2014: A Transformative Year

If you had asked me one year ago today what I would have expected 2014 to look like, I wouldn't even be close to telling you what actually occurred this year. I probably would have told you that I expected to continue working towards my counseling hours, spending time with my then boyfriend, and going out and partying most nights in Milwaukee. Well, none of those things happened for more than a few weeks. This year has been very unexpected, but a lot of the choices I made helped save my life.

I started the year living in Milwaukee and quickly on the path to total self-destruction. I had just taken a new job and was learning quickly that I missed doing actual therapy, but case management wasn't terrible. I was also spending most of my free time in a very enabling relationship. I was encouraged to lose weight and get blackout drunk more times than not during the week. My eating disorder and alcoholism were quickly becoming my main priorities, and everything else fell into place around that. It all came to a screeching halt at the end of January when the relationship ended, which I didn't expect, and I spiraled for 3 days until I hit my breaking point.

February 1st, I made one of the biggest decisions of my life. That morning, I woke up feeling emotionally and physically worse than I had in most of my adult life. I spent the morning figuring out what to do and decided that I needed some help. That day, I grabbed a pile of clothes off my floor, threw them in a bag, and went to the train station bound for St Louis to be with my family. I called work to tell them I was going on leave and texted friends who needed to know. That 6 hour train ride might have been the longest of my life. I got to St Louis to try and figure out what I had to do.

The first 2 weeks, I slept and tried to determine what to do about work (I was only given 30 days unpaid leave), treatment, and the life I had up and left in Milwaukee. After the first week, I went to go intake at an IOP program, but I had such a bad feeling about the therapist that I never went back. She had brought up a name, McCallum Place, that did more intensive treatment. So, I had an intake scheduled for the next week.

My intake at MP was one of the most overwhelming experiences I have ever had. I was forced to discuss issues that I had buried deep inside me for years. I finally had to admit what I had been doing for years to destroy myself, but I was in pretty deep denial about how bad things really were. I requested 6 hour days, because I felt like I didn't need 10 hours every day. I wasn't that sick. Boy was I wrong...

Anyone who goes to treatment will tell you that day 1 is always the hardest. Most people just cry the entire day. That's what I did. I had to meet with 3 people: therapist, dietician, and psychiatrist. With each person, I had to retell my story, so that they understood why I was there. Plus, I had to sit for my first lunch and PM snack. I had no idea what to expect or how everything worked. I was so grateful for 3:30 that day.

My first 2 weeks at treatment, I was pretty adamant that I would be returning to Milwaukee and work by the beginning of March. I felt like I just needed a little kick; then, I would be fine. That idea drew some skepticism from both my treatment team and fellow patients. By the end of that first week, I stepped up into 10 hour days and made the decision to quit my job and start a new life in St Louis for a while. I called my job and said I wasn't returning and turned my focus onto recovery 100%.

Partial Hospitalization was the hardest thing I have ever done. Over a 12 week period, I spent 10 hours every day at McCallum, and the rest at my parent's house sleeping. It was emotionally and physically draining. For the first time, I had to confront what was really underneath my anorexia and figure out who I was; a concept that I had never even thought about. During this time, I created wonderful relationships with some of the strongest, most bad ass people I know, and started to learn that I was okay as I am. In March, I went to Milwaukee to pack up all of my things in mine and my brother's cars, said goodbye to my friends and my life there, and left to begin a new life in St Louis, because I knew that returning to Milwaukee right away would have been a dangerous decision. By the beginning of April, the weight of all of these decisions and having difficulty with learning all of this new information became so overwhelming that I went down fast. My insurance had dropped me down to 6 hour days and was threatening to discharge me any day. I had started medication that made me hallucinate and lose control, so I spent a week in the hospital to refresh and restart, but it ended up being my downfall.

The day I was released from the hospital, my insurance dropped me down to IOP, because I hadn't lost any weight while I was inpatient. So, in 2 weeks, I had gone from 70 hours a week to 42 hours to 15. That jump from 6 hour days to IOP is ridiculously difficult. I chose not to go to IOP and said I would find my own team. Well, that never happened.

I spent the next 6 weeks working on getting out of my depression and figuring out what the next step would be. I started applying for jobs all over the place, and eventually, I found one in mid-June. The extra benefit was that it came with an apartment as well, so I would finally be able to go back to being independent again. I accepted and moved out and was doing very well for 2 months. My eating disorder voice was still there, but it was no longer screaming. This lasted until things got crazy at work.

At the beginning of August, my job had a lot of major changes, and I ended up being promoted in that; however, with no training on how to do this new position, I ended up losing myself into work and got extremely off track. In 3 weeks, I had gone from the higher end of my goal weight range to out of it completely on the lower end. I didn't want to lose my job, so I went back to McCallum to intake for IOP.

I started IOP at the end of August. It became a juggling act of work and treatment, but it was exactly what I needed to get back on track. I spent 12 hours a week working on what had caused me to relapse and how to incorporate recovery into my outside life; something I had never had to do before. I had my struggles, but I felt very comfortable with my team and worked hard to ensure that I didn't go back to PHP. During this time, I was able to return to some kind of balance of a personal and a work life. I was getting back on track. It also helped that I had met this very cute, tall, bearded man through my coworker who came in and instantly became supportive of this journey and helping me when things get bad. It was a very welcome change from my last relationship where my eating disorder had been encouraged, not my health and well being.

By the end of November, I was feeling overwhelmed by the responsibilities at work and trying to leave early 4 days a week to get to treatment. Also, my therapist was being transfered to a different site, so I felt it was time to leave. The biggest difference this discharge was that I left with a team in place. I maintained my therapist and regained my dietician from PHP. I felt positive about leaving.

Over the last month, I have been mostly able to balance recovery and life. I do have bad days, but I have far more good days. I've continued to work hard in therapy and on the insane meal plan my dietician has for me. I feel that I am in a very healthy place in my recovery and emotionally at the end of this year.

This entire year has been about my eating disorder recovery. I spent a total of 6 months at McCallum Place and another 5 working on my recovery outside of it. As I am ending this year, I feel very optimistic for the first time in a long time. Things have been going remarkably well, and rather than sit here and be anxious about what bad thing is going to happen next, I am going to focus on being happy in this moment, because I deserve it.

Every month in 2014, I used the song "This Year" by The Mountain Goats, which has the primary line of I am going to make it through this year, if it kills me. This line has rung true as I would have never guessed that I would spend so much time working on myself to get better. I made it through. It didn't kill me, but it did make me stronger. To celebrate that, I get to ring in a new year of love and happiness with my man, and I could not be more grateful.

I would not have made it through this year without the support of my family and friends who continuously reminded me that, even though treatment sucks, I was doing the right thing. I made it through 2014 one day at a time, and that will help make 2015 that much better.

My resolution for next year is to continue working on this journey in recovery and to continue living in each moment. One day at a time.

Happy New Year, my loves!

Meal Plans and Vacations

I think I learned that meal plans and vacations don't go together. I just spent a weekend out in Washington, DC visiting some of my dearest friends from high school, which was a fun weekend, but learning to go off schedule on my meal plan and without calorie counts was overwhelming.

Ever since I've learned my counts, I feel like I have slipped back into some bad habits. Counting was like a religion to me when I was really bad. I counted and measured every single calories that entered my body and punished myself by compensating if I went even 1 calorie over. Now, I still obsess over my calories in hopes to get to a level my dietician and therapist are okay with so I can get on a maintenance meal plan for a while. I currently hate how my body looks and feels, but I am trying to remind myself that this is what I need to do for this moment. But now, I can't seem to function without counting every calorie again; it's just on a bigger scale.

So, going on vacation is no easy task. I have my regimented 10, 12, 3, 5, and 7 eating times. Everyday at those times, my recovery record rings on my phone, and I am prepared with something to eat. Not that simple when you're out doing things and trying to relax. It's even worse when you have more limited options and unknown calorie counts for your meal plan. It's just really hard.

So, I just did what I could. I feel like I didn't really lose any weight, which I guess is a good thing, but I feel very off track. I know rationally, I'm probably not that bad, but to go back on my regimented schedule feels terrifying today. It's back to that total control, which I spent so many weeks in therapy trying to let go of. All I want is to eat normally and not feel like a crazy person if I don't know the calorie counts for one snack.

I have a really difficult time with this in recovery, because I feel like there are so many contradictory statements. We're supposed to let go of the control of restricting, but we still have to monitor every piece of our intake to report to our dieticians and figure out what meal plan is best. We aren't supposed to obsess a out food, but we have to in order to stay in recovery. We can't exercise, but it's worse for our body image and health if we don't. I constantly feel like I am in a Catch-22 and a no win situation. How do you solve that?

I'm becoming increasingly more frustrated with this whole process. It makes me not want to see my dietician any more, because I feel like it's more damaging to my psyche to continue to go; however, my therapist won't continue to see me without her. Again, another no win. I just can't help but think that this might never get easier, and I will have to fight this every single day for the rest of my life, which might be the worst feeling of all.

Coming Undone

It's been an incredibly frustrating time since my previous blog. Between my therapy appointments, which are only becoming increasingly more painful, and my dietician making major increases at each appointment, I feel like I am losing my mind. I know recovery is difficult, but I'm starting to feel like I am never going to catch a break or just have a moment where I am not completely overwhelmed with anxiety.

