be spending that $700 a month on improving the house? Part of me must want to get well or I wouldn’t do these things, right?
But how can part of me want to get well, and yet I still continue to do unhealthy things? This cognitive dissonance is what makes this disease so hard.
