If I am in anyone's direct line of sight when these topics are discussed, or if I am visible to anyone when asked to "connect with" or "be aware of"the fact that I even have a fucking body, I almost invariably: (a) have a full blown panic attack, (b)storm out and refuse to participate, or (c) pout in the corner scowling in silence... This even happens in individual therapy sessions, medical appointments, and everyday occurrences, probably because the second I think about my disgusting and overwhelming "PRESENCE" I immediately want to obliterate it into nothing... Seriously, put me in a Yoga class, ask me to role play, or "notice my (fucking) breathing" and watch the fun..
I begin having a veritable tsunami of disturbing and horrible thoughts and ideas, and will be in another room sobbing, breathless, popping a Klonopin, or vomiting within the first 3 minutes... Then I'll be playing out scenarios in my mind for the remainder of the day involving grotesque self-evisceration... Where I imagine carving all of the fat and muscle off of my body with an oversized potato peeler, then replacing my skin neatly over the remaining skeleton...
Trust me, the serial killer-esque nature of this image is not lost on me...
Also believe me when I say that you would cry too if this was your response to something as innocuous as a Doward-Facing Dog pose...
In addition to my desperation not to acknowledge the existence of my own body, I am even more determined for the rest of the world to forget that it exists as well... The fantasy I have when I have to talk about a body part, or how I look, or how I see myself, in front of anyone, typically involves transforming into a disembodied head... I become consumed with the fear that the second that I mention anything regarding my appearance, everyone will suddenly hyperfocus on my flaws, notice how gross I really am... The scales will fall from the eyes of those present and there I'll be in my true form: Jabba the Hut's stunt double...
Part of me knows all of this is highly irrational, but that does absolutely fuck all to change the horror movie that plays in my mind... And although logically, I know that "The Spotlight Effect" is deeply at work in me and almost certainly everyone I encounter, I still long for a cloak of invisibility to wrap around my body, leaving just a floating head to face the world...
Behavioral researchers Gilovich, Medvec, and Savitsky did an experiment almost bordering on inhumane to examine this "Spotlight Effect" in 2000. They describe the phenomenon as an overestimation of the extent to which others actually give a shit about what you are doing or how you appear... especially when you fuck up or are otherwise doing something you perceive to be socially unacceptable... Put simply, when you make a mistake or possess a flaw, you are suddenly the center of the universe. The spotlight is fixed on you and the horrifying spectacle that is your botched life is on display for the world to see. To challenge this erroneous perception we all supposedly possess, Gilovich and Co., evil geniuses that they were, required college students to wear a fucking Barry Manilow t-shirt... because it doesn't get any more humiliating than that, right? Then they each were led into a room full of other students for a bit, then back out eventually, and allowed to remove the loathsome garment... Once they had slightly recovered from the social trauma, the researchers asked the Barry Manilow Fan Club how many people they thought noticed their fashion faux pas. When compared to how many people in the room actually gave a flying fuck, the t-shirt group significantly overestimated how many people noticed...
While I should find reassurance in the fact that it is highly unlikely that others are judging me by my own ridiculous standards, somehow, it doesn't diminish the wattage of the spotlight...
I recall a group I had weekly in one of my countless treatment programs in which the therapist had these little blank body diagrams:
And every week we would have to "accept" a new body part, write the date on the diagram, and say some positive shit about that part... Keeping in mind that this is an eating disorder clinic, I was not alone when I reluctantly selected one eye one week, the other the next, working my way around each ear, each eyebrow, each hand and foot, my hair, top lip, bottom lip, until eventually months had gone by and I was running low on acceptable parts...
Everything from my neck, down to the stumps of my wrists and ankles could take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut... Which in retrospect is probably how I imagined those parts appeared, soft, puffy, greasy sugar-coated evil with a giant hole in the middle...
So the therapist running the group, known by the patients as the gentlest hard-ass in the facility, had a tendency to aggressively challenge our disorders while deeply empathizing with the patient, the person, left in the ED's wake... As one girl would later put it, she would "make you cry, then start crying with you, making you cry even harder..."
So we are going around the table, each accepting a part, or pretending to, and I am frantically searching my mind for something, anything, that I could honestly learn to live with... I was oddly determined, for some reason, to be sincere when I accepted parts... it was a huge deal to me...
I have always been rubbed the wrong way by the therapeutic concept of "Fake it til you make it." For me, manufacturing sentiments that I didn't possess for show was something I did constantly with everyone outside of treatment, and the outcome of this pretense was almost always to self-destruct... So I tried my damnedest when in therapy not to conceal my true emotions, with the hope that it would liberate me from my destructive ways...
"Your turn..."
Deer in the headlights... Still staring at the diagram, at the mowhawk and representations of my tattoos I had drawn in previous weeks... Suffocating, suppressing tears, eyeballing the door, ready to run...
"I can't. There are no more parts."
"Is there one you think you can work on accepting?"
"No."
"Would you like some help from the group?"
"NO!"
Tears are now pouring down my face, heat and blood are rushing to my cheeks and chest...
"NO! STOP LOOKING AT ME!" I sobbed to the entire room. Spotlight much?
I got up to leave the room.
I had run out of the facility to my car once before, stolen my keys from the front office, took off driving in the middle of a panic attack, vomited into a cup, chain-smoked 3 cigarettes, and almost crashed before returning to apologize and finish out the 10 hr a day intensive treatment program, the staff had not been amused... I had also run out on other occasions to purge in bushes, neighboring doctors offices, trash cans... I was not running out again...
The therapist rose to stop me, said my name sternly. But when I looked up to see her face, instead of the anger and frustration I had expected from her tone, this therapist, a year or two younger than me, but eons ahead in emotional maturity looked...sad? She had tears in her eyes, that she quickly blinked away with her back to the other patients as she faced me. My back was pressed against the door, my hand on the knob, her face shifted in and out of focus... blurred by tears... Surely she had given up, surely this was the last fucking straw, surely she had tired of my constant resistance... Nope, her face remained the same, a combination of helplessness, sadness, pity... "Hey, those are my feelings," I thought to myself... I mumbled to her that I wasn't running again, just please excuse me for the rest of the group...
I took a Klonopin, and plopped onto a beanbag in the common area, curled into the fetal position, and attempted to breathe... As I drifted into a post-panic nap, I found myself fascinated at the therapist's response to my tantrum... Was my self-image really that distorted? Was it that pitiful to see? Was it sad?
Its been almost a year and a half since this incident, but I think about it constantly still, replaying it in my mind...Even as I sit here now, in my oversized clothing, afraid to glance down or at be near reflective surfaces for more than a few minutes a day for months, I remain utterly baffled...
I have no idea what is real. I have no idea how I appear to others. I have no idea what my imaginary spotlight is actually exposing... Who even notices what I obsess over constantly... What do they really think when I slink off to purge or excuse myself from eating... Do they even care?
I remain oblivious...
I want to take off this damn Barry Milow t-shirt already... but I'm absolutely terrified of whats underneath it...
Love and Neurosis
No comments:
Post a Comment