My last therapy session was probably one of my most difficult to date. After starting EMDR at my previous session, we started discussing my biggest trigger, my father. I don't feel the need to go into all of the details here, but in summary, I have not had a relationship with my father for a few years now. Leading up to and following my parents' divorce, my father became someone I didn't know, let alone had any respect for. At that point in time, I felt responsibilities to too many other people to try and process this major loss and transition for myself. In the years following, my relationship with him became more and more strained as a lot of completely heartless bullshit happened. For me, this has always been one of my most painful things to discuss and process in therapy, especially with events of the last year or so.

So, I had my session on Sunday afternoons as always; however, knowing that I probably wouldn't see my therapist for 2 weeks due to me being out of town, I expressed that I was really concerned about opening all of this up too much right before leaving. My session went on, and it was really difficult. Then, my session kind of ended abruptly as we discussed my next appointment. I left feeling very unsettled, a feeling which has continued through today. It's my anxiety crazy high and has not helped me get anything done lately. I feel so distracted by the thoughts in my head that I am having a difficult time focusing on the day to day things I have to complete. I feel like I need an emergency session before I go, but with the holiday, that's just not possible. Then, I saw my dietician on Monday.

TRIGGER WARNING- I am going to talk about numbers, because it is critical to see how insane my meal plan is. So, if you are triggered by numbers, please skip over this next 2 sections:

So, the last time I saw Erica, we adjusted my meal plan so that I could have smaller meals and more snacks in order to help my stomach when my gastroparesis flares up. It's also more manageable for me mentally. I have never done large meals, even when I was healthy, so to try and do so now is brutal. So, last week, I did really well with this meal plan. I felt really comfortable with it and was confident that I could continue to do this moving forward. I could tell I was gaining some weight, which is terrifying, so I felt like I would stay on this plan and then reduce it after I hit somewhere in the middle of my range to weight maintenance. I recognize that I have been under my goal weight range, but it has never been more than 5 pounds outside since I left PHP in April. So, with last week, I felt like I had probably put on about 3 pounds. I am pretty good at figuring out my weight and fluctuations after focusing on my body for so long. Knowing my weight from my doctor's appointment last week, I figured with 3 pounds, I am officially back on the very low end of my goal weight range. I recognize that they want me to put on a little more weight in the event that I struggle with doing the trauma work and lose some. I feel like, cool! I gained 3 pounds in a week. That sucks, but I know that my meal plan is at a good level. So I went into my session anticipating that meal plan wouldn't change. Boy was I wrong...

Erica ended up adding the calorie equivalent of another meal to my meal plan. I'm having a hard enough time doing the amount of calories I had to do on last week's plan, which totaled a crazy 3000 calories. But now, I'm up to 3500 a day and still on exercise restrictions, which blows my fucking mind. I get that I need to gain weight, but wasn't 3 pounds in a week good work? Why do we need to accelerate this process? In addition to that, why are we adding another full meal? My stomach can't handle that. What are we doing? I do not like it.

END TRIGGER WARNING

The trickiest part of my dietician appointments have been accepting my meal plan and recognizing that yes, I still need to weight restore. I'm close to where I need to be, but not close enough for my team to be comfortable with my range. I know that this is a good thing, but it's really difficult to deal with. I have so many days where I feel like I'm doing a good job, but it is never enough for my team or those around me. It feels like a Neverending cycle of "You're not working hard enough at your recovery," which is a really shitty feeling. I just feel like I am now consuming a heinous amount of food and not being allowed to do much movement. Yes, I do want to compensate for it in some way, which is my eating disorder voice, but I just don't feel like eating a fuck ton of calories and sitting on my ass all day is a healthy way to weight restore. When I do start being more active, my body is going to freak and either decide to be in pain when moving or over compensate the intake. It's a no win situation. Between this and my unresolved therapy this week, I'm frazzled.

Do you ever just get the feeling that you're constantly climbing uphill with no downward slope in sight? That's where I'm at in recovery right now. Life always has times of peace and of struggle. That's what makes it life, but you have to keep going. Recovery is not an easy process, but you have to go through the struggles to get to the beautiful side.

Survival Story

I recently was tipped off to a blog on the Internet that the writer shared that she was working on a project with Buzzfeed and asking people for their survival stories. Through social media, someone who has been reading my blog suggested that I share mine. I did, but I think it's important to share here as well. So, here we go. My essay on my ED Survival Story:

Surviving my eating disorder has not been an easy task by any means. The first time I restricted, I was 13 years old; a scared little girl who just wanted to use her voice that had been stuffed away for so long. Growing up a military brat, you have no control over your life for the length of your sponsor's contract. You go where the military tells you to go and often will little notice. As a kid, it automatically kicked me into survivalist mode, because if you got too emotional or attached, leaving was that much harder. You have no control or stability, which lead to these insane unfulfilled needs. Couple this with abuse from a variety of sources, I felt like my only option for some control or using my voice was to use food. Restricting became my source of survivial, both physically and emotionally.

My battle with anorexia only got worse as I entered high school. I was faced with a mountain of adversities, such as: a deployed father, multiple moves, the deaths of multiple friends, and the suicide of my high school boyfriend, which I was blamed for. My need for control turned into a need for comfort, support, and some positivity in my life. Anorexia became my everything, because it filled every need I never knew I needed. It became my friend and gave me a voice when I was struggling so deeply. After a 3 year battle, I fell into my first true supportive group of friends who helped me turn my life around, for a little while anyways. After more years and more trauma, I relapsed severely in the summer of 2013. By the end of the year, I was barely surviving on a restricted diet of 500 calories a day and a flat affect. Nothing mattered but my eating disorder, even though I could never see how much it was killing me. To me, I could only survive day to day by punishing myself for all of the horrible things that had happened in my life, none of which were truly my fault. Then, on a night when I was blackout drunk trying to numb my pain even more, I hit rock bottom and called my mother to tell her what I was doing. The next day, I up and left my job, apartment, friends, and entire life to get on a train for 6 hours to a new life; one of recovery, even though I didn't really know what I was going into.

Entering treatment in early 2014 saved my life. I would not have survived this year without making that decision. My journey in recovery began with individual/group therapy, meals, dieticians, and medications for 10 hours a day over 12 weeks. I was in hefty denial when I entered treatment, but with time, the idea of having a life without my anorexia became feasible. I left treatment determined to succeed. I lasted 3 months before returning to intensive outpatient, because returning to a "normal" life of working full time and living on my own again was completely overwhelming, and I returned to using restricting for control. After 3 months of IOP, I am finally back on my own with weekly appointments with my therapist and dietician, my modes of survival in the real world.

Today, I still have struggles. Because of my anorexia, I now have a heart condition that I have to take medication for daily. I have stomach issues that may never go away. I have emotions that I still am not really sure how to deal with. I have my trauma that I still get reminded of time to time. I don't believe I will ever wake up and say, "I survived my eating disorder," because I have to make a conscious decision to continue in my path of recovery multiple times a day, every single day. Recovery takes an incredible amount of willpower. Anyone working on staying on that path deserves a medal. For me, surviving used to mean being able to manage my trauma and emotions by not allowing myself to heal and becoming more damage in the process. Today, surviving my eating disorder is making choices to be compassionate to myself, using food to help support me in all aspects, and letting go of all the blame and negativity that I have held onto for so long. Surviving means living the best life I can, because I am deserving of it. The best part? Anorexia will have no part in it.

I do not know if this will get chosen; however, surviving my eating disorder is such a huge focus in my life right now. We don't survive by being passive. Only the truly strong survive with hard work and dedication.

All of the Trauma, All of the Food

This whole process of getting better is really rough. There are so many days I wish I could wake up and just be free of the eating disorder thoughts, have the ability to feel, and eat all of the food. Unfortunately, this isn't that easy, which I guess makes it a good life lesson that I can use to reflect back on in my old age when I finally get to the point where I can do all of the things I listed above. Til then, I keep on going with all the appointments.

I started EMDR with my therapist yesterday, which has just left me kind of reeling today. Just going through and beginning to work on all the bad stuff and bringing up all of these feelings has been brutal. We started to do prep work before actually diving into my trauma, which will start next week. We talked about the fear of letting go, which I discussed in my last blog. She got me to a point where we were discussing what I am truly most afraid of and determined it's another form of the fear of the unknown.

My biggest fear is uncovering what is truly behind that wall of my eating disorder. I know that there are very strong emotions that have been buried for a long time. The strength of those is probably more than I really recognize, which feeds into my feeling of a loss of control if I truly let every emotion go. I hate losing control, so that's a huge internal battle. So, really allowing myself to feel is going to be a major step.

The other large fear also deals with the unknown. There is a very significant portion of my life that I have no memory of. My first real memories don't start until middle school for me, and even then, I don't have many vivid memories from the last 10 years. I know a significant part of that is due to my trauma, but it leaves a lot of questions as to what some of the things I don't remember are. I have had nightmares of childhood trauma for 15 years now but very little actual memory of it happening. In doing EMDR, I am scared that all of these memories will come out, and I will be left as more of a broken person than I have ever been. It's a risk I have to take though. All of it had been pretty overwhelming.

