and yet more to get confused by.
I can't decide whether it's a mark of stability or of being stuck. All I do know is that this year I'm thinking about the same sorts of things as I was this time last. I'm a bit ahead of myself in terms of exact dates, but that's probably because Easter is earlier this year and the weather is warmer. It is with some discomfort that I realise that I'm still blathering on about Lent, I still haven't read the books I intended to last year, let alone got onto the ones I wanted to look at afterwards and with Eating Disorders Awareness Week coming up I'm still wondering what to do with it.
I do have one new thought, or at least one new word, to juggle with. "Alexithymia". Is the idea that what I may describe as Anosognosia is thought of (and has been for years) as Alexithymia by some others going to be helpful? Are both terms going to be offensive to many? Am I ever going to stop going round and round in circles on the same subjects within religion and medicine?
3 comments:
Ooh, now I thought that agnosognosia and alexithymia were very different things - respectively the inability to understand/believe that you are ill (which I didn't have as an adult, but did as a teenager) and the inability to identify/verbally express emotions (which I suffered from immensely, and which still affects me mildly). I think they are both relevant to the discussion of eating disorders. It's a peculiar paradox that suffering from either A may result in the person with the eating disorder finding both ideas offensive.
I like to think that even when I feel like I'm going round in circles, I am actually going round in a very tightly wound spiral and gradually escaping...
Like Katie I experienced anosognosia as a child/teen with AN, but less so as an adult. And alexithymia... Um, well, I still have difficulties with this face-to-face. I can identify and express emotions much better in writing, when I am not faced with someone looking at me..
I decided to write to my psychiatrist after I had spent the first 9 months as his patient staring blankly at a picture on the wall or knawing away at my fingers and largely mute...
Interesting that you both identify a link with maturity in the waning of anosognosia. I agree that it probably is less prevalent in adults and treatment protocols vary accordingly even with those most keen to give responsibility to parents in the treatment of children. I wonder though how a GP or someone in a similar position should deal with them, given that they are not ideas usually discussed in medicine (especially now that paternalistic medicine is supposed to be giving way to patient rights and responsibilities)and that you are probably right that suffering from either of them may result in the patient finding the ideas offensive.
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