Tag: therapist

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How not to recover from 35 years of eating disorders

It took all my energy

(literally: ALL of it)

to confront my therapist: “I’m only staying in treatment with you because it would be easier to fix my issues with you, with you, instead of with another therapist, that I would also have to pay.”

LESSON #6: if you ever find yourself even considering saying this to your therapist or counselor or advisor, I don’t care how mentally ill or guilty or non-compliant or unmotivated or however else they “make” you feel, I beg of you, from the bottom of my heart: J U S T. LEAVE. T h e y S U C K. Therapists are educated and trained to notice and address issues as they (inevitably) arise. Did they think this lesson didn’t apply to them? That “I’m so competent my clients and I won’t have any issues” ??!!??!!?!? You are paying them to do this. Issues are inevitable parts of all relationships and it’s their job to deal with them honestly. Do YOU get to keep YOUR job if you, just, don’t DO it?!

You’ll find this story in another section of this blog but it bears mention, here, because it was the day I purposefully quit working on recovery because it was the day I lost all hope it was possible. Instead I resigned myself to trying to just “manage” my eating disorders alone. That session was the product of over a year of journaling and prayer and careful consideration and it consumed all the assertiveness resources I possessed, or I would have confronted her again, a month later, and fired her, because she never brought the subject up again.

Instead, I kept paying her for two more years until she”retired” – when she literally took me to a new therapist, and I do mean literally. As in, she was in the room, actually there, in the office, telling the new one I was over my eating disorder (in her eyes, apparently, merely “the worried well” to the very end, no matter how often I threw up or how little I ate.) It took 4 years of almost perfect therapy with this almost perfect therapist who had almost perfect boundaries and who listened almost perfectly with an almost perfect blend of compassion and firmness for me to realize and barely even begin to process the truth of what had transpired in that former therapist’s office.

So. Back to June 2007, after that session I called out my therapist: I purposefully quit even trying to recover. Eleven years later, December 2018: I quit trying to even manage my eating disorders and purposefully embraced them again, not caring how much/often I starved/fasted/binged/vomited/restricted … everything but laxatives. In the 11 years between, I wrote a lot of letters letting people know who I really was and what I really needed and what I really believed and obviously lost a few people. My beloved step-mom died. My dear pastor died. So did the car I’d driven for 19 years. I moved. Alone. I set boundaries and let go of a few more people. I got bullied past the point of a new PTSD diagnosis at my full-time job and plain old picked-on at my part-time job. I filed a lawsuit. I drank too much. Way too much. (Until I went to Racing for Recovery, an amazingly innovative and holistic treatment center for substance abuse, where I regained my self-respect, or at least enough to risk spine surgery:) after a bone graft, laminectomy, and fusion, I was out of work for three months and in and out of physical therapy for the next 2 years. And I gained weight. A LOT. More, than ever, in my life. I’d never, ever, for so long, been so sedentary or so restricted in movement or practiced so much patience, but it wasn’t enough patience to cope with the weight gain. I ran too soon and too fast and too far and it was too much for my knee. The following year it was my tushie. The injuries slowed me even more which led to even more weight gain and more discomfort. And I shouldn’t say “discomfort.” It’s worse than that. Instead of growing used to my own skin, my intolerance for the body I live in grows incrementally more disabling at an ever-increasingly rapid rate.

Enter Anorexia Effort Umpteen-Billion-&- something, binge/purge subtype. That was December 2018. It worked. It also led to me being treated at 2am in the the ER with a ham sandwich that the nurse brought to me to eat while he scrounged for supplies to deal with the wound on my forehead where my scalp was showing from slamming my face into the metal corner of the elevator frame from falling down from getting dizzy from not eating anything that day but 2 packets of chocolate covered espresso beans.

(Apparently, my body was a little tired of how I’d been “feeding” it the past 35 years.)

Shortly after, I started a temporary part-time job and was too busy with it in the early months of 2019 to starve or vomit too much because of how much it debilitated me. But. As soon as the job was over, in mid-March, I plunged down the rabbit hole and straight into the toilet.

