I'll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places.....

I think I've had an idea of what's been feeling "off" for me of late.  I'm in a "familiar" place and it's a place filled with all sorts of fears of failing, fears of succeeding, and baggage aplenty. 

A major source of motivation for seeking treatment was knowing I wasn't going to be able to lose weight and get healthy until I'd dealt with it all.  I wasn't fat due to lack of ambition or lack of attempts.  Rather, Edie had placed up a gauntlet for me to try to go through on my way to achieving what I wanted.  The gauntlet is still there, even now, but I'm trying to find alternative paths through it.

It's sort of hard to explain it all because well, I don't think I totally "get" it either.  Here's the familiar cycle:

I'm overweight.  Period.  The end. 

I decide I need to lose weight and get in better shape.

Two paths are possible here - either I end up doing nothing or I go whole hog into dieting and a strict exercise cycle.

The "doing nothing" path leads to disgust and frustration and Edie being reassured that I'm a total failure who doesn't want "it" bad enough.

The "whole hog" path leads to one of two places - becoming totally overwhelmed by the pressure of the "ALL" I've imposed on myself or the inklings of success.

It's the inklings of success that is so tricky and is the familiar place I'm dealing with right now. 

I need to to stop quantifying "success" in terms of having a smaller body and a lower weight.  I NEED TO.  Because when that's the "success", Edie gets to have control over how I'm feeling about things.  And she's too reckless to have control. 
I start feeling good about my body shrinking and get wrapped up in either the obsession to make that happen faster and faster and then get wrapped up in thoughts on how I'll never be successful at it.  OR thoughts about how embarassed I'll be if people notice I'm getting smaller because then they've just acknowledged what a fatso I was to start with. 

Another no win creation of Edie's.  I can feel myself getting sort of sucked into that cycle of not being in the moment; of fearing success and failure all at the same time.  I've been here before and have never been in charge of how this path turns.  I need to get in charge.

Good thing I have therapy today.  Whew.