Nasty scale & a therapy session

The scale was very nasty to me this morning, showing a 3 pound gain!! ACK! Mentally, I can blow it off, but it's like an emotional setback. Making me feel like I've worked for the past two weeks for NOTHING. In my head, I know that's not true. My metabolism is up, I feel better and my clothes are (somewhat minutely) looser. I'm doing all the right things, and eventually the scale will catch up. We went out for dinner last night, and whilst I avoided bread and other bad carbs, when we came home I felt like my legs were swelling up. So, it's probably too much salt yesterday. But still, it makes me want to scream!

Last night I told my therapist about most of what I discovered in the past week. He didn't argue with me about the superiority/inferiority complex, the narcissism and my being emotionally sensitive. But he did congratulate me on being able to see that those are qualities I'm expressing at current. He also thought it was greatly insightful to be able to tie it into my weight problem. He likened it to spokes on a wheel...which makes sense. He also said narcissism is like a pendulum...swinging from self love to self hate. AND he even watched me do it when I started saying, "oh, this is all so meaningless. Why should this matter. My problems are so small. Compared to Darfur, the Holocaust, babies dying, people being tortured, or even just people with monetary problems, I really have no right to complain."

He suggested that all these things start very early in life--like in the first couple of years. This makes it so difficult for me to identify what the problem is. I do know that my brothers birth, when I was 3 years old, was extremely stressful. My parents did not expect twins. My mother was hemorrhaging, and one of the twins was blue, with a hernia. The were a month early, and weighed like 4 pounds each. To add to that, my grandfather on my fathers side had a routine prostate surgery, and ended up dying extremely fast and abruptly just down the hall from my mother's hospital room. My therapist has asked me many times, "and where was Martha during all this?" My response is always something like, "oh, probably at my grandparents."

I was also able to tie my perfectionism into all this somehow with this analogy: Its like whatever I do, I never feel like I nail it. If whatever task is a staircase, I always feel like I climb to the next to last step--or even half way from the top step. And then I beat myself up for not being the best, or at the top position. This is all fine and good. However, if any external criticism comes my way, the staircase crumbles and I fall. I said this is because, of my thinking: "Well, that's just my own internal battle, but if someone else has seen my shortcomings, they must be real. And probably far worse than I actually thought."

The bottom line was that I really don't like myself, and often hate myself. Then, I started swinging on that narcissistic pendulum... But, anyways, he asked when this started and what it would take to make me like/love myself again. This was right at the end of the session, so my quick answer was lightness. I want to be light hearted, not take everything so seriously.

My homework for the week was to notice all the moments of lightness I experience. They mostly involve my Babe, but I suspect there will be others:)