You may be dealing with some complex emotions both before and after surgery. It’s perfectly normal for the emotions you feel after surgery to be similar to those you feel before you have the surgery; many of the self-esteem and confidence issues that help lead us to surgery aren’t immediately fixed by bariatric surgery, or even after weight loss begins.
As a matter of fact, you could go through a period of feeling worse after the surgery than you did before. You might feel anxious, depressed, disappointed, out of control, and helpless one minute and then happy and excited the next. Many of the same issues that affected your emotional well-being before surgery will still exist, and still affect you, after surgery.
The changes that are necessary for weight-loss surgery to be successful can also trigger emotional issues. After all, actually losing weight post-surgery requires a major lifestyle change that involves new eating habits, a new routine, and even new relationships. These are huge changes, and all of them involve eliminating or seriously limiting things that were once major sources of comfort. As a result, depression, anxiety, and loneliness are possible side effects.
Here are some things you might begin to feel as you start losing weight:
- Feelings of insecurity as you lose weight and adjust to your new identity while saying goodbye to the old.
- Feelings of vulnerability as you lose the protective blanket of weight that you never realized made you feel somehow safer.
- Feelings of anxiety as you face your new lifestyle and new ability to be active and social.
It’s possible that these changes will be more emotionally taxing than you anticipated. When you feel this way, you need to turn to your online and offline support groups for help and guidance. Exchanging these thoughts and feelings with other people who have been in your shoes will go a long way toward helping you feel better and keeping you motivated to succeed. It will also help stop you from adopting bad eating habits as a way to cope with your emotions, an activity which could lead to weight gain and undo all the hard work you put in to your weight loss. You should also bring these feelings up with your doctor so he or she can help you manage them and make sure you’re healthy, both physically and emotionally.