External pressure

You can lose a lot of weight by dumping the boyfriend.

Sounds like dead weight in your life.

We have the whole world waiting to tear us down -- those most intimate with us should be our best ally.

If people feel unhelpful around you, that says to me you have an idea of what would be helpful. Start there, and you will get closer to knowing what you want. And now lots of my philosophical blather:

Why is therapy unhelpful now? Saying something is unhelpful without specifying why is...unhelpful. Oh don't get me wrong, I am notoriously picky and perfectionist about therapists and find many inadequate. What, precisely, is unhelpful?

The last thing you need is advice, honestly. Advice is sympathetic and tends to be pandering. Therapy is empathic rather than sympathetic, and also should not be pandering. It should be client-centered - but it also should not just tell you what you want to hear.

As for your boyfriend, warning signs all over that like woah. If you are willing to get surgery to change your body partially because other people want you to, you must take a step back and ask why.

I actually am a big fan of body modification if done for self-empowerment. When it's done because others want it, that gives up autonomy to the other. Have you changed anything else because your boyfriend requested it? Financially? Career-wise? And so forth?

At any rate, the problem may be that whatever other people want you to do is largely irrelevant. Whatever advice anyone can give you is, similarly, irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what you need. Not what you want, not what other people think you want or need. So, that's the question:

What do you need?

And, I have the sense that it's not weight loss or an appearance change. It goes deeper...something goes unsatisfied and neglected, and no advice can fix that easily or quickly.

Also, nothing can really reset our thoughts. We can change our thoughts and then our behaviors and emotions will change. The brain doesn't get reset, though, outside of brain death, really. If you want to reset yourself, that tells me something is missing between you and yourself, and between you and those around you - a connection on a deeper level is missing or painful. It's an interesting way to put it...people are not whiteboards. The fingerprints of all we experience stay with us despite the changes we make.

What you must do rather than keep reaching for external solutions is do what you are avoiding: say no to the boyfriend. His response to that will tell you more than anything he has said previously.

And, a personal note:

Many years ago before I was in therapy, I didn't know who I was. I was in the midst of an emotionally abusive relationship. I had no identity. The process of regaining my identity was hard, like crawling over glass inch by inch, and my therapist never once told me who or what I was. I explored that on my own with some suggestions, but it took quite a long time to become assertive and gain independence. I did it by simply experimenting and trying different things. I made sure to deliberately practice *not* asking people for advice.

That person is long-since dead. She was capricious, selfish, and empty. She was depressed and lifeless. It took effort to change my thoughts, effort that has taken years. And, this post may in fact be a strangely-worded sales pitch, however anyone reading this can benefit from this one fact:

The only one who can ever give us meaning, or answers, is ourselves. Not some corny named website. Not a book. Not a philosophy. Not even a therapist, whether it's me or anyone else.

Meaning and contentment come from accepting who we are where we are at. Changing ourselves without doing that, whether plastic surgery, WLS, or other body modifications, will never achieve that if we are not first content and accepting.

Acceptance doesn't mean we never change. It means we acknowledge where we are at, and where we are at relative to others around us. It can be alarming, painful, enlightening. No advice can get you there...only self-inquiry and challenging yourself will get you there.

Sorry it took me some time to get back to y'all - but it takes some time to dump a boyfriend. Definitely feel like I've lost a the most unnecessary and unhealthy weight I had.

Thank you for all the great advice, and the conspiracy theories lol. Honestly, I was just reaching out to see if there was a generous interpretation to what my boyfriend was pushing me into, because I couldn't find one. Yes that was one of the suggestions that they gave me on that life advice site. I went to them trying to find a way to crawl out of my depression AND keep my BF. They really helped me to regain my bearings but some things are just too toxic to save.

Have a beautiful Wednesday!