Anita,

1. My therapist and I worked to change my thought patterns. I started trying to listen to my gut rather than other people. For example, if my cousin were to say, “Katie, your nose is big and you need a nose job,” instead of freaking out and thinking I need one, I would attempt to listen to my gut. Since I never thought my nose was big before, there is no reason for me to think my nose is big because my cousin said so. Another example is if my friends were to say, “Katie, you should break up with your boyfriend. He’s not good enough,” I would listen to my gut and only break up with him if I wanted to. I used to listen to other people’s opinions over mine, so I started to change that. I also started to distance myself from things that caused me unnecessary anxiety or would trigger me into bad thinking patterns. This all started to happen around October.

2. I don’t know if I had an eating disorder, but I definitely would diet and somewhat starve myself. I would always be thinking about how I could lose weight. I think I officially dropped that whole mentality in September through November. If my friend were to bring up dieting, I wouldn’t continue the conversation to avoid bad thought patterns. I also started to work on my anxiety. I still believe I have anxiety and I know if I weren’t actively fighting to keep a healthy mindset about my body, I probably would fall back into my eating disorder mindset. So those things may not be solved, but I figured out how to better deal with them.

3. I think we texted every day until late September. At the beginning of my college semester that started in August, I was extremely busy. I remember my best friend would call me, but I wouldn’t be able to answer because I was either in class, at the gym, doing homework, just studying, at a club meeting, etc. I think our texts began to slow around then. I was upset about it then, but I just told myself that I need to get settled into my routine before I have time for phone calls from friends and a social life. Then my friend went on a retreat for fall break at the beginning of October and she didn’t have her phone for a week. After the retreat, our texts slowed even more. However, I became even BUSIER so I didn’t have time to fix it. I visited her at the end of October (she goes to college too so I visited her college) and everything was normal but I felt that she was acting a little distant. I assumed it may have been because she was starting to become closer to her college friends and I am different from her college friends. After that, we probably texted every 2 weeks. Then the texts completely stopped when we had plans to hang out twice and she canceled both times. Our last texts were:

Her: “hey sorry I can’t hangout! Something came up. How about we visit each other soon!”

Me: “Yess definitely!”

Well, actually, they aren’t the official last texts we sent. My boyfriend forced me to text her “Hey what’s up” but I kinda regret it because I don’t know how to continue a conversation with her anymore 🙁