dealing with control or no control

Any ideas on dealing with control issues? I have been dealing with control my whole life through starvation, restricting food, or no food at all for long periods of time.

I have no idea how to deal with this, I've talked to my t but she pretty much just does talk therapy. I will be starting therapy at an ed clinic but not until September. My dietician is giving goals to work towards but I am not meeting them. I did post in the ED forum, but thought this might be a good place to gather some ideas to try out. So basically when I am feeling loss of control in any given area of my life I will starve as a way to cope with this feeling. Since I started when I was five and am 32 now, I literally know no other way. It has grown into a self image problem as well over the years, complicating it further.

Any suggestions are appreciated, I am really struggling at the moment.
Thanks, Anika

I would think some mindfulness excercises may be good...I'm on the other end of the spectrum with overeating.

Ok, somewhere along the line you have never been in control of anything. The desire for Control is a normal human trait. And it is merely based on a basic instinct to survive. Somehow you were never given a structure to follow. The structure being, sleep, waking moments, activities within those waking moments that revolve around gaining knowledge and an understanding of your surroundings, and a safe enviornment to do those activities including a parent that accepted and loved you and encouraged you to interact with your enviornment and others within that enviornment.

Somehow you did not get the proper safe enviornent you needed to slowly define your surroundings and begin to learn how to interact and safely learn in that enviornment. And because you have not had that, you punish yourself by turning all your insecurites by that lack towards the one thing you have, YOU. So what happened in your youth? Where was the focus when you were growing up?

What you have to do is RELEARN what you have missed and begin to learn how to express yourself by learning about your enviornment and finding REASSURANCE AND
ACCEPTANCE. Right now all your focus is on yourself and because you never got some kind of acceptance and appreciation and you are punishing yourself. You have been trying to change YOU and manipulate YOU. What you have to learn is to look at YOU and self identfy and begin to FOCUS ON your enviornment and how to learn and figure out what you can and cannot do and what you can do best.

What you have to LEARN is how to read a book and enjoy it, perhaps go sailing and enjoy it and learn how to adjust the sails and control the way that boat glides with assistance from the wind, go and sit on a swing and pump and see how high you can swing and feel it contol it enjoy it. Find a horse farm where they teach riding, brush a horse learn how to lead it, learn how to sit on it, balance youself on it when it walks and take the reigns and steer it and see how far you can go in contoling how you can sit and gain balance and posture and slowly gain control. What do you like to do? Learn more about that and let yourself try different things. Perhaps just cover the mirror, children don't really see themselves at first, often they think it is someone else in the mirror and they often try to talk to that reflection, they don't even think of judging it. You have to learn how to be external, not constantly internal. If you have learned to be internal, you can learn to be external and somehow you have not learned how to be external, that is what children learn first.

All the internal stuff comes much later, and if there no real external comfort, there will be too much focus on internal distaste. Cover the mirror first. Or, take it away.
Only have a mirror that you can see your face and brush your teeth and comb your hair. Often times children don't really do too much of that when they are young, usually it is the parent that does that and their main exposure to the mirror is to learn how to brush their teeth. Young girls do play dressup and look in mirrors but what they really look at is the outfit, not really themselves. So when you dress yourself, pick an outfit and put it on and don't look in the mirror. Clothing is just a garment to cover your body, nothing more, don't give it too much thought. Dont stare at magazines with images of women that are not really real, just people who's pictures get altered in a way that will appeal to women, it is a well studied trick of imagery. It is so studied that all packaging right down to the shape of a bottle for a soft drink, to a bottle of makeup, perfume and so on is designed by appealing shape. These shapes are actually tested by putting several shapes in front of people and seeing how the human pupil reacts when a shape is viewed. Did you know that?
Pretty tricky huh?

You have to step back and learn how to EXTERNALIZE and GAIN COMFORT IN CONTOLING by gaining knowlege about things and activities THAT INVOLVE INTERACTING WITH EXTERNAL OBJECT AND ACTIVITIES.

Think about this. This is where you need to begin to look away and eating is just nourishment that helps you have strength to enjoy external activities. You have to relearn the basics.

Open Eyes

Wow, thanks so much, you put a lot of effort into that response. I really appreciate it. A lot of it holds true for me. It's a lot to take in so I am going to re-read it a few times, and take notes. The first half... freaky, like right on the head.

