My shrink called me fat

"You know, you have changed a lot in the past two years. The first time you walked into this room you were much thicker than you are now. You have shed your protective layer of fat."

...

"Excuse me?"

"You were obviously protecting yourself from men by being unattractive. Now you are no longer protected by your armour of flesh. You are no longer fat.This means you want to be attractive to men. "

By this time I'm completely amused.

"So now, what am I? Fat, medium, normal?"

"Normal, of course. You're absolutely average."

"So the difference between me being fat and me being average is 15 pounds? Because that's all the weight I lost. Would you really call that a huge difference, for someone who is 5'10? Because it's not. And I don't think you should associate "flesh" with unattractiveness, it's very reductive."

So he told me he was sorry he hurt my feelings. But he didn't. I don't think fat is a bad word, it's a descriptor. I disagree that fat, or flesh, are symptoms of a life less lived, less enjoyed.

Overanalyse this!

« What’s the use of being overanalytical about everything ? What’s the use of being so emotional ? »
I must have heard this a million times in my life, and it is always a source of mingled irritation and amusement. I am very sensitive to people’s moods and behaviours. I don’t react to things because it’s useful-I just do. I like understanding the way people act. I like wondering what’s the link between a friend’s endless partying and the fact that her father has remarried. I like investigating mentally: why do I suddenly feel sad about something?

I’ll be the first to admit that this overanalytical behaviour is probably a secondary effect of my analysis. When you are getting over depression, you are taught to identify “triggers” that you can then work around. Say you are always depressed after listening to Malher symphonies (check) or after seeing a critical family member, you’ll avoid these triggers when particularly vulnerable.

Being overanalytical also has some social advantages for someone as shy as I am; I’ve become quite adept at predicting people’s reactions (once I know them a bit, obviously), and this avoids awkwardness. Would I be better off by just asking :”What’s wrong?” Often, yes. I’ve been trying actually to stop making projections and just ask when I’m not sure of why someone is angry/sad/perplexed. Being straightforward is also a time saver, since you avoid the endless handwringing of the overanalytical species.

But let me defend my kind: many “straightforward” people are not good at defining what ails them, or how they are affected by events, because they aren’t prone to overanalysis. They’ll just try to solve the problem. It’s much more difficult to solve a problem the source of which is unclear. Just as frequently as my less emotional friends have helped me muddle through a situation by asking clear questions and underlining my overreactions, I have been able to reciprocate by explaining the emotional undercurrents of an argument. As much as I sometimes wish I could be a hermit, we are a social species. We can’t rely on others to behave the way we would. Only our own reactions make sense to us. My sad habit of always wondering why, where and when has helped me be more respectful of people’s choices, especially when they go against my own reactions or beliefs.

This being said, it’s often a relief to me when I spend time with people who are blunt and to the purpose. They pull me out of my own head, and laugh at my interpretations of their behaviour. But in the end, little do they know that for all my histrionics, I am far more accepting of their idiosyncrasies than they could ever imagine.

Family trouble

I've just come back from a lovely lazy day spent with my friend Am, her husband Vic and their cute baby Syméon. They are my age and PhD students, yet they make this parenting thing work. They've been married for some time now, and their parents have been married for a really long time as well. It made me think about my own family and my relationship to families.

Obviously I have a lot to say on this topic, as would anyone. We are molded by our childhoods and most people can be separated in two groups: those who are very close to their parents and those who break ties almost completely. It's hard to stay in the middle.

I'm in a tricky situation.When I tried to kill myself, I hurt my family for ever. They did not read this as my own struggle, my own battle: it was a reflection on their performance as parents or sibling. I understand this completely. If I did not have depression I would read the same mute accusations in my behaviour than they did.

So now I feel I have this huge debt towards them. Although I know that I won't ever try again, I can't take away the worry and the guilt they feel. All the love I can show won't erase their pain.

That's the way life goes, doesn't it? We try to be perfect in our relationships, we try to be in the right, to be the person who's behaving well. And then we're the bad guy. And there may well be no way to make that change.
What has been difficult for me is to accept that I have hurt my family and made them go through hell, but that I need to move on from that. I can't change what I did, but I don't have to obsess about it.

