Cry, Cry Again

“I always feel a little silly after I cry like this,” I said to the woman evaluating me Wednesday to decide if I need further binge eating treatment. It had been a very painful hour, where occasionally – suddenly – I’d be choking back tears, unable to speak. “It’s just always feels a little funny to me to tell someone I don’t know all these personal details*, and to cry.”

“You don’t cry?” she said.

“No, I totally do,” I said. “But usually it’s out of frustration, or it’s about my mother.”

“Do you cry a lot?” she asked.

“Not usually. Every once in a while I will, but I don’t sit around my flat and cry or anything.”

“Well you should,” she said.

“I should?”

“Bingeing is a dissociative behavior,” she said briskly. “You’d be a lot better off if you went home and cried instead of bingeing.”

Um, OK. I take her point. Actually, I know perfectly well that she’s right. But it’s not as simple as deciding to cry instead of eat. And I had taken an instant dislike to her, the manner in which she treated me, and the tone in which she spoke to me.

I have to go back and see her another time for her to finish evaluating me, because – and I have heard this before – I am a tough case. She told me rather sharply that I hadn’t given enough thought to a few issues I’d brought up, and that she wanted me to think about them in the time between appointments. I bit my tongue to avoid snapping back: “I don’t think about them enough? Are you kidding? This [referring to one particular personal issue] is almost all I think about.”

So not looking forward to Appointment Two, the Appointment of Doom. Perhaps I could have a root canal instead?

*Yes, yes, I know I have this here blog thingie where I tell people I don't know loads of personal details, but for me that's not the same as sitting face to face with someone and doing it...