Posted by headachequeen on October 5, 2004, at 15:42:29
In reply to Re: Thanks for the advice, posted by bridgey1128 on October 5, 2004, at 15:04:50
Oh, Bridgey, you are incredible... and such a special person... we are so fortunate to have you here...
I was not certain to whom the question was addressed and thought it might be you <gg>
Then I began to wonder if Topomax might be a med developed to battle that 'redhead thing" LOLI too have a weight problem... have been at both ends of the spectrum so to speak... as a teen I was anorexic, before anyone knew there was such a word, and before eating disorders had been discovered, but then I was battling the redhead gene before it was discovered too <g>..
Somewhere along the road, someone decided I was depressed and that had to be treated... I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, a lot of that exacerbated by the fact that I hate the area in which I live if any one wants my medical opinion, and the new take on SAD is that it is better handled if it is treated year round, so I was put on anti-depressives year round instead of when the symptoms hit... from being thin and anorexic and pathetically in need of a meal in appearance I suddenly became drastically overweight...
thanks to these wonderful meds... they also took away my wish and/or will to do anything which did not help the weight issue...
so we (I use the editorial we from force of habit and because there had to be two people in this body, one person could never be that large) ballooned up to around 209 at one time...
I agree with Bridgey... if one dresses carefully and doesn't slouch around one can manage to look reasonably decent to people around one... I had quite a high profile in the community and my weight was not a problem... but one cannot fool oneself
Why when I was in the nineties I was convinced I was overweight and worried terribly about my weight and would not eat... self image and self esteem are frightfully intertwined...At one point with careful dieting I made it back down to 140... and stayed there for a couple of years...but back it came... thanks to another round of medications... it seemed to be hopeless... and that created a genuine depression...
people would tell me I had nothing to be unhappy about... hello! Who is unhappy?? there is no connection and no similarity. One can be happy and be depressed all at the same time...eventually someone realised that some of the symptoms that had been classed as being depression were actually linked to the epilepsy and my doctor decided it was time to deal with it... my previous doctor didn't want to deal with it because there was such a stigma involved with epilepsy...
When I mentioned migraine to the neurologist he put me on Topomax... never had a migraine since and I am ecstatic... and I have lost so much weight... wish I could lose more... and maybe I will... but I am happy with the weight loss to date...
and while I learned to live with myself, that self image projection Bridgey speaks of, I am better able to live with me today...as for normal families...
my psychologist forbids the use of the word normal in any discussion. He says that there is really no means of assessing normal, there is no measuring stick so to speak. What is normal for one person is abnormal for the next.
Television has created such an abnormal image of the so-called normal family that we are all trying too hard to measure ourselves against them...
starting way back with Father Knows Best then there was The Brady Bunch and remember that one with Brian Keith and the gentleman's gentleman and the teen-age niece and the twins? and My Three Sons?? Life was always neat and tidy and perfect...
but they had script-writers, live-in house-keepers, and never had to live permanently with their 'families' or their 'problems'. There was a perfectly neat, up-to-date home in the suburbs or in a high-rise apartment with all the latest everything to make life easy. With script writers to solve every problem and give Mom and Dad the wisdom of Solomon, dysfunctional families were unheard of on television, but children growing up with television saw these 'families' and thought this was 'normal'. They wanted to live like this. To achieve the standard of living depicted on television and in the movies, both parents had to work, if both parents were still in the home. Family life deteriorated in a hurry.
Normal family life now is something different for each family as people struggle to keep families intact.
As for controlling mothers, the controlling mother of all time lives in my house. I have met her and I am she. I learned from a great example and I have refined the skills until I have it down to an art.
Then again, our ethnic background is that of a matriarchal society, so it is to be expected. The other day I heard that my daughter's mother-in-law wanted their unborn baby to be named for the m-i-l's side of the family. Not a chance. I explained to my son-in-law that like his father-in-law and his f-i-l's f-i-l before him, he married into this family; she did not marry into their family. We do not change for outsiders; they change for us. He looked at me and grinned and said that he had noticed that and it didn't bother him one bit...
and it only took him two years to figure it out...
controlling??? I am the master of it
kat
poster:headachequeen
thread:5053
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20041002/msgs/399271.html