And spending the day with a baby reminded me how free I am. I'm single and childless: the world is my oyster! All the ties I have are my own choice: I choose to love and respect my family and treat them in the best way possible, but I want it to be a choice, not the consequence of something I did three years ago. So while I hope one day they forgive and forget, in the meantime I'll discover the world and become a happy person. In the end, that's what they also want for me.

Things change

Things change, baby.

Almost seven months after the break-up, I'm calling my ex my friend, because he is. I'm going on dates and trying to feel single again. As predicted in May, I'm no longer in the noisy despair stage: pain happens, but the main mode is numbness and quiet indifference.

So a lot has changed in a way. Has it?

Depression makes you wary of trying to define yourself by your behaviour. I am not my depression. It is a part of me, but I don't want it to define me. I want my good traits to define me, but depression makes it hard sometimes to define those.

When I was X's girlfriend, he would often complain about my tendency to "fish" for compliments. I did. I needed an exterior eye to correct my deformed inner one. I am acutely aware that my vision of myself is flawed. But see, I am flawed too. And this break-up has made me realize some things that I always feared to articulate, in case they would be self-fulfilling prophecies.

I was always scared that "the real me" would be repulsive to others (friends, family, boyfriends). And then I met X. He loved me despite my defects. I told him about my depression, my eating disorder, my insecurities and yet, he loved me.

Until he didn't.

I entirely accept what happened, and in a way, this acceptance is my problem. Because if a man tells me that I am too dark, too heavy, too difficult, he will be telling me what I already feel, what I already know. That ultimately, my good qualities cannot compensate for the bad ones. When X told me he felt trapped, I understood that I was the problem. When, you know, it's always more complicated than that.

So as I gingerly dip a toe in the murky waters of flirtation and seduction after years of coupledom, I've consciously or not defined what is palatable and what is not. It's OK for me to complain laughingly about feeling under the weather and then switch the topic to something general. It's not OK to say what I really feel. Because that would be scary. And in the end, it's my own fucking responsability, no one else's.

At the moment, someone must have given me a Love Magnet, because I am being propositioned all the time. My stock is up. Yet something holds me back-and that something is the fear that once again, I am misleading these people into something they may not want to handle. I told X about my problems, but he didn't believe me, as he later admitted. Damned if I show my true colors, damned if I don't.

It's exhausting to live with demons on your shoulder. We all have those, although they may differ. Jealousy, greed, anger, sadness. Pick your poison. It's so exhausting to pretent they don't exist.

I knew I wasn't going to react to this break-up the way it was expected of me. My anger was short-lived. My bitterness almost non-existent. My affection and respect for my ex did not dissolve into ether, they morphed into something else.
I came to see myself as a list of pros and cons, the way X saw me, with the column of cons outweighing the pros.

Sometimes I still do.

And I want that to change.

Choices, choices

I hate this armchair, but I try to settle comfortably. I am paying for this, after all.
"So let's pick up where we stopped last week. Why don't you want to have children?"
I look at him. He's scratching his nose, not looking like an inquisitor at all. I smile.
"I don't want anyone to have my genes."
"What's wrong with your genes?"
"I'm chronically depressed." I wave an airy hand. And all that. I also have really bad blood circulation and asthma. But those don't count. They aren't life-threatening. They don't make you want to die. Or try to die.
"Do you believe depression is genetic?"
"I believe that it is, yes. And even if it's not, how could I bring up someone if I'm sad a lot? Wouldn't it be unfair on the child?"
I was brought up by someone with addiction. I know what it feels when your love is not enough for someone to change, not enough to make them happy. When you are a child, you don't know happiness is something you make for yourself. You think it's your fault.
"Why do you believe it's genetic?"
"I don't want to believe I had a choice in this."
I didn't choose to be alive. A lot of the time I wish I weren't. I'm stuck here for the best and for the worse. And my best is amazing. And my worse is soul-killing.
"I don't want to believe that I chose depression for myself."
"You've been through a lot."
"No, I haven't. And even if I had, it wouldn't change anything to the fact that it's my responsability to go beyond my bad experiences to make something of myself. If it's something wrong in my genome, my stumbles don't make me feel so guilty."

