5

BREAKING NEWS: a wild appointment appears!

Not long after privately booking my private appointment with a private therapist in Southampton, April House phoned me to say there was a slot and did I want it. So I bailed on unfettered neoliberalism (£30 per appointment for students), and fell back on the NHS a week later. This place is light years away in Bitterne, and as I’ve mentioned, there’s no direct bus service from Portswood, which is really handy given that probably a damn fair amount of disordered eaters are at Southampton Uni. However, my wonderful housemate offered to give me a lift in his superb yellow car, and upon arrival I was greeted by a girl who looked both smaller and younger than me who turned out to be my clinical psychologist;  her first week on the job. I was asked to fill out the same crazy-measuring tick sheets and was asked again what I Normally Eat. After a year and a half of la folie, I have finally begun my treatment.

Between this and my initial Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, I went along to one of Student Minds’ ED group therapy sessions I’d spied on the student union calendar. I met some wonderful people and although it’s not there to replace treatment it was great just to get a load off my (flat) chest, reassured by the presence of SUSU the cat. I highly recommend these sessions to those looking to meet others sharing the same unfortunate mentality.

Cycling over to April House that Friday I had absolutely no expectations, high nor low, as a CBT newbie. I’ve regrettably been one of those people who believed in independent ‘rationalising-away’ of psychological disorders, but being in the clutches of a hunger-obsession has made me re-evaluate. With my pint-sized therapist I basically mapped out my thoughts, behaviours, feelings, and physiology and then made a timeline of important events in my life. From my childhood shame at swimming lessons to my recent breakdown at a bowl of intolerable noodles in Chinatown, my eyes were opened to a whole canister of potential underlying causes I had completely overlooked. My ‘homework’ is to record everything I eat in the coming week and my subsequent feeeeelings, a task I am throwing myself at with extreme gusto. If only I had the same gusto for actual ingestion.