The Counselling Side of LighterLife...

What appeals to me most about Lighter Life is having the counselling to break my habits/addiction. I am pretty damn sure it isn't the lack of food element that has got me hooked on the idea! However, its also the thing that scares me most about Lighterlife.

I have gone through some cognitive therapy before and it was HELL. I needed it and it did help in the long term but in the short term I was a gibbering wreck. I was emotionally raw and felt so utterly close to losing my mind. That stretch of counselling amost ended my marriage and for a while it made me a terrible mother because I was just going through so much pain and anguish.

Unfortunately, I stopped doing that therapy half way through because I found myself financially screwed and so could no longer afford to carry on. I always intended to go back but after a while the scab began to seal itself and I could lock away the pain again. I know thats not healthy but I always intended to go back....it just got put off and off and off. So now I am going to face it all again...with Lighter Life. Dear God I hope my counsellor can handle me!

Everything I say about myself is true. I'll change the names of everyone else in this blog so that I can express myself freely. In my mind I need to be able to get everything written down and "out there". Out of my head. I also hope that others who are wanting to lose weight will identify with this blog. My greatest hope is that it will encourage or help anyone take action and gain control of their own lives. If I inspire anyone I would be very grateful to know about it. It would mean a lot to me.

Anyways, I am digressing...

My concerns about the counselling is that I will have to revisit many awful things. I went through sexual abuse as a young child at the hands of a family member. I also experienced being raped at 14 amongst other things.

Growing up, I had a mentally ill mother who screwed me, my sister and brother up. My mum is a "dillusional paranoid manic depressive" person. This made for a very odd upbringing. She would think the phones were bugged and that we had creatures living in our bellies. She thought everyone was a bastard out to get at her. We knew no different so her mad ramblings and unbelievably weird behaviour were "normal" for us. The thing I think affected me most about my mum is that I couldn't talk to her. Most of the times I tried to she would twist everything you said to make it about her and her problems. Otherwise she would seem to take notice but then, a month later she would mention it all back to you but she would have warped it into something else in her mind and we soon learned that confiding in mum meant it made her ill and we felt guilty about that. So effectively, we had no mum. Most of the time though, she laid in bed. She stared through you and did'nt hear a word you said to her. She'd laugh to herself and was completely unaware you were even in the room. It was awful. I felt terribly neglected.

There were times of the day that mum gave us attention though. Feeding time. The only time she seemed to give me any attention was when she was feeding me. It was the only time she would praise me or love me at all. She never asked about school or how I was. She'd only ever ask if I was hungry. She made me eat even when I didn't want to. She gave me adult portions and only praised me when I cleared the plate.

As for dad, he was very emotionally closed to all of us. Always working and wound up. He loves us dearly but doesn't have the emotional capacity to express it. He hated any kind of emoton being expressed when we were young. If we cried or tried to express ANYTHING he couldn't emotionally deal with we were called stupid, told that the emotion was stupid and that we would have to stop it.

So there was no comfort or outward love from either parent. We learned to not express ourselves and had no parent figure to talk to or look up to.

Repressing all this emotion made my brother a very violent person. At 9 years my senior, he became my daily nightmare. He was abusive and violent to EVERYONE in the home. Including my elderly grandmother. It wasn't his fault and he isn't like that as an adult. It was purely the up-bringing we had. My sister was the one who I could go to but she was still a child herself. She left home as soon as she could. She didnt want to leave me behind but she was 7 years older so i couldnt go with her.

So without any role models and no one to interact with or learn relationships from, I became eager to please and wanted attention/love from anyone who would spare the time for me as I got older. When I was 14 I was raped by my teen sweethearts brother. He was 21. He got me drunk and raped me on his bathroom floor. I was so drunk (first time I ever tasted alcohol) I wasn't even concious through all of it. I kept waking and knowing I should try to stop it but also feeling it was expected of me. Afterwards he told everyone I had slept with him and I didn't even have enough self esteem to realise he had no right to do what he did to me. Everyone called me names and it really upset my "teen sweetheart". He was the first person I had grown close to in my entire life and he thought I was a slag because I slept with his brother. At no time did it occur to me to stand up for myself and say I didn't do it willingly. I felt nothing but shame and disgust for myself and of course, for the rape. It was not how I was meant to lose my virginity at all.

By 17 I thought sex was all that was expected from me and so I did it with anyone who asked. (well almost anyone but I did manage to avoid doing it at times). I just thought that was my function. I didn't like it. In fact I dreaded it but I thought it would make me liked and maybe even loved. All I ever wanted was for someone to really adore me but of course, if anyone ever really had...I wouldnt have known how to develop it past the sex. I was emotionally fucked beyond belief. I had no confidence and just learned to be bubbly and accommodating. My childhood had taught me to emotionally detach and mask everything. Pretend everything was fine and that there was no emotional turmoil.

All through this I was fat and constantly felt used and ashamed. Everything became this awful cycle that I didn't know how to escape from. I simply didn't have the emotional growth to trust myself or to believe in myself so everything just happened "at" me for years. The only thing I still believed was that things were only good when I was eating. The only time my mum could be proud of me and the only time I could be numb from everthing I felt.

So all of this and more besides will be coming out in my sessions prehaps. That is what scares me. I dont want to get raw again. The part of me that can detach so easily means I can say everything I have been through very casually but the part of me that needs to confront it all and deal with it will pour out of control when the scab is picked off again. Whilst I really want to finally work through it all, I am really scared about how I will feel and what it will change. What it will mean to my life as it is.

For every bit of excitement I feel about starting Lighterlife, I feel every bit as daunted too. I hope this is a journey that wont send me to a loony bin!