To all who have shared their stores so-far, Thank You!
I notice that weight is coming up a lot; weight has been a concern for me as well, but not enough of one to actively work on, especially as I had the "excuse" that some of the medications were futzing with my system. One of them had me eating about twice as much as normal and still not feeling full.
But this year, my weight has fallen a fair bit without my having taken any particular care. I believe, and my GP thinks my belief to be well-grounded, that for me, the key to that spontaneous weight loss was my having started therapy. Originally I had a very specific focus in mind, but we have drifted and the therapy has become more about coping with my overall situation, including a non-trivial amount of "validation" from the therapist that although I am not perfect, that many of my stress feelings have real roots, that if life "doesn't seem fair", it has to do with the fact that some people really are treating me unfairly. And the weight loss? Because through the therapy, my internal conflicts and frustrations are lowered, and discovering and accepting myself more, and I am asserting my own needs more -- and thus my brain has dropped out of constant "fight or flight" mode, reduced the cortizone production a lot: cortizone is a precursor to a number of steroids needed for combat, so when it drops, your body stops holding on to fat that it is hoarding as an "energy reserve" for the fight.
So, seriously, if you are overweight and you can't seem to lose it, and you are feeling chronically stressed, then therapy might help a lot in getting your mind to the point where it knows the emergency is over and let's your body return fat-retention to normal levels.
To Karren: I'm still having arguments with myself about whether you were being serious or not
Yep, there have been many of us who have gone through a phase of being sloppy or taking risks or "accidentally" not being careful; we have such trouble bringing ourselves to outright tell others, but we allow ourselves to be unsafe on the matter, somehow telling ourselves that being "caught" would just be an "accident", something "not really your fault".Originally Posted by sherri52
I'm nearly certain that at one time I had a thread about "Do I *want* to get caught / Do I want to get *caught*", but when I went back to try to find it several months ago, I couldn't see any sign of it.
I don't know why so many of us start to feel that we want someone else (sometimes it doesn't matter much who) to know about your dressing. There might be an aspect of wanting to be "given permission" to dress, to be told by someone we know personally that dressing is acceptable and not perverted or that you aren't a weirdo.... even if you don't think of yourself as a weirdo, the little recesses at the back of your mind sometimes need to hear it from a "peer" or "person of authority" in order to totally release the idea.
I know that in my case, I was starting to feel physically sick because I was feeling that in not telling my wife, I was in some sense lying to her. I didn't have a specific about what the lie consisted of, just that hiding it from her was a lie, a bad lie; that I was being untrue to my ethics (which are quite important to me) by not telling her. By that time, I was no longer the person that she thought I was, so hiding my stash and the fact of my dressing was hiding what had become the "real" me under the disguise of who I had been... and in a marriage, (IMHO) hiding who you really are is a form of a lie to your partner. For me, it become time to rip open the disguise, and to hope for the best while fearing the worst.
A few months ago, I got sick of hiding who I have become from my sister and my mother, and told them too. There was only one other person who I felt "deserved to know", my best friend who is honest and open with me about his human struggles, so a fairly short time later I took the plunge and told him as well (and made it clear to him that I don't expect him to keep any of the story from his wife, who is also a dear friend of mine.)
The reasons vary from person to person, but Yes, it is common to come to the point of feeling that the secret has to be let out.
.gif "Big Roll Eyes")