Come on! It’s ridiculous!

One must have some sense of jocularity when observing the ridiculous.

So there I was on a Friday night, April 5th, 2019, to be exact, coughing up blood for the second time in the past two weeks.

Now, that was new. I’d vomited blood, before. Many times, actually. Not copious amounts, but enough to get my attention. But coughing it up? Like my esophagus was disintegrating? An earlier esophageal scope had found “tears” – as in, “torn.” But … disintegrating?

I remember saying all this at my assessment at River Centre five days later, and how angry and irritated I felt, not for being asked, not at myself for being honest, but angry at myself that this was my truth, angry that I was such an embarrassing human. And I remember her response, her brow furrowed with concern, the compassion in her voice

(don’t worry, she got over it)

saying, “You know – you’re really very sick”

and how completely taken aback I was to hear that. I fell for that like the sucker I apparently am and five days later wrote them a big fat check worth half a month’s salary.

Sucker.

Wait!! What happened!! How did I end up in the clinic?! Yep. That’s EXACTLY how I felt.

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Outstanding ways to ensure shrewd potential clients doubt your competence:

Around the time I moved into my very first place of my own a 3rd exposé appeared in our local paper about the founder of the only eating disorder treatment center in a 200 mile radius. It noted more boundary violations, some that I did not register at the time because I was ignorant of being a similar victim, and was, like Garner’s prey, grateful to be violated.

For instance, one anorexic victim (excuse me – cough!clientcough!) named “Jan” was quoted praising him for taking her calls “at all hours” – that’s another very important lesson that I’ll get into under “the therapist” section. For now, just know you should FLEE, and QUICKLY!, from ANY mental health professional who allows this. Your therapist should ABSOLUTELY have some method of contact between sessions but they should ABSOLUTELY have very clear and fair boundaries that allow them to care for themselves and you in a professional, ethical manner. You can be as grateful as you want to be for being mistreated but the only impact that will have upon the inevitable consequences you will suffer is to make them even more difficult to move beyond.

We also learned about his (boring) board game (that I later discovered multiple copies discarded and abandoned around his clinic. (Interesting graduate-level study tool? MAYBE. Fun “game”?!? NOT!) Also, this was where we learned both his and his mistress’ name were both on the deed of the condo he helped her buy. In this third newspaper article one of his supporters defended his right to his (quote) “lifestyle.” We learned that shortly before the first article came out, he defiantly refused the Ohio State Board’s demand he relinquish his license, which led them to file no less than 15 ethics violations. We learned so many good clinicians had quit their jobs, there, because of the environment.

Well, “Duh,” I thought. This guy and his clinic actually kind of made my unstable life appear relatively calm via comparison, a thought that rendered any notion of getting treatment there a ridiculously moot idea. If you read only one of these articles about the man that founded this clinic and trained the people that still work there, today, and developed the treatment protocols that it is only just recently in 2020 barely began to stop following, then read this one from late December of 2004, the most thorough of them all:

https://www.toledoblade.com/frontpage/2004/12/26/Sylvania-psychologist-battles-to-salvage-controversial-career/stories/feed/feed/index.rss

These 3 articles were all written by the same Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, and 7 months after this one he wrote his fourth and last, when the Ohio Board finally succeeded in suspending David Garner’s license – this is the first one Garner “declined” to comment:

https://www.toledoblade.com/news/state/2005/07/22/Psychologist-accepts-temporary-suspension/stories/200507220062

Around this time, therapy had turned into the most stressful thing in my life. And I thought this was normal: a logical byproduct of making a voluntary effort to engage oneself in an intense process of change to be a better human and grow and recover.

