Judy2

called mum to discuss my desperation with the therapy-situation. would have wanted to hide all my sadness and desperation, to push away all the emotion - but couldn't. was surprised to find her quite validating: "you are sad - it's okay that you are sad, sometimes we get sad" (on point embodiment of dbt therapy strategies, even though she doesn't know about them - i'm impressed, mum!) ... still haven't found a solution, but i guess i'll have to figure it out somehow.

...still such a struggle! definitely i don't even have the words for it, to express just how much of a struggle it is.

still feeling pretty conflicted because it's all easier said than done. guess i don't want my body to change a lot for now, but i'll try to eat enough to fuel my workouts and have energy throughout the day. and i'll try to focus on healthy, balanced nutrition.

..i wonder if i should be ashamed of myself, for sharing all this darkness and chaos, this mess i have inside of myself. i wonder what you guys think, if you think i'm a completely narcissistic, stupid bitch. probably. ...trying not to care? i don't know. i do probably care. mostly just sharing nowadays because a) if i don't think too much about all the suffering involved, i actually feel like the kinds of thoughts i'm having are quite fascinating and interesting...just from a purely philosophical or psychological pov. sharing some thoughts that i know are sick helps me look at them with a sort of detached admiration, rather than tormented self-identification... and b) it's one of the few coping mechanisms i have that might be somewhat functional and provide a sense of stability (as you can tell i am lacking). but yeah, i should definitely be ashamed of myself.

...just opened my letter with the report from the clinic and it sounds like at least a handful of people on this planet still believe i'm seriously messed up. (call me crazy but it's usually a fun experience, reading about how sick people think i am). ... which is nothing i'll be able to fix all by myself, within a few days. so i'll still need therapy, i guess. just don't know when and where and with whom...it's quite difficult to arrange this even with insurance. (and again, triggering to try my best to make progress even without support right now...)

...calmed down a bit. out of all the things i'm so ambivalent about (because there are so many contradictory parts inside of me, so many contradictory definitions of right and wrong that i personally get confused about how to handle my own theories on how to stay safe...), out of all things right and wrong... i guess it can't be wrong to prioritise my health. it feels a little wrong, but it's probably the "right" that will get me out of this mess in the long term. whereas the ed-version of what's right usually just perpetuates a state of helplessness, waiting, counting days, ...and so on. symbolic dissociation from life and truth and what's actual. - still scary, still extremely difficult. but health is what i know i want in the long term anyway. i don't want a life of restrictive eating - i know i don't. (it's just that NOT NOW...because i still need to be skinny for now, because things are so messy and chaotic and i've got nothing to hold onto...) also, i don't particularly like the idea of making my metabolism slow down again after only just having given it some energy to re-boot. it's just weird, having to choose between a body and food. at least apparently, at least in my black and white world. even a healthy, good-looking body just isn't the same as an anorexic body. but then, the anorexic high is a very isolated spiritual experience, with huge costs. ...have been contemplating this for months in this journal (i think?)...and i know the answer. even though it's incredibly, fundamentally scary, even though nobody understands and i feel invalidated and triggered and and and... okay. oh, and btw. i've been wanting to say that i have this idea of planning a solo trip to reward myself after handing in my thesis (which should be in a few months??? if things finally work out...). regardless of the mark i get...because i'm doing something that's really difficult for me, and so i deserve a reward. (deserve to live...so i guess forcing myself to go on a trip and be alive is also a bit of a challenge again). solo travelling in nature is probably too scary, so i'm thinking i might go to a city again. maybe Copenhagen, maybe Barcelona. never been there before, but i figured i might get along there quite well. ...or maybe i will plan some hikes as well, we'll see.

yeah i totally get that! it makes sense to bring this stuff to your awareness instead of turning a blind eye to it:)

it's like this instability is EVERYWHERE... where's my home, what do i do with myself, what do i look like (the body i'm in! ... the state of my arms and legs, my face, my neck, my tummy, my back...)...not even that is fixed, even that is unsteady, unstable. i've got NOTHING. Nothing to hold onto! (and i feel so lonely with this struggle...no one seems to understand it, or know it in quite the same way, or validate it...no one believes it.) again, just a thought, but earlier today during a hopeful moment, i thought: okay, if no where in the world is home, maybe everywhere is. maybe i've even got two homes (my parents' place and my flat), maybe more. but then i'd have to find a way to make sense of all the ugly, challenging, disquieting, noisy bits that seem inescapable, that are always inevitably present and intruding upon My Peace...and i don't know how to do that. please, someone teach me how to do that! i feel so scared, so desperate. so small, so alone. just crying in bed...i guess. maybe that's okay though. maybe that's been needed, for quite a while. haven't been able to cry this much in weeks.

