Another Therapy Rant

I'm really sorry to go here again, but my appointment with R today was so lame and uninspiring. Of all things, we talked about - wait for it - basketball. No, I'm not a basketball fan. No, my college doesn't have a good team. No, I don't know what "full-court press" means (even though R tried to explain it in quite some detail). To be fair, R did ask me at the beginning what I wanted to talk about. Only half-joking, I said: "Not Boost." It's true, I'm really sick of R harping on the Boost issue. My weekly success or failure seems to, at least in R's eyes, hinge on whether or not I drank the prescribed number of supplements, regardless of whatever else I ate that week. I've got issues with that approach, but that's a whole other post.

Anyway, after that it felt like R was doing everything possible to avoid talking about food or weight at all. So we talked basketball, authors, poverty, school, and some other equally random stuff. It's not that I don't find any of that interesting, it's just that my parents are paying for a therapist, not for a conversationalist. A couple of times I even tried steering the conversation back towards more relevant topics, but it never really stuck. As a result, I was withdrawn and unengaged and pretty unsure of what I was doing there.

Really, what am I doing so wrong? I don't know what I'm supposed to be getting out of therapy, but I know this: whatever it is, I'm not getting it. Honestly, the only part of the whole ordeal that ever makes any impression on me is the weigh-in. I get super nervous and stressed out about stepping on the scale; I freak out internally for a good 24 hours in advance, and then it's over in three seconds. And then I sit down in R's chair and my mind promptly goes blank.

Actually, that's not true. I'm not always totally unemotional. In fact, sometimes I find myself almost in tears, but it's never because we're making profound emotional breakthroughs or anything - it's usually just because I can't express myself accurately and get frustrated when R misinterprets what I mean. Then I get mad at myself for even trying and clam up.

I really want to make this work. Not only is he covered by my insurance, but R is at the top of his field and I really do like him as a person. I'm trying so hard to be more open and bring up stuff that's bothering me, but to be perfectly honest, I still suck at it. 

In other news:

- Another girl from my school has started coming to Treatment Center on Friday mornings. She isn't just a random girl, either. She used to be president of a club I'm in, and we also live in the same neighborhood so I see her walking to/from campus fairly regularly. I actually never suspected that she had an eating disorder, although she is very thin. She sees a different therapist (not R), so at least I don't have to worry about an extra layer of non-anonymity, but still. We haven't actually acknowledged each other yet, since it's just been a couple weeks and our time in the waiting room has only overlapped by a few minutes, but Oh. My. God. So awkward.

- While heading out to my car after my appointment today, I saw two different patients arriving for the day program, and both had feeding tubes. The weird/scary part: one was a teenage girl, and the other was a middle-aged woman.I guess I should be grateful that I at least still have the option to drink my Boost instead of having it pumped into my stomach.