Lesson Number Five: Therapy is NOT supposed to be “the most stressful thing” in your life. After years of rehabilitative therapy for my therapy, from an ethical clinician who has boundaries, I can tell you with assurance that this lesson is viable. In late spring of 2007 I finally gave up on recovery. Not only did I lack the support I needed to do so, this therapist was clearly not able to help me. And after 5 years of trying to recover I clearly did not have the kind of support system needed to do so, nor was I able to cultivate one on my own. I told her I was only staying so that I would not have to terminate with so many issues between us, saying it would be easier to resolve them directly with her than take them to another provider. She agreed. However, after that difficult session I lost my nerve to confront her over and over again. And she never brought it up. And because it was a sick relationship under the care of a woman I suspect was the borderline she accused me of being, I stupidly stayed 2 more years, until she (supposedly) “retired.” (…yeah right…)

What happened in that office is a different part of my story, but it made checking River Centre’s website a regular part of my life, still watching for indications they were dealing with their scandal in a healthy way. But the same names remained: The two Garners. The same unique last name. A 4th name I had seen for quite awhile. I hoped and watched and waited especially for David Garner’s name to disappear. The same for any female who left, hoping it could be his wife or the “assistant” with whom he had an affair. No luck. The wife continued to work together with the husband and his mistress at the same clinic they opened together, reparenting young eating disorder victims, one big incestual happy family.

How could anyone get help at that place? Now that his secret was out, how could these therapists continue to help providing new victims for this predator to exploit? How could the scorned wife continue to work with him and his girl-on-the-side?

In 2008 the last article about Garner and his clinic came out in the city paper. It was written by a different journalist. They finally took his license away for good.

Like most predators, I correctly guessed he was a re-offender incapable of rehabilitation.

He did it again.

And this time, it was another, eating disordered, vulnerable, young, malleable

patient.

https://www.toledoblade.com/local/2008/10/22/Sylvania-psychologist-cedes-license-in-sex-charge/stories/200810220060

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10 unparalleled reasons your abandonment issues, which are only with therapists, are uniquely iatrogenic to therapy:

  1. She knows your other therapist failed to outlive your treatment because they were working together when her brain tumor was diagnosed
  2. In the summer of 2002, a few months into treatment, you admit this impacts your ability to “engage” and she assures you “I wouldn’t start this with you if I wasn’t going to finish it”
  3. But then in December she says she might be retiring
  4. And then in March she says she’s 99% positive she IS retiring
  5. But then she doesn’t (though she doesn’t tell you – in April, she’s just still “there”)
  6. And then in June she suddenly moves to a different practice
  7. Which, she promises, in July, is moving to a different location
  8. Which, in August, when you show up there, is only a sign by a locked door with no one there
  9. After you drove from an hour away
  10. And it’s not the first time you drove an hour to a session that she didn’t show up for

(Lots of lessons, today. Lesson Number Two: If your therapist seems like she might be flightier than YOU, Go With Your GUT. She probably IS.)

SO! And that was just the therapy part of my 2003! I left out the part when I was pink-slipped into a psychiatric ward for half a month for being suicidal, or the part a few months later when my ex-husband’s “anger management counselor” pulled me aside to tell me privately that she was seriously worried he would rape me, or how she failed to express concern about why I failed to express concern (because he already had raped me though I wasn’t yet able to correctly define it) or the part when we had to have a special meeting with the city police, where I worked, because of his behavior there,

blah

blah

blaaaaaah……

Therefore whether or not I would, could, needed, wanted, deserved, was sick enough, (blah blah again) to go to the nearest eating disorder clinic was not something I had time or energy or resources to contemplate because I was busy just surviving. Despite the fact that I was vomiting profusely and often and somewhere in there my kidney function had been compromised and I had to quit one of my part-time jobs that I loved best. When that newspaper article came out in December of 2003, I gave it as much time as it took you to read that last blog post. And in the year that followed before the next article came out in December of 2004 was no better. My gem of an ex had the sheriff kick ME out of the house, I packed up my stuff and moved 5 times, transferred schools, changed my program of study, relocated to the nearby city, and spent the summer in a women’s shelter for victims of domestic violence. All while having no insurance and a therapist charging me for each full billable hour down to 15-minute increments which I was STUPID enough to be GRATEFUL for her willingness to let me accrue a bill.

