Some people arrive here after years of being assessed by professionals and sent on their way, because they didn’t match the picture someone was trained to look for, and the conversation never happened.
You were left to work out privately whether this is a real thing or just how you are, while the thoughts ran underneath your whole day, never needing your permission to start.
It’s beyond frustrating that something that should just be nourishing turned out to be this complicated.
And the question underneath it is how much longer this is workable, and whether you’re meant to carry it by yourself.
The spine of this work is looking straight at the story you were handed about food, bodies, and what makes a person worth anything: where it came from, who benefits from it, and how much of it you chose.
Alana built her Master’s Capstone Project on that question, working from the book Eating in the Light of the Moon, and it goes down more like a story than a lecture.
It’s a strange kind of relief to find that the confusion about eating the right thing was issued to a whole culture as a set of instructions, and it landed hardest on the people paying closest attention.
The shame has somewhere else to go after that, and it isn’t you.
An ornament earns its keep by how it looks to whoever happens to be standing in front of it, which is an impossible arrangement to live inside, because the verdict is permanently outside of you.
So we work toward a different measure: what your body lets you do, where it lets you go, and what you’re interested in and what you’re for, once nobody is grading the answer.
Before any of that, we get a read on your window of tolerance, the range where you can feel something without being flooded, so we pace this to you and not to a schedule.
There’s a cost here we’d be doing you no favors by leaving out: who you follow changes, and some friendships change with it, because the messaging around you has to shift for the rest to hold.
Some relationships end, and some arrive, and there’s real grief in that, which we’ll treat as grief rather than as evidence you’ve taken a wrong turn.
Saying so up front matters more to us than making this sound easy.
If you’ve recently come out of a treatment program, we’re glad to be the outpatient therapists who take it from here, and if a higher level of care would serve you better, we’ll tell you straight and help you find it.
That’s a decision we make together, and a free consultation is where it starts.
Wherever you are in Texas, none of this requires a drive, and Alana reads everything sent to amccraw@plantedtobloomcounseling.org.
It’s been a long time since anyone named this with you, and that’s where we’d begin.
Something in your life is asking for attention, and you’re the one who noticed it.
That’s the courage part. We’ll bring the shovel.
Take a look around, and if we sound like the right fit, book a free 20-minute consultation.
Growth starts where you are, and right now that’s here.
You can also email us at amber@plantedtobloomcounseling.org.