Author: cpeikert1

I took a shower this morning! For most, this statement wouldn’t cause anyone to bat an eyelash. In my house, this was news.

I have not taken a shower in months. Now  before you pinch your nose and scrunch your face up thinking « Ew », let me clarify that I take at least 2 baths daily and subscribe to only the highest of hygiene standards.

A few months ago, a dark fog set in around me. I struggled to get out of bed most days and standing up to take a shower took more effort than I  had to give. I simply couldn’t face the thought of doing it.

The last few months have been difficult and extremely hard to understand. I was eating more, fully settled at work and the weather was great. Why, then, was I feeling so low.

The doctors said it was a phase – though no one could pinpoint the cause. Tests revealed I was physically healthy. So what gives?

I started to question my medication.

Antidepressants generate a lot of press…none of it is 100 percent conclusive. Studies range from saying they don’t work to saying they play a critical role in the treatment of depression, to everything in between.

And I suspect every study is accurate because the effectiveness of these medications varies as much as Human beings do.

When I was first prescribed an antidepressant, I was at an all time low in terms of spirit and weight. I did not ask about the side effects and I didn’t hesitate. I wanted something to help ensure I could keep on living.

As my mental health has improved -thanks to a lot of internal work, a huge support network and a loooooot of talking – I started to re-examine the role this medication played in my life.

The list of side effects it can trigger is extensive and the effectiveness can vary over time.

For me, the antidepressants had a bit of a numbing effect. They froze my sensations, my brain functions. For a time, this was exactly what I needed as I focused heavily on developing coping mechanisms for my overactive brain and my erratic emotions.

Over time, though, this numbing effect started to have a harmful impact. I was exhausted, a novel concept for me, and I had zero interest in life. I did not look forward to things and I rarely experienced joy. I was sleepwalking through life but conscious of it. This plummeted me into a very dark time.

So, after much discussion with my partner in crime (Charles) and my psychiatrist, I recently started the process of weaning myself off my antidepressants.

I want to be clear: I firmly believe antidepressants serve a role and can bring  much relief to many. I have no shame related to taking them and I believe they played a positive role in my journey back from the brink. That said, I am a different person now, and I believe my body and brain are ready to bid them farewell.

This weaning process has to be done slowly, carefully and with the support of a mental health and medical professional as the medication alters your brain chemistry. Done too rapidly, and you can create the sensation of shocks to your brain. It is done in stages and, at each stage, you wait and watch for side effects – of which there can be many.

Week 1, no negative side effects but my energy started to return.

Week 2, my emotional and physical thaw really started to take effect. I felt happier, my brain was sharper from the moment I woke up. No more endless snoozing in the morning with no desire to get out of bed. At the same time though, my past impulsivity and negative self talk started to make an appearance. But, this time, I have coping mechanisms and a stronger, more informed support network to help.

I won’t lie, seeing some of these emotions come back scares me. What will week 3 and 4 bring? Is this a sign of a trade off I will have to make in life: feeling energized and alive but emotionally unstable? Is there a happy medium to come? Will I be unable to recognize myself next week?

I don’t know…

Maybe I will mull it over, in the shower!

« Beautiful! »

Yup, after a lot of interesting moments over the last 2 years, I finally look in the mirror and see beauty.

For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I see myself as beautiful. Sure I see the imperfections, but I see beauty nonetheless.

But wait! Don’t organize a parade because there is a slight problem.

Whereas I see beauty, my medical team sees underweight.

Hmmm, there’s an unexpected dilemma.

What do you do when you have worked so hard to accept yourself and embrace who you are but it remains unhealthy? When you are finally comfortable in your own skin but your thoughts remain focused on restriction and remaining thin?

How do you push yourself to eat more when you firmly believe you are just right. Healthy or happy…that is the question…because both seem impossible.

If you are reading this, hoping for a magical and insightful answer, I am sorry to disappoint because I have nothing.

Every day that I look in the mirror and feel confident and beautiful feels like a gift. So, I have no idea what motivation could propel me to rock this fragile boat. 

