Yesterday I wrote about how I was putting off doing an elimination diet to hopefully discover what triggers flares of one of my autoimmune conditions. I was honest about why I’ve been scared to do it and what I might or might not find out. Writing that all out did help me sort through my feelings a bit, but when I was done writing I wasn’t done thinking.
I kept wondering why I was so scared of something that will lead to answers one way or another. Even if I don’t find any foods that cause flares, I will learn that I don’t have trigger foods. That won’t be the result I want, but it’s more information than I have right now. But I knew that there had to it than just that. I thought maybe I was scared that it would trigger disordered eating behaviors, but I’ve done so many random diet plans and I know how I behave on them.
Then I realized something that I don’t know why I hadn’t connected before. Part of the reason I am hesitant to do this elimination diet that might help me is that I don’t necessarily believe I deserve to find out.
I’ve written about how in my past someone in my life liked to tell me that I wasn’t lovable or worthy of things. I’ve always thought of that in connection to dating and friendships. Whenever I get ghosted by a guy, I have to work through the thought that I was an idiot to think I deserved a guy that great. I was just ghosted by someone recently who I thought was a really great guy and I was looking forward to seeing him again. It sucks to be ghosted, but I know it has nothing to do with me. There are women in my life that look like supermodels that get ghosted. It’s a numbers game and since I put myself out there a lot I have the risk of being ghosted a lot.
But this false narrative I have about not being worthy does go beyond relationships. Maybe I’ve never connected it before or I never had the reason to connect it before. For years, I have said that I was unlucky with health related things because I always have weird stuff. But I never felt like it was my fault those things happened. They usually had a reason I could pinpoint that took the blame off of me somehow. But with an autoimmune condition, there’s nothing I can blame it on. Even if I discover what my triggers are, those didn’t give me this problem. It just makes it worse.
And I know that I didn’t do anything to deserve this issue or anything else health related. I know that it’s just a genetic issue or mutation that I had no control over. But that doesn’t change the fact that I have been putting blame on myself.
Part of it is because I was misdiagnosed for a while and some people believe the skin flares caused by my condition are due to weight or bad hygiene. While weight can make some of the flares worse, weight doesn’t control whether or not I get this or get flares. And hygiene has nothing to do with it, but I do take a lot of care of my skin where I get flares so I don’t have any secondary issues. But when I was told that this was something I could have controlled and it wasn’t getting better, I did blame myself for not doing more. And when I couldn’t make it better, I figured I was doing things wrong and I couldn’t figure out what to do.
Now that I know that this is an autoimmune condition, I don’t have the same blame on myself. But I do wonder why I had to have this bad luck and what I did to deserve this. And the answer is that there’s no explanation for the luck and I didn’t do anything to deserve it. But in the back of my head, there is still the voice that says that I’m not worthy of good things.
And one of the good things that I feel like I don’t deserve is to get answers and to have fewer flares. It’s such a weird back and forth in my head about whether or not I deserve it. I know I do because everyone deserves to have whatever control they can over their body and medical conditions. But that little voice keeps telling me that I’m crazy to think that.
I have been working on quieting that mean voice through therapy and it has gotten better in the past few years. But it seems to pop up every so often and sometimes it’s in very unexpected ways. I never thought that it would be one of the reasons I have been avoiding working on my autoimmune condition. But the more I think about it the more I feel like that makes sense.
I’ve said so many times that writing this blog is like therapy for me. And I think that it always will feel like that because it allows me to get my thoughts out and even though I risk people judging me it is my voice and opinions uncensored. That freedom is so great for me. And having a breakthrough moment because I couldn’t stop thinking about something I wrote is a new way this is therapy for me. I’m so grateful I figured that out because now I have something new to work on and see if I can keep making that negative voice quieter in my head.
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