Karen
20-07-08, 17:46
I am having quite a serious relapse at present. For those of you who were reading my birthday thread, I still haven’t moved and this is the cause of my current distress and panic. I have less than one week left in my current flat before I am forced to move from here but with each day that passes I want to move to my new flat less and less.
At first I was trying really hard to get used to it. I followed my therapist’s advice and tried spending a bit more time there each day but since moving my possessions there a couple of weeks ago I’ve actually spent less time there than ever. I panicked the first night I was meant to sleep at the new flat and instead slept on the floor of my old flat and that’s where I’ve stayed ever since. It doesn’t matter that I’m now in constant pain because I already had joint pains which my doctor suspects is arthritis possibly caused by my anorexia and sleeping on the floor is painful and means that some days now I can barely walk at all after being on the floor all night. I have nowhere comfortable to sit here either but still I cannot face going to the new flat.
There are so many reasons why. I am scared of being alone and I know it will be a bad move for me in terms of my illness. I struggle to cope still at times even when I am not alone. I haven’t been alone for more than one night since my admission to hospital last year and I’m sure it is the fact that this time I came home and haven’t had to cope alone, together with my CBT therapy is the reason why I’ve managed to maintain instead of going straight back to full on weight loss again like I have done in the past.
Being on my own again means my fear of food will once again become a major issue, because I have had problems with bingeing since discharge from hospital and it is part of my anorexia. I don’t purely restrict, I also have periods of bingeing and purging when feeling upset, or alone or as a form of self punishment. When living alone I never keep food at home because I am scared of it and I can’t see how that will change any time soon.
I approached my GP to see if I could be referred on the NHS for a couple of hypnotherapy sessions purely to help me tackle the bingeing problem because I’ve read that hypnotherapy can be particularly helpful for this problem but the PCT refused to fund me. I am paying for my own CBT and yet they will waste thousands sending me as an inpatient to an eating disorder unit each time I go to the other extreme and starve myself because I am scared of bingeing and overeating but they won’t fund a couple of hypnotherapy sessions. Well, I am done with asking my doctor or the NHS for anything.
The new flat has so many problems. Apart from worrying about being alone, I do already feel cut off from people that are important to me. I’ve felt this way for a while but because I’ve had other people around the fact that these important people are withdrawing and I feel rejecting me hasn’t really hit me until now. Now it has hit me with a vengeance.
I feel unsafe there because it feels claustrophobic – not because the flat is smaller than here but because of the area and the fact that there are lots of houses around and it is closer to town and there are lots more people. Several times I have been there and there have been teenagers hanging around in the evening and at other times I’ve seen men hanging around so I don’t feel safe. I think once I get to the flat I’ll have to lock myself in and then I will feel too scared to ever go out again. I’ll be trapped there and it will be like a prison.
I know I’ll have the internet there, which I’ve lost from this flat now except from a flaky unsecure wireless signal that comes and goes but there is nothing else to do. My tenancy does not allow Sky which I do watch a lot at the moment and we cannot get a Freeview signal here. So I cannot even have TV on to distract me, well on analogue channels and there is nothing on those to watch.
I am still having problems with feeling dirty when I am in the flat even though I have cleaned and scrubbed it. I had the bathroom flooring changed and new lino put in there but I still think the bath and toilet and sink is dirty. The whole kitchen feels dirty and I’ve got a problem with the bedsitting room carpet, even though I’ve had it cleaned. It’s got these strange hair-like fibres and I can’t help obsessing that it is dirty. So I don’t feel comfortable there.
I’m convinced I have made a really bad decision to move there and if I was going to move, which I needed to do to save money, then I should’ve moved away from this area completely. That is what I was going to do originally. I am not safe here at all.
This week I’ve felt very upset and distressed and hurt by a number of things and my reaction to that has been to take it all out of myself. I feel disgusted with myself that I’ve been bingeing again. When it happened the first time I thought it was a one off and that I’d be able to regain control and stop again but every day since that first time has just been a repeat of the day before and I feel ashamed and distressed that it is all out of control again. I don’t know what to do. I am desperate to stop but can’t.
I thought long and hard before writing this. I’ve held off writing anything on here all week because I don’t want to cause any more controversy or to upset anyone but I do need some support, so I am begging the Administrators to please not to delete my post. I will not go into detail about my eating disorder behaviours, I just need to reach out to someone because I feel so isolated already with people I usually rely on not around so much at the moment and my therapist has been away. I hope you understand and allow my post to stand.
