In therapy, yesterday, I was explaining my struggles with eating to my therapist. Since my early teens, I've grown less and less interested in food and feeding-- just standard anhedonia and avolition-- to the point I'm underweight.
She was asking if it was because I felt bad about myself, if I disliked my body. And I get why, I am female and a young adult, the prime demographic for restrictive eating disorders.
But it lead into an interesting explanation. I do not have a high nor low self-esteem; I do not think badly of myself, nor do I think well of myself; to me, I just exist, without any morality or value attached.
When I look into the mirror, I do not see a face I identify as 'me'... I just see a face. It moves when I move, it feels when I touch, sure, I recognise fully that it belongs to me, that it is my body and flesh. I do not experience any delusions around not being real, about my reflection not being my own.
But it's just a body. It's just like looking at a photo of someone else, or seeing them in real life (as if I ever go out and see others).
I have great trouble with the simple idea of living things being, well, living. I have great trouble with flesh having thoughts and experiences behind it. I know I am alive, I know I am conscious. Inside my own head, indeed, I am, I am so very alive.
But there is an overwhelming disconnect with the world around me. Not only dissociation, though that's sure a part of it. I just fundamentally cannot connect with things around me, cannot experience it as tangible and there. So how would I be able to judge it 'good' or 'bad' when it isn't even 'is'?