All I am going to say right now till I can gather my thoughts is.. the part about shapes and our response to them. I know I detest any type of angular or hard edge cornered shapes, they seem harsh to me, I much prefer curved soft comfort shapes. Interesting tho, when you are starving yourself your body becomes angular and harsher shaped and loses it's curvy softer shape. I wonder why with objects I am almost repulsed by angles and in body I am repulsed by my soft curvy shape. Just an observation.

I am gonna go work on what you wrote tho, thanks again.

Your welcome Anika, it may take you a few times to read it and really think about it and what it means. And what young children do and need and perhaps there was something that you didn't get and your really not aware of it. Many times parents tend to place too much on the way a child looks and they get too picky. And they pick too much and are so unaware of how it can have bad effects later on in a child.

Also a child that is not really attended and encouraged to participate in their environment can be adversely effected and they are unaware of the effect of the lack of this and it comes up with low self esteem or other issues and they do not realize where it comes from.

I have every confidence that you can learn to direct yourself away from being so self critical and self controling. No you don't like curves on your body, but you like it everywhere else, think about presentation, most presentations have some kind of curve to it. Curves are soothing whereas clean cut square objects present control and simplicity and have less warmth. Men often ten to prefer boxy clean lines. Except for cars, they often relate to a car as a she, therefore they like to see curves.
Isn't that funny. But a man who is a hunter or builder will often pick a boxy truck.
Today there is a new presentation for these men to have both, therefore the peterbuilt nose on many vehicles are desirable as they present a curve within the nose or face of that vehicle.

Most men like women with curves and some meat on them.

Take the mirror away and let yourself explore the enviornment take the focus off of the control of yourself. You need to find control elsewhere. Think about hobbies and what you can do to find control over something else. Perhaps take up drawing or even sculpture or even pottery, you need to have other things in your life that you can learn to control over and not you. Cover or get rid of the mirror and that dam scale and venture out, the sooner you find an outlet the better. You will need an outlet that will take the place of timing all your control over your appearance so that will require you to find something you can do alot. I can even be jewerly making or something with patterns that has steps to focus on instead of the steps you take to self control.

Open Eyes

It is hard to make any changes until one can identify what it is that needs changing. I would start a journal/blog and see if I could identify times when I experience the feeling of loss of control and write about it (rather than use my body inappropriately), see if I cannot imagine some other ways to deal with it and experiment with those.

It's easy to lump many things together in a larger group but impossible to then work with them; imagine it like laundry; we put a bunch of stuff in the washer/dryer all together but when they come out, we have to separate them and fold them individually; one doesn't put the towels the same place as the underwear But if you had never learned about the different articles, you wouldn't be able to separate them out, wouldn't know what was what?

I think emotional situations are a bit like that, if one doesn't work to identify just what each emotion is and how it is "used" and what it is for, it's hard to get a very clear result. Your body is "big" and easy to see/use and abuse. Get to know the details of yourself and your life experience so you can fine tune your responses and make them appropriate.

Thanks guys,

While I do know I did not have any control as a child, I came from a home with a lot of physical and mental abuse, very heavy into the pentecostal churches. My dad had suffered a ruptered brain aneurysm when I was 5, thus when the anorexia began. I thought everyone in my family was going to die ad leave me. My dad also suffered from Bipolar which was undetected untill later in life. My family life as a kid revolved around my dads mental illness, only we didn't know this then. We moved constantly. I went to 25 different schools by grade 10.

Also I stated experiencing psychosis at age 10 or 11. I had told my parents and they put their hands on me and prayed an spoke in tounges and cast it out of me, invoking the holy spirit. I continued to have psychosis, niht terror, mood problems, a ton of depression. I eneded up homeless at 14 when my parents divorced, my mom moved to Saudi Arabia. So that was another big thing where I felt had no control.

I worked on a lot of these issues in therapy when I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1. I have ignored the anorexia because it has been my main coping tool for so long. And a lot more to do with control than body image. It's the satisfaction of being in control. I know when my moods change it's the first thing I turn to to gain control of something. Basically when anything happens that I feel stripped of control I have this old mean friend to turn too. It's very much like an addiction.

Thanks for all the input. I am really working on it, I am taking in everything that as said here and trying to see how I can apply it, to ake it work for me.

Really I do appreciate every word, from strangers no less, It's more then anyone has said to me in real life.