Such Sweet Hands

Kim:
Finally, how does creating fit in with your overall treatment?

Art therapy has been a favorite part of my treatment.  I found such comfort in the art therapy sessions as an inpatient and then later as an outpatient.  Both therapists were very different.  At inpatient treatment, the therapist had us approaching our feelings with a variety of activities that usually started out as a way to touch base with feelings and then we’d write, draw, paint, etc.  I learned a lot about how to get to the truth of things, then to create something.  I’d like to get back to trying some more of this approach on my own.  Another thing this therapist did was to start each of us out with an Art Journal.  I still have mine!  I work with it anytime whatever I’m working through needs to come out in a non-narrative fashion.

In the outpatient program, art therapy was set up the same each week.  A bounty of art supplies were made available.  A theme would be suggested.  Then it was a two hour free for all.  It was a good time to get to know my fellow patients because we talked about everything in our lives, not just our eating disorders.  I saw some inspiring work in there.  One patient in particular created a series of self portraits that provided a remarkable lens on her journey.  I mostly made messy, globby, paint covered pages of swirls.  It was soothing to get to just sit there and do whatever I wanted.  It got me into playing with painting.  I now have a stash of watercolor supplies to play with at home :)

Right now I don’t have an organized approach to art therapy.  I’d like to though.  This is something I will be writing about on this blog.  I want to share what works for me.

And lets not forget the value of creating for creating’s sake. It’s so soothing to make something no one ever needs to see, but when I look at it the thing I was working through totally resonates through the scribbles and paint blotches.

You mentioned in your last post it can sometimes be a big challenge to hit publish or to start writing or making — is it a *good* kind of challenge these days?

Yes, it is a good challenge.  For so many reasons, so many things can get in the way and poison the will to make/create and the confidence to share.  I’ve been having this battle forever, now it’s a lot less of a struggle.

A long break here between answers.  Thanks for the patience.  The depression monster took over again and I honestly spent much of the month of February asleep or wanting to be asleep.  This thing comes over, and it doesn’t matter how well rested I am, the only thing in the world that feels good is sleep.  Any healthy rested adult can still indulge in a nap now and then, but we usually find ourselves aware that there are other things to be done.  Pleasurable things like books to read or tv shows to watch as well as “to do” items like fixing that leaky faucet.

This sense that there ARE things to do and it IS worth it, (it’s NOT pointless to do them) keeps us going.  Depression sweeps that away though.  And so, in this bout at least, I found myself aching for sleep.  The cause of this latest officially diagnosed phase of Severe Depression?  *Shrug*  I’m calling it the intersection of meds pooping out, downtime from a sinus infection, and my own lack of self direction/ self belief.  The meds make a big difference, when they work they establish a baseline of “normal” that shouldn’t waver drastically regardless of the work I’m doing in therapy or the emotional challenges of daily life.  This phase of depression didn’t just go away on it’s own, a change in medication is the main reason I’m bright eyed and bushy tailed today.  It’s up to me to use this time to continue to build the sort of life that nourishes and helps keep the depression away.  A week ago I felt very down and that things were pointless.  Today I just feel normal, not hyper and over zealous, just normal.  Normal is such a relief.

So now for another answer…

Kim asked:  Have you always felt comfortable talking about your ED? If not, what’s changed, and how does it affect your overall outlook and feeling about things? How do people respond to you when you talk about it with them?

When it was decided that I needed to go to inpatient treatment it was also clear to me that I didn’t want this to be a secret.  It just didn’t feel right to disappear and make up some story about it.  Also, I find the more open I am about it the harder it is for those negative ED thoughts to gain power.

In my 20’s I was often willing to speak about having had ED behaviors when I was a teenager.  As an adult I was so very unaware that it was still at work in my life.  When it blossomed to full force in 2008 I was willing to admit I had lost any appetite, but denied it was a problem.  I had kept the ED to myself when in any situation that would have gotten attention.  Never told a doctor or therapist.  I surprised myself when I admitted to it in the first session when I started therapy in 2008.  I wanted to deny it was a problem, that depression was my problem and not the ED.

As an individual being open about it is another way of working on being healthy.  Denying it is another way of fortifying my ED, it thrives when unrecognized.  I just made the connection writing this answer that this is why I have to be open about it.  Also, like any problem it gets worse when denied.  Not just on a personal level, but as a group too.

I wish mental illnesses weren’t so stigmatized.  I also have had Severe Depression (that’s the official term) for a very long time.  By blowing these issues off, discrediting, hiding, etc I’ve simply empowered the broken bits of my life and weakened the healthy bits.  I don’t know how much of an mental health activist I’ll be, but at the least I can be honest and open that these are problems I’m working through and life is better for doing so.  I hope doing so lessens the stigma for a few folks.