In addition to that, I learned my weight for the first time in 3 months on Tuesday,  which is never great.  I have been having all kinds of stomach issues on and off since going to treatment early this year. So I finally went to go see my primary care doctor to see if she could help.  That turned into 45 minutes of me crying about how low my weight was,  even though I feel like I have been trying really hard to do my best and follow my meal plan.  It's just so discouraging.  It's hard enough when my brain doesn't cooperate,  but for my body not to as well?  It's enough to make a girl go crazy.

This lead to my dietician appointment tonight where we discussed all of this.  So since I am continuing to float around the same weight,  which is just under my goal range, I received the gift of major meal increases today. Every snack and meal increased. Then,  I got my calorie count.  This is the first time I have requested to know my calories ever since before going to treatment when I counted and obsessed over every single one.  It's 6 times the amount I was restricting a year ago. If that's not a mindfuck,  I don't know what is.  I know it will help me Hey back to a healthy weight,  but it doesn't make it any easier.

Overall, recovery is such a difficult journey.  Every day has different challenges, but with them come the new beautiful things in my life.  So,  I am choosing to contribute on this path and try to figure it out.

Fear of Letting Go

Therapy is hard... Tonight was my first outpatient session with my therapist. I still can't say how much I enjoy working with her, as she pushes me to really confront a lot of the issues and feelings I have spent years avoiding. We have been working through my timeline slowly but surely, but we're at a pause point in order to do some prep work before beginning EMDR.

Tonight, we were discussing my life outside of IOP, which I think is going fairly well. She asked how often I had been restricting and if it has been full meals or just components. Most days, I have been completing very close to 100% of my meal plan. Others, I skip snacks, but not meals. Every day is a little different. So, my therapist posed an interesting question, "Why are you so scared to give up your eating disorder?"

At first, I was pretty taken aback by this question. My thought was "I've already given it up. That's why I spent 6 months of this year in treatment. What do you mean why am I scared?" Then, I took a reality check. In some ways, I am ready to stop living with my eating disorder in control, because it's ruined almost half of my life; however, there is SOME part of me that is absolutely terrified to give up all of my eating disorder behaviors, which is a terrifying thought in itself.

One of my biggest fears of letting go of restricting is having to tear down and rebuild the wall I have spent the last 10 years building up. ED for me has functioned as the threshold for emotions and attachments since I was in middle school. I learned from an early age that people always leave and that emotions don't do anything but make me uncomfortable. While both of those beliefs aren't true, I have functioned on those assumptions for years. It has protected me from many things but kept me from figuring out and showing my true identity as well. So, the idea of letting go of restricting, allowing myself to feel things, and let people see that side of me is a really difficult thing to overcome.

My next biggest fear is an inability to cope. My main coping skill is skipping a meal to help me feel better. It's my go to quick fix. While I know a plethora of other coping skills from my training as a therapist, I have a difficult time turning to them, because they don't have that same instant gratification. So, what am I supposed to do? Sit with my feelings? Don't be crazy. That would be a normal thing to do, and I have rejected the idea of normalcy. So, I am holding on to restricting just in case I get too overwhelmed.

Finally, my biggest fear is living a life that is eating disorder free, because I haven't done that since I was 12 years old. The vast majority of my memories are from periods where my restricting was present (because, of course, the bad memories are most prevalent). I do not know my life without my eating disorder, which is the scariest thing of all. I have to learn how to cope, feel and acknowledge my feelings, AND figure out who I am? Excuse me while I just go lie in my bed. Seriously, this is a massive undertaking.

So, I find myself asking, "Do I really want to give up ED? All of this other stuff seems like a lot of work, and I would just like to stay in my bubble. It's safe here." Then, I mentally slap myself in the face and snap back to reality. Have the last 10 years really been that great that I want to repeat them? That's a big fuck no. I have put so much work into getting to this point in recovery that I would be throwing it all away by choosing to hold onto these behaviors.

While I recognize that I cannot change my three major obstacles over night, I can dedicate myself to working towards these goals. If I can start to incorporate other coping skills, I can reduce the amount of restricting I do. If I can allow myself to begin accepting that it's okay to have feelings and actually feel them, I might be able to create stronger relationships with others and live a more genuine life. If I can continue to figure out who I am, I will be able to dictate the life I lead and keep the people that want to join me on that journey. That's what this journey in recovery is all about; facing our fears and being willing to accept change. If we don't, we continue to stay in these patterns and be miserable, and no one deserves to live like that.

Happiness

Happiness;  easy concept, difficult to achieve.  Anyone can come up to you and ask,  "What makes you happy?" and you will probably be asks to list off a number of things. Many of these things might make us happy, but it doesn't mean we have achieved total happiness with our lives.  So if things don't makes us happy,  what does it takes to get there?

For me,  my idea of total happiness consists of feeling fulfilled in what I an doing every day,  finding an activity that stimulates me mentally and physically,  being surrounded by people who love and care about me,  and being able to help other people.  I feel like I have had most of these things at some point in  at my life.  I have had moments of being truly happy; however, with most of my life being clouded with trauma, they have been fleeting and bringing my walls up higher. I get very weary about it.  There's always this little voice in my head that tells me it won't last,  and it's normally right. 

I have had a pretty negative outlook on my life with many moments where I have doubted that I could ever be happy, but staying in that negative headspace only reinforces that I probably won't be. It has taken me a long time to accept my part in my depression.  While I do not have control over the things that have happened to me,  I do have control over my reaction to them.  For years,  I have been the victim and have done nothing to get out of that identity. My eating disorder didn't help that either. I became very dependent on other people and expected them to take care of me and make me happy. My internal processes did not match my independent, strong exterior.  When those people left,  so did my happiness.

It has taken me until the age of 23 to figure out that I am in control of my own life and letting in or removing things that make me miserable. I also can make myself happy without the assistance of others.  After years of chasing people and things to try and make my life fulfilling,  I learned that that's not what life is about.

Maybe happiness is one of those things that we shouldn't chase.  Maybe it's something that, with a little patience and living in the moment, will come naturally to us. For me,  after spending 10 years of my life hating myself and beginning the journey of recovery,  I have finally found myself in a place of being truly happy with how things in my life are going. It has been a long time, and I am always terrified for the next bad thing in my life to happen. But for now,  I choose to live in this moment. If I don't, I may miss out on my main goal- to live a life in happiness.

Choices

Tonight, I had a long talk with one of my students about choices. In life, we are faced with more options than we could possibly count everyday. These can range from minor (What shirt should I wear today?) to major (Should I move to a new city?). Regardless of what type of choice it is, they can have some pretty major impacts on our daily lives.

Tonight, we were talking about choices in how we act in response to situations. For me, I have this battle every day. When I am faced with a difficult minor or major choice, my eating disorder voice always gets louder.

For example, tonight I met with my dietician for the first time in outpatient care. It was really comfortable, especially since she was seeing me twice a week in PHP and knew many of the struggles I had then. She also knows about many of my traumatic experiences; therefore, it's already an advantage for my care. So, we caught up on where I was at now and transitioned to talking about my meal plan. Going in, I was pretty aware that my meal plan was definitely on the lower side of my calorie range and that my weight is currently at the lower end of my goal weight range. So, I was kind of expecting some kind of change to be made in terms of my meal plan. What I didn't expect was the number of changes and increases.

I rationally know that these are necessary, especially if I slip up on behaviors as a result of the trauma processing in therapy; however, it doesn't make my eating disorder voice happy, and I am being bombarded by messages in my head telling me I am going to get fat. So, this leads to a choice; follow the meal plan or my ED voice.

My gut reaction to this is to choose ED. That's my go to coping skill. I know that restricting makes me feel less anxious and more in control of situations in my life. Also, with the trauma work I am doing, my ED is the wall that makes me feel safe. I know that I cannot get hurt when I restrict; I am protected in my anorexia bubble. Luckily, my rational side has kicked in more and more while I have been in recovery. I have the choice to fight those negative voices and to complete my meal plan to the best of my ability day to day.

The choice I make is going to pretty major. If I do not choose to do the meal plan, I will lose everything and end up back at McCallum all day, every day, which I have enough motivation to prevent that. Just like that, small choices we make can amount to major impacts. Choosing to skip one meal or one snack can be a the first step on a downward icy slope, which is all it takes.

Choices are incredibly difficult, especially when we have past experiences that dictate what one to pick based on consequences and rewards received as a result of those decisions. But if we choose to make rational positive decisions,  even if they are extremely difficult to follow through with,  that one choice may prove to be enough to change our entire lives.

Identifying the Calm

For the first time in months, I feel like I am at a really solid point in my recovery; a spot that I haven't felt good in in years. In my 10 year battle with anorexia, something has always lingered. Typically, it has been manifestations of my negative core beliefs. Some part of me always feels unlovable or unworthy of anything good. That tiny voice builds and builds until I ultimately relapse. Those core beliefs have defined my life since elementary school, so 15 years later, it's hard to let go of, but here I am. I feel calm.

This calm is a strange feeling. After a week of high anxiety and feeling unsafe, it all seems to have alleviated. There is no real rationale for it, but I feel like I am starting to solidify a stronger identity and idea of what kind of person I want to be. For having so many years of being lost, I am starting to figure out what I want my life to look like.

As kids, we are always asked what we want to grow up to be. Mine radically varied from ballerina to nursing to journalism to who even knows what else. I think it would be better if teachers started asking who we wanted to be. As adults, most people go into college, their first step into the "real world" to figure out what they want to do the rest of their lives. That's a huge decision to make in your late teen years.