Karen
At first I was trying really hard to get used to it. I followed my therapist’s advice and tried spending a bit more time there each day but since moving my possessions there a couple of weeks ago I’ve actually spent less time there than ever. I panicked the first night I was meant to sleep at the new flat and instead slept on the floor of my old flat and that’s where I’ve stayed ever since. It doesn’t matter that I’m now in constant pain because I already had joint pains which my doctor suspects is arthritis possibly caused by my anorexia and sleeping on the floor is painful and means that some days now I can barely walk at all after being on the floor all night. I have nowhere comfortable to sit here either but still I cannot face going to the new flat.
There are so many reasons why. I am scared of being alone and I know it will be a bad move for me in terms of my illness. I struggle to cope still at times even when I am not alone. I haven’t been alone for more than one night since my admission to hospital last year and I’m sure it is the fact that this time I came home and haven’t had to cope alone, together with my CBT therapy is the reason why I’ve managed to maintain instead of going straight back to full on weight loss again like I have done in the past.
Being on my own again means my fear of food will once again become a major issue, because I have had problems with bingeing since discharge from hospital and it is part of my anorexia. I don’t purely restrict, I also have periods of bingeing and purging when feeling upset, or alone or as a form of self punishment. When living alone I never keep food at home because I am scared of it and I can’t see how that will change any time soon.
I approached my GP to see if I could be referred on the NHS for a couple of hypnotherapy sessions purely to help me tackle the bingeing problem because I’ve read that hypnotherapy can be particularly helpful for this problem but the PCT refused to fund me. I am paying for my own CBT and yet they will waste thousands sending me as an inpatient to an eating disorder unit each time I go to the other extreme and starve myself because I am scared of bingeing and overeating but they won’t fund a couple of hypnotherapy sessions. Well, I am done with asking my doctor or the NHS for anything.
The new flat has so many problems. Apart from worrying about being alone, I do already feel cut off from people that are important to me. I’ve felt this way for a while but because I’ve had other people around the fact that these important people are withdrawing and I feel rejecting me hasn’t really hit me until now. Now it has hit me with a vengeance.
I feel unsafe there because it feels claustrophobic – not because the flat is smaller than here but because of the area and the fact that there are lots of houses around and it is closer to town and there are lots more people. Several times I have been there and there have been teenagers hanging around in the evening and at other times I’ve seen men hanging around so I don’t feel safe. I think once I get to the flat I’ll have to lock myself in and then I will feel too scared to ever go out again. I’ll be trapped there and it will be like a prison.
I know I’ll have the internet there, which I’ve lost from this flat now except from a flaky unsecure wireless signal that comes and goes but there is nothing else to do. My tenancy does not allow Sky which I do watch a lot at the moment and we cannot get a Freeview signal here. So I cannot even have TV on to distract me, well on analogue channels and there is nothing on those to watch.
I am still having problems with feeling dirty when I am in the flat even though I have cleaned and scrubbed it. I had the bathroom flooring changed and new lino put in there but I still think the bath and toilet and sink is dirty. The whole kitchen feels dirty and I’ve got a problem with the bedsitting room carpet, even though I’ve had it cleaned. It’s got these strange hair-like fibres and I can’t help obsessing that it is dirty. So I don’t feel comfortable there.
I’m convinced I have made a really bad decision to move there and if I was going to move, which I needed to do to save money, then I should’ve moved away from this area completely. That is what I was going to do originally. I am not safe here at all.
This week I’ve felt very upset and distressed and hurt by a number of things and my reaction to that has been to take it all out of myself. I feel disgusted with myself that I’ve been bingeing again. When it happened the first time I thought it was a one off and that I’d be able to regain control and stop again but every day since that first time has just been a repeat of the day before and I feel ashamed and distressed that it is all out of control again. I don’t know what to do. I am desperate to stop but can’t.
I thought long and hard before writing this. I’ve held off writing anything on here all week because I don’t want to cause any more controversy or to upset anyone but I do need some support, so I am begging the Administrators to please not to delete my post. I will not go into detail about my eating disorder behaviours, I just need to reach out to someone because I feel so isolated already with people I usually rely on not around so much at the moment and my therapist has been away. I hope you understand and allow my post to stand.
Karen