Food restrictiong helps me to control my emotions

[BeeBeen]

Two months ago I started to suffer from a depressive episode that still last....

I have found that restricting food intake makes me feel in control of everything.
I don't count calories or anything, I just eat as little as I can.

Does anyone feel the same?

[Dee]

I have often felt that the only control I have is what I put in my body.  My therapist has often compared it to a baby that will purse their lips to control what goes into their mouth.  For me, this type of control has led to a long struggle with anorexia.  It got worse and worse as my ex-husband started controlling me more.  I had no access to money or accounts, I couldn't drive, couldn't have my own email, wasn't allowed to go out with friends, and he even picked out and bought my clothes.  Worse of all he controlled my body.  Despite my divorce I am finding the disorder really had to recover from.  I just spent 60 days inpatient and I am doing well, but it is a struggle.

It is so easy to get into the spiral.  I can't urge you enough to seek treatment now before it gets any worse.  I have irreversibly damaged my heath.  It is also true the longer it goes on the harder it is to recover from and each relapse is harder to recover from.

[Blueberry]

It is so easy to get into the spiral.  I can't urge you enough to seek treatment now before it gets any worse. 

I never counted calories or anything like that either so I saw myself as "not really" having an eating disorder until I was in an eating disorder group in inpatient therapy. Then I knew. I have also switched from an anorexic state of mind (though it wasn't really noticeable by my weight) to over-eating and not being able/willing to stop. It's as if I went from over-controlling of myself (i.e. not allowing myself things) to under-controlling and haven't found the balance yet.

The more you use a non-healthy coping mechanism, the more this path gets fixed in your brain as the highway to feeling good, though it's not. So the easier it is to fall back into this unhealthy mechanism. If you can find a trauma-informed T who is knowledgeable about eating disorders, so much the better.

[BeeBeen]

I am sorry you have struggled so much with eating disorder. It's sounds really painful.

I have a therapist/psychiatrist that understand trauma very well, but I weight 183lbs while I should weight 172lbs (according to my GP), I am very ashamed of that. I feel disgustingly obese, like no one else in the World  (I don't find people with obesity disgusting, just myself). I don't want to be thin (actually, I would like to be more musculate), just fat free.

I relate a lot to:
"Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a
thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance."
I have no mouth and I must scream -Harlan Ellison-