Healing & Dealing with Emotions

You all noticed that I took a bit of break from blogging. There was a lot going on in my life and at that time I couldn't process it and am still struggling to process it even today. I won't go into details but I thought it would be a good post to talk about how we all deal with emotions, healing, and our WLS.

I was in a very emotional and high stress situation that impacted my whole being...my life...my daily in and out of what is life. So with that came a wave of emotion that flooded me...I felt as if the breath had been knocked out of me - I literally didn't know if I knew how to go moment to moment. I had been hurt and that pain dug up the past...the evil dark past of both my own life and my pre-WLS life. It was not something that was pretty. I was in a dark place, but am thankful that I had tools and a great team of support and doctors to assit me in the journey to be okay.

Immediately when the incident happened bad behaviour and temptation seemed to be all around me. I wanted donuts, cookies, ice cream. I wanted to sit on the couch and do nothing. Activity wasn't in the game plan. I wanted to sleep until I couldn't sleep anymore and then would head to the couch. I didn't work out. I didn't eat on my diet totally - I did stay on my meds and vitamin regimine, but that is out of habit. I didn't want to take care of me.

This has been the biggest hurdle for me since my surgery 2 years ago. This emotional period wasn't the best of me as I will honestly tell you I felt like a zombie going from work to home and back again. I didn't sleep well, I wasn't eating well, and I felt like a big ball of nerves. Suddenly old behavious that I haven't taken part in for years were back inside my head and I admit I did give in to some. I ate that cookie, I had that donut, and I ate carbs. Ironically I didn't dump - didn't get sick, but I didn't feel as clean and useful as I am when I'm doing what I need to do to take care of me. I made these choices. I own up to them and I talked through my feelings about why I chose to do it.

I admit I'm human. I have bad habits and as a WLS patient those don't go away even though I have altered guts.

I admit that eating wrong isn't the answer. Eating to fill a hole didn't fill the hole. I was still feeling all those emotions that I was feeling....I just ate bad stuff. When I write that down you realize - WOW that doesn't make sense...but I'm not the first one to do this.

I admit that I can deal with my feelings in better ways but I'm also honest in recognizing that I'm an emotional eater and have been my whole life. This has just been the first huge instance when my old self took over like a ghost inhabiting a body....it was not pretty and I'm not proud of myself. I'm also not proud that I allowed depression to take over how it did and dictact how I felt more than how I really felt, but we are human and we are real.

I admit that I know some new triggers that I didn't know I had - I can recognize (because I wrote them down) what these might be in the future and though I'm not ready to share them it is a HUGE step for me to have this list so that I can work on them so that if something does happen in the future - I will be prepared.

We all handle stress and emotions differently. I have to realize that alongside my post WLS body my anxiety, depression, and PTSD is part of me and that impacts my lense of how I see, deal, and handle parts of my life. Though it makes situations harder to deal with, it isn't impossible. It is all about learning about you - and I don't think you ever really stop learning about yourself.