Some say you have to keep gaining and learn to see beauty at each phase. To that I say a very dubious… « okay… »

I don’t believe it and I don’t want to. Honestly, I have no desire to trade this contentment for the uncertainty of weight  gain and self help.

The therapists say, you don’t know until you try and that worst case, I can always lose the weight if I am unhappy.

To that, I say: « bullshit! » The prospect of starvation is no longer an option for me and no medical professional should advocate it. 

Maybe it works for some but I refuse to use that as my plan B.

So instead, i wake up each day, look in the mirror and smile. And if it means I eat just enough to stay at this weight, i will take it…for now.

Cause god knows I have worked hard to get to this place and feeling beautiful is something I not not quite ready to gamble away.

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be many things: nurse, teacher, actress. As the years went on, I realized I was too squeamish to be a nurse, too impatient to be a teacher, and way too shy to be an actress.

And, while I still lack the personality or skill to be an actress, it turns out I am quite skilled at putting on a show.

Putting on a brave face, being open about my challenges while making light of them at the same time, pretending to be Wonder Woman….everything cleverly crafted to give the impression that, while things are tough at times these days, I’m ok.

Turns out, I’ve been putting on such a great show that I even convinced myself…until I no longer had the strength to keep up the performance – even for myself.

So, after a bit of an intervention of sorts with a Wise friend (that’s you, Heather), a guiding hand from James up above (via you, Josee) and a caring Husband, the curtain came down this weekend.

So…I am going to take a break from performing for a little bit. I am going to put this blog on hiatus – just for a little while. But I’ll be back. And I am sure there will be lots to tell.

Peiky out…for now…

There are days when I wonder if I am really ill. Maybe I’m just being stubborn by refusing to eat, maybe I am just a big attention-seeker, maybe I always wanted to be a kept woman and I am using starvation to wind up back on sick leave. If that is true,  it should be easy to stop. I just need to put my big girl pants on and grow up.  I have a problem, yes…but ill? No. It is all a question of will.

And then there are moments where I know there is something very wrong within me.  And it hits me hard.

Recently, we were invited for dinner by someone Charles works with. Plan was to go over with our girls, have our collective brood play together and enjoy a lovely homecooked meal. What could be nicer, right? Nice people, children taking care of themselves, adult conversation, nothing to cook and no dishes to clean.

As the evening approached though, I started to get nervous. What if they make something I don’t like. Let’s face it, with my long list of inedible items, there was a high probability this would happen. What about the pressure to be polite and eat my full plate?

Sensitive to my plight, Charles had already inquired on the evening’s planned menu: pasta with Cajun chicken. I instantly felt myself relax a bit. Ok, I thought, the type of food is out of the way, you can always warn them when you get there that you are not feeling well and a tiny portion will do for you.

All was going well until drinks were served.  Our hostess, proud to have us over, made her famous bourbon lemonade in Mason Jar glasses. Lemonade???? With alcohol??? My mental calculator instantly came to life. 130 calories for can of fizzy lemon… shit, I don’t drink bourbon so have no idea about calories…and look at the size of this glass…agh….

So as I nursed my drink, we made conversation. I felt ok. A bit out of my comfort zone but ok. Until I heard the wife ask her husband for 2 containers of cream.

Ummmm. Cream….Now the warning bells were ringing and anxiety and dread were building. I told myself to breathe…we could solve this…Surely we could say I was allergic to dairy…lactose intolerant?But shit, what if Charles already said I had no allergies. And I can’t really ask him in front of them.

Maybe it is for a cream soup…and I can skip the appetizer. Or, if it is a sauce, I can just ask for no sauce. All this is going on in my head as I have a smile plastered on my face and am singing and dancing with their eldest daughter. As dinner is being served, the children are watching a movie. How I wish I could just say, “you know what, I’m good, I’ll just watch the movie, skip the dinner. You guys enjoy though.”

But I know my manners and cannot embarrass myself like that, or Charles.

