Battling the Feelings Voltron
Welp, I did get my blood test results back (remember that?) and sure enough: my Vitamin D level was quite low. So I’ve been taking a D3 supplement, plus I moved up to a higher dose of antidepressant, and I feel so much better now that I can’t believe how long it took me to notice that I was feeling so off. But that’s the thing about depression — it’s only after you’re back to feeling like yourself that you realize how much time you spent feeling like someone else, or no one at all.
Getting my emotions back in check and feeling like Myself, of course, makes me aware of how much other baggage I’m still hauling around. Yesterday I had my second-ever (routine, no worries) mammogram, and while it was a completely straightforward mammogram experience, it brushed up against a layer of Body Issues, a big clump of OMG BODY WTF that’s been hanging out just below the surface, and got it all stirred up and angry.
So I’ve been working on untangling all the individual pieces of that so I can work on them one by one, because if I don’t they all join forces into one giant Feelings Voltron, and Feelings Voltron is undefeatable. Here are some of the pieces I’ve identified, which you’re welcome to not read since Thar Be Feelings and really I’m only writing this for my benefit anyway:
1. I’m fat. I believe I’ve mentioned this here before. What I haven’t mentioned is that — I keep getting fatter. In my twelve months of working on eating intuitively, I’ve continued gaining weight at the same rate as I did when I was dieting (yes, I gained then, too), or when I was eating all my feelings. At this point it’s pretty clear my weight gain is going to continue independent of my eating and exercising habits, and my doctor, rightfully concerned, has referred me to an endocrinologist to try to figure out what’s up. My ability to accept the shape and size of my body is shaky sometimes anyway, and trying to develop solid body acceptance of a body that keeps changing is extremely emotionally draining — not to mention the worry that there may be something seriously out of whack that’s causing this. (My appointment with the endo isn’t until late April; I’ll keep you posted.)
2. Yoga is hard, y’all. I’m still going to yoga class at the Y once a week, and practicing several times a week at home, and can tell that I’m improving…but so many years of not exercising regularly, or exercising like crazy for a month or two and then quitting when it didn’t make me lose weight, have left me pretty wimpy and out of shape, and I’m continually caught off guard by how difficult it is. I already feel pretty vulnerable about being visibly fat at the gym (and by the way, this piece about being fat at yoga is AMAZING), and I’m having to step away from the class nearly every week to quiet my self-talk (“What are you even doing here, fatty? You should be home on the sofa, eating chips, because your body isn’t cut out for this, obviously” — my self-talk is a real bitch) and get my breathing under control. So it’s physically a lot of exercise, yeah, but a lot emotionally too.
3. The mammogram experience itself was a real challenge. I mean, it’s physically uncomfortable, sure, to have to stand perfectly still while your breasts are mashed between plastic plates; but I was caught off guard by how very exposing and violating it felt to have the tech picking up my parts and putting them where she wanted them. She was very sweet and super-professional, and I knew exactly what I was doing there, but it rattled me more than it did last time. Add to that having to put a number to how much weight I’ve gained since my last mammogram five years ago (necessary for my file, she said, so the lab doesn’t think they’re looking at someone else’s films), and especially having to detail my family history of breast cancer (mother diagnosed age 34, deceased age 37; maternal aunt diagnosed age 60), which bumps into grief over my mom’s death and concern about my own mortality — 34 doesn’t seem very far away at all anymore.
So there we have it: the disassembled, component pieces of my Feelings Voltron, which I now have to keep isolated from each other so I can wrestle with each of them separately and keep them from reforming. Here goes.
Countertransference
When I started this blog, one of the first things I did was tell my parents about it. I knew I’d be writing about parts of my childhood that reflected on them, and I wanted them to know the information was out there and not hear about it from others; and to be honest, I wanted the sense of accountability that would come from knowing my parents knew about my blog, so that I was never tempted to say anything here that would reflect badly on them.