(Which is why, when my divorce settlement came through, I. LITERALLY. Gave. Her. My. HOUSE. I paid my lawyer, bought a few groceries, and gave her All. The. Rest.- my freaking HOUSE.) (This is Lesson Number Three: A therapist who allows you to rack up a bill for over a year is VIOLATING YOUR BOUNDARIES. RUN. Run Away FAST.)

https://www.toledoblade.com/news/state/2004/12/04/State-levies-new-charges-against-embattled-Sylvania-psychologist/stories/200412040062

Don’t want to read the article? Allow me to enlighten you. Remember the Ohio State Board of Psychology wanted to revoke David Garner’s license for having a sexual affair with a colleague that he was supposed to be supervising. This inspired him to send a letter to his own patients and their families soliciting them to support him with the following exact words: “I do believe that those who will be personally affected by decisions made by the board should also have a voice.” Then, he, himself, sent the board the inch-thick stack of letters they wrote for him. If you think, as I do, that sounds like he blatantly used his position of power to exploit them, you’d be right on target with the State Board who accused him of just that. Personally, I wonder why he didn’t change careers and run for public office, because even though he wrote those words with his own “pen,” he denied the charges, indicating his ability to create his own reality is on par with any skilled politician.

I did mention the article to my therapist. And we actually had a discussion about GARNER’s awful lack of boundaries. (Right?!?) (cue Alanis Morissette.) But in December of 2004 I was preparing for my divorce trial while failing Russian History (I thought the Romanov dynasty would be “fun”) while living with an aunt and uncle and grown-up cousin and trying to get better “for” them. (Which, by the way, Does Not Work.) (That’s Lesson Number Four: You cannot get better for other people. It can be a temporary motivating factor, but It Is NOT sustainable.)

In mid-2005 I got my very first apartment – the first time I ever lived alone. The day I got the keys, I picked up some burgers, fries and a shake, and promptly inaugurated my new bathroom by vomiting, again, profusely, and often. On day three, I ran into my therapist’s office unannounced and blurted out, “Does this mean I can’t do it?!? Or that I’m doing it?!?” She said I was fine. And asked me if I wanted to take home the stuffed puppy her grand-daughter had her bring in for me at my previous session, which I had turned down, not wanting to be more involved with them or their father or her outside life than I already was. But this time I took it. I slept with it every night, Every Single Night, for the next thirteen years.

Two years ago I gave it to my cats and replaced it with a stuffed monkey from the zoo, named Emerson. My (current) therapist said she thought that sounded “significant.”

It was.

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The River Centre Clinic story takes a back seat for the next 18 years. Time to fast-forward.

The main story, at this point, is individual therapy. The DSM IV-TR came out in 2000, and there was no doubt I met the criteria for for a slam-dunk diagnosis. On top of that, I had been sick at that point for 17 years
(the fancy clinical adjective: “entrenched”)
AND on top of THAT, my environment (a.k.a.: my marriage) was not supportive. Thus I automatically assumed that under her care it would only be a matter of time before she admitted me to the nearest treatment center for eating disorders: River Centre Clinic.

Ten-Mile Creek ran fast and swollen my first month, there. The ducks were constant company.

Now, allow me, if you would be so kind, to digress into a history lesson. For I think it’s possible that one day in the future, the factual origins of social media could blur into Myth and Legend.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, before Buzzfeed and Huffington Post, there were these things called newspapers. They were actually printed on real paper, and they were printed all over the globe and in every language, and (along with TV and radio) that is how we learned about the world around us. In general, we could reasonably trust most of what we read because they were only supposed to print stuff that they could prove was true. This concept was called: “Journalistic Integrity.” Anything else was just gossip. (And gossip used to be considered “wrong.”) Also, sources of information were allowed to protect their privacy, so they could remain reasonably safe from persecution. This concept was called “anonymity.” Back then, in the olden times of long ago, anonymous sources were often considered the opposite they are, today, and many looked upon them with admiration for their courage to find a way to expose truth.
Okay – you got all that? Because I’m going to discuss newspaper articles that are important to my story.

