realizations and reflections

I had a really good session with my therapist this morning.
Went in feeling tired and stressed and embarrassed and ready to process the whole meeting with my dietitian/weight thing. Plus, I had more to process as a friend of mine put in a pass to go to dinner with me tonight and her pass got denied. I can't help but think it is partially related to me and where I am at with things...and that makes me discouraged, but even moreso it makes me pissed.
Let me back up and explain.
So, i wrote earlier about my session with my dietitian not going as planned. Well, right before I went into that session I talked with my friend AND my dietitian about where we could go to dinner, etc. Then I had session, she informed me about where I stand weight wise, and voila! pass denied. Now, I do realize that there could be other reasons that the pass didn't get approved...reasons I may not even know about. But it messed with my head. I explained earlier about how embarrassed I feel and how I kept wondering what everyone was thinking of me and a gammut of other thoughts and feelings. I tend to do a lot of mind-reading, as my therapist so gently reminded me of today. Add in some embarrassment and a dash of guilt and you get a magic crystal ball. So, I processed these events with my therapist today, spending a good half a session venting about how people probably think I'm such a hypocrit now, and how I think I'll just cancel all my appointments with my dietitian from now on since I'm too embarrased to even show my face. Woah. Slow down, right? Well, that's what she had me do. Yes, those are legit issues but the degree of passion and anger I had when venting to her signaled that something else was really going on. I hadn't actually stopped to think about what was really fueling all of this madness until she made me stop and think about it.
Turns out, the real issues lie much deeper.
I've been feeling an enormous amount of pressure since leaving Laureate last September to be the perfect recovery role model. I've been terrified to admit when I have a bad day or slip up because, God forbid, I might actually be human and prone to making mistakes. I've felt this need to please everyone because I've caused years of worry and for once, can allow others the opportunity to catch a breath and not have to worry. This feeling of pressure has increased even more since moving back to tulsa. I desperately do not want to disappoint people that care the most about me...my parents, my team, my friends. I'm so afraid of disappointing people. It's always been easier to be sick because people just expect for your life to go nowhere, for your appointments to gradually get worse, your weight to drop, and your mood to become increasingly irratic and depressed. It's a lot harder to live up to people's expectations, continually work to not disappoint or let anyone down, and to do things the "right" way. Hence, my fear of success has always been greater than my fear of failure.
We also processed my level of stress and how I'm actually currently experiencing a lot of stress and yet I pretend like I have no stress whatsoever. Let's break it down. I just moved across the country, am living with a roommmate that I just met, trying to figure out how to budget, about to start a job, will be going to school starting in October, all while paying bills and applying to 5 different nursing programs (a mountain of stress in and of itself!). Clearly, the way in which I have been coping is simple avoidance. I just don't think about it, therefore it's not there. Or at least I can pretend it's not there until deadlines creep up on me and I have a meltdown because I didn't tackle the issues in time, or in a managable way.
All in all, my session allowed to take a look at what was underneath some of the superficial, surface level emotions and feelings. It now makes sense why I would have felt so disappointed and embarrassed hearing that I'm not exactly where I need to be physically right now, even though I had no reason to be embarrassed as most of it was stress related anyway, and i've still been doing recovery. It was just the idea that I had somehow let everyone down that got to me.
Oh, the people pleasing devil. How it gets me.
Recovery isn't always going to be perfect. In fact, nothing is ever going to be perfect, so why stress myself out over trying to be something that is nonexistent?
Some of my goals are to work on not personalizing things until I have checked them out with the right people (i intend to talk to my dietitian and ask her specifically if I disappointed or let anyone down.)
I'm also going to make plans and lists to help me stay organized and reduce some of the "overwhelmingness" i'm feeling.
I also intend on finding things here that I can do and find fun and relaxing :)
And that is about it.