So I sit down…Not too much wine for me please…(calories). Oh beet salad…I can do this. Wait, there is cheese grated on it, anxiety rises, breathe…ok, ok, just scrape it off. Phew. Time for the main event. I think I’ll be ok. Chicken, no sauce, pasta. I see her sprinkle some cheese on the pasta but I think I can handle that.

And then the plate is coming toward me, and lands at my place setting. For everyone else, it looks beautiful. But I want to cry. The chicken has been cooked in the cream sauce. So while the sauce is on the side, as Charles discretely requested for me, I have no choice but to eat it. At this point, I panic internally. I feel trapped. I cannot eat this…options from running out of the house (I could sit sipping a diet coke at the Harveys across the street), to pretending to faint cross my mind. But I can’t do that.

So I have a few bites of chicken, trying to wipe the sauce off on my plate. I have some salad even though there is feta in it and I know that no matter how much I try to eat around it, some tiny bits will wind up in my mouth. And I ask for more wine, just to be able to dull the storm going on within me.

At this point, while physically there, I am gone. I zone out. I look around the table at everyone eating, talking, laughing, enjoying the host couple’s favorite meal and I want to scream: “what is wrong with you!!!??? How can you sit there, laughing while my skin is crawling. How can you not care about the turmoil I am feeling right now.”

But how can they know? How can they understand that I am not just picky or weird about food. Unless you are anorexic you cannot understand because anxiety, fear and desperation are not typical reactions to food. But they are for me. And then it hits me. I am ill. This meal is actually causing real distress. And I know that this goes well beyond me simply growing up and snapping out of it.

I know it as I think about the meal the entire car ride home. I know it as I close my eyes and all I see is that chicken. I know it as I beg Charles to let me starve the next day and I know it as I take a sleeping pill just so I can get through the night.

The only question that comes to mind is: now what?

When I first started this blog, I knew it would require time, effort, honesty and authenticity. I hoped it would help my recovery, offer support and inspiration for readers facing similar challenges and, maybe, make people laugh. I wanted to share truths that are often left unsaid and find the freedom you can only experience when you feel understood.

I didn’t expect it to be all sunshine and rainbows. I knew that recovery would involve stumbles and setbacks, and that writing about these would likely hurt the people that love me and cause them to worry. But I also knew that, for this Blog to serve its purpose, I would need to continue to share fully and completely, no matter where my journey took me. I knew…

What I didn’t expect was to be sitting here today, writing this specific blog.

But, here it is, the truth that bulky sweaters and cancelled dinner plans have allowed me to keep “quiet”: in the last 3 months, I have lost all the weight I worked so hard to gain during this past year.

Shit! NOOOOO! What the hell?? Why? Oh….Christina….

I imagine your reactions were somewhere along these lines. A mixture of puzzlement, worry and disappointment. It is ok, I’ve had all of these thoughts.

So What Happened?

When I found myself gaining weight at the Douglas, I started to panic. Somehow, the target I had when I started recovery started to petrify me. Was I afraid of getting better? Was I afraid of letting go? I honestly don’t know. I didn’t talk about it. The Douglas didn’t ask. And I found myself out of the program, restriction taking hold. Just 2 lbs, I said to myself. Lose 2lbs and let your weight stay there for a while so that it becomes your new set point and then you can eat again. The problem was, as I have mentioned before, I am addicted to restriction. So, the minute I allowed it back in my life, I was hooked on the drug again and 2lbs was no longer enough.

And now, I promise myself, just 2 more lbs. Reach a certain weight that you deem low enough and then you can stop. There is just one tiny hiccup. No matter what I eat, the needle on the scale isn’t moving creating massive frustration, almost desperation within me.

You might be wondering how my brain did a complete 180 from wanting to gain weight and get well to wanting to lose weight, to believing that eating is wrong when only a few months ago I believed it was the right thing to do.

