I’ve been wanting to post an update for a while now, and I’m finally carving out some time to actually do it!
In mid-November, my team told me that because COVID numbers are rising, they were moving Intensive Outpatient (IOP) online again. They invited me to join, and because our semester ended December 1, I was able to do so. I started on the 1st, so I’ve been back in IOP for two weeks now. Like before, it’s been a great experience.
Some things are new—for instance, the program recently hired a music therapist, and I was wondering how that would work. I’m really liking it! I’ve only had two sessions with him so far, but I’m looking forward to more. We’ve been choosing songs to represent our eating disorders and our recovery, and then sharing them with each other and talking about them.
For example, I chose “One Day More” to represent my eating disorder—not because of the lyrics, but because of the overlapping voices at the end. Everything fits together, but it’s all interwoven, and it’s hard to pick out any given part unless you know the song pretty well. That’s my ED, too. There are a lot of voices and thoughts and reasons why I should restrict, but by learning more about myself, I can better understand what the voices are saying and how to counter them.
Interestingly, though it wasn’t surprising once I thought about it, the others in the group focused on lyrics. I could definitely see their points once they made them, and I agreed with them, but the lyrics weren’t the focus for me. That prompted me to realize that hearing a song for the first time is very different from hearing a song that you’re more familiar with. My eating disorder—that’s something I’m extremely familiar with!! But again, as I learn about it, I can start to tease it apart and untangle the thoughts and beliefs that have been with me for so long.
Now to do my “homework”—I told the group last week that I wanted to find a song with a lot of dissonance and resolution to represent recovery, so I need to look into that!