When I first entered college, I was barely 17, about to experience another series major trauma, and had my college plan radically shifted from what I intended it to be. I was originally going to move to North Carolina to study dance and psychology  (as a back up career). I had this idea of what my life was going to look like. By the end of my first year of college, I was still living in Sheboygan, engaged to someone I had been dating for 2 months, and living in survival mode while my eating disorder and trauma consumed my mind.

So, I went through college and did pretty well. My first taste of identity came in 2010 when I studied in Madrid for a few weeks over the summer. It was my first taste of actual freedom: no parents, partner, or responsibilities to anyone but myself. I knew that my independence was fiercely important to me, and I wasn't getting that at home. I held onto that and thrived for those weeks, but came home and quickly lost it all. I fell into the same patterns and continued on.

At the end of 3 years, I was able to graduate with a double major in Psychology and Spanish and a life plan; I would be the good Navy wife. I planned to complete grad school in a year and then join my partner out in Maryland. My identity had become a path towards becoming a wife. My life had no other meaning. Yes, I had a college degree, but I was ready to give up my dreams for someone else at 20 years old. I was so blinded by dependency on another person that I didn't need to figure out who I was. I had my identity through him. Why did I have to do any work on that at all? Then, life threw me for a curve ball... again. My life plan walked out on me.

After my break up the summer after college, I was lost. No identity to call my own. I was just a girl with a 2 hour commute to grad school 3 days a week and working 2 jobs. I didn't have time to figure me out, which was a blessing and a curse. I was able to survive through work again. I took the first steps towards an identity. I decided to use the money I had been saving for a trip to see my partner, and I put it towards a flight to New York to go for the dream: auditioning for the Rockettes. That was my first glimpse of who I wanted to be. So, I decided to start a new life in Milwaukee to try and figure out who I was.

Milwaukee was both good and bad for me. The good? met the most amazing people there that I could never live without now. I got my Master's Degree. I found that counseling truly is the career for me in the long run. I had freedom. The bad? I had freedom.

After 3 years of a rough relationship, I was back on my own again after a major bout of depression and eating disorder behaviors. Then, I was introduced the bars that I could actually get into, and I was hooked. My partying ways definitely got out of control when I lived there. At my worst, I was drinking half a bottle of Jack Daniels by myself every night. I was in a major relapse and was scary skinny. My identity became grad school girl by day, alcoholic by night. When you're super busy with grad school and numbed out at night, there's no need to develop a real identity. Your behaviors define that for you. This went on and on. I (again) got into a relationship that I changed my identity for in order to be loveable. My eating disorder behaviors were encouraged, and I became dependent  (again). Once he left, I cracked. After a 3 day drinking binge, I was so broken and lost that I had no idea what to do. I knew I wanted to end it all, but it didn't feel like the right option. I knew I couldn't do that. So, here I came to St Louis.

Through treatment, you have to break away at all the survival armor and walls built up to protect this fragile identity that hasn't had the chance to grow. Somewhere, that little person is trying to get out. As I have said before, I did a lot of identity work with Travis. He really pushed me to look at who I was without my eating disorder. I was nothing. How can you live for 10 years having no clue who you are? I was a shell of a person for a long time. I had good qualities on the outside and nothing on the inside. Treatment was rebuilding and bringing the outside qualities in towards myself.

Now, I feel like I am starting to figure out who I am. I value the people in my life, especially when they are openly supportive of me. I value honesty and looking at life in a realistic, but positive way. I value loyalty as I have a lot of issues with abandonment. I value so many more things, but those are what create my identity. By living in accordance to my values, I am living in a way that I respect and feel good about. That's how I feel calm.

I'm pretty excited about the things happening in my life right now.  I feel like I am on the start of something new.  Where it will lead?  Who knows?  But for the first time in a long time,  I'm excited for the ride.

Safety

Since discharge last Friday, I've actually been doing pretty well. Not perfect on my meal plan, but I don't belive that recovery is a perfect process. I'm doing my best every day, even with my stomach issues, which have been getting better as well. Positives always need to be balanced with negatives though. I have been really struggling with anxiety and feelings of safety.

My anxiety is always there. Some days, it's really high; others, it's manageable. Lately, I've had higher anxiety days. It started on Saturday with a pretty major flashback. I haven't had a really bad one in quite a while, so it has been really overwhelming. I woke up really early on Sunday feeling very unsafe in my body and apartment. It's unnerving when you are so terrified of things that you rationally know would probably never happen. You just sit and fear and pray it calms down. None of this has been made any easier with the situations in my community right now.

Ferguson has been blowing up the news. While I am pretty close to downtown St Louis, a solid 25 minutes from there, it still has not added to my feelings of being unsafe. Because no one has any idea how wide spread things will be, I have a hard time using rationalization to calm myself down. At the same time, the likelihood of anything happening to me at this time is slim to none. Rationally, I know I am safe. Irrationally, I am waiting for someone to break through my door any second. So, it's been a difficult balance.

Through all this, I am proud to say that I have kept to my meal plan pretty well. I think it's just difficult to feel constantly afraid and have limited ways to calm down. I've been a homebody since Saturday. I have barely left my building, which is only making things more overwhelming. So, the next challenge is to actually physically battle my irrational fear rather than hide in my apartment and panic.

Fear is a powerful thing. It has the ability to shut everything down in an instant. We are wired to freeze or fly. It's our reactions to these fearful situations that determine how we move forward in life or stay stuck.

Transitions

The last week has been insanely difficult for me. After doing my trauma work on Wednesday, I have been left reeling. The nightmares every night have come back. The flashbacks have kicked up a little too. I have been isolating and just trying to move past the thoughts, but that is always easier said than done. It has also slightly derailed my meal plan, but I am working to get back on track one moment at a time; however, I am quickly approaching another transition in my life: discharging from IOP.

I am voluntarily discharging for multiple reasons. 1) My therapist is being transferred to another section of programming, so I would no longer be able to see her and would have to start again with a new therapist. 2) I am having increasing difficulty in balancing the schedule of my work demands with those of treatment. 3) I think it's time to sink or swim. That doesn't mean that all of this isn't terrifying though.

At IOP tonight, I spoke with all 3 members of my treatment team about the idea of discharging. All 3 were supportive as long as I have follow up care; this was not set up on my first discharge. My psychiatrist is offering to go through a provider list for me and help me pick someone who is not heavy handed with medication. My dietician gave me referrals, including one to the dietician I met with during PHP who had since left. But it was my therapist who did something amazing.

First of all, let me just say how much I love working with my current therapist. She really pushes me to connect to my emotions and push through when I want to shut down. She takes things at a much slower rate, so I can actually begin to process them rather than sweep them under the rug. I also have a strong level of trust with her, because I know that no matter what fucked up shit from my life I share with her, she isn't going to back down from it. It has been really beneficial for me. So, the thought of working with anyone else is really difficult right now, especially with the trauma work we have just begun.

Tonight, my therapist told me that she was willing to see me at her other outpatient clinic at a time that she fit in her schedule for me and a rate I can afford. I just started crying, because it was so amazing of her to do that for me, but it was the reason she told me that made me feel even better about it- "You have just been so brave about going back to these dark places in your life that I know you have never truly, emotionally discussed with anyone else. I think that that takes remarkable courage, and I can't release you to a new therapist to start over when you're working so hard to get through these things. I know I need to keep working with you, so I will do whatever I can to ensure that that keeps happening." And then, I cried more.

Sometimes when I am stuck in the negative thoughts of my trauma, I can forget that there are still good people in the world whose main purpose is not to hurt or abandon me; it's to help me. This was a huge reassuring moment for me, and I feel so much better about continuing on in my trauma work. It's still gonna suck, but I know I have strong support to go through it with.

So, I am transitioning out of IOP on Friday, but I am feeling ready. There are always those nerves, because you have to figure out life a little more; however, I am feeling confident that I can move forward and maybe let go of some of the darkness in my past to have an brighter tomorrow.

Prepping for Trauma Work

One of my main reasons for going to therapy is to work on the trauma that I have experienced in my life. For me, I am the type of person who has stuffed every negative feeling and event so deep within me that I have become emotionally disconnected from it. This causes nightmares, flashbacks, dissociating, anxiety, and more; however, in order to stop all these things, I have to unleash all of those things that I have stuffed; the things that are creeping up when I don't want or expect them to. So, how do we prepare for trauma work?

As I have mentioned before, I am currently going through my timeline, which has been no easy task. As we have gotten closer to my high school years and beyond, I have had this impending sense of doom and high anxiety knowing that my most severe trauma is coming, and I will have no choice but to talk about it. If I don't,  all of the bad things will continue, which would ultimately impact my ability to live in recovery. Now, I am at that point.

Tomorrow, we are beginning work on one of my biggest traumas. I spent a lot of time in PHP talking about it, as this event has had a profound effect on my ability to cope and what I choose to cope. I even did an hour long psychodrama, because it was the 9 year anniversary of that day in March. So, I have been mentally preparing for this moment over the last week or so through positive self talk ("I talked about this before. I can do it now") and telling myself that it is necessary for my recovery. It's just knowing how deeply angry and sad I am about this that terrifies me.

