Trip Summary

I ended up having a pretty fantastic Thanksgiving weekend at home. Beforehand, I had been really nervous about the food situation and worried that my family would be hyper-attentive to my eating, but that actually wasn't the case at all. In fact, my mom was about as hands-off as she's ever been. When we visited my extended family (some of which is aware of my ED) on Thursday, I got the impression that everyone had been warned against mentioning on my eating, weight, etc. I got lots of Your hair looks so pretty! and What a nice shirt! -type comments. So I definitely appreciated their conscious efforts to make me feel comfortable.

My two best friends from high school were around, and I spent lots of time with both of them. I also got to hang out with my brother; we've gotten closer in the past few years, but haven't seen each other much with me at school and him working crazy-long hours. He took me shopping for a late birthday present on Saturday, and we had a good time walking around together and catching up.

As far as food, I think I did okay. For the actual Thanksgiving dinner, I was pretty much resigned to the fact that I would be eating more than I was comfortable with and that I wouldn't be able to calculate the calories. That being said, I tried to not get super anxious about it and just enjoy the occasion. I tried lots of different dishes (including pumpkin pie!) although my portions were a bit skimpy. And there was definitely some major guilt afterwards.

During the rest of the weekend, I had good intentions about being more adventurous and spontaneous with food, but that didn't exactly happen. My mom seemed to be making an unspoken effort to accomodate me by stocking the fridge with my staples and cooking fairly "safe" dinners, so I didn't really have to step outside my comfort zone very much. This made things much simpler and less stressful than I had anticipated, but also didn't really push me to challenge the ED very much.

So I had a wonderful time at home, but there were no huge recovery milestones either. I guess surviving a food-centric holiday with my sanity intact is sort of a victory in itself, but the rigidity remains entrenched.

Since returning to school, I've jumped back into the typical regime (minus exercise, STILL) but I seem to be harboring this vague sense of guilt about having neglected it for several days. Not sure why.

Finally, I'm getting nervous about seeing R in therapy tomorrow. I left my last appointment feeling extremely defeated and hopeless about recovery. I had cried for the first time ever in therapy that day, which embarrassed and frustrated me. Although I AM motivated to recover, I am also still a pretty sucky patient and I hate letting R down week after week.