I think people are responding well when I mention it.  I’m still testing the waters though.  I’ve been spending so much time in the therapy world and am only now moving back into circulation.  I think people are most uncomfortable when I discuss medication.  Something to explore I suppose…

Everyone has been supportive or simply kept their peace this past year.  Which is fine by me.  I know in the silence there is a lot of unexpressed support and choose not to fathom the rest.

Please, if my answers don’t quite fill the questions, let me know.

Julie’s question seems a good place to start.  It’s a big one, my understanding is a lot different now than it was a year, or even 6 months ago.  I’m just going to sit here and answer it like I would if chatting in person.  I know some of you are editors, so forgive rambling or bad grammar ;)

What prompted your eating disorder and how old were you when it began?
I was 10.  And this is why I’m not quite as upset about the media as some folks.  I didn’t decide to go on a diet because of the media images around me.  Sure they had and still have triggering effects, but my inner need to starve myself started for other reasons.

A lot was going on when I was 10.  Stuff with my parent’s marriage, my father’s alcoholism, how we coped to get through, and what all that does to relationships in a family.  It was during Christmas break that I just didn’t eat much for a few days, then didn’t eat at all for a day or so.  Obviously there were feelings going on that I had no facility to deal with and depriving myself of food clicked in my mind and body as an excellent way to numb it all.  I don’t completely understand it all yet.

If we hear about someone who started drinking at 10 to numb out, we freak out.  But by such a young age so many have already found other insidious ways of “coping” with the things that are too hard to understand.

In my experience the behaviors came and went.  But I was never a big eater and continued to have all sorts of different problems with food.  I had a phase in 6th grade where I kept choking on my food for no reason, I had stomach issues in my teens, I became a vegetarian for a while as a means of defining “safe food”, and in recent years I was extremely vigilant about the politics and purity of the food I ate.  It manifested in all sorts of ways, each with it’s own triggers and reasons.  All along, I regularly skipped at least one meal a day and never had a realistic notion of how much food my body needed to thrive.  Not eating enough was just the way of life for me.  I still have a hard time accepting just how much food I need.

I can better grasp the eating disorder by looking at the idea of negative vs. healthy core beliefs.  We all have beliefs about ourselves and the world.  The negative beliefs I have were in perfect alignment for an eating disorder.  Those beliefs were formed in a household with a single mom struggling to get through college while my father destroyed his life.  I also have a genetic background that predisposes me to anxiety problems, addiction, and depression.

It is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week… I’ve decided to follow my intention of speaking openly and honestly about my experience with ED by opening up to your questions. I trust folks will be kind and well mannered about their questions, my biggest worry is that no one will ask any questions and I’ll just get to keep talking at myself.

Many people feel they have to keep their ED a secret. Job security, insurance issues, social judgement, etc. I obviously don’t feel I need to, so have at and ask away. What do you want to know?

I am merely a person working on maintaining recovery.  I have no intention of fronting like any sort of professional expert.  I am only an expert on my own eating disorder and my own recent experience in treatment programs.

I’m going to start blogging again.  It’s been a while and there is a lot to say.  For now we’ll settle for Howdy.  I’m curious if anyone will even see this right away.  Sort of comforting to think no one will see it, that I’m free to say what I will.

I’ve written this entry in my head many times over the past 10 months.  And now that I sit down to write it, my words want to hide away.  This is exactly the sort of thing I want to write about.  There is a tangle between my thoughts, inspirations, and desire to share and the fear and mechanisms in my mind that insist on perfection or simply block the flow.  I’ve never really let myself freely express much without carefully processing it first.  My mind mastered that habit when I was still in elementary school and it’s a hard one to break.  Simply saying this, that I am a perfectionist, makes me shudder.  Because I am not perfect and my work has never been perfect or “good enough” in my judgement.  So how dare I out myself as a perfectionist, because I fear you all know what a great big mess of failed endeavours and missed deadlines I really am.  Truth is, no one else is in my head and aware of all that drama!  And I will tell myself this several times before I hit the [publish] button.

I have spent the last year or more confronting and working on the matters that have stunted me and nearly killed me.  Perfectionism, Depression, Anorexia…   because the causes, the symptoms, the diagnosed labels, in the end none of it mattered to me as much as the pain that I wasn’t my full creative self.  I wasn’t able to allow myself the honest, unjudged, unprocessed expression required to truly produce all the writings and objects I imagined.  I simply wasn’t able to truly, fully be myself.  She couldn’t get through the thoughts and worries that edit and judge and package things to make sure I don’t do anything wrong.

I am much better now.