Here is a sparknotes version of this story, as I am not comfortable sharing all of these details on such a public platform. My sophomore year of high school, I had just moved to Maryland after a few years in Wisconsin. In March, 4 months after I had moved, someone I was close with in Wisconsin committed suicide after his battle with mental illness had gotten too hard. In hindsight, there were obvious signs that were clearly ignored by his parents. At 14, I knew something was wrong but didn't have the capacity to do anything about it, especially from another coast. This was my first major loss, which also kicked off the horrible trend of many of my friends dying way too young (He was 18). I had no idea how to cope, but that wasn't what made this so bad; it was the fact that his parents blamed for it. In their eyes, I was the reason he committed suicide.

Most people hear this story and automatically say, "What the fuck was wrong with them?" As an adult who has lost more friends to suicide since, I honestly feel like they were looking for a reason, as most people do in these cases. People always look for the reason that this person has chosen to end his or her life; however, we rarely find that answer. But 10 years ago, that insight wasn't there. At 14, I had no ability to cope with a death, let alone the responsibility for it as well, and I held onto the blame for his death for years. The worst part is that I never showed that guilt and pain. I had learned that it is wrong to show emotions, so I stuffed it deep inside me where I wouldn't have to deal with it. Then, I chose eating disorder behaviors, alcohol, and drugs to feel numb.

The thing about unpacking these feelings and trauma is that it is a tedious and delicate process. It's like unpacking that box of your grandma's china. You are so careful to unwrap each little piece, because even the slightest rushed movement could cause it to break. You can't rush through it; you have to do it one piece at a time. If you don't, everything could be ruined. Trauma is the same way.

I can honestly say I rushed through this event in my treatment the first time around. I spent 3 days talking about it and feeling that pain for the first time in 9 years, but after that, everything switched off again. This was also due to other things that had come up; however, without giving this trauma the time and care it needed, it got repositioned and packaged back up in that china box. A piece or two came out, but most of my trauma set is still there.

I think the best thing we can do when preparing to talk about trauma is to approach ourselves with kindness and compassion. These things have had a major impact on our lives, and they can't be fixed overnight. That is one thing I have to continually remind myself of. As much as I hate feeling things long term, if I don't continue to feel them, the negative effects will be worse than the feelings. Trauma happens to us. We do not cause them. We do not have responsibility for them. We should not blame ourselves. While all of these things are much easier said than done, they are important to recognize. Trauma occurs to some degree in most people's lives; however, it is our ability to discuss and work through it that helps us succeed in this journey towards recovery.

A Pound A Week

So after finally starting to feel better and working to get back on track with my meal plan, I have yet again been thrown another curveball by my treatment team. I trust them, but I hate these challenges. Because I have been sick, I lost enough weight for it to be considered a problem. While it is not my ticket to PHP, as I was not intentionally losing, it is an major roadblock in my recovery right now. My challenge is that I have to get back up to my goal weight. By doing this, I have to gain a pound a week until I reach that weight or I face being upcerted. 

Now, even for normal people, I think hearing that you have to gain a certain amount each week would be terrifying. When you have an eating disorder, that fear is magnified by 10, probably more. My rational side says that that's not a lot of weight; however, translating that into my meal plan? That's a horrible feeling. Knowing that I have to increase my intake that much more? God help

So, challenge has been issued, and I have 2 choices: gain the weight or don't? It will always be a battle of mind over matter, but this might be the biggest challenge I have faced in this journey in recovery.

One pound a week at a time...

Dance- How I Lost My Dreams to Anorexia.

This is probably the hardest blog I have written so far. It's very painful for me to discuss or even think about, which is why I don't talk about it often. But with it coming up more and more, I need to talk about it. If you know me, dance has been such a huge part of my life. It was one of the only constants I ever had growing up. Every time we moved, I was always involved in dance or something similar from city to city, state to state, country to country. Today, I came to the harsh realization that I haven't danced in over a year, which is something I don't think I ever would have thought would happen in my life, but here I am. I'm not dancing.

When I came to St Louis for treatment, I literally picked up and left everything behind. I was in such a bad headspace that I grabbed a pile of clothes from my floor into a bag (none of which even formed an outfit to leave the house in), got on a train, and tried not to look back. I left behind my job, my friends, my apartment, my car, everything. I ended up losing most of those things because of my eating disorder. To me, none of those things matter as much as dance. Losing that has been one of the hardest things for me to face. I can accept losing everything else, but this is has been really painful.

Last year, I was offered the contract of a lifetime. After so many days of auditioning, last minute trips to New York, and blood, sweat, and tears, I had finally done it; I was offered a contract to be a Rockette in New York City. It took me a few days to think about what to do. Had I taken that contract, I would have had to pick up and leave Milwaukee to move to New York City for a few months. I would have had to work another job to make it by, but it was something I had dreamed about since I was 5. I would be on stage at Radio City Music Hall. I chose to turn it down for two very big reasons- 1) I knew I would have to work a 2nd job just to make ends meet and 2) I was so deep in my eating disorder that I didn't think I would physically be able to do it. Two months had passed since my last audition, and I was down 15 pounds. I was barely able to work everyday, let alone dance a 90 minute show multiple times a week. So, I said no.

Things happen for a reason though. The show I was offered a contract for ended up being delayed, so I would have moved to New York for a few weeks of rehearsals and then, nothing. It ended up being the right choice. Little did I know that 2 months after that decision, I would ultimately lose everything anyway.

I haven't actually danced in over a year. The last gig I did was Mondo Lucha in Milwaukee, which was ninja hip hop and so much fun. For the first time in a long time, I was dancing just to have fun again; not to impress anyone or get a job. It was just for me, and I haven't gotten myself to dance since. Even in treatment, we had dance therapy, and I rarely participated. If I was in group that day, I would always sleep or zone out. It was too painful to accept that I wasn't allowed to really dance at that point in time. All I could do was eat a fuck ton of food and sit around in order to put back on all the weight I had lost. It was torture.

Even now, I haven't been able to bring myself to dance for so many reasons, which my eating disorder has a big part of. Being in front of mirrors for an hour where you have to body check to make sure your body is in the right position is incredibly trigger for me right now. All I see is fat and a body that I don't recognize when I look in the mirror. I have never been content in the way that my body looks weight restored. It makes it incredibly difficult to look in a mirror. Also, my eating disorder tells me that I can't go back to class, because I am out of shape, have no stamina, and won't be good anymore. It would be a failure for me to go, so I just avoid it. Finally, I put so much pressure on myself to be perfect in class. Dancing has always been an outlet for me, but it also has been a downfall. When I dance, I can't even describe the feeling. It feels like home; however, I feel like since I had been the best in class before, I have to live up to that in my mind, which is completely stupid. Dance is for me, not anyone else, but I still can't bring myself to do it.

I shudder in my mind to think that I won't ever dance again. Part of me truly believes it while the other can't see my life without that. Recovery has been a really painful journey so far. I have had to look at a lot of aspects of my life, past, and identity. Dance fits into all of those things, so I know in my heart that I need to reincorporate it. It's just a matter of how and when. I'm still not sure I can, but I don't think I or others would recognize me without it. So, it's sink or swim time. My challenge to myself is to take at least one class this month, because I know that I need to to prevent from going insane. I end this blog with this quote, because what is my life without dancing? Not as good as it could be.

Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free

Wake Up Call

Throughout my time in treatment and in talking to people who have successfully had longer periods of time in recovery, everyone has said that recovery is like a light switch. One day, you'll wake up and realize "What am I doing to myself?" and that's how you transition to focusing on recovery. In some ways, I agree with this; however, I don't know if I have ever truly experienced it.

The last time I was in treatment, it was my time in the hospital away from treatment that was the catalyst for my recovery. Being away from treatment made me realize that maybe I could successfully do things on my own. I didn't need to be there 6 hours a day, 7 days a week anymore. Also, being around others who were deeper in their eating disorders than me was incredibly triggering at that point.

This go around in treatment, I've been pretty stagnant. While I have been making good progress in my individual therapy, I haven't really done overly well with my meal plan or battling my eating disorder thoughts. Being of my stomach issues, I have days where I just generally give up on trying to follow my meal plan and focus on making it through the day; however, by restricting more, my body only gets worse, not better. I have more days where I am doing better on my meal plan, but I honestly don't think I have had a day where I have successfully completed all snacks and meals since I re-entered at the beginning of September. It's just trying to figure out if IOP is really helping?

Then, I received an e-mail from my therapist yesterday saying that they are threatening to discharge me because of my lack of progress and the number of days I have missed treatment to stay at work instead. I understand that. I fully admit that I have not been the most committed to treatment lately, but it is not because of my eating disorder. I think I might have had my wake up call.

In the days I have actually gone to IOP, I haven't found them the most effective. I have had more success with my individual sessions rather than the supported meals and groups. It ends up being more of a chore to go each day rather than providing the benefits that I need. So, what do I do?

Today, I feel more clarity in my mind than I have in a few months now. My eating disorder voice is quiet today. For the first time in 2 months, I have actually exceeded my meal plan, and I don't feel that guilty about it. I challenged myself by going to Target and actually spending some time in the grocery section. I attempted to avoid looking at labels and calorie counts, but still did on a few things. I bought a variety of foods that I can actually eat over time, rather than just a week. My stomach finally doesn't hurt today, even though I was sick most of last night. All in all, this is the first good day I've had in a long time. Nothing amazing has happened. Nothing has really changed. It's just a good day.

