Forgiveness

Do we forgive those who have hurt us?
The people who walk out when we need them the most.
Those who forget us when we are struggling.
Ones that look the other way when we reach out.

What about the times that they have tried to make amends?
The moments when you think that maybe things could change.
Times when it feels like the relationship can be fixed.
When both parties are willing to admit that they were at fault and move on.

Then, they are met only with a stonewall that neither party is willing to climb.
Where a compromise can never be met.
Blame is placed and responsibility is denied.
He claims no wrong doing.
She knows differently and places that blame inward.

When years go by and no words are exchanged.
The relationship continues to fall apart.
Each moves on with their lives without consideration of the other.
A thought is triggered and someone reaches out.
Contact is restablished.

Another discussion is had.
More walls are built.
Communication breaks down.
More years go by.
Memories and nightmares remain.

Then, an unexpected message asking for forgiveness.
He acknowledges that maybe help is needed.
She is left asking why now?
Why not a year ago?
What's the point?

Will it help alleviate the pain that's been caused?
Are answers finally going to be given?
Would it change anything?
Does it really matter?

Words have already been said.
Feelings have been hurt.
The damage has been done.
One has been left a broken person,
Because she has placed all the blame on herself.

So, should she forgive him?
She spends days debating the answer.
Ruminating on thoughts and feelings.
Then, she gets an answer:

The person that she should forgive is herself.

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.

Falling for Triggers

ED has a sneaky way of coming up when you least want it to. Triggers surround us every day in our lives. Even people without mental health problems face them. The slightest things set off memories, feelings, behaviors, etc. For me, triggers have been all over the place this week, and I've done kind of okay at managing them. It's just led to extreme anxiety, body checking, and a lot of ED thoughts.

My biggest trigger this week has been being sick. For the record, there are gross details following. So, if you don't like bodily functions, skip over this paragraph. TMI:
 Over the weekend, I could tell I had a UTI, but kind of let it go. I took some cranberry tablets, and drank vodka/cranberries at the bar. Nothing seemed to help. Then, it came to a head on Monday night. I was at cooking class and was in so much pain that I could barely sit, let alone stand. I typically can't stand through cooking class with my heart problems anyways, but this was worse. Then, I went to the bathroom and saw blood in my urine. I spoke with the dietician and off to the emergency room I went. After 2 hours of waiting, I had a 5 minute conversation with a doctor who prescribed me antibiotics and sent me on my merry way. I took off from work on Tuesday to rest, but I could feel increasing pain in my back. By Wednesday, it was unbearable. I worked in the morning, but left early to go see my doctor. 2 hours later, I was in a CT machine getting a scan to see if my kidneys were infected. The next day, I got a call saying they were clear and was given a script for hydrophone to help the pain. About 7 hours later, I was in urgent care again, because I was throwing up and passed out. The doctor did some tests and suggested that my UTI had cleared, but there was probably something on my kidneys that might not have been strong or big enough for the CT machine to see. I went home, threw up some more, and then went to bed. I took off Friday to rest. Today, the pain finally started to go away. Now, I'm just exhausted.

So with all of that crap happening to my body and the pile of medications I have been taking this week, eating hasn't been my favorite thing to do. It's been really hard on my stomach and hard to eat to make up calories after I've thrown up unintentionally. It's a difficult battle. My ED voice says I can just skip all of those, and it'll be fine. Skipping a few meals this week won't hurt. It'll actually help me look thinner for my brother's wedding next week. All the crazy talk.

Trigger two actually has been my brother's wedding. It's knowing that it is going to be a heavily photographed event. These pictures are going to be ones that last forever. I am just so terrified of looking fat in them that I want to restrict to make sure I look the best that I can. Rationally, that's insane, because my dress is wonderful and flowy. It'll hide my least favorite area of my body, so I can rationalize that it'll be okay. It's also just a lot of people with a lot of eyes on me. This will be the first major event since I went through treatment. I mean, I've seen my family, but I am also seeing a lot of people that I haven't seen since before I went to treatment. So, it just makes me nervous. I just keep telling myself that I need to focus on TJ and not myself that day. Maybe that'll help.

