Shut Up and Be Happy

For the first time, potentially ever, I have found myself in a surprisingly calm period of my life, and I am freaking out about it.

It's not like everything is perfect. I'm having a huge increase in eating disorder thoughts, which makes me want to use behaviors. I haven't really done so, and if I have, I always make it up later or the day after. I still don't have a job and haven't really heard back from any type of employer, except rejection emails, which is incredibly frustrating. Besides these things, everything is else is great and, dare I say, stable.

Stable is a weird word for me. It only ever seems to exist in the short term in my life. I have gotten used to relying on change to give me stability. No change makes my life feel uncomfortable, which it's not true in any way, shape, or form. It's actually a really good thing. So, what do I do in these situations? Create the instability.

One of my crowning achievements is that I am fantastically great at self-sabotage. I get scared that for the first time, things will be okay. My eating disorder hates that, hence the number of thoughts I've been having lately. It wants me to remain in chaos, so that it can come in and help control everything. Typically, I succumb and enter a new relapse.

Today, I can feel myself teetering. There's such a huge part of me that is determined to continue in recovery, but another that is honestly just tired. This journey is exhausting, and I've been listening to more ED thoughts lately. I just don't have the energy to keep pushing them out and challenging them. The worst part is that I make this worse by adding more value onto events than is really necessary. For example, my therapist called me out last week on being frustrated by lack of contact from jobs. She pointed out that I really haven't been unemployed for that long. It's only been 2-3 weeks. So, I am the one making myself feel badly about this. Self-sabotage at its finest. But how do I make it stop?

When working with clients with anxiety, I used to challenge them by making them give real, actual examples of how those irrational thoughts were in any way valid. Typically, there isn't any or, if there is, it's a pretty big stretch. I used to have clients very similar to me. Some had grown up in a very different world, but it was still chaotic none the less; however, when things were good, their anxiety would get worse. With one of my favorite clients, this went on for weeks until I finally told her to tell those thoughts in her head to shut up and just try to be happy in the moment. For once, things weren't chaotic. They were good. In some lives, that never happens for long. She was taken aback, but she agreed to "Shut up and be happy."

This is a phrase I need to take to heart more. I have spent so much time living in my eating disorder that I remember more moments related to that than actually positive ones. That's just sad. No one should live like that. If I continue to stay in this mindset, I will never actually be able to be content with where I'm at right now, and my life right now is wonderful.

So, self, shut up and be happy.