Sometimes I feel like Dory in Finding Nemo. Yes I have so much knowledge and awareness about anorexia, about the psychological factors behind it, about the risks, about the pain it causes others and about the treatment methods. I know all of this and spring into action toward recovery. Then, boom, almost overnight, it is like everything is erased from my mind and I am lost…wondering who I am, how I got here and where I need to go.

My therapist reassures me that this is not atypical to recovery. That I had to learn everything I learned in the past year at the Douglas and that I have to keep reminding myself of these lessons. This, she says, is the foundation I needed to build before I could go deeper. Know that I have a firm grasp of the What, I can delve into the Why…something the Douglas could not offer with a group of 15 people living together 6.5 hours a day/4 days a week.

This week, the plan is to start the descent into the Why.

I won’t lie. I’m exhausted. I am so tired of still being in this place…of still talking about this. But I am not really one to dwell on things. Just like Dory, I just keep swimming.

I recently started dating.

No, not men…companies.

Being back on the job market after spending 17 years at one company is a bit like starting to date again after many years of marriage. You are out of practice, scared but also excited about possibly finding “The One”…again.

First step was determining what I was looking for. Senior-ish role in marketing, communications or – dare I try it, HR – larger company, moderate commute, work-life balance and a good salary.

Hmmm. There may be lots of fish in the sea, but the one I am looking for might not be that easy to find. This will be a challenge, I think to myself. Maybe I need to start with a rebound job…you know, one that you know going in is not the right one for you but serves a purpose. Yeah…a rebound job. Less pressure in terms of the search. You can do this!

I started slow with online job sites – scanning job profiles, company locations and corporate cultures. I want to move to something different but that fits my core values and interests. I want to be challenged but not so much that I fail. In truth, starting to work again will be hard. My therapists have warned me about the risks and the demands – physical, psychological and emotional.

“You’ll need more energy to cope throughout the day.” – Translation, you will need to eat more.

“There will be added stress in your day-to-day.” – Translation, you’ll be tempted to restrict in order to cope.

“You’ll have a lot on your plate to juggle with work and being a mom.” – Translation, you will have little time to invest in getting well. (psss…you are still sick, you know).

Still, with all this in mind, we have agreed it is an avenue worth trying as part of my recovery. Interacting with the world, accomplishing, adding value to an organization will help me grow and heal. The trick will be ensuring that the growth is not overshadowed by the struggles I will face.

So, I tidy up my CV, keep scanning LinkedIn and other sites, and, some days, I finally apply – hoping that as I swipe right on this professional dating app, my potential suitor likes my profile. I’ve had a few interviews. Those too felt very much like first dates. You put on your confidence-boosting outfit, you prepare anecdotes for the small talk, anticipate questions and craft the answers that will really sell yourself and then, butterflies in your belly, you face the music.

You try to be as interesting as you can, you show energy and enthusiasm, and you ask questions to see if you are right for each other. In some cases, the company’s profile was far more attractive than the role turns out to be. In those instances, while somewhat disappointed to hit a dead end, I am somewhat relieved. There is no wondering if they liked you as much as you liked them. No waiting for the phone to ring. No feeling bummed when they contact you to say no thanks.

Right now, I have gone on a few dates with one specific company. I find them different yet interesting. My boxes are not all ticked but I think we could have a very nice and healthy relationship for a year, or two…or….

And, if it doesn’t work out, well, I’ve got my network of contacts and headhunters to help with my fishing expedition.

I’m an addict.

I’ve never smoked a cigarette, never touched a joint, let alone anything stronger. I’ve never popped pills and, apart from the 3 years in London where I gave my liver a nice workout, I barely drink. But I am very much an addict.

My vices are intangible but no less damaging than those listed above.

My name is Christina, and I am addicted to restriction and control.

Let’s start with restriction. You might be thinking…um…I get how restricting your food intake can be damaging but how can it be an addiction? Let me explain. Every hour, of every day, I think about restricting my food intake. I am happy when I know I’ll be able to skip a meal and I will jump on an opportunity to cut back. The more you restrict, the harder it becomes to find things to remove from your daily intake. But that is almost part of the game. Cut out the gum, cut down the coffee, swap out some vegetables with more calories for water-based celery.

