daniellethesheep wrote: »

Me: 1
Binge: 5
Streak: 0

thanks for the support guys.

@KnitOrMiss I do journal sometimes but it turns into just self loathing, I don't have any friends and barely have aquaintences, I'm not close with my family. I stayed back last year, so most of the classmates I had last year don't see me/talk to me anymore. I'm just being dramatic but my life kind of sucks rn and having my body look like this certainly isn't helping. I'm in a program for a healthcare profession, so seeing a psychologist on campus may jeopardize my eligibility to participate in my internship (as I may be deemed "psychologically incompetent" to make medical decisions for my patients. I'm just done with it all.

@daniellethesheep

Have you ever tried the challenge where you have to look in the mirror for 5 minutes a day (start with a compact, if need be), and pick one feature to admire - even if it is something simple like your eyes or your smile? After the first week, you add another feature and so on and so forth. While you're looking in the mirror, you have to stop any negative thoughts as soon as you realize them. It helps to have some sort of phrase to repeat to yourself - either in your head or out loud - to stomp down that feeling and get back to the positive self-viewing. It seems somewhat silly and fake and a waste of time, but if you give sincerity to it, even starting with 30 seconds to a minutes building up to longer times, etc.

My biggest "mental shifts" really came about when I started forcing myself to stop all of my negative self-speaking, putting myself down, letting others put me down, and putting myself last, always. It's incredible hard to do and feels fake and selfish and silly and just all kinds of wrong at first, but even taking a negative and self-abusing thought and rearranging the words to be less negative or to carry no blame or fault assigning....can make SOOOOO much difference. Even stopping ourselves once we start to beat ourselves up is it's own level of win.


That all being said, my sort of knee-jerk type of response here is, "If you will be penalized for taking care of your own mental health, how will you ever be able to help someone else with theirs?" I understand not wanting to get labeled and be blocked from internship, but personally, I don't believe a person should be able to make medical decisions if they refuse to get treatment themselves. Personally, I'd trust someone who'd been through it themselves more than someone who only knew things from book knowledge, etc.

Now, I'm not knocking anyone or their education/experience or anything. I also know that this is an idealized way of looking at it, because while we shouldn't be punished for caring for ourselves, the money-driven business age in which we live often makes it happen without consideration to right or wrong, fair or honest, etc.

I would work hard to see if you can find a private program with a sliding scale that you can participate in that won't exclude you from your internship and all of that. But truly, when we're that deep in the trenches of skewed thinking, brought upon my years and years of stress and mess in our lives, something has to give. NEDA is a free online mentoring type program that works specifically with this kind of thing. I do believe that it is anonymous, etc. It isn't a formal medical thing, but many times just having someone to talk to that gets us out of the endless feedback loop of torture in our brains really helps...

Danielle - on other thing I wanted to ask...I know you've trained for marathons and such in the past, but I wanted to ask if you are familiar with the hunger amplification effect of extended exercising. I think it is anything over 30 minutes of intense workout or 60 minutes of lower intensity workout creates a warped effect on hunger. It amplifies hunger exponentially over the calorie burn, especially in women. There has been a lot of research lately on this, showing that shorter bursts of exercise spread over time actually benefit most of us better. It has something to do with the level of nutrient depletion in our muscles and brains that tell is in a distorted fashion how much they're depleted, and if we don't hit those needs with the exact nutrients they need, they'll keep feeding us the hunger vibe until they get the nutritional support they need, or until we eat so much we get sick, etc. It's incredibly hard to break out of this cycle when exercising intensely quite often. Especially for folks like us who have the added binge component to fight off. Have you tried dialing back your workouts to help with hunger management? 4-6 weeks with reduced exercise would likely help with the edge of excessive hunger and binging urges, at least enough that your brain might be able to kick back in to help...

It's just a thought/suggestion...so no pressure. I just hate to see someone so young struggling so much and feeling like you have no options at all...

All my hugs, Danielle! Let's choose to make today better, no matter what tomorrow might be or no matter the damage of yesterday. Today, we can choose to be better. (HUGS)