Regardless of the “don’t say this/ don’t say that” thoughts and the “write this later when you’ll be better at it” and the “no one needs to read this” and the “what’s the point” and the “what are you thinking” thoughts and many more…

I am finally saying:

Hello!  I’m back.  I’m doing well and working hard and looking forward to sharing with you.  My work these days is writing, making things, self care, therapy, and trying to convince the cats they don’t NEED to wake me at 6:30 am every day.  I will share progress and thoughts and answer questions about it all…

The moment I saw Kim’s photo tutorial my hands were itching to fold one too!  Amazing what the hands remember.  If I thought too hard I’d have gotten it wrong, but the hands remembered it all perfectly.

Catharsis

Originally uploaded by such sweet hands.

I’m not feeling talky at the moment. But My fingers are chatting away in a mix of crochet and knitting.

Yes, I sort of faded out of participation with the wider world. Consider this the start of a slow fade back in. I want to use this blog as a way of sharing my process during this phase of my life, but haven’t decided just how much I want to share.

Meanwhile you’ll get plenty of looks at my actual Catharsis project in progress…

1996:  My first voting experience!  I had to vote with a provisional ballot because there was some problem with my registration.  That was a bummer, but voting was cool.  I have to admit it was just another of many new experiences I was enjoying now that I was finally out in the wide world on my own.

2000:  The day after the election not only did we not know who would be our next president, the company I worked for was sold to a larger one.  Between the vote recount drama and how the company sale and transition were handled I got my first full adult sized dose of “life is unfair”.

2004:  We moved into this apartment the day before the election, I spent the day of the election working in a yarn store and taught a 70’s TV starlet how to crochet, the day after the election I recall just sitting among my pile of boxes and wondering what people were thinking…

2008:  I lost my driver’s license because I didn’t put it right back into my wallet while I waited for my ballot, I started serious therapy for my depression, even my brother voted for Obama and we won!

Someone folded a small load of my towels for me!

I fell asleep before a load of towels finished drying and forgot about them this morning. By the time I went to get them I wasn’t sure what condition I’d find them in, because coin-op laundry rooms can be dog eat dog places…

I was greeted with a neat little stack of folded towels sitting on top of a clean dryer. So someone (probably a neighbor’s hired cleaner) went out of her way to wipe down the surfaces and fold my towels. Just when I’d lost heart and stopped cleaning the surfaces myself…

I picked up the lint dust bunnies that had built up around the place and did a few other things to straighten up and just felt really thankful someone took the time to fold my towels. It’s just such a treat to have someone else do one of these mundane tasks that I’ve grown used to doing all the time. I’m glad life is filled with little surprises like folded towels when you least expect them…

(I started this entry sometime in March or early April)

I started this granny project about a year ago, but it went into certain hibernation for many months. One reason for the hibernation? The cubby box that holds all the yarn for the grannies became the favorite cute and cuddly curl up spot for Tiger Lily. What can I say? The girl has great taste. I’m sure if I ever finish the granny project she’ll want to sleep on the blanket, but probably enjoys the fluff of so many skeins and balls of yarn piled on top of each other even more. When I finally reclaimed the box from her I found skeins shaped like trapezoids. All the yarn had just been flattened and squooshed… at least I know they were squooshed with the loving attention of a sweet cat making her bed. Of course I did cover the yarn stash, I placed a couple of layers of towels on top of the cubby so her “nest” didn’t become a nest of fur in my yarn! Yeah, if I wasn’t such a weirdo, if I was practical, I wouldn’t have let her sleep there anyway. I would have moved the cubby box and kept her away from it. I did try to make her a bed with another cubby box, but no amount of folded towels could create the same cat approved nap spot as a pile of Blue Sky Cotton and Crystal Palace Cotton Chenille.

So I rescued the yarn and grannies from the cubby, replaced it with yarn I’m less interested in, and put some towels on top in case Tiger Lily decides the cubby is still worthy of her naps.

I was in a real funk at the time. Unsure whether I wanted to continue to contribute to the craft world as a designer and often overheard as saying I just wanted to send all the yarn away and turn my “office” back into a dining room. So, while I was feeling totally uninterested in making any designs that had to be pitched, written up, edited, and such, I found myself laying on the couch and staring at this small collection of grannies spread out on the rug in front of me.

Shuffling the squares around like puzzle pieces or building blocks led to catching up on weaving in their ends. A few days later the squares still lounged on the rug while I started sorting out all those squooshed balls of yarn. The balls of yarn got thrown into the mix on the rug and finally I couldn’t resist grabbing a hook and playing with all those great colors to make some more squares.

So the whole time I was babbling about getting a job out in the real world and saying I had no crochet mojo left I was cuddled up to all these granny squares…