Trigger three has been my isolation due to being sick. I have spent a lot of time in my apartment by myself this week. I consider myself an extroverted person. I thrive on being social and communicating with people face to face. When I'm alone, I tend not to eat, because 1) my hunger cues really come and go. They haven't been consistent in a long time. 2) No one to hold me accountable. 3) I have never really been a person who eats when they're bored. Isolation and people not reaching out to me leads me to feeling unworthy or useless, which isn't even close to true. My feelings just get the best of me sometimes.

So, how do I cope? I wrote the massive letter to ED blog yesterday, which was really had an impact on me. I had done similar exercises in groups during my first round of treatment, but always had a time constraint on it. I also don't think I was at the place to be able to do it back then. I would love to expand it for me personally with more details about some of those situations, because I think I need to. It was my way of starting to connect to that story and begin to somewhat feel everything in my life. I'm also writing this blog today as accountability. In addition to blogging, I've been watching a lot of horrible reality television. I learned that Undercover Boss makes me cry like a baby, and Intervention makes me miss my life of being a therapist. I've thought about signing up for dance classes and challenging what might be the most triggering thing for me. That'll probably be a blog in itself one day. I've listened to a lot of music, and taken a lot of showers.

This week has proved to me that I am probably stronger than I give myself credit for. I have strongly considered myself a survivalist for a lot of the crap I've been through, but I have also turned to really negative coping skills in the past. I didn't turn to any of those this week. I thought about having a drink to unwind, but I know that drinking on antibiotics and pain pills is an overdose waiting to happen. So, I didn't. Honestly, I haven't had a drink in over a week, which hasn't happened since the first time I was in treatment. I also don't have the craving to drink anymore. I haven't done cocaine in a while. I didn't try to exercise through the pain while not eating. I even took off work which, if you know me, never happens. I'm a workaholic through and through. I engaged in appropriate self-care. Surprising, I know. I surprised myself with it too. Maybe I am capable of all of this without turning to ED.

Triggers will come up at the most inopportune moments for all the wrong reasons. But if we can learn to engage in appropriate self-care and coping skills, they become easier to manage. Those skills will become a necessary ally in the battle against ED in the fight for recovery. Even though I did engage in some behaviors this week, I know it will be okay. I may fall, but I can always get back up and make the choice for recovery.

Selfish vs Selfless

Today in group at treatment, someone talked about being selfish versus being selfless. These two words hold significant weight in the way that we think, feel, behave, etc towards ourselves and others. Selfish is when we are totally focused on our own needs, and selfless is complete focus on the needs of others. In an ideal world, everyone should have a balance of both. We need to focus on our own needs, but also look at the needs of others in order to maintain relationships. My eating disorder completely clouds this.

When I am in a full blown relapse, I tend to be very selfless in a selfish way. How is that even possible? I become very selfless in order to escape the battle in my head. Basically, I am using my selflessness as a way to be selfish. I do it to fulfill my needs, because I cannot handle what is going on in my life. So, I turn to others as a way to be selfish. It doesn't mean that I do not care about others and do not genuinely want what's best for them; however, I do tend to become enveloped in other people's lives and focused on them 100%. Most of my relationships have started in the midst of relapses, because I wanted to give someone else all of the attention in order to not have to focus on myself. This is something I have had to be mindful of in this process. I have found myself running to online dating as a way to take the focus off of myself. So, I have to monitor myself when meeting new people. As the great movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind said, "Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?" Change woman to man and that's me. 

Using others to help me cope with my issues is potentially one of the most selfish things a person can do. It leads to an extreme amount of guilt and difficulties in my relationships, because I don't realize how much I am hurting others by using them for my coping. It also tends to push people away, because I become dependent on them to the point of unbearable. I become too much and people walk out. If they don't walk, I push them away by becoming clingy and then shutting down when a response is given. None of my needs can ever be fulfilled by others, even though I wish they could be. I become selfish, because even though I am attempting to fulfill their needs by doing anything I can, I am not taking care of my own needs, which causes everything to fall apart. So, how do I break this cycle?

