Eating problems reveal other challenges

Eating problems reveal other challenges

Jamie:

I've never had an eating disorder, a pretty healthy eater. I'm German, we like to eat. So, it I just lost interest in my appetite. And I think part of it had to do with poor sleeping because I would literally force myself out of bed at the absolute last minute to get to work on time. Because I walked to work, very convenient to do that, so I wouldn't eat breakfast.

And then at lunch I would be busy with emails or I’d do other things. I would come home and make dinner and I wouldn’t eat half of it. Essentially, the sleep and the insomnia created a lot of other, like the eating issue. My mom just looked at me and she’s like, “You know you’ve lost weight. You didn’t lose it the right way. You just stopped eating.” So, it wasn’t good.

I saw I guess she was a social worker. I would see her just about monthly. And I saw the psychologist every other month. So, it was really good talk therapy. I remember when I had gone to Camp Pendleton, I was very ashamed. I wouldn’t tell anybody why I was going to be gone for 2 hours.

But when I was seeing the therapist in D.C. I said, you know what, I was very honest with, it was a very small office, so easy to do, but I was very honest about what I was doing. You know, I have a medical appointment, this is what I’m doing. I think it helped because I worked with someone that was in the Army and he has PTSD. He’s dealt with that. When I started being open about what was going on, he found someone he could talk to.