Tired

Today is one of those days where I am just tired of recovery. Every day lately has been the ultimate battle of just trying