Maybe the wake up calls don't always come in when we expect them to, but it could be that the come in right when we need them, even if we don't realize it ourselves. I am a firm believer that everything in life happens for a reason, but it doesn't always make sense in that moment. Eventually, it always does. Maybe this wake up call is going to lead to bigger and better things and a healthier journey on my way to recovery.

Boundaries (aka Things I Suck At)

Boundaries are these things that we sent in place mentally, physically, and emotionally to protect ourselves in a variety of capacities. There are so many different uses for them, but most of us kind of suck at actually putting them in place and sticking to them. Personally, my biggest issue with setting boundaries is with work.

My issue with setting boundaries with work has existed almost as long as I can remember. My therapist pointed out that this is a result of my trauma.

When I was in 7th grade, I was severely bullied at school. I was being pushed down flights of stairs, being spit on, having my things taken from me, and more awful things. I was 11 years old and had no idea why these were happening to me. The worst part about it? My parents and I reported it to the school, and their response was, "Well, that's just what middle school kids do. You must be provoking them somehow. So, we are setting you up with your history teacher to do extra work." Then, that history teacher took advantage of that situation. He was grooming me for inappropriate things that teachers should never do. Luckily, that grooming never paid off, but it was still terrifying.

So, the school was teaching me that by throwing myself into work, I would be safe from many of the physical things happening to me. If I am working, I can't get hurt. I have clung to that idea for the last 12 years. It helped me in a lot of ways. I was in the top 5 of my class. I completed college in 3 years, and I received my Master's degree at 22. It helped me get ahead, but it also helped me compartmentalize all the bad and pretend that it never happened. Now that I am unpacking all of those things finally, it is incredibly painful.

I still also don't know how to disconnect myself from work very well. Work had always been a huge distraction from my feelings. So, when I start to feel upset, I turn to work to not deal with things. Tonight, I found myself feeling a little overwhelmed, so I went to check our messaging system. From all the messages, I just got more and more frustated. There were things going on that I had no clue about. Kids being argumentative and debating every rule. I found myself getting more and more annoyed.

Then, I thought to myself, "What the fuck am I doing? I don't get a lot of downtime, so why I am getting annoyed with work when I am off the clock?" So, I shut off the system, but I am still itching to get take care of it because my emotions just make me so uncomfortable. I'm basically crawling out of my skin right now with how uncomfortable I feel. But then I remember that I have very fluid boundaries with work and it has always served a purpose for me. So, now what?

Rationally, I know I need to set a firmer boundary with work. I need to not check my email or my messages once I leave work unless someone calls in an emergency. Emotionally, I am still not sure I am ready to do that or can. I am learning to accept emotions that do come up, even though I am still very disconnected from them; however, I know that if I continue to push emotions away, I will never become comfortable with them. So, I need to set my boundaries and stick to them. Otherwise, I am going to continue to push away my emotions, which results in pushing away people. I will become completely enmeshed in work, and that just sounds terrible. I think boundaries sound way nicer :)

Vacation and Something to Come Home to

Sorry for the blog hiatus. Last week was insane at work, and I ended up working 40 hours in 4 days, which was the worst; however, it meant I didn't need to take any PTO on Friday. I just got a free day off, so that was great.

This weekend, I made a trip up to Wisconsin to surprise my best friend for her 30th birthday. My therapist has been discussing the idea of self compassion with me a lot lately, especially because I tend to continually do things for others instead of myself. So after the crazy week at work, this trip could not have come at a better time. I spent a lot of time with my best friends and family all weekend. It was really a good way to get back to a better perspective on my recovery and where I am in this process.

The benefit of having true best friends that know you inside and out is that I trust them enough to be honest with me. While my eating disorder tells me things that I perceive are true, they are typically completely and totally false. Friends will be gentle in telling you the truth and use it to help you in the long run.

So, when a friend of mine pulled me aside this weekend and said, "Heidi, I am really concerned about you. I want to know if you are truly doing okay," I knew that she could see that I have been doing overly well. I, of course, said that I have been doing okay with good and bad days. She said, "Are you having more bad days lately? Because when you bent over, I could see every rib in your back." For me, that was really difficult to hear. My eating disorder voice said, "Yes. All that restricting we've been doing everyday is making you thin and more beautiful because of that." My healthy mind said, "Woah bitch. That is NOT good." So, what do I do with that?

This was honestly the wake up call I needed. My treatment team has really been pushing me about my lack of progress so far. I have been back in IOP 2 months already. In those 2 months, I have struggled with so many things. I still can't seem to complete my meal plan. I have lost weight, not maintained or gained. I have stomach/GI issues multiple times a week. I felt my depression and anxiety were so bad that I turned to psych meds to help myself. All of those things have made things really brutal, but I have made some progress.

I have not been restricting as much. I have begun sharing my timeline and actually beginning to feel a lot of my trauma, which I have never done. I am learning how to blame others for things they have done to me. I have learned how to handle things not in my control, even if I don't give up control everytime. It's progress.

Driving home, I was able to reflect on the weekend and what I need to keep doing. The hardest part about coming home is looking at what you have to leave behind. But I am coming back to things in St Louis. I have a job and an apartment that give me the freedom I need to continue my journey independently. I have the support of family and friends near and far. I have a treatment center that has wonderful staff and people I get to share this journey with. I am spending time with a wonderful guy that is supportive in this journey (and super cute). I have a new life in St Louis. It's not an easy life. It's not my dream life. It's something new and different though. Do I miss Milwaukee and my friends there? Yes, but it is not the place for me right now at this point in my recovery.

All I can do is take things one day at a time, and the place for me to do that right now is St Louis. The journey continues...

Is Fat a Feeling?

Almost every day, I hear someone in my life or surroundings saying, "Ugh. I just feel so fat today." It's such a common expression in American culture: feeling fat. In eating disorder treatment, they drive home the fact that fat is not a feeling, but rather, it is what we are labeling feelings that we cannot identify or are using eating disorder rationale to discuss emotions. Regardless of what the ED experts say, I know myself and others in recovery really struggle with giving up this idea.

Most days lately, I do truly wake up and say, "God, I feel so fat today." The reasoning changes day to day. It could be that my clothes aren't fitting how I want them to or my jeans are a little tight or seeing my recovered body in the mirror.

Honestly, I still am not used to my recovered body. When you put on 15+ pounds in less than 3 months, it's a shock to your system. The refeeding process is horrifically painful. You have to eat past the point of feeling full, sit with stomach pain and GI issues, and it's time to eat again. Imagine the fullest you have ever been and having to push yourself past that point at least 5 times a day.  To this day, I still have stomach issues, which is what makes this recovery journey that much harder for me. That overly full feeling makes me feel fat.

Rationally, I know that when I am "feeling fat," it's my eating disorder getting into my head. Labeling my emotions as "fat" is a hell of a lot easier than admitting I'm sad, angry, anxious, etc. I have always been pretty disconnected from my emotions, so this is just one more way to keep me that way.

Irrationally, my eating disorder feeds off of this "feeling." ED begins to tell me that that feeling is right. That I am fat, which means I am worthless, unlovable, and all the negative core beliefs I have about myself. It spirals to skipping snacks, not taking my meds, and going from there when I am not in treatment.

Thankfully, I am in treatment. I have the opportunity to discuss these things with my team and others in IOP. I am learning how to truly identify my feelings for what they are. They have been held behind this wall of my eating disorder to keep me "safe" for so long.

Deep inside me, I know there is someone who is so angry at the world and upset with a lot of the things that have happened in my life; things that are honestly truly unfair to any human being. Unfortunately, I don't think I am quite there to let all that out. So, in this moment, I am going to focus on accepting emotions as they come and to try to have compassion towards my new, healthy body.

On Track and Giving It All Away.

Things have been really intense lately. After going through the trials and tribulations of Tuesday, I have been trying really hard to get back on track, which hasn't been easy. Once you start restricting again, your body absolutely hates you when you try to put food in it again, which is why it's so easy to stay in that pattern of restricting once you start. My gastroparesis has flared up big time. My stomach doesn't really know what to do with food right now, so that's been difficult. Every time I eat, I either get full or stomach pain really quickly. The physical part of my eating disorder is only one small portion though.

The mental part has been increasingly difficult with the more trauma work I do in therapy. On Friday, I spent a lot of time discussing the year that set the foundation for everything else in my life: 7th Grade. While I did experience trauma prior to this year, this year was the basis for the majority of my core beliefs, coping, and how I view myself. So, spending 45 minutes talking about that trauma is emotionally and physically exhausting. My therapist had a lot of really solid points though; things I had never thought about, which was awesome. All I can do is take things one moment at a time.

This week has made me really look at giving. I'm starting to learn that I give myself away without really giving anything away at all. I have the ability to give away my feelings, thoughts, and behaviors to others without revealing anything about myself. This is such an ingrained, internal process that I often don't realize I am doing it anymore. I typically I have given myself away to so many people and things in my life that didn't deserve me at all. In my head and my heart, all the space is occupied by others, and I don't leave space for myself. I literally give all of myself away.

