As part of the preparatory process for surgery, my medical team had me visit with a “Clinical Psychologist” or in Rowena speak, a “shrink lady”! I have to admit that I did feel a little daunted by this prospect… I had never been to see anyone in this field before… Some of you (this would be my very rude friends!!!) might well say that this was a visit long overdue! Hmmm…
Anyhow it was not scary at all! It was just like having a chat with a friend… the only thing missing was a coffee cup! As part of my first consultation (I had two…), I was required to complete a very long questionnaire… This had been designed especially to be used for bariatric patients with answers fed into a computer program which would then spit out any “warning triggers”… I was pretty impressed with this and did not really anticipate hearing about anything that I wasn’t already aware of…
Jump forward to post surgery and my follow-up consult… How was I tracking? Yep good… How was I feeling? Yep awesome… Did I have any worries… Nope, none really! Well here are your computer results… Your responses indicate a “binge eating mentality”… Say what??? I would never, ever have classed myself as a binge eater and I was quite taken aback… Of course my “shrink lady” was just beautiful and settled me straight away… No I wasn’t one of “those” binge eaters… but “Row, if there is an open packet of lollies can you stop at just a few…” Ohhhh…. (insert a light bulb here…) OK… I get it now…
Our heads are tricky things and when we are in the right space we can be unstoppable… The trick is to recognise when we are going down a more destructive pathway and to stop and turn ourselves around… To not follow through with what is often a more familiar (and easier!!!) route… To be mindful… At every step, of what we do, what we eat and how we go about the “day-to-day”… And to realise that when we fall off the wagon we just need to get back on… Not stress over the fact that we fell off!
To date I haven’t felt the need to visit with my shrink lady again but it is such a comfort to know that such a resource is at hand should I need to…