In a lot of ways, I have to become selfish for the right reasons. I need to focus on my own personal needs and self-care in order to become a person capable of being selfless with no expectations in return. This involves a great deal of therapy and commitment to incorporating self-care. I have to let myself take breaks and process things. I have to take on only what I can handle and step away from things I cannot. I must take better care of myself and that includes following my meal plan. So, what's my biggest first step that I need to take?

I asked my new therapist to begin going through my timeline and actually talking about it in great detail. I did this the first time I was in treatment in 2 ways. The first was with my individual therapist, but we only hit the highlights and overlooked a lot of the smaller issues, which add up. The second was in a group; however, I have a really difficult time allowing myself to feel the events that have happened in my life. It feels like I am telling someone else's life like I am giving a biography report in school. I try not to connect on it, because my life is exhausting with the amount of trauma I have experienced. To feel all that trauma again is awful. That's the purpose of my eating disorder: to serve as a wall between me and all that crap. Without my eating disorder, all of that comes back and becomes so overwhelming that I shut down and relapse. Unfortunately, it's not enough to have insight as to what happens. Something has to be done about it.

It's time to move forward. It's time to allow myself to experience all the feelings I stuffed down deep inside, because they were too much to bear. It's time to accept that these feelings are okay. They are not bad, just scary. It's time to take away the blame of the things I don't deserve to blame myself for. It's time to heal. It's time to tear down the wall of my eating disorder and create a new whole self that can process the pass and emotionally heal.

Before, During, and After

I've been thinking a lot about the Before and After moments of my life. At 23, I have had some pretty intense turning points in my life, and the ways I chose to cope with those things have also impacted what follows. This lead to me looking at my Eating Disorder. After my first major episode at 13, I have had 4 serious relapses at 15, 17, 19, and 22. All of these came as a reaction to some of the most serious, traumatic moments in my life. So, what happened before?

Before my relapses, I genuinely felt like I was in a good place in my life. At 13, I had had some really difficult moments, but I had finally settled in to a new school, new friends, and became very active in musical theatre. I felt like I was genuinely settling into what could be comforting for me. At 15, again, I had just moved to a new school in Maryland and was finding this amazing group of friends, who truly supported me through everything and still do. At 17, I had just started college. I was ready for my new start to find out who I truly wanted to be and what difference I could make in the world. At 19, I was in my final semester of college, about to embark on a new life with my fiance and looking to graduate school to become a therapist. At 22, I felt like I was in a great relationship, working a wonderful job, and becoming content with the idea of settling in Milwaukee.

Before my relapses, I was believed that the world wasn't such an awful place. I believed, even though all these horrible things that continued to build in my life had happened, that the good things in my life would stick around and that in some inconceivable way, I would be loved.

Before my relapses, I let the weight of my past build up inside me. I let the blame of things were in no possible way my fault sit on my heart, crushing it with guilt day in and day out. I let the shame of my trauma and my reactions to it eat me alive. I let my own self-hatred for my actions cycle in my brain in every quiet moment. I sat in silence and allowed this to eat me alive. I found solace in myself as people around me let me

Then, the things I saw as unthinkable happened... My dad went to Kuwait... My friend killed himself... My dad walked out on my family the day my grandmother died... My fiance left me... I finished graduate school and my trauma came flooding back.

And then, I relapsed.

During my relapses, I would restrict as often as possible. I weighed food to make sure that every serving size was to the correct ounce. I would count to 500 each day and hate myself if I went even 1 calorie over. I body checked incessantly. I would stand in front of the mirror for hours a day. I would pinch and pull and suck my body in, praying that the things I hated about it would magically go away. I yelled at myself for being so fat, disgusting, unlovable, and undeserving of this life. I contemplated taking the bottle of pills to make my peace, to make things easier on my loved ones who saw me wasting away. I would drink with my boyfriend, Jack Daniels, until I felt no pain. I rarely slept because the nightmares and anxiety would be so bad. I would do cocaine until my nose bled, feeling like I was invincible, knowing that my heart racing would help me lose weight. I skipped my heart medicine to have my heart race, not caring if I passed out. I isolated, hoping to just waste away in peace. I fought a daily losing battle against myself to the voice in my head saying, "You are not meant for this world being as fat as you are."

