u/ciniminisareyum

Quick setting, I’m an athletic guy in his early 30s who everyone looks up to as an incredibly stable individual. I am not; my relationship with food, eating, are absolute dogshit and very much an “invisible” eating disorder.

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I’ve had my “first” real felt bouts of anxiety in my adult life that I can remember after my first couple sessions. I want to “figure everything out,” and I’m so good at exerting self-control that I have no control over self-control, it rules me. Relaxation is borderline nonexistent. Food rules are externally “a good diet” and internally so rigid and cruel I have wept over a single donut. I’ll restrict subtly for months at a time then go on multi-day food benders to commit arson against the internal rigid rules system.

So when my therapist gave me my first homework of “slow down, do nothing. That IS the homework,” anxiety came crashing down, because I can’t (yet) handle a lack of resolution for questions or problems in my life.

Yesterday, queue all the standard questions about what I was afraid about related to getting to the root of why rigidity exists: am I scared of giving up my body? Gaining weight? Becoming lazier? The occasional binges themselves? The idea that people will see me change and go “whoa he wasn’t as stable as I thought he was?”

Yes, yes, yes to every question. But my therapist picked up on something at the very end before I did later in the day while doing an exercise she gave me: I didn’t leave the session with anxiety about the questions becoming true. Half of them already are; the binge cycle for me explicitly permits gaining some weight (and dropping it again), most of my sports are already side hobbies at this point, I’m already not scared of the binges, and a lot of my daily life already is lazier than 15+ hours of sports/week college me.

I left the session feeling terror. Every question I asked and expected to fear regarding change itself feels way, way too small. The change is almost fundamentally a “symptom” in my head. I’m scared of the change, but what TERRIFIES me is that the aspect of “change” feels disproportionately small compared to the size of the terror.

I don’t believe the idea of unwinding a rigid system is SO scary ONLY because I have 3-4 very very heavy binges per year. I don’t believe it’s so frightening ONLY because people will see me publicly change. It can’t be simply “you might or might not gain weight.” Every one of those, individually AND in aggregate, feels WAY too small.

It’s almost like those things are scary on the surface because they all reveal something existentially threatening to me underneath all of them. I don’t know what yet. But the fear is a step below the surface consequences.

So yeah HAPPY WEDNESDAY EVERYBODY! HAVE A GREAT DAY!

Preface: I’m frustrated but, to clarify, I’m not about to scream AT the therapist. I’m about to scream because I feel like I played myself and think she hit the RIGHT thing that I’m very uncomfortable with.

TL;DR: ✨ Disordered eating! ✨ I have huge rigidity problems with food. I meticulously manage a ledger. Sucks, given it’s what’s kept me fit, but it came to a nasty head and I sought out help.

I asked the therapist to kick my ass. She functionally ended up pointing out that I’m an extremely cognitive person who NEEDS to have a solution, or at least a PLAN for a solution, for basically every aspect of life. This manifests in food via the ledger by which every food I eat must have a “plan of action” to deal with it the next day. Maybe it’s extra exercise, maybe it’s cutting back, etc.

If I can’t solve a problem, or envision the solution, it drives me mad. Restaurant canceled a last-second reservation? No problem, the solution is go somewhere else or treat it as a fun story for later. Someone cut me off in traffic and it makes me upset? Envision them in some life-altering emergency or attribute the fact they simply didn’t see me. Find ANY plausible reason for why something didn’t go well, stick to it, and spin the negative into a positive. This applies to everything.

Well this ugly-ass problem with food reared its head, and I have NO answer. I have spent HOURS spiraling into research, trying to figure out what’s “wrong” with me, how to fix it, trying to come up with “positive spins,”the list goes on.

It was as invisible as the air I breathe to me until it very, very suddenly wasn’t. I told her I’d do whatever the homework was, do the proverbial 12-step plan, do what it took. Just lay it on me. I’ll do it.

WELP. SHE SURE AS HELL DID.

Her “homework” on session 1 was literally “to do no homework.” No research. No solving. Let the voice in my head that NEEDS to solve the problem scream in the passenger seat. She said that if I actually got homework to do, I would just turn that into another problem to solve. It would be a box to check. She said that I would speedrun through everything. So her homework was very explicitly to do nothing.

FAM. IT HAS BEEN TWO DAYS AND HOLY SHIT I FEEL LIKE IM GOING BATSHIT INSANE.

I feel like I HAVE to research. It is SHOUTING in my brain. I’m generally a very calm person who, at least to my own mind, doesn’t experience much anxiety, but let me tell you, I feel absolutely nothing BUT anxiety right now.

I was fully prepared to do any homework that she gave me, but I was NOT expecting “do nothing” to be THE thing.

My mind is not happy with this. I’m trying my best to trust. But wow this isn’t a cakewalk.

I feel like there’s no community for me.

My eating has kept me fit. My binges don’t feel like loss, a blackout, or out of control. They’re rare, intense, and euphoric. There’s no shame. There’s not really any guilt. I was raised in sports, so I have all the “tools” to be successful propelling the cycle that cages me. They’re always followed by very long, very strict cuts for months at a time. I gain some weight as rebellion against the strict lifestyle, then the “banker” kicks in and twists my arm into the next diet. I hate the banker. I hate that every single daily food choice has to pass some moral test in my mind.

It sucks. At least with a more common pattern, you can know it’s recognized. EDNOS just throws you in complete limbo. Even worse, on the outside, my eating habits look “healthy.” They’re absolutely not, and my relationship with food is so draining.