Why on earth would you do that, you might wonder? Ah, well…there are many reasons. For me, there are 2. First, restriction gives me a high. Being functional while eating very little makes me feel invincible. And, I struggle to admit it, but it makes me proud. I keep two running tallies during my day: everything I accomplish (laundry, blog, shopping, dancing with the girls, etc) and every calorie I consume. At the end of the day I compare both and the more I was able to get done with the lowest food intake, the greater the pride. It is not enough to accomplish a lot in a given day; I must do this by overcoming hunger, fatigue and feeling faint. I need battle scars in order to earn my badge of honor.

The second reason is that starving myself has a numbing effect. It is hard to feel things when your body is essentially in sleep mode. It becomes easy to tune out the things that you don’t want to deal with when you are already working on fumes to get the essentials done.

Linked to my addition to restriction is my utter dependence on control. Feeling in control is reassuring the me. If I control everything, nothing can surprise me, nothing can hurt me. Being in control makes me feel like everything will be ok. If I keep all things in check, I’ll be fine. I cannot imagine a world without being in the driver’s seat of life. Of course, it is a delusion because no one is in full control of everything…and yet…

As a result, I am deathly afraid of losing control.

When it comes to eating, I am petrified of giving in to my hunger, buckling under the fatigue and going crazy. This fuels my restrictive tendencies. Don’t eat, don’t risk awakening the hunger beast. I think to myself, the only way to ensure I don’t go overboard is simply by not eating. I do this because I know that every day I restrict, I walk a fine line between utter control and having the flood gates open and being crushed by the waves.

The unfortunate thing is that the more I feel out of control, the more I desperately try to control and restrict. And so goes the cycle that is so difficult to break.

I haven’t found the right rehab for these addictions. Though my time at the Douglas helped, more treatment is required. And once I am recovered, I know that, like any addict, I will never be able to restrict again without great risk of relapse.

One day at a time…one…day…at…a…time

I have it all.

Before you choke on your coffee, let me explain.

Sure, I no longer have the posh job, with the salary that went with it. I don’t travel to great places, staying in hotels that – even in the days of corporate cash containment, I wouldn’t book if I were traveling on my own dime.  And yes, I am still too thin and flunked out of Food school. But I really do have it all. And here’s why.

I have parents who not only moved house to be closer to their grandchildren, but who never cease to surprise me with their warmth, generosity and care. I have family and friends that challenge me, support me, entertain me, check in on me and remember each milestone – big or small. I have people in my life that are interesting, knowledgeable and who have many lessons to teach me.

I have 2 amazing, funny, smart, kind girls whose faces light up when they see me. Some days, they are so excited when I pick them up, it is as though I have been gone for a week rather than a few hours. They are healthy, they are happy and they love me unconditionally – even when my singing annoys them or when I am frustrated or when I botch the chocolate chip muffin recipe…again!

I have my weekends and my weeknights, free from work and from the overwhelming desire to constantly check my phone. Free from the overwhelming pressure I used to put on myself to always be “on”.

I have music! Songs that I always loved but somehow stopped listening to. Yes, they were on in the background but I stopped really hearing them, stopped feeling the emotions and energy they could bring. I simply couldn’t hear them with the torrent of thoughts going on in my head, with the scenarios I kept playing over in my mind. Now, with a much clearer brain, I can hear again.

I have endless bubble baths and a fire place, and shoes, and NetFlix and Starbucks, and an occasional dessert.

I have knowledge and a level of self-awareness that I’ve never had before. I have understanding and I have a therapist who is making a difference in my life. I have new insights and I have personal growth.

I have the material things, I have the vacations by the beach, and I have the peace of mind required to enjoy the sunsets.

And ok, I’ll admit I don’t have my full health right now. But I am not alone and I have lots of fight still left in me.

So, yes, I have it all