My daily intake is usually pretty routine. Yogurt and fruit for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch with cottage cheese and water, and dinner which is usually tacos, fajitas, spaghetti or lasagna or some sort of chicken dish.
I found a new website today, dailyplate.com and I started a food journal there. I think it'll help a little to have my calories counted for me instead of leaving it up to me to figure out, because honestly, I hate math, even something as easy as addition. So I think part of my problem is that at the end of the day the last thing I want to do is add up the calories, so if I can just enter in my food and have something else tell me the answer, problem solved! Mostly. I still have to remember to enter my food.
Therapy
I have to start this by clearly stating that I have never ever enjoyed therapy. When I was younger my family was going through some dysfunction and we were "forced" into therapy. I was only 6 or 7 years old and my therapist wanted us to keep journals. My journal was supposed to be a "picture" journal where I was supposed to draw each day how I felt, what I did, etc. I remember very clearly that the day before our family therapy sessions I would hurriedly scribble out a bunch of pictures that I made up so that the counselor would think I'd done my journal everyday. I hated it.
Not only did I hate being told how to fix my life by someone who didn't know my family, I hated that it didn't seem to work. Ever since then I've been a believer that if you yourself can't fix yourself and you know yourself better than anyone else, how in the Hell is a complete stranger supposed to know how to fix you?
So needless to say, last Friday when I was due for my first therapy session, I was dragging my feet hardcore. I tried to conjure up some illness, maybe a rash of some sort, or a car accident, that would prevent me from making it on time and thus not being able to spend an entire hour *cringe* talking about myself.
I didn't come down with the plague, a rash or thank Jeebus, a car accident. When I got there, the therapist came out and asked if I could wait just 2 minutes for him. I thought about saying, "Look, the longer you make me wait, the more time you give me to run out the door, jump in my car and flee." But I sucked it up and said, "That's fine."
In order to pass the few minutes of time I thought I had, I watched out the window. I saw the therapist walk by, after having gone out the back door apparently since I was in the lobby. I watched him get in his car and drive off. WHAT THE.....?!?!!? Did he get a copy of journals from when I was 6?!?!? Did he google me? Did he talk to my enemies or something? Talk about not helping my level of confidence, watching my therapist, who I've never met, fleeing before my appointment even began. If I didn't need therapy before he took off, I definetly needed it now!
He did come back, apparently he ran up the street to get Starbucks because when he brought me into the
Once we sat down, he asked me to tell him about myself. This is where it gets scary. It's almost like he knew me or something. I gave him a brief run down of my life. I figured everything I told him, was told in the same manner as if I were telling my husband about my day at work.
However, he picked right up on the two most traumatic times in my life. When my sister ran away when I was 6 and when I moved from my hometown to where I live now. You'd think that moving isn't traumatic, but for me, it was. I went from knowing only way of life to a completely different, unknown way of life. My sister running away is self-explanatory. I was sitting on the hill above our house with my brother and we listened to her fight with my mom and dad, heard the door slam, saw her run off the porch, up our driveway, past us and out of our lives.
I didn't mention that part of her leaving, the part where I watched her literally run out of our life...I said it like it was yesterdays news, like, "Yes, I lived that, yes, it was painful...but look at all these drawings from when I was that age...I was FINE!" Truth is, I wasn't fine. And he could tell.
So we talked about it. We talked about my sister leaving, and coming back, then leaving again, then me and my dad driving her to Nebraska to live with relatives, then her coming back and leaving, and coming back and leaving...until finally, she came back and stayed. Five years ago. He believes that a lot of my trust issues stem from that. I don't know if that's the sole reason I have trouble trusting, but I believe him that it plays a big part.
We talked about leaving my hometown. Saying goodbye to our family pets that we'd had for my entire life. The dogs, and especially the horses. Leaving my friends, some that I would never see again. Leaving the small town way of life and everything about it defined me. Moving to the city, not having friends, or a path in life, no job, no college...just me, trying to be a grown up but very much wanting to stay young and carefree.
We talked about my low self-esteem, my inability to be happy for myself. Why I punish myself when I've done something and my self-criticizing manner.
I was impressed. Really. I liked my therapist. He gave me homework to work on this week - I have to analyze my self-criticism and try to figure out what I'm thinking when I do it and how I feel after I do it.
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