I'm not just a pretty face.

Don't sweat it. Just be as honest as you can when you answer the questions. The evaluation is a good thing and is not at all stressful. If they approve you... GREAT! If they don't approve you.... that may be a good thing too. Getting your head in the game before surgery will really help you to be successful after surgery. If you have to do a little psych work before surgery, do it! You want your surgical outcome to be good and the hardest part of the WLS journey is getting the "head stuff" right. You would not want to go through surgery and fail because you could not get your mindset headed in the right direction. Many of us have issues with food. Being aware of those issues can help you figure out coping strategies that don't involve food.

Good Luck!

Tell the truth. It's there to ensure you know what you are letting yourself in for and that you have the supports in place to make you a success.

Anyone giving you questions asked etc is not helping you.

Be honest. There is no perfect answer. It's important that you tell the truth so they have a better idea of what type of eater you are. They can also help you deal with the challenges post surgery if they know what your real history is.

I'm a compulsive binge emotional eater. It didn't delay my surgery. The psychologist warned me that I would need to address the issues that trigger my behaviors in order to be successful, and she's right. WLS is only part of the solution. Fixing your head is more likely to lead to long term permanent changes.

You'll be fine.

Besides which, a whole bunch of us are completely bat**** crazy. We passed.

No kidding

I appreciate the support guys. This eases my mind some. I just set my appt for Nov 9th. They sent me a 13 page document to fill out. (yay!) One step at a time. Thanks again!

I would be very cautious about disclosing previous psychiatric attempts to heal yourself if they weren't absolutely necessary ... many of us have tried talk /group therapies etc out of sheer frustration ... in my case the cause of overeating was a giant congenital hereditary birth defect ( a huge hiatal hernia thatalways caused irritation in my esophagus that only overeating would cure ) .

I am part of a psychiarically oriented generation so the therapy option was one I explored . That does NOT mean i have a psychiatric history . (good luck))

As someone who actually DOES the Psych evals, I can tell you that varies widely from one Psychologist to another... So what anyone else went through may be completely different from what you will experience.

VERY few people will be completely unable to have surgery because of the psych eval. Even in the few cases where approval is not given immediately, it is usually only a matter of suggestion counseling for a certain period of time to resolve or improve a specific concern.

As the others have said, just be honest. You are not doing yourself any favors if you lie (in terms of your chains of long-term success) and the person doing the evaluation may very well either suspect or know that you are lying... and that may count against you more than if you tell them something that you think is negative).

I once had someone who was over 400 pounds try to convince me that she really didn't overeat except on Sundays and that her weight HAD to be the result of some mysterious physical problem (even though her thyroid levels were fine and her doctor found nothing over many years). After suffering through an hour of bull**** from this woman *****fused to accept any responsibility for her weight, I told her that I could not approve her for surgery because if she really only overate on Sundays, surgery wouldn't help her. I then proceeded to gently explain that she was kidding herself and that in order to be successful in losing the weight, she needed to work with a counselor and get real. I recommended that we reevaluate her after 3 months of working with a counselor, but she dropped out of counseling (with someone else, not with me) after 2 sessions.

Lora

Just wanted to share an update. My psych visit was yesterday, and I am assuming it went well. Ill know for sure in 10 business days. But i left there feeling pretty confident. 

Thanks so much for all the support thus far!