The Healthy Eating Minefield

All those people who say healthy eating is easy need to get off their high horse. In my experience, healthy eating is complicated, and especially if you've ever struggled with disordered eating, and/or mental illness.

Healthy eating is a veritable minefield of wrong choices, mistakes and scary limitations. First, scientists can't even agree on what's healthy. We're constantly being told that yesterday's choices are no longer healthy. We're told it's as simple as "x calories in" = weight loss, but weight loss doesn't necessarily equal healthy.

I'm trying to do the right thing, by my body and by my mind, but it's so complicated. Am I doing it right when I eat salad for dinner? Maybe, but maybe I'm not including enough nutrition or maybe I'm not giving myself enough calories. Am I doing it right when I snack on fruit? Not, apparently, if you add peanut butter or nutella to that. Am I doing it right when I eat muesli for breakfast? Maybe.

The truth is, I'm so turned around right now, I have no idea whether I'm doing it "right" - whether the food I'm putting into my body is okay or not. I have no idea if I'm getting the right nutrients, the right calorie number, the right anything.

I know what I like and I know what I don't like. I know that it's winter and I want warm food, but the tasty-healthy options I know of aren't warm - they're cold things like salad or watermelon or neutral things like dried fruit and corn thins.

I also know I'm trying, and maybe that's good enough for now.

How about you? How do you go with healthy eating -- are you a natural or do you get as confused and mucked around as I do? Do you get upset when you make mistakes and choose options that aren't as healthy as you thought?

I Guess Sometimes Running Isn't The Answer

Here I am, doing the same thing I have always done, hoping for a better outcome without changing the direction of the flooding tide. There are heavy decisions hanging over my head that I am avoiding in hopes that they will make themselves; if I wait long enough, they might... but having them hanging is not making each day easier.

Avoidance. Escape. I want them; I feel as though I need them.

I know that avoidance as a coping mechanism almost all of the time falls short of "helpful" or "healthy"; and yet... It has been more than a week since I sat at my stepmother's table and shared a meal with them. I have tried to push away the thoughts, the emotions, the ideas. I have worked to build ladders against the walls of paranoia so that I can pretend they don't exist. I have built dams and wells and thrown into them the sadness, the guilt, the fear, the anger, the shame, the disgust. They continue to bubble up, bubble out and flood my brain the way the Brisbane river flooded Southbank last week. I have alternately reached out and retreated; struck out and struck in; fought and loved and hidden. And what I have done more than anything else is run. In any way I can, I have taken off running and not stopped until that panicked feeling went down a little again.

I need to find a way to control this crisis, because this became one far too quickly and far too strongly. I am in serious distress and I need to level it out enough that my skills have some impact.

I've been thinking about this all day, and I think I know how I'm going to do that. I think I know the right way to handle this, but I'm not absolutely sure. I might make it worse - but at least I will have tried... and if I don't do anything, it's still going to keep getting worse on its own.

Don't get me wrong; as much as I have avoided, I have also been trying to do what I need to, in tiny ways. I wrote a journal; I wasted about four thousand words avoiding and then I wrote a thousand words about the visit. I have mentioned that I'm struggling. And tiny ways at trying this are great, but they're not enough. if I want to keep my head above water, I need to make bigger steps.

I need to actually stop running. I need to start looking at this for what it was, and that's going to mean learning how to accept it. It's going to mean talking about it and writing about it and actually being honest about it. It's going to be uncomfortable.

But how do I voice this tangle of emotions? How do I extricate myself from the guilt, shame and disgust long enough to allow any of the other emotions a look in; or for long enough to allow anyone else in? I need to figure it out and soon.

I need to trust in my own beliefs, I need to trust in my own self; I need to let go enough to trust in the pockets of safety that there are here where the waters aren't so rough and I can rest a little.

When you are swept off your feet and carried away on the tide, how do you regain your equilibrium?

Situation Coathanger (WARNING: SA)

WARNING: This post talks about sexual assault.

Once there was a little girl with a mummy, a daddy and two brothers. From the time she was born, her daddy loved her very much, and paid her more attention than he ever paid her brothers. Her mummy didn't like that very much, so to make up for it, she spent more time with her two sons. When the little girl's daddy started to be inappropriate, her mummy didn't notice. Eventually, the mummy got tired of the daddy never paying attention to anyone but his little girl, so she got a divorce from him. Every second weekend and a share of the holidays, the mummy sent all the children to spend time with their daddy; and later, with their daddy and his new wife. When the children visited their daddy and stepmother, they were usually not treated very nicely, not even the little girl, and the whole time, the daddy was inappropriate with the little girl, and so was her new stepmother.


