To be in control there has to be no rules to break

My relationship with food and exercise is all about hyper awareness of everything. Everything is calculated and judged as good or bad accordingly.
If I feel I’ve over eaten then I would be obliged, based on my rules, to fast for a certain number of hours.
At some point, daily restriction makes me so desperate to eat that I “binge”- usually meaning a normal calorie level instead of my acceptable calorie allowance (again all this is determined by the rules).
So how the hell can the cycle be broken?! Surely if the rules are abandoned then the whole thing just flies out of control and I would eat anything and everything and become disgustingly obese … Or does it?
Therapy this week made me think that maybe if there are no rules, then no food is terrifying or off limits. Food would just what it is: food. Not a punishment or a reward; not an emotional numbing device; not the most important thing in my mind; just food.

IAPT therapy and eating disorders

I am currently being treated in the high intensity iapt service. I hadn’t heard much about the iapt thing until I got referred, and so I did some investigation into it online. Initially I was a little confused, as it seemed that Body Dysmorphic Disorder was as close to ed’s as iapt went. I was psyching myself up for some more pointless therapy.
But then I got there and was utterly surprised. My therapist is a clinical psychologist who has done the extra work to be a HI therapist. Therefore, her educational background is very broad in terms of the kind of psychological issues she has studied. Even so, I know that ed clients aren’t people that she works with regularly.
From personal experience I knew that an ed service probably wasn’t the way to go though. The waiting lists are long and the cases are usually prioritised by physical risk; I’m not dying so they would probably assess me and send me on my way.
Since starting my iapt cbt, I have found documents online about particular iapt services that do specifically say some ed clients are seen in their services. All I can say is that I’m so glad I took this option.
My therapist is warm, kind, organised and helpful. She has books about cbt in eating disorders and is giving me ed specific homework. She also recognises the need for medical input and so I am being monitored by a gp- like I would be in a ed service. She has created a formulation that merges my ed, anxiety, depression and self esteem into one, and has helped me through the hard parts of starting antidepressant medication.
I feel like she might be the person who can really help me 🙂
I’m also totally fascinated by therapists. I kinda find it hard to imagine them as people outside of work! It must be a really rewarding job, and I suppose their own life experiences probably make them better at understanding others.