One day towards the end of 2003 an article came out in the city paper that I paid special attention to because it was about this “River Centre Clinic” place in which I’d already stockpiled some hope. (Our small town had it’s own newspaper but most of the people I knew got the city paper, too, because there was nothing in the other one.) (Hi – that was sarcasm – why would we buy blank paper?) (And we really got it for the coupons.) It got my undivided attention because I was not doing so great. (Big, huge, ginormous Understatement.) And a good eating disorders clinic would have been a very helpful thing.

It was an extra-trustworthy article because it was written by a Pulitzer Prize winning young man who married a local woman who just happened to be one of my friends:
https://www.toledoblade.com/frontpage/2003/12/12/Trouble-revisits-local-psychologist-as-counselor-admits-affair-state-cites-ethics-breaches/stories/200312120022

So. Apparently. This “David Garner” person, who founded the clinic with his wife, liked having sex with his patients. And he treated anorexia. So that means he was drawn to women who had starved away their curves and periods and looked like children. So obviously there could have been a pedophilia theme running in there, as well. And he didn’t JUST abuse his power: when his victim lodged a formal complaint, he LIED about it. For a YEAR. Think about that for a moment: that made her look like a liar. So: not only was she sick, he made her sicker with his abuse, and THEN he slandered her CHARACTER for year (which allowed others to, as well.) I mean – HOW MUCH DAMAGE IS ONE PERSON ALLOWED TO INFLICT UPON ANOTHER PERSON?

Right away I had to wonder about the co-founder of this clinic, his wife, who was also a therapist. WHY would any therapist help supply this guy with fresh victims by setting up an eating disorder clinic with him?!? it’s not like he could hide from her the fact that The Country Of Canada suspended his license.

Wait. It gets better. Shortly after this he became an ex-pat of his homeland and crossed the border south to Michigan. At this point a SECOND Canadian victim came forward.
DUDE. This guys been doing this – and getting away with it – since FREAKING 1979, This is when him homeland stripped him of his license forever, and he moved even farther from Canada, and crossed another border, south, into Ohio, whose licensing board apparently thought that unlike every other repeat offender, this guy was done repeating. But this guy just couldn’t keep his pants zipped at work. He had an affair with an “assistant psychologist,” at the clinic, who was publicly willing to shoulder the blame.

An “assistant” would imply she was early in her career and thus probably young. One might wonder why the older, mentor-type figure would allow the younger person to compromise herself in this way. Unless they had no scruples whatsoever. I couldn’t help but think of how easily a younger woman could have been manipulated by an older man who (the article said) even helped her by a house.

What on earth was the atmosphere like at this clinic run by a husband and wife working together with his mistress? I wondered. Nope. I’m definitely not going there anytime soon. (Which wasn’t a problem with my therapist, who merely called me “the worried well” – but that’s for a different story.) As I continued to work in recovery, wondering if my therapist was right, I continued watching River Centre Clinic’s website, wondering if my therapist was wrong.

Why did I care? Why did I pay attention? Why did I spend brain cells on it?

Simple. It was the closest and only viable treatment facility and I needed full-time care. My therapist was a well-published eating disorders “expert” (quotes deliberate) so I was unable to consciously acknowledge that she was not helping my eating disorder. I literally starved the 24-48 period before most sessions, and on those occasions she rewarded me with compliments on my appearance.

… which is I N S A N E …

So somewhere deep in my fuzzy screwed up brain I knew I needed what this clinic offered but impossible if they cancelled out their help by doing more harm than good. So I watched their website: maybe one of the female staff members name would disappear from the site, indicating the “psychology assistant” went to work somewhere Maureen Garner (her boyfriend’s WIFE) did NOT work. Or maybe David Garner would get fired, or quit for the sake of his clinic. If I saw staff changes that indicated the Clinic was dealing with their drama in a healthy way, then maybe I could get the care I suspected I needed. And had possibly never stopped needing, since I left my hospital program so many years earlier.

