It probably sounds silly, but I really miss therapy. I know LighterLife wasn't therapy in the conventional sense, but it meant that once a week I had an hour to talk through my problems, discover the route cause of my anxieties and try to find solutions. The sessions were so laid back that without really realising it I ended up using CBT and other techniques I'd been introduced to in actual therapy a few years before (previously with very little success), and as a result my head was in an excellent place. For me the food packs and the weight loss were a lovely bonus to the whole process, as the most important thing was finally having a breakthrough on the mental health front. Yes, LighterLife tackled my problems with food, but - maybe it was because of the tiny groups - I also attacked my larger problems at the same time, and for that I'll always be extremely grateful. I like to think I've been vaguely okay since I stopped the sessions: my weight's plateaued, I've not slipped back into terrible habits and I haven't had any particularly bad breakdowns. However, I don't think I'm as stable as I thought I was, and I'm definitely not as strong going it alone as I'd led myself to believe.
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Life is becoming extremely overwhelming at the moment and it's taking an awful lot of concentration and hard-work not to let (potentially irrational) fears and anxieties consume me. I've been extraordinarily lucky over the last fortnight to spend more time than normal doing my favourite things and catching up with my favourite people, and in times of stress it's these sorts of things that normally calm me down, reboot my head and give me the confidence to carry on. Consequently, there have been days when I've felt invincible (last Tuesday is a perfect example of this) but the highs are matched equally by the lows, and given how dizzyingly happy I've been recently it's therefore pretty easy to imagine the flip-side. I thought I'd mastered the art of soldering on and darting my way round a meltdown, but this week when I haven't been blissfully and serenely content, I've been in a constant state of panic, with my heart rate through the roof, a never-ending headache and a mind that never switches off (cue no sleep). It's exhausting, and I'm so beaten down that I'm not sure I have it in me to fight every tiny horrid voice in my head that I'd successfully managed to mute.
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Luckily, I'm not taking this out on my body as I used to in the past. My most recent trip to London at the weekend was a bit of a milestone as it's the first one I've had where I've been largely on my own and not once wanted to binge. I had the perfect opportunity to buy all the food and gorge in my hotel but didn't - it wasn't even a conscious choice, but rather the thought of behaving like that didn't even cross my mind. Plus, as I couldn't do a workout I made sure that I walked absolutely everywhere, eschewing the tube and bus as much as possible in favour of reaching my step goals on my Fitbit app by power walking past herds of tourists from one destination to another. In this sense, I'm clearly not as broken as I thought as something is stopping me from throwing in the towel and regressing. It feels like I've rewritten my default settings, and that's only a wonderful thing!
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However, it all comes back to the fact that I'm very much aware that I'm just not right at the moment. I'm trying so hard to continue to use everything I've learnt to stop me from drowning but it constantly feels like an uphill struggle that I'm never going to win alone. I'm still convinced that stopping LighterLife in the summer was absolutely the right decision, but that perhaps I need to rethink the notion of doing the next step alone. Whether that's to do with weight loss specifically or mental health in general, I'm starting to think that I'm the sort of person that needs a helping hand, and maybe that's not such a bad thing if it means I'm working towards finding a good place. I'm not weak for admitting that I need help. Convincing myself that I can do this on my own is only destroying my confidence and forcibly shoving me further and further away from my goals, which is a ridiculously counterproductive notion! Despite all evidence to the contrary in reality the 90 Day SSS provided little to no support at all so I'm now on the lookout for something similar - in terms of structured weight loss - but much cheaper (that plan is ludicrously expensive) and with guaranteed face-to-face support. I don't have a clue where to start, but we'll see!
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Plus, I want to look into actual therapy again. Maybe talking to someone will help me work out a plan of attack for stopping the world from feeling so overwhelming and hideous all the time, and I won't be content to retreat behind my fears quite so much. I don't know, but I think it's worth looking into at least.
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This is my absolute favourite time of the year, so I want to start enjoying it properly!
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