i feel scared, and sad, and lost, and lonely, and helpless

i feel sad, and hopeless

...trying to pick myself up and be a bit hopeful, here and there, but really i could use a therapist to support me - which i currently don't have, and things are still unresolved, complicated, scary. (living situation, weight situation, BA thesis,...) this is part of the update i never gave, but i got a new gym membership last Monday. apparently i've got nothing better to do in life and don't know what else to do with myself, so this is something to fill my days with. i'm also finally getting into strength training, which i've been wanting to do for years. ...i enjoy killing my legs on the stairmaster until they feel like lead - later on, they carry me with more ease. i enjoy trying some pull-ups with a little bit (- 66%) of support from below...that's something i find strangely (unexpectedly) pleasant and want to keep working on. and i noticed that the few exercises i'm doing for my core have already changed my default posture to be a lot more upright. but yeah...the general tone right now is desperation, and hopelessness. it's just that the gym is ONE HELL of a triggering place. (just like Zurich, where i visited my brother this weekend. i spent all day analysing body types and it seems like the ancient statues at the tops of some old buildings have the healthiest body fat percentage overall, which was the one reassuring element throughout the experience, the rest was pretty concerning. *of course my brain is not interested in registering the amount of overweight or healthy people, only comparing myself to the skinniest 10%). hundreds of bodies to look at and compare myself to. the amount of women there whose body weight is ostensibly too low is frightening...and it's absolutely triggering. this morning i weighed 48,4kg...which for me is a bmi of just about 18. probably getting my period back in a few weeks, which is something, i guess. i'm already feeling so chubby in the face, already way too fat again...maybe i'm already too much. which is odd, seeing that number now, knowing it can't be so if it's barely a healthy bmi and the doctors said i should get to a minimum of 21. then in some moments i notice i'm still quite skinny (note to self: i still have a thigh gap at this weight) and want to keep it that way (feels nice, having small legs and arms...being slim...others do, and no one calls them eating disordered for that), but feel very divided because i'd probably have to go back to very unhealthy, disordered levels of restriction and ed-behaviours to maintain a weight that is still quite low. but i want to look skinny! because i feel so, so, so small on the inside (emotion coming up: tears). i feel so small, and being a tiny woman (just small enough for it to be a noticeable feature, an "oh she's so much smaller than most women!") best reflects what i feel like on the inside...but restricting and counting calories and being hungry all the time isn't making me happy, either. isn't what i want in the long term. isn't what i would want for my own daughter, frankly (...emotion...). i guess i can still look good at bmi 21, if i work out. i see other women at bmi 21+ all the time who i think look good....but they're not me. they don't have that awful face that turns chubby and round and ugly unless i'm at least 2kg underweight. they've got the confidence to carry all that weight. myself, i certainly don't. i need to be skinnier than average, need to be unusually slim...because i've got nothing else! and i feel so small, i feel so tiny...i want people to see that - otherwise they NEVER believe me (tears...), never see how messed up and broken and scared and lost i am on the inside. ...so yeah, the thoughts are LOUD and i'm trying to hold against that, but i could totally use a therapist to help me deal with all of this. it's all too much and the thoughts are so loud...it's difficult to resist and ignore all of them. but i don't want to be going to the gym while starving myself - that sounds like one big hell of an experience, not very pleasant. i don't want any more weeks and months, or even days, trying to get satiated on 2kg of veg and walking around town either constipated or with diarrhea. it's just that i look in the mirror and, being barely at a healthy bmi range, i still can't decide if i look quite skinny or already too fat. because some women at the gym have it as their goal to be where i was coming from, to be super toned and lose their periods and restrict and stuff their stomachs with veg and aaaaah.... this is SO triggering...and i have to deal with it all on my own, no one knows or sees the struggle i'm going through...makes me sad. makes me desperate. not even my best friend understands...whenever i mention this topic to him, i only feel massively invalidated and the pressure to self-harm spikes when i feel misunderstood in everything that concerns this very, very important topic... very important. because it's literally about the image of myself that i show to the world. this is so difficult, it's such a struggle, no one knows this or sees this, i'm all on my own.

