N lost 40 lbs. No deprivation, diet, or struggle. This is a side effect (which he didn’t even seek) of his analysis. A healthy mind demands a healthy body.
I never thought I’d see him not end the day with a pint of ice-cream. And hey, his dad died at 56 of gastrointestinal troubles. So I’m beyond happy about this development. He also gave up gaming completely, gave away his humidor, and enjoys going to the gym. Again, no effort at self-control and no struggle. It just happened.
Nothing works (not just for weight but for anything) until the mind gets healthy.
Clarissa's Blog 
What did he improve about his mental game?
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He experienced severe physical and emotional abuse as a child. He’s been in therapy for that, and it’s working.
We are from the USSR. This means we are all severely traumatized. We simply don’t function without specialized psychological help.
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Great news! How long / how frequently has he been going to analysis?
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Once a week, and it’s been a while. He’s one of those men who were socialized into not expressing any negative feelings ever and not even knowing those feelings exist. Plus, he’s not very talkative, to put it mildly. So the initial stage of learning to talk about his feelings took forever.
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I have found this to be true, but for me it was my undiagnosed ADHD and asthma that was causing my absurd weight gain. I really wish my parents had been more aware of my real issues growing up. I tried to fulfill my hyperactivity with eating because exercising even a little made me completely out of breath. Eating obviously didn’t fix my problems. Now that I’m on medication for both asthma and ADHD, I can exercise without feeling like my lungs are going to kill me, and I can think without eating (or smoking — I did that for a long time too).
The result is that I have lost 52 pounds as of today and I’ve done a lot of writing. The ADHD drugs do have a side effect of loss of appetite, but I still eat three times a day. It’s just that I don’t have massive amounts of food (to the point of feeling sick), and I also don’t feel the psychological urge to stuff myself. It’s marvelous! I actually enjoy food MORE now, because it no longer feels like my enemy. And I eat whatever I want — no banned foods. 🙂
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52 lbs! That’s amazing. Congratulations! You do look fantastic these days.
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My mother had food issues. Being ill, and being served food in bed on a tray, was one thing she liked. Also being in a restaurant and having something good. These events caused her very great pleasure and she would exclaim: “Someone is taking care of me!”
She felt that she had been very poor, and that she was still low income. I was not a serious person in part because I was one of the causes of the current precarity, but mostly because I could not possibly imagine what it had been like to be so poor. My goal in life has been to become poor enough that my mother will recognize me as real and respect me.
This is why I engage in various forms of self-deprivation or self-destruction — never bad enough to be complete, of course, because I want to be in good health to begin my life once I get my mother’s go-ahead.
If I had an analyst, they would be able to work with me on these kinds of metaphors. That is why I want one. As it is, I have to work with them on my own and then explain it all to my therapist. This is all right, since he puts up with it (most won’t) but an actual analyst would be faster.
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There are many who work on Skype. And some insurances actually do cover up to 70%.
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It’s encouraging about the insurance. I have not yet found one who would work with mine, but it’s still encouraging.
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(Actually, psychoanalytic training is something I’d like to do — it’s one of my alternate education fantasies, get the chance to do some serious reading in field.)
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