So many things happened when scheduling that first appointment that if I had allowed them, they would have prevented me from beginning. There were two big ones that came close to doing me in.

First, before I made this appointment, I looked through the website and discovered there was more information than not about eating disorders. I didn’t have an eating disorder and this immediately threw me off. People with eating disorders, in my opinion, had anorexia, were extremely thin, etc. Thinness equaled eating disorder in my (lack of) knowledge.

Next, the original Registered Dietician (RD) that ‘M’ suggested wasn’t taking new patients, but they had another RD that was. I am someone that needs a basis for trust, it isn’t an automatic with me. That may come in the form of a referral via someone that I respect, from my own assessment, or another source, but if I don’t have it I feel a loss of control. This whole process was breaching my control issues anyway, so I wanted to throw in the towel at this news. As is obvious, I hadn’t invited God into this mess.

After some coaxing and grumbling, I made the appointment with the available RD and, surprise, God knew who I needed on this journey. He knew then and He knows now.

While waiting for my first session, a very underweight young lady came out. “See,” my twisty, messy thoughts began, “you don’t need to be here.” “These people are even wondering why you are here.” “You don’t belong here.” On and on my thoughts were trying to coax me to leave but I had already made eye contact with too many employees. How could I jump up and leave?

Appointment started, and I recounted the cupcake story that led me here. We tried to untangle some of the past diet failures. (I have been on so many “diets,” that to this day – a year-and-a-half later, I remember ones I forgot to tell her.) She jotted as I talked. I cautiously opened up to her that I felt I was an overachiever and a perfectionist and it made no sense that I could not achieve and maintain weight loss. She just nodded.

In the next few sessions, she approached the eating disorder issue, which I very quickly dismissed. “Eating disorders are anorexia, bulimia, things like that,” I quickly told her. She just nodded more. We talked about some family history, some patterns of eating, the starvation, the fact that I binged, and purged, on and on. I was so ashamed every week that I think I cried every session. I would resolve myself as I went in that I wouldn’t cry, but I felt so exposed and vulnerable and she hadn’t achieved pedestal status with me yet so I would just cry out of anxiety and fear.

At one of the sessions, she suggested I get the book “Life Without ED,” begin reading, and we would discuss. She warned me that this particular girl that wrote the book DID have anorexia, but I needed to read for content, that the anorexia wasn’t her main focus. She went up the ladder of the pedestal a little more each week as I could feel her “getting” me – she knew that the anorexia factor would be a stumbling block for me in this book.

I thought ED was a person when ‘ML’ first mentioned the book – Life Without “ED” – some jerk that had wrecked this girls life and now he was gone and this was her life. Okay, I could relate to that – I had a list of jerks that had wreaked havoc on my life. “None of them had been named ED, but I can maybe relate to this book after all,” I thought.

The first few pages in and it was perfectly clear ED was not a jerk ex that had caused chaos in this woman’s life. ED was her eating disorder – anorexia – that she cleverly named ED.

I got a pen and started circling, starring, underlining, exclamation pointing, WOWing, and more. As I read, it was as if this girl was, well, me. I was confused how we could be so similar – the same story, the same feelings, the same voices in our heads telling us we were worthless and worse, yet we were so different.

During our next session, ‘ML’ asked me what I thought about the book. “Well,” I said, “her and I have much in common.” Yes and what specifically? I start telling her things that I can relate to – “well I can relate to it all,” I say. “Outside of her eating disorder, we are the same person.”

She hints at the idea oh-so-gently that I do have an eating disorder. She makes more steps up on the pedestal because of her gentle approach. She knows this is brutal for me to digest and she makes the suggestion that at my next appointment, I see ‘C’, the “expert”, for an actual eating disorder evaluation. SIIIIGHHH. More unknown people to try and bring into this circle of chaos. “I don’t have an eating disorder, but Ok, whatever you think is best.”

This next visit was the absolute worst. ‘C’ was all that you envision a therapist being. Sitting crossed legged in the chair, fast-ish talking, holding a thick booklet on a clipboard of what I quickly learned were questions that would, in essence, slice me open and leave me exposed and vulnerable. It was like being asked to the “second” part of a bad date – no get-to-know-you or dinner, just the . . . second part.

As she rapid-fired questions and flipped pages, I was trying to explain some of my answers and she was having none of it. I’m an explainer to a fault, I wanted her to understand the answers I was giving her. Or possibly, I was attempting to explain away the truth.

I had never met her, after all, and she was asking me the most personal and painful questions one could be asked. Early family history? Early sexual abuse? How I used food? Was I a perfectionist? How I felt about myself? How I saw myself? On and on she pecked and pecked at me. My mounting anxiety was crippling me more and more with each painful question, which she appeared to be annoyed with because she kept glancing abruptly at my tapping fingers and legs. Nightmare. I was in a nightmare of pain where each thing that hurt me since forever was pulled out of it’s file, all of them at once, and were whirling around in a tiny room with a woman I had never met.

After the evaluation torture ended, she sat for a few minutes, jotting notes and then spoke. “This test is the (I can’t even begin to remember the name) test and it calculates the likelihood of you having an eating disorder,” she began. “On the scale of all the factors involved, you scored 8 out of 10,” the word EIGHT emphasized just a little much for my liking.

It possibly makes no sense, but it was hard to hear and even harder to believe. It was easier to believe the convincing lies of the enemy that had tainted my thinking for so long. That I was just a weak, out of control, failure. Those things were easier to believe than to think that all of my past had led to coping mechanisms that involved food.

The next visit with “ML,” and I expressed my struggles with “C.” “She’s just not for me, that was all too much,” I told her. She convinced me to just “try” to see her again, to discuss test results and work through some of the issues. The plan was to alternate weeks with “ML” and “C.” I reluctantly agreed to this plan, and seeing “C” the next week. In summary, “C”, sitting there in her chair crossed legged and sassy, asked me abruptly, “So, what do you want to discuss today?”

HARD. STOP.

What? You just ripped out most every piece of pain from me, things that I had no desire or emotion to deal with and then you sit here and ask flippantly what I want to discuss. I can’t recall what we even discussed that day, but “C” was so far from the pedestal that there was no going back now.

I let “ML” know in as kind of a way as possible that this relationship with “C” was irreparable and I wouldn’t be seeing her any longer.

There are some important things I want to mention here. There are people that God has put in this part of my life for a season, that served their purpose and I am now, after more than a year, okay with saying that they served (insert specific purpose) and they may or may not still be apart of this story.

“C” served her purpose of making this diagnosis and I am okay with that being her only role. I am in no way discouraging anyone that thinks they need a clinical evaluation to avoid it because of this particular disaster. Just the opposite actually. I would greatly encourage doing what needs to be done to better your life.

The long journey of work with “ML” and all that I discovered about eating disorders will be coming in hot in the next few days. Obvious plot twist. Anorexia isn’t the only eating disorder.