Hey @soos_mite_ah if you don't mind my commenting here... i've had a similar issue with my screen time for years. it got better when i took the focus off the screen time itself and onto the things i'll do instead. it sort of comes naturally when i've got other things to do or people to talk to that i spend significantly less time looking at my phone. sometimes it also helps to leave my phone in my room or at home, if i don't actually need it. just thought this might help:)

i feel so exhausted

why is my life so complicated, why do i have to feel so unsafe all the time? i can only do it wrong, all the time. i always have to be feeling bad about something, always have to be hating myself, always have to be tense and on the lookout for potential danger

i just want to be safe and i don't know how

i want to cry

i'm not safe. not anywhere.

i'm scared!

scared! anxious!

a quick note based on the little psychoanalytical expertise that i have, insights from this past week: i'm not the typical borderliner in that i rarely express anger. but around my parents, i tend to be the most narcissistic, apoplectic, rude, unfriendly, closed-off bitch. sometimes i don't like it when they're touching me. sometimes when they talk to me i don't reply, sometimes i urge them to "leave me alone!" what they can't see is that this stems from an intense anxiety that they might get too close to me, that they might do or say something that enters my system, my sensory aparatus, my body - without my personal consent, violently, irrevocably. it gets to me too quickly, too much. so i'm usually anxious (and by extension, angry) around them just by default, especially around times when drama and conflict is to be expected. i despise their advice, i hate it when they comment on my affairs, when they tell me what to do. which is so funny, because i've always wanted to be an adult around them...but maybe in truth i was just trying to get some space, some sense of autonomy...because now, as an adult, true responsibility scares me like hell (as i've already mentioned a million times before, but it's interesting in the context of me refusing, or even dreading, parental advice). playing the adult was just a trick i played on them and myself to be able to distance myself a little bit...but i have no f*ing idea how to be an actual adult, how to actually live and make sense of life and take care of myself....it's just that my system is screaming "away! run away!" whenever i'm near my parents. i don't know why i'm this messed up and evil. why i'm this complicated and ugly. being so conflicted about my own self-image doesn't make it any easier when i feel vulnerable around my parents. it only makes it worse, because already there is such conflicted emotion within myself, and they're intruding upon that and only making everything harder. ...i don't know... just wanted to summarise this insight. got a lot of "figuring out" to do in life, these weeks and months to come, i guess. things are very difficult and confusing. i don't even know whoi am or who i should be or what i want - and especially, if i should want the healthy path or the unhealthy one, or something inbetween...it's always especially complicated when i have to account for so many parts of myself, the one that wants emotional quick-fixes, the one that's a bit wiser, and the wiser one that gets desperate because even if i am trying to be wise, life is so complicated that it's jist not so easy and maybe it would be okay to keep a little bit of illness/dysfunction, because everybody does... so yeah it gets confusing and i got no clue what to do or where to go!

still feeling very, very lost still got nothing to hold onto no place, no person, not even myself i don't even know what to do with myself, who to be, if i should be underweight or at bmi 18 (a little skinny but healthy looking but probably not entirely healthy for me personally) or 21 (ugly and fat but able to eat whatever i want)... i don't know. ...overwhelmed. i want to cry. i don't know what to do, or where to go. tears are flooding my eyes...

...made it back to my flat, now i have mixed feelings. i have a very tidy room (almost too perfect and tidy), but noisy neighbours and lots and lots and lots of bad memories (as opposed to the good childhood memories attached to my parents' place). i'm a bit overwhelmed and still don't quite know what to do, still don't know where things are going/supposed to go. it's a lot. do i really want to stay here to write my thesis, or go some place else? ... got an appointment with my professor next week, so it makes sense to stay until then, and see what to do after that. oh well. Life is difficult, this place is difficult. so. many. challenges. oppressing environment.

...just got a lot going on and it's difficult enough figuring things out by myself - hence the silence. i've attempted to write things down and give a longer update several times, but so far i haven't managed to come up with a coherent version that covers everything. maybe that'll come later:)

i don't want to gain any more weight. i feel a lot more comfortable being lean.

i want someone to explain my situation to me and tell me what to do