recovery
this holiday season, i am feeling immense gratitude for recovery and the access to resources i have that i know others may not. the past year has been extremely challenging facing my eating disorder and choosing recovery. every day it is a choice, and i hope that sharing any part of my journey helps others. in honor of this gratitude, here are some lessons from my past 8 months in eating disorder therapy.
It’s never about the food.
This one seems obvious, but when you’re in the moment it’s difficult not to think it’s about the food. While eating disorders vary a lot but it never really is about the food. What does control mean to us? How does food/controlling food make us feel? What does losing weight/gaining weight mean to us and how does this impact our view of food? Leading into…
Food neutrality: the practice of recognizing that food is not a tool to look a certain way
For me, I fully believe in this, but reprogramming my brain to believe it is hard hard hard. Naturally- we live in a society that promotes controlling food and body. And when I’ve personally seen that controlling food does change my body it's hard to fully believe it. I have to go back to thinking about how I felt at different phases of my body. At my smallest I was ridden with anxiety and the fear of losing control. I was very unreliable to the people around me. Choosing recovery is for me, but it is equally for my loved ones.
There are different types of hunger, not just survival.
Honoring all of these, without judgment is a practice. Whether that’s eye/nose hunger (walking down Main Street at Disney and smelling the butter popcorn), stomach hunger (physical hunger), cellular (the “too hungry” feeling), mind (hunger from restriction) or heart hunger (emotional hunger - maybe we were given a certain food as a child to comfort us), we deserve to honor that hunger. All hunger serves a purpose.
Controlling food was a survival tactic.
It served as something for me to fixate on to avoid feeling hard feelings or confronting my emotions. I am understanding more that I didn’t learn healthy emotional regulation. Discovering these needs and finding ways to meet them is hard work. My eating disorder developed as a way to protect myself.
Overexercising is a form of purging.
I love working out. Truly, I love feeling strong and pushing my limits. I am recently starting to examine my relationship with exercise. I used to get extreme anxiety when I missed a workout, but where I’m at in recovery, I still need to take a step back sometimes. It’s easy for me to push and push and push, but it’s important to stay grounded in the reason I’m choosing to workout in the first place. Especially as a coach, I want to ensure that I am promoting healthy movement and practices.
God.
This isn’t something that has been pushed on me in therapy at all, rather something I have found myself. Truly recognizing that I can let go and trust God with so much that I try to control is a huge ease. My relationship with God changes, but one thing that remains constant is that I can trust a higher power
Journaling and reflecting what my experience was and what I may have been feeling before and after a binge.
Giving myself permission to engage and reflect gives grace to recognizing this is a coping mechanism. By allowing the behavior to engage, it’s likely you may not even want to engage as you are staying present and inviting room to give love to behavior that has been adopted to protect yourself.
You cannot hate yourself into a person you love.
Always lead with love. I have kept myself in a cycle that keeps me from feeling too much - one way or the other. I had a hard time feeling safe in joy or love because I was scared of it being temporary. How can I truly enjoy food? What would that look like for me? How can I work towards enjoying more in my day to day life? When you notice the urge, how can you pause and nurture your needs in a way that is loving?
the lessons are constant, the reflections are insightful, and the growth is happening. slowly but surely, i am healing. progress is not linear. some days feel a lot harder than others. and that’s ok.
grateful for my family, friends, loved ones, mentors, coworkers, community, that keeps me close to myself when i feel lost.