I choose to not be angry; I choose to forgive and forget, I choose to fight for what I care for.

"Maybe everything is a choice."
"Life isn't."
"Yes it is. You're here. You're choosing to remain alive. You're choosing to see me. You're choosing to get better. Every morning you go running to pump some endorphins in yourself and make yourself happier."
I can't see through my tears.
"Sometimes I feel no one knows what this feels like. How bloody hard it is. That no one cares."
"Don't you think I care?"
"I don't know."
My family cares. My friends care. But in the end, the shrink is right.

I choose this struggle, and I will run again tomorrow, and I'll think of the things I love and am passionate about. I'll see my friends and family. I'll cuddle with the cats and make really stupid jokes.

Whatever is coming, I may not be ready, but I choose to pretend I am. Give it to me, and watch me take it.

I choose to be a grown-up.

Disguises

I'm wearing my grown-up dress. It's got a big skirt and a slim top, and I pair it with a blazer and some heels. I'm wearing this dress because I spent all day whoring myself out at the Sciences Po Business convention, giving my CVs and asking for money.Ironically, this took place in the Paris House of Chemistry. It feels quite strange, that this is a thing people do every day, when they ask for grants, for scholarships, and yet I find it so difficult. Give me!Money! On my shoulder you can see my big bruise-scratch that I got from tripping over a branch while running with the track team. Stupid. I also have a couple of beauties on each of my knees. I'm clumsy. Here's the thing: I've been covering up a lot of my bruises and of my hurts recently. On the one hand I deal with them better if I pretend they're simply not there. On the other, I know that they will hurt even more when I attend to them. Scary prospect. All these thoughts collided when I had lunch with my friend L from Lyon today. I felt a rush of nostalgia for all the good times we had together and I loved hearing about all the things she is doing. She admired my outfit and told me how old-ladyish I looked. I took off my top and showed her some of my AMAZING SPORT injuries. She giggled. "I guess some things don't change." I'm so used to people asking me to change, to always improve, that I found something wonderful in that shedding of my disguise.

The Great Escape

I pride myself on having great escapism skills. I can have a conversation and still be elsewhere, although I can't if the conversation is slightly more sophisticated than the weather. I can be in class and yet someplace else, also not recommended but sometimes essential. I like to think of it as a skill, and of myself on being a great escape artist, but these last few days I've been trying to live in the moment a bit more, and stop yearning for another time or another place.

I tried this successfully a few times: during one of those "in the supermarket queue" moments of awkwardness, where half conversations are born and killed, I was incredibly there and attentive. During a class on statistics, not the most rrrrriveting of subjects, I tried to be 100% focused. And while reading a book on Microeconomics, I concentrated on every word as if it were a sacred text.

I think this awareness technique is better for me when I'm stressed or depressed, because it eases the feeling of virtuality and loneliness that comes with unhappiness.

However, when a boring lady tried to draw me into her maze of shopping information in the bus this morning, I stared at her forehead, nodded at her, and remained firmly inside myself, happily escaped from the world. Sometimes it's best not to listen.

The question that has no answer

Every Thursday afternoon, I have a routine. I walk up the hill of the Quartier Latin in Paris, I stop in front of the bicycle shop and fantasize about owning that sweet blue number. I walk on until I arrive in front of a primary school, and punch in the entrance code of a small, inconspicuous building. I go up to the second floor. I ring the door bell. A slight man opens the door, shakes my hand, takes me to the waiting room. When the previous patient leaves, he comes to fetch me and I sit in the large leather armchair, feeling overly large and strange.

How was your week?

I take some time to answer this. Because there are so many answers, every time. It went fine. I did loads of things. I talked to people I don't know and it wasn't scary.

So I answer.

It was OK. But I'm still sad.

Why are you sad?