When she was 12, her mummy kicked her out and sent her away to live with her daddy. After two years, her daddy didn't want her anymore either and he sent her back to her mummy's house. For the next few years, when she went with her brothers to visit her father and her stepmother, he wasn't inappropriate in that way anymore. When the girl got old enough, she moved back out of her mother's house and got married. That didn't go very well for her, either, but her father and stepmother knew they couldn't touch her while she was married. When the girl's husband wanted a divorce, she found a new boyfriend to keep her safe, but when that ended, she had to move back in with her mother.


The little girl's mother wanted to prove that she was a good mother, so even though the girl was now a woman, she had to call her father on special days and wish him nice ones, because if she didn't, her mother might kick her out again, and this time she didn't have anywhere to go...


I am 27 years old, and even though I have tried to cut contact with them; if my father and stepmother want to contact me, all they have to do is ring my home number, and I am bullied and/or tricked into talking to them. I am 27 years old, and whenever I am bullied into seeing my father, he still assaults me.

I am working on getting out of here. I have been on the housing list for a year, as the highest priority. I am in the process of moving interstate so that I can be and feel safe. But in the meantime...

In the meantime, my younger brother came down to my bedroom on Wednesday night, and asked me whether I was doing anything on January 8. I didn't even look up from what I was doing, I told him I wasn't sure but presumably I had no plans. As he said, "good, then you're going to Dad's", I looked up and saw the phone in his hand. My father had to have heard everything. My brother walked away, triumphant.

Ten minutes later, he returned and handed me the phone because my father wanted to talk to me, too.


There is no such thing as safety in this house, not for me. He can get me anywhere. He can come after me at any time, and my family will just hand me over.

This is always a difficult month for me, for unrelated reasons, but right now I am a mess. I am in the process of trying to quit alcohol as a coping/destruction mechanism; I am trying to organise things for this move; I'm in the process of reporting the assault when I was 15; I am trying to fix the friendships that fell apart when I came back from a holiday three months ago; there's a few other things going on that I'm not able to talk about right now; and I am trying to deal with everything that November means for me... and now this.

I want to say that I can't do this, that I don't have what it takes to live through this, but I know that if I choose to, I can and I will. I'm struggling, though, to want to choose to. Until I can get out of here, this is what my life will always be. And that's hard to know.

I know I am walking into a situation where I am going to be assaulted. I know that as much as I have been trapped into it, that doesn't stop it being a choice. And that means that I am, by definition, choosing to be assaulted. And that's where it gets too hard. Because I do not want it, but I am choosing it. And if I am choosing it, I deserve it. If I am choosing it, when it happens, it will be my own fault. It would be different if I didn't know, if I thought there was even a chance I would be safe, but all of my precautions come to nothing, every time. And I still go. I do have reasons for why I make the choice I make, but I cannot shake the belief, the knowledge, that this is my own fault.

This coat hanger binds me too tightly, I can no longer breathe. I wanted to challenge these thoughts, but I don't know how.

If anyone out there has any suggestions, they would very much be gratefully appreciated right now.



Cheerleading/Challenge Statements:
It's okay to do things to look after myself. It's okay to be a little bit gentle with me right now.
Even if it feels like the rest of my life will be like this, it won't be. Eventually something will change.



*Explanation on title: Carol and I were discussing this sort of situation after my call to dad for Father's Day. When she asked me to give the situation and the feelings associated with it, a shape, it was very clearly a coat hanger.

Taking A Look At My Choices

The last few weeks, and particularly last weekend, have been an uphill battle for me. In many ways, I can see how I am a world from where I was; in others I seem to be running headlong down the trail to where I was. I've made some good decisions that have worked out, some good decisions that haven't and some really phenomenally poor decisions (that, unsurprisingly, mostly didn't work out well). I'm learning that all of those are okay.

So, in the interests of being honest with myself on where the decisions I've made lately lie...

Healthy decisions/actions (whether or not they worked out in the way I had hoped):
Putting an online acquaintance on psuedo-ignore.
Not calling my father on his birthday.
Putting Serenity on to distract myself.
Going to Riverfire with some friends.
Working hard to do healthy things (like drinking lots of juice and having vitamin C tablets) to help my body heal faster.
Posting my regular "Sanguine ..." post, even though I think it was painfully obvious that I wasn't doing very well at the time.
Going in and talking to a social worker at Centrelink.
Asking the hospital if I could make my visits less frequent and get my nurse to do dressings in the meantime.
E-mailing a domestic violence place in Canberra about my options to gather information for when I move.
Getting my nurse to sort out a dressing and check out some things.
Having an apple and a banana instead of chocolate.


Unhealthy decisions/actions:
Calling my father on Father's Day.
Arranging to meet up with my ex husband so I could meet his daughter.
Not turning Serenity off after it became clear to me that it was extremely triggering.
Putting Law & Order SVU on after calling my father.
Reasoning that because I'd had an apple and a banana I didn't need breakfast or lunch.


Uncertain decisions:
Not talking to people about how I feel.
Not asking for support.