(Not that I’d have anything like that to say! Hi, parents!)
I also post the link to this blog on my personal facebook page, which means that all kinds of people, from my church friends to my sixth-grade crush to my former coworkers to my extended family, have access to what I write here.
(Hi, friends and acquaintances!)
Still, even though I know they know about this website, it’s thoroughly surreal to me when I’m talking to a family member and they refer to something specific I’ve written here — there’s still a disconnect for me between my blog life and my family life, even though I know that Venn diagram overlaps quite a bit.
Why, they’re out there, reading this, right now. (Hi, family!)
But what do I write about when what I have to contribute to the fatosphere is about my family? What do I say about the baggage I’m carrying after ten days visiting my extended family, baggage I wasn’t carrying before I left home? How do I write about the disorder and disconnect I feel when my body, my fat body, marks me as different from them in a way we’ve been trained from childhood to recognize as bad - that for all I know, they still think of as bad? Knowing that they’re listening, how can I authentically deconstruct the sick feeling of wondering if they think something’s wrong with me, that they’re reading these words right now and nodding their heads yes?
When I’m with my family, there are biscuits and sausage gravy and a half-dozen kinds of homemade jam; there are eggs and grits and coffee and so much laughter. When they’re thinking Uncle Jaime’s big breakfast, hurrah! I am thinking about getting to the table before all the armless chairs are gone so I don’t have to spend the meal wedged into a too-narrow seat. When they are laughing and making conversation I am trying to do the same thing while watching to see how many biscuits my thin cousins are eating and not taking more than them, and going easier than I’d like to on the gravy, because I don’t want them to see me eating and think, glutton. When I’m with my family I am conscious, so conscious of being the only fat person there, and I am trying desperately not to stand out.
Not to be the elephant in the room.
Later, we go camping, and I am careful to sit in one of the Premium Camp Chairs that’s designed to hold up to 325 pounds, not the regular ones that hold up to 200; if one’s not available, I make an excuse to stand. I am famished from hiking and pitching tents and chasing kids on the playground, but I eat only as many hot dogs as I think I should be seen eating, not as many as I’m hungry for. When we rent paddle boats for an hour, the boat tilts dramatically when I sit down in it, and I try to cover my mortification with false cheerfulness when I say I’d rather stay on shore and read my book with my toes in the lake.
I spend the week trying not to draw attention to the difference between my body and theirs, and trying not to reinforce the stereotypes I’m still afraid they believe: glutton, lazy, no self-control. When my size does become a limitation, I am filled with shame, certain I am fulfilling their expectations.
All the ways I feel healthy and confident at home disappear when I’m with my family. When I’m with them, all my hard-won sanity evaporates.
My therapist defined a new word for me today: countertransference, when a psychoanalyst takes on the client’s issues and experiences an emotional reaction to them, rather than remaining in an objective, diagnostic role. It’s revealed by the therapist’s personal, emotional response — when a therapist feels self-conscious about her own lack of makeup in the presence of a client who is obsessed with physical beauty, for a very simple example. In a nonclinical setting, countertransference is essentially: letting someone else’s disordered worldview infect your own healthy one. Personally taking on the other person’s emotional baggage instead of setting a boundary that says, no, I won’t carry that.
And in this case, I’ve taken one family member’s obsession with absolute control of one’s physical body - an idolization of the state of being in Perfect Physical Health and a desperation to control one’s biology – and put it onto myself, like a smelly, rotten coat over my clean clothes. I’ve held myself up to one person’s disordered, impossible standard, and then in my insecurity assumed that everyone else was measuring me by the same ridiculous norm. I made another person’s sickness my own instead of rejecting it for what it is: sickness, idolatry.
In my mind, I let another person’s disorder make me into the elephant in the room, instead of being what I am: cousin, niece, sister, daughter, granddaughter, mother. Healthy. Sane. Cheerfully imperfect.
Beloved.
(Hi, family!)