Then, friends and family reached out to help. Opportunities to bring me out of myself arose. New cities, jobs, and friends invited me to step outside of my mind. Happiness came in in a variety of ways, some that I didn't even know were possible. Learning that I was not alone and accomplishing things to better myself helped me focus on the positive. At 22, I entered treatment for the first time to process the things I struggled through the previous 10 years. The light came on, and I could see a way out of the darkness I had been living in.

After my relapses, I still struggle with thoughts every day. That little voice in the back of my head telling me how fat, worthless, and unlovable I am never goes away, but it does get quieter eventually. I see my body as a part of me, not some separate entity that my mind just lives in. I gained weight to become a healthy size, which makes things easier and harder all at the same time.  I have to consciously make the decision to eat every day. I make the choice not to ignore my hunger cues. I talk about my emotions instead of stuffing them. I can say with some degree of certainty but not total absolution that I am not responsible for things that have happened in my past. I acknowledge that these things are not my fault. I am learning that my identity is an ever-changing thing, but I am figuring it out, because I recognize that I am not my eating disorder.

 On the left is December 2013 during my last major relapse and on the right is August 2014, 4 months after ending treatment.

My life has been largely colored by trauma and coped with by anorexia. Life is a constant series of befores, durings, and afters. Every moment we have is an after of another, but the before to the next big adventure. But by learning from our preparations for befores, our reactions for durings, and our solutions for afters, life in recovery just might be manageable.

Being Rational

Well now that I am not totally losing my mind in a total freak out, I feel like I can write a rational blog.

Yesterday was a total shit show. It's often days like that when I feel like I absolutely cannot handle anything anymore. Just one thing after another kept adding on to the point where all I could do last night was lay in bed and cry. I have always never been really sure if I meant to live this life I have been given. I'm not sure why I was picked to have all these things happen to me, but I was. There's no rational or human explanation as to why.

One of my clients used to tell me that she knew she had experienced such a tremendous amount of trauma in her life, because God chose her to be a role model and example to others that you can make it through anything. The more I go through treatment, the more I think about her. She truly was an amazing example and leader for her family, church, and community. Even though she had experienced a huge amount of trauma, she tried so hard until her body wouldn't allow her to do so anymore. By the time I started seeing her, she was in her mid-60's but had been plagued with a tremendous about of physical ailments. She was on oxygen and walked with a cane. In the year that I worked with her, she became more and more ill, but still wanted to be that example for her family and others living in her assisted living home. The last 2 months she was my client, she was doing so poorly physically. We transitioned into phone sessions, because she couldn't make it into the office anymore. All of a sudden, I stopped hearing from her. I knew in my gut that she had probably passed away; however, it was still a difficult period of not knowing. Then, after mailing her a letter, our main offices received it back with the word "Deceased" hand written on it. It was a really difficult thing for me to accept, but I knew that she wasn't in pain anymore and gone out as that beautiful role model that she wanted to be.

Whenever I think about my client, I think of how calm and rational she was about everything. She could have been having nightmares and suicidal ideations all day, but she was still able to sit and explain in a calm and collected manner how she was doing and legitimate explanations as to why. She was very insightful. I have always envied this ability in other people. I feel like I am a very rational person. I think things deserve explanations and reasons, which is why I feel so frustrated in my eating disorder.

My Eating Disorder is clearly not a rational thing. The vast majority of my core beliefs that trigger my eating disorder are also irrational. One major belief has always been that I am unworthy of anyone's love, particularly romantic love. Another top contender is that I am undeserving of any good things that do happen to me. Finally, the worst one of all, I am responsible and deserving of blame for all of the horrible things that have happened to me in my lifetime. I can try and give evidence for all of these, but I am typically shot down by more rational answers.

The irrationality of my eating disorder has been a huge struggle point for me. I don't understand it. I hate it. I do not get why I can't just get over it. That battle between my rational and irrational minds are even more difficult than the one between my healthy and ED minds. The biggest battle of all will be accepting the rational and accepting that the irrational will always exist, but there are better things in the world to challenge it with.