I have given my heart to people who don't deserve it. I have given my thoughts to negative things. I have given my time and energy to things that I never needed to, because they make my life worse. I have given love to those who could never give it back to me. I have given my everything to things that don't truly matter in life. But worst of all, I have given everything to my eating disorder, because it was the one thing I felt could keep me going and helped me from not giving everything away. I have successfully done all of this while keeping my trauma in a private room at the back of my heart. I have never truly given myself away, because no one in my life knows all that's back there. I'm not even convinced that I do anymore.

I'm starting to learn that I need to be more careful about who I give myself to. I am realizing that I give things to those who don't deserve them or who don't match what I want. I am giving my everything to work, because it helps keep going. I continue to give myself to my eating disorder, even though I know it's wrong. I just give and give and give, but I hold onto the things that destroy me.

So, time to stop giving away myself so easy. I am at the point where, when I do give, I am losing everything, because it feeds my eating disorder. We all know my eating disorder destroys everything. I think I am starting to learn what parts of myself I am willing to give away. Because I am learning to accept and embrace the things that have happened to me rather than blame myself for them, I am more comfortable giving those things to others. I am learning that maybe giving those parts of me to other people are way more powerful than giving the version with a wall around her heart. Maybe that's how I get to have a more fulfilling life and get away from my eating disorder.

Refusals

I had my first refusal in IOP last night. Every little thing seems to be adding up lately, and I just had no desire to go to treatment last night.

I hate Tuesdays. We go to group for an hour, sit around doing nothing for an hour, and then eat dinner/post/go. So, I arrived at treatment a few minutes late because of work. I got my weight and vitals, which were miraculously in range without having taken my medication yesterday, done by staff and went off to group. Group was fine. I was pretty numbed out to the conversation of "Love Yourself." Never a fun topic, so I just kind of sat there, zoning out. Conversations about love and relationships make me anxious. Some of the topics brought up were pretty triggering. Anxiety builds.

So then, we have this awkward 45 to 60 minutes to sit around and do nothing. With any eating disorder, sitting and anticipating anything with food is the worst. Your anxiety kicks off and all you want to do is go to sleep to relieve it. Then, of course, I decided to pick a challenging meal, chicken and dumplings, instead of my typical sub-meal of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So, my anxiety continues to build.

Then, I had e-mailed my psychiatrist on Friday morning. I wrote about surrendering to her in a previous blog and being willing to try medication. Well, Thursday night, she left me this long winded voicemail about how she is concerned that I am using alcohol so heavily that I will go into withdrawal and Wellbutrin can kick that off faster. Honestly, I am not drinking nearly as much as I have in the past. I am not even drinking to the point of getting drunk most of the time. I typically max out at 2 drinks, and then I'm good. I have never gone through alcohol withdrawal, only hangovers. So, I e-mailed her Friday morning explaining that my alcohol use is down and that I am not drinking every day, etc. She never responded. So, I didn't start the Wellbutrin. By last night, she still hadn't responded, which was frustrating because I knew she had worked multiple days at this point. My anxiety builds even more.

So, I decided to check in with one of my favorite staff members. I had gotten pretty close with her the first time I was there, so she has been through most of my breakdowns and previous struggles with me. I expressed how frustrated I am with this whole process. In a lot of ways, I feel like I've wasted the last 8 months of my life by doing this, but rationally, I know that this helped save my life. I shared how frustrated I am with my team's lack of responses and my meal plan. I talked about my alcohol use, and how much I have progressed with that. I shared my fears about losing my job, having to move home, and potentially having to go back to PHP. I basically just bitched about everything for 45 minutes and got some support, which was helpful, but my anxiety was still pretty high. She said she would contact my psychiatrist to see what was up and to try and get an answer for me about my medications. My anxiety is at an all time high.

Then, right before dinner, the nurse comes over and tells me that my psychiatrist has said "Absolutely not" to starting medications. So, I just started crying, because at this point, I was just so frustrated with everything. Of course, that's the same moment we're going to sit for dinner. My anxiety has cracked.

On the walk across the hall to dinner, I spoke with another staff member about my struggles today. She informed me she couldn't get my meal changed, so I would have to challenge myself. So, that was just the news I needed. We talked about how I don't feel my alcohol use is bad enough to warrant a ban on medications, especially when I am even open to trying them. I got to the meal really upset, which is never how you want to start challenging meals. The anxiety is overwhelming.

The meal itself was a salad, chicken and dumplings, and cookie cake. Whatever I didn't finish, I knew I would have to drink supplement for, and I didn't want to drink 24 ounces of fluid instead of food. So, I knew I would have to try to eat some of it. For supplementing, you have to eat all or nothing for the appetizer and desert. For the entree, it is none, half, or all of it. I knew I wouldn't finish the salad, because there were ingredients on there that, for taste preference reasons, I won't eat. I was actually able to eat half of the chicken and dumplings. I tried to just focus on conversation and checked in with staff if I was close to 50%. I was feeling too anxious to try and eat all of it. I was also able to finish the cookie cake; however, that still left me with 12 ounces of fluid to drink. For reference, that's like a can of soda, but when you are already feeling so anxious that you're incredibly nauseous, thinking about drinking that amount of liquid in 15 minutes is insane. I need a relief for my anxiety

So, I chose to refuse the supplement. In some ways, it was for practicality. With how sick I already felt, I thought I would lose everything by drinking so much liquid. So, I wanted to keep some calories in. Also, my eating disorder was screaming, because I felt so out of control with the entire day. I didn't want to put those calories in me. I checked in with the staff after the meal just to try and calm down enough. We agreed that I would take the supplement with me and made a 2 drink maximum deal for when I would be out later that evening. My anxiety finally lowered a little when I left.

Refusals are a tricky thing. I feel extremely guilty about it, because I feel like in IOP, I shouldn't be having any. I also feel like I am fucking up my recovery. At the same time, my eating disorder is so happy with me. I felt back in control and ready to go for the rest of the night, especially because the supplement is still sitting in my fridge. I know refusals are a part of this process, but I just wish this would start to get easier. With every little thing adding up, I truly still wonder if recovery is worth it. Then, I have to check myself, because I know it is. I have a responsibility to at least try and make it work, even if I am incredibly frustrated. I do not need to have control over everything, even though it feels like I do. I have control over my choices in recovery, and refusals cannot be a part of that.

How Important is Recovery?

I have honestly been really struggling lately. It is making me wonder how worth it this whole process is. Is it worth spending 10 hours a week in therapy? Is it worth being watched for 3 meals a week and having to talk about how I feel about it afterwards? Is it worth unleashing all this trauma in me that has never been dealt with? Is it work spending 3 nights a week in therapy when I could be doing other things? Is it worth having feelings? Is it worth having to document everything I eat for my dietician to look over? Is it worth going on medications for? What is recovery really worth? When I get really discouraged, I often want to say "Fuck It" and just move on. I would quit treatment, have free time at nights, and just live with my ED.

My body image has been horrible this week. I went out with a coworker last night and had to change 4 times before I was okay with leaving the house. She finally had to say, "Stop. You get to change one more time and then after that, we need to leave. You look fine." I just look in the mirror and see stretch marks from weight restoration, stomach fat, lines from my clothes where they don't totally fit anymore, and just feel disgusting. How do you even get over that mental hurdle? I hope that one day my brain can see that I am human and that my body shape is fine, but I really don't think it ever will. Then, I just am so overwhelmed with my trauma and anxiety that it makes me want to curl up in a ball and just shut down. I can't handle thinking about it anymore. Anticipating treatment and having to talk about these things every night is making my anxiety unbelievably high. I have started shaking again and have had panic attacks. It's been really difficult. So, why not just give up? How important is recovery anyways?

Even when I have these awful days, I try to recognize the positives in recovery. I can't always see these things as positive or even that important, but they still exist. Recovery is worth it, because:

• I have enough energy to make it through a day without having to take a nap.
• I can better focus on things I have to get done and accomplish.
• Long term goals seem possible.
• I'm not isolating from friends and family.
• I am not passing out everyday.
• My hair has stopped falling out and my nails are growing. 
• I am not always doubled over in pain when I do eat something.
• I don't have the body of a small child anymore. 
• I can enjoy the little things in life a little bit more.
• Clothes look better, because they're not hanging off of bones. 
• I don't feel the need as much to turn to drugs or alcohol to numb out.
• I don't feel so empty all of the time. 
• I sleep better.
• I have less anxiety.
• I don't have this obnoxious voice screaming my negative core beliefs in my head.

I could go on and on about all of these. There are so many reasons why recovery is important, but the most important one will always be:

• I have my life back.

Surrendering to My Psychiatrist

To go on psych meds or to not go on psych meds? If you know me, you know I'm pretty stubborn about taking my medications. I also really don't like the idea of using chemicals to balance me out. I'd rather just talk about the shit that's going on that I'm not dealing with. Once I do that, I'm fine; however, I can't have 10 hours of therapy every day, so no matter what, I still end up experiencing symptoms. Lately, my symptoms have been getting worse.

The meds I take every day are "necessary" for me to have a healthy life. My heart pills, which I take off/on, help me to keep my heart rate not insane and to not pass out every time I stand out. My birth control is necessary, because my period came back with avengeance after losing it for 3 months. My trazodone is necessary, because I can't function if I don't sleep. But to me, psych meds aren't necessary. Who needs a pill when you have therapy? I guess mind over matter doesn't always work though.