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River Centre Clinic was not a place I would ever be sick enough to need treatment a second time.

But the thought of it’s existence brought me comfort, because I assumed that at least part of my old treatment team had to be there. Where else would those specialists have gone when their hospital program closed? And maybe I could talk to them, someday. I had never stopped keeping an eye out for them whenever I drove an hour to the city to shop at the malls. I mean, therapists, nurses and doctors went to malls, too – right? I badly needed verification they existed, because although I cherished my memories of treatment there, those memories didn’t feel like mine. They felt like something I read about, and that was a source of great pain and confusion to feel like this thing that was so important to me had nothing to do with reality.

Reality. A good transition word to refocus. For, as I said, “De Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt,” it was my Way Of Life. I was in denial about my health, my job, my marriage, my education…almost everything. Thus, I had no insight about my misery. I simply assumed the things I had heard were true:
“You’re not happy with anything!”
“No matter how/what/when/where, ___ it’s never enough for you! You’ll never be happy!”
“You know what, you’re spoiled! You’re just like your father/mother/grandmother! you have to have everything go your way or all you do is…”
What was my way? I had a “way”?…I never figured that one out. I just figured (is that past tense?) it was all true and I was a dyed-in-the-wool malcontent with no hope of hope. I had long since accepted that as fact. I only wished acceptance made it less painful.

So there I was driving home from the factory one summer morning. I remember about where I was, north of town, and how when I glanced out the passenger window I noticed the mist rising off a field that was backed by a treeline, and how I thought, “Wow, today’s gonna be a scorcher” And that moment it hit me:” I don’t have to stay here. I can leave!” Immediately: a flash of joy, of relief, of shock, then shame settled in for, by “leave,” I meant leaving the living. (I’m still too ashamed to use the “s” word.) This was not a new thought; desensitization to the idea settled in beside the shame. For the time being though, the shock lingered and I was able to use it to began making attempts to change. Something. Anything.

I started by moving from nights to second shift (a.k.a. No Life – you work late, so you fall asleep late, so you get up late, so all you really have time to do is get ready for work. Repeat.) By the time the company Christmas party rolled around, though still on the high end of a healthy weight range, I’d lost about two dozen pounds. I met up with my old friend at the shrimp table exactly like the year before, remembering how emaciated she was despite all the “free shrimp” she was so happy about. I still wish I had the burgundy outfit I bought for the event – a huge splurge for me, from the Ann Taylor store. I bought it because the semi-cropped jacket over the zip-up pants made me look deceptively thin.

That year, though, the roles were reversed, and it was my old friend who was staring and whispering, and I who was uncomfortable and irritated. And I remember why! “They don’t know anything about eating disorders! I’m at the high end of a healthy BMI for someone as short as me! I have WAY more experience with this than they do!! I KNOW what I’m doing.”
Another flip-flop: I didn’t socialize that year. I just hung out with my antisocial husband.

My next change was the job, itself. My depression made me desperate; I jumped at the first viable position. It was at a bank, where no one would notice how much weight I’d lost, freeing me to continue to lose more. My new boss, though, seemed food-obsessed, constantly bringing in desserts that most co-workers were more than happy to be pressured into eating. But me? Well…one Ash Wednesday, I amused myself for 3 days in a row by challenging myself to open my wrappers in total silence, so she wouldn’t hear me eating at my desk. I told her I was fasting for religious reasons – and oh! the shameful kick I got watching her freak out exponentially as each day passed.

Two big things happened in 2000. The first big thing was we done got ourselves this new-fangled gadget they was callin a computer, and we bought us a complicated piece o’ furniture as durn big as a shed to put the thing in. And what was one of the first things I did with it?


I looked up this place called The River Centre Clinic.
I read every name, every bio: David Garner. Maureen Garner. (husband and wife? yep)
A unique last name; female.
More that I don’t recall because they didn’t stay.
(But not one name from my old team.
And I’d know because I kept every scrap of paper from that program.
I still haven’t thrown any of it away.)