War in My Mind

What do you do when you are fighting an internal battle all day every day? Every waking moment of my day, I am having all these different thoughts racing through my brain. ED thoughts. Healthy Mind thoughts. Work thoughts. Personal thoughts. More ED thoughts. Negative thoughts. Hopeless thoughts. Fight through it thoughts. Work thoughts. All of the thoughts. All of the anxiety. Every day is like a war in my mind. Those few moments of peace where my brain isn't racing are becoming harder to find. So, what do I do?

Every good soldier comes equipped with tools. As a therapist, I taught clients about their tool kits of coping skills that are all readily accessible. The only problem with this is that you can't always be doing coping skills all day every day. There's some level of coping with sitting with the war, but we all have other responsibilities that can't always be shaken off to focus on a coping skill 100%.  Blogging has become one of my primary coping skills. It has become an outlet for me to put those thoughts out of my head, rather than letting them circle. It's also been really validating sharing my experiences with other people; however, I can't always drop what I am doing to write a blog. The battle continues.

Once I figure out what tool is best for me in that moment, I have to fight the hardest battle of all: challenging the thoughts in my head while using that skill to keep my anxiety at a somewhat manageable level. My biggest struggle is that many of my thoughts are irrational, which stem from irrational core beliefs. My own personal theoretical orientation is Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, which believes that mental health problems stem from irrational core beliefs, which impact our emotions and behaviors. It's full of fun phrases like "Should"ing over yourself (Telling yourself you "should" do something, even if it is damaging to you) and "Musts" ("I must be the best and win other's approval," "Others must treat me the way I want to be treated or they're terrible people," and "I must get what I want. I musn't get what I don't want. But if I don't get what I want, it's terrible.) All of these apply to me pretty well, especially the Shoulding. Most of these are pretty irrational. So, how do I challenge them?

Evidence is really important to challenging my irrational thoughts. I feel like I am doing a horrible job at work, and I am going to be fired, because I am doing such a bad job and can't keep up with it while at treatment. None of this is true. I'm definitely overwhelmed with trying to balance the demands of work and my recovery; however, evidence shows me that my thoughts are irrational. Proof: I got a raise this month. I get praise and validation from my coworkers. I have not missed a deadline on any assignments since returning to treatment. That evidence helps me challenge my irrational thought and become at peace with a rational one. This is a pretty exhausting process though.

The average person has about 40-50 thoughts per minute (Thanks Google). If every one of those thoughts I have is irrational, how much challenging do I have to do? An insane fucking amount. That's exhausting just thinking about it! It does get easier though. The more challenging I do, the easier it gets, especially for repeat thoughts. I have some of the same general thoughts everyday, which are not limited to: "If I eat that, I am going to get fat and be worthless." "That person in the mirror is fat and disgusting." "You're doing such a bad job, because you can't do this work fast enough." "You forgot to schedule these things for those kids, so you obviously suck at your job." "No one will ever love you, because you're gross and ugly." "You clearly can't take care of yourself, because you've let yourself go." "Don't feel happy. You don't deserve that." I could go on forever...

I think the most important thing is to continue fighting the war. There's that old saying that says something to the effect of "You might not win the battle, but you can still win the war." Each day is a new battle. We're never really sure what might hit us at any given moment; however, persistence in fighting each individual battle, even if we lose some, will help us win the war against our eating disorders and continue on a new journey in recovery.