(I know these two seem to be clearly in the unhealthy decisions 'box' but due to circumstances I can't seem to word coherently, I'm not sure that applies in the instances this refers to. For example, if I know or should reasonably know that you haven't been trash-talking me, I don't think it's necessarily healthy for me to tell you I feel betrayed; or if someone else's support needs are higher than mine, it's not necessarily a healthy or fair decision for me to request support at that time.)


Having done this, I'm surprised there are so many healthy choices on the list! It's a nice surprise, though. I think I want to look in more detail about why I made the unhealthy choices I did. Some of them are easily explained ("I wanted to self destruct more than I wanted to get better" or "I'm feeling too lazy to be sensible") but things came of a couple of the things on that list that I want to explore in more detail. I think I'll make that my goal for this week. At the very least, it'll give me something to discuss with Carol!

I'm going to make one other goal for myself this week; and that is to do something related to moving house every day. Even if it's something small (like sending an e-mail or finishing some paperwork that needs to be done). I'll check in on Sanguine Saturday with how well I've gone with this one!


Cheer-leading statements:
My emotions are valid and acceptable. Even the ones I don't like!
It's okay to make healthy choices.
It's also okay to make unhealthy choices sometimes - they give me a chance to grow and learn.
My past doesn't have to define me. My present doesn't, either.
I'm not responsible for anyone's feelings or actions except my own.


Take care of yourselves until next time, and may we all find our own small fences along the way.

Mucky Monday: Rejection & Abandonment

I've had a rough couple of days. Then again, sometimes it seems like I bounce from one bad day to the next. First of all, I struggle to be okay with being okay (more on that in another post, I think); and then, of course, life keeps happening, and I struggle with the ability to find my feet there.

When mental health closed my file, I was told to make an appointment with my GP and connect with him. I was told to see him approximately as often as I had been seeing my psychiatrist (I am curious if she ever listened to a word I told her about the extent of my self harm - I see my GP a couple of times a week in regards to that) and check in with him in regard to how I am doing.

Let me preface this by saying that as much as I'm about to use powerful words such as "knew", this is mainly conjecture. To start off this new plan, I had organised an appointment with my GP for today to discuss the letter and make sure he was happy enough with the plan. I knew, as soon as I mentioned it, that he was not happy. We are staying with that plan, for now, but he made comments along the lines of "we will find an alternative if you continue to deteriorate". I am not hopeful that there are any alternatives left; but that is not a bridge to cross today, so I am choosing to leave it. Perhaps if/when it does become relevant, there will be new avenues to take that are not currently open to me. The future, after all, is not set in stone.

As he provided the necessary treatment, my GP mentioned to me that he is planning to leave for a month. He stressed that it is absolutely imperative that I begin to see one of the other GPs in the practice while he is still there. His concern is that if I do not, and I need to see a GP while he is away, the situation will end in my needing hospital. I agree that this is not at all a favourable outcome (and my heart secretly wants to beg him not to leave, thus solving the entire situation).

So, on the heels of mental health closing my file, and my ex husband's new fiancée giving birth to his daughter, the sexual violence counsellor I managed to attain after leaving DBT (unfortunately I was not able to hook back in with my old counsellor, but the new lady is one I am familiar with through various art activities run through the centre) is going to be away through all of my upcoming major trigger dates/events, the nurse that I see for wound dressings was away... and now my GP is also leaving. Is it any wonder my normally high fears of abandonment and rejection are so high they're staring down at the stars, at the moment?

Like most people with Borderline Personality Disorder, I am hypersensitive to abandonment and rejection. Usually to decrease the chances of it happening, I will people please to an extraordinary degree. In this situation, there's very little I can do along those lines. No matter how much I try to be 'good', my GP is still going to take his holiday. My counsellor is still going to be away. Mental health are still finished with me. I feel at a loss, as I fear that everything I have put faith in to be there and sustain me is fast disappearing. Soon all that will really be left is me, myself and I.

Knowing those fears are there, though, doesn't mean I have to bow down and give in to them. I have a choice, now: I can choose to see this as yet more rejection and abandonment, and throw in the towel; or I can choose to see that these events are not necessarily connected. It's a hard path to take, to choose to see that these events may have nothing to do with me or each other; and I imagine I'll fall down a lot along the way, but I much prefer the place to which that path leads.

I am choosing to tell myself that it will be okay, that I can learn from this and grow, that I have the capability to live through this and come out the other side a better person.



Today's thought challenges/cheer-leading statements:
If my GP chooses to take a vacation, that does not mean he is personally rejecting me.
A slip is not a failure. I now have a new chance to try again.
The past does not dictate the future. Just because people have left in the past does not mean that people will always leave me.
I am not a bad person.
If someone is upset by actions I have taken, it does not mean they cannot like or love me anymore.



Take care of yourselves until next time, and may we all find our own small fences along the way.