Why am I sad, indeed. I don't know, Mr Shrinko. Please open my head and empty it of all its shit. It's that same bloody question I always have to answer. Why did you try to commit suicide? Why do you cry for hours? Why does getting up feel like picking up the globe? How can YOU complain? What's wrong with you?

I get why I should ask myself this question. It has to begin somewhere. But the truth is, every answer I give (I'm stressed, I'm not good enough, my family is going to pieces) is never the truth. I don't feel like I belong here, never have. But that doesn't mean I don't try. I straighten myself up and I look at him straight in the eyes, and I tell him that next week I'll feel better. Or that I know it's just a phase. And he knows that I'm not being honest, but something more important for me: I'm being optimistic.

See you next week.

So if I know how the routine goes, why do I go back?

I want to be happy. I will be happy. I believe in me.
Sometimes I find the right answers.

How to choose your therapist (or do they choose you?)

My first experience with a therapist was at my university in America, where foreign students were encouraged to talk to someone in case they had adaptation problems. This was a good initiative and since I was homesick (and also without realizing it at the time spiraling down into depression), I booked a meeting with Rachel.
Rachel was a kind person but she was incredibly wrong for me, for several reasons.
1)She was easy to read.
Let me clarify: I could tell exactly how she reacted to all my disclosures and which ones hit home. She was clearly a troubled eater, I guessed that early in our conversations from her way of talking. She was constantly reassuring me about my weight, which is neither here nor there. It's not about the weight for me. It's about loving myself. However, she had a fixation on weight and it showed. I ended up not talking to her honestly because I knew in advance how she would react and that it hurt her feelings that I , a slimmer person than she, should feel unlovable.

2)She was not subtle.
My maternal language is French. I was talking to her in English. This obviously has consequences for therapy. I would often try to explain why some words had a special meaning to me because they were "new", or reminded me of a French word that had impacted me in some way. She would never understand this and always tell me that "it's the same word, just in a different language."

3)She let herself be manipulated by me
I'd like to emphasize the fact that I don't think she was bad at her job, just bad for me. I managed to have her prescribe me the medication I wanted to take to commit suicide. I never told her I had tried to kill myself. I never trusted her enough, because she hadn't been able to understand my deviousness.

My second therapist was a Lacanian psychotherapist who believed that only complete silence on his part would reveal my pain. I quickly got freaked out by the eery silence pervading all our "conversations" and gave up.

My current therapist is a psychiatrist. He is very good at deciphering my moods, never lets himself be misled by me. He avoids any identification and gently reproves me when I try to get him involved in my story. For the time being, he is the right person for me. Funnily enough, I feel that he chose me rather than the other way round: during our first talk he looked at me earnestly, and then told me to come back next week because we had work to do. I felt like I'd just passed a successful test. Yes, you are demented enough for me!
So if at first you don't succeed, try again. I believe many could benefit from therapy, but that we all have different needs. So trying out different methods can be necessary. Or you can be lucky and find someone perfect for you on your first try.

I find therapy incredibly challenging. I often ponder our discussions during the entire week after our meeting. I often leave the office crying or very sad, but it has taught me so much about myself.

Post-natal Depression

My dearest friend A has just had a beautiful baby son (and I don't even like babies!) and fears that she is suffering from post-natal depression.
I had told her during her pregnancy that my mother had had an awful time after giving birth to me. This being 23 years ago, PND was not commonly diagnosed and mothers who did not instantly bond with their children were judged by the doctors treating them and were seldom sent to see a mental health provider. Symeon is only two weeks old, and A is already reaching out to her friends asking for pointers and helpful advice.
My heart bleeds for her. I've been through depression and I can't imagine the strain of having to care for a new-born while coping with the horrendous backlash of emotional distress depression brings in its midst. However, I am glad that I told her about it and that she is able to ask for help. Instead of making mothers feel guilty about how they feel, we should always try to help them in this time of need.

Instead of constantly labelling women "emotional", "irrational" or "hysterical", can't we just acknowledge the diversity of experiences we can feel? Science has too often reduced us to the sum of our (private) parts; I strongly applaud the new transparency that enables us to understand how we feel.

Now if only the Scientologists would shut up...