Self-Care and Anger

I have been continuing with the thin fantasy every day, or just about; once or twice I have "forgotten," and I also realized I'd been forgetting to do the part about whether the issue was also seen in my childhood, so I started doing that again.

My eating continues to be completely different than it was before the workshop--that workshop had a profound effect on me. At this point, it's sort of feeling like a way of life not to eat if I'm not hungry and to stop when I've had enough, or pretty close, and to eat what makes my cells happier rather than sadder.

My body feels light and good and there is no bloating, which is great. (I was thinking that maybe Carol gave me some sort of permission when she said she's all for people returning to their natural weights.) At the same time, I have considerably more anxiety--I think there's less of a buffer. But I have the tools to deal with this. Not to say I can banish the feelings, but there are self-care techniques I can use. I'd thought my self-care was pretty good, and it was, but this is an opportunity to make a step forward in that realm, of necessity.

More anxiety = more necessity for self-care, and not just with food. That's the tip of the iceberg. It's about resting and which activities are enjoyable and how I really want to spend my time and what I really need to do at a given moment.

I realized I want to start experimenting with new recipes again. I've been putting on sweaters more when I feel chilly. Sometimes I come home from work and get straight into bed; I have felt surprisingly tired a recent day or two. Little things, but things that show me that someone is paying attention to exactly what I need.

As for anger, I am angry a lot; I have been for years. Sometimes I feel slight chest pains and have had the intuitive thought that I'm giving myself heart disease with my anger. Lo and behold, this week's Newsweek talked about this very thing; it said exactly that. There was a quiz covering general level of distress and social inhibition. On the distress quiz, I was way over the top (in a bad way). On the social inhibition, I squeaked by. I am not depressed nor particularly isolated (though I do often feel awkward around people), just pissed off.

So now I'm trying to take a look at the kinds of things that piss me off, which fall into a few categories that I see over and over: 1) I get angry when I get scared. 2) I get angry when someone "invades" in some sort of way, or seems aggressive or like they're expanding into my territory in some sort of way. 3) I can get angry when people don't do what I think they "should" do.

I'm keeping in touch with myself about this a bit more: Do I really have to get angry about this? Am I really in danger here? What can I do to protect my safety? Is this particular turf really worth defending or might it actually be more pleasant to collaborate? Etc.

One particularly bad thing is that I feel frightened on my bicycle a lot. I suspect I always did, and just couldn't tell. I guess I can decide not to ride it, or I can reassure myself that I have good urban cycling skills and that I will ride as safely as possible (which doesn't mean a car won't flatten me).