Empty?

Today my therapist, A, said: "You think you're empty."

We were talking about my fears/anxieties regarding social eating, body image insecurities, and basically presenting myself - my body, my personality, my hunger - to the world.  I was telling her that this new weight on my body feels so darn uncomfortable all the time that I am embarrassed to go out.

She said that it's about more than my weight.  That I feel like I don't have anything to offer, and I am afraid to engage sometimes because I think I'm "empty."

I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this statement, because I don't think I feel empty.  I feel trapped, obsessed, riddled with fears, endlessly anxious, insecure, angry sometimes, sad sometimes, almost happy sometimes.

My stomach certainly isn't empty.  It's usually a bit too full for my taste, even though my hunger signals are out of whack and I often feel stuffed and hungry at the same time.  But not empty.

My head certainly isn't empty.  In fact, my head is usually so full with swirling numbers, weights, nutrition facts, counting and recounting and recounting again that it feels ready to burst.

I'm not so depressed that I feel like the future is empty, either.  It's more like the future feels so full of things that are scary and unknown and potentially fattening that I want to curl up and hide.

Part of the problem is that I have been so detached from real life and real people these past few months that I am too full of obsessive, self-centered ED things to make much room for real world things.  Maybe my ED self is too full, and my real self is too empty.  But the ED self has been part of me for so long that I'm not sure how to separate it.