So, in seeing my psychiatrist yesterday, I decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to discuss the possibility of beginning psychotropic medication. I had a horrible flashback during a staff meeting yesterday that was so bad that I needed to leave to regather my thoughts and stabilize myself out with some solid coping skills. The flashbacks and panic attacks keep getting worse, especially with going through my timeline. Since it is too overwhelming to do large chunks of my timeline in one sitting, I am often left with these residuals or anticipation of what I have to discuss next. This causes issues. So, medicine seems like the best temporary assistance for me to make it through the next few intense therapy sessions.

I have been staunchly against psych meds. My first round in treatment, I had a battle with my psychiatrist. She was often very condescending and judgmental of my life choices. She labeled me as an alcoholic and told me I was in denial about how bad my problems with my eating disorder. Then, after having some serious mental breakdowns, I decided to cave in at the encouragement of my therapist. I tried Prozac and had an allergic reaction to it. Then, I tried Zoloft and became insanely suicidal. So, my track record with meds is bad. 

So, I am surrendering to my psychiatrist. I am working with her to pick a different class of medication. We agreed to try Wellbutrin at a very low dose to start. As always, I am very nervous about starting it. I am worried what it will do to my mood, my feelings, and my body. I am concerned that it will make me foggier. My mind has been so jumbled that I can't even think straight most days. But maybe surrendering is the first step to progressing.

Extreme Anxiety

So, I've been neglecting the blog for a week now, mostly just because I have been extremely busy and extremely anxious. I'm having a difficult time finding the time to force myself to sit down and talk about what is going on, especially because I have been stuffing some really deep things lately. I can just feel everything bubbling up inside of me, feeling like it is on the edge of spilling out, but my twisted mind kicks in and shuts everything down. So, I've been a numbed out zombie for the last week, and the times my emotions have kicked in haven't been pretty.

Last weekend was my brother's wedding, which was really beautiful. Everything, except the freezing weather on Saturday, worked out. I was really nervous about seeing a lot of people, especially when I was having such negative body image all last week. I felt so fat and disgusting for the vast majority of last week. Honestly, I felt okay the day of. It was a lot of different emotions from being nervous that stupid people would show up or pull shit, missing grandma, and seeing this as another life transition for us (finally a good one though). There were just a lot of people in my family with high anxiety levels and lashing out on others, which triggers my trauma, ED thoughts/behaviors, and anxiety. It just makes me shut down. So, I was able to having feelings, but I was distracting from a lot of it pretty badly. It was overall okay, just very overwhelming.

This week, we had a stressful week at work with people visiting from China to check out our program. There were a lot of last minute changes and stressors for what honestly seemed like a meaningless trip. I personally felt like they were here to make sure their kids were fine, but mostly to see America and have fun. It made the last 3 days incredibly frustrating. They are finally gone, so that helps, but my anxiety has been through the roof.

Anxiety is a tricky thing, because not only does it fuck with your mind, it causes your body to malfunction as well. I already have a heart condition, so my heart typically races anyways; however, my anxiety causes it to feel like it is going to beat out of my chest. It would be like the scene in Dumb and Dumber when Lloyd has the dream where he rips the chef's heart out on his date with Mary. My heart would be out of my chest just beating. Everything feels out of control and scary and I just want to go crawl in bed, which is typically what I do. Anxiety is the most difficult level of uncomfort. So, what do we do?

When I have such extreme anxiety, sitting and thinking about what appropriate coping skills are and targeting what the root of my problem are the farthest things on my mind. I just sit and stir until I shut down. Shutting down is just so easy, but so damaging to my psyche. I have been working on focusing on control/out of control. A lot of the things I get anxious about are completely beyond my control. I can't control people not texting me back or traffic or work stuff. I just can't, no matter how much I think I can. My constant need and craving for control will always be a battle. This blog is helping, because it's finally an outlet. Sometimes I don't realize how much I need that...

Now, that my anxiety is calming down, I can move forward rationally. Breathe in, breathe out. One step at a time.

Connecting

Today in session, my therapist and I began going through my timeline, which is a super brutal undertaking. We didn't get into any of the major stuff, but we spent a lot of time discussing my childhood and how that has impacted me as an adult. We all know that childhood has a tremendous impact on everything in our lives; however, she brought up many points that I had never thought about before in terms of different types of connecting. There are many different types of connecting. The two biggest ones we focused on today were how I connect myself to my emotions and how I connect to other people. 

As I have said in previous posts, I have an extremely difficult time connecting with my emotions. I do everything in my power to not feel them. So, when going through my timeline, my therapist and I are really working on figuring out where that all started. Honestly, I'm not really sure I know at this point in time. I think, to some extent, it has always been there. Growing up as a military kid, you experience these major changes that you can't cry about. It also becomes a norm after a while. You get used to saying goodbye. You learn not to cry, because you're getting a fresh start in a new place. It becomes easier. Your emotions become less heightened after each move, each new place, every new face. It becomes routine. So, in many ways, I feel like I am desensitized to emotions. Also, after so many years of stuffing everything, it's just second nature at this point. There are definitely some topics that are so triggering to me that stuffing everything just doesn't work. We spoke briefly about those topics today, but I only teared up at them. I'm really nervous about how deeply my therapist pushes a lot of these issues. I think it will be really helpful, but I am also really nervous. There's just a lot there I haven't touched in a long time, so who knows what is all behind that Eating Disorder wall that's been up for the last 10 years. I think it will truly help me learn to connect to myself more in the long run though.

Connecting to other people has always been a pretty easy thing for me. I consider myself a pretty social person, very extroverted. With that though, I keep a lot of myself locked away. Any time I have unveiled these small parts of myself, especially anything trauma related, those people leave or hurt me with that information later. So, my issues with abandonment kick in, and the wall gets higher.  Then, it turns into a "Why bother?" situation. If I continually unveil these small pieces of myself to others and they walk away, they take those pieces with me, and it breaks me down in the process. Sheltering myself and my heart have always seemed like the best options. Even when I meet people who I truly connect with and feel like I can share those pieces with, I am always so terrified to say anything about my issues that I shut down. I literally can't even say what's wrong sometimes, because I am so terrified of it. I just get weird. That's not fair to the people in my life or the relationships I have/had. I like to think I am doing better with it, but who knows. I don't think I'm a good judge of that.

Overall, I think recovery is all about connecting. For me, I have begun connecting to the identity I have never truly had. I am working on connecting with others better. I am attempting to connect with my emotions for the first time in a long time. I am connecting my rational mind to my body. I am connecting my mind to messages of positivity. It's all about the connections. My connection with my recovery will ultimately be the only way to defeat my eating disorder. If I am not in sync with that connecting, ED will sneak in, and I will relapse. There truly is strength in connections.

Breakdowns lead to Breakthroughs

This week, I anticipate some struggling. Because I have such a difficult time connecting to my emotions, sometimes the smallest trigger can send me into a massive breakdown. The wall my eating disorder helped build comes down just enough for me to just lose any control or compartmentalizing I have done. It becomes this chaos in my mind and body.

When I have a breakdown, I tend to just cry hysterically.  Even if I get to a peaceful state of mind, I just keep crying. I think it's because I so rarely cry. Once I start, everything I have been holding in just comes out. Then, my mind begins racing with thoughts of "This isn't okay." "Pull yourself together." "I'm really uncomfortable." "Shut it off." I become very anxious.  My chest and stomach get tight, and I can get short of breath.  It almost feels like I am dying in some small way. It's not a panic attack,  but it feels similar. So, I slow it down and shut it off. It's not resolution.  It's my off switch.

My therapists have all pointed out to me that they can see when I shut off. I've been told that my body physically changes. Even if I start to tear up and shit it off,  it's a noticeable physical change.  Then, I present as okay and just tuck everything away to the back of my mind as far away from my heart as possible. It gets grueling doing that everyday though. So, what am I supposed to do?

Lately, I have been trying to embrace emotions,  but it's not gonna happen overnight. I also so rarely deal with emotions that my automatic off switch gets to them so quickly that I don't even notice I am getting emotional sometimes. I can feel that something is off in me afterwards,  but it's hard to rectify at that point. Tonight,  I had a breakdown. Just a lot of small things throughout today built up,  and I just lost it. I tried to sit with my feelings. I was giving myself some positive self-talk, telling myself that it was okay to be upset and frustrated.  That lasted about a minute before I shut it off.  It sends my ED mind into overdrive.

ED goes crazy when I am upset. It sends every negative message to add to my already terrible core beliefs about myself.  It's that reinforcing voice in my head that makes it worse. To make it stop, I have to shut off my emotions to make my head stop racing. But then once I do that, the shame sets in. I just keep hearing that I'm not normal because I can't have emotions or deal with them in any way. I know everyone has different struggles with emotions,  but it makes me feel isolated. I shut down and can't open up emotionally to others. It's really hard. Honestly, my head feels like a never ending battle most days. I am so thankful for my Trazodone to help me sleep and to have a break. I am thankful for this blog too as an outlet for my crazy and the support I receive from the people who read it.

You always hear that breakdowns lead to breakthroughs. So, what's my breakthrough tonight? Even though I only had a minute of feelings,  I was able to sit with it. That minute of being uncomfortable showed me that maybe my brain does have some fight for recovery left in it. Maybe next time I get upset, I won't shut it off for 5 minutes. Who knows? I won't know til I try it. But that's how recovery goes. Listening to our rational minds, using our coping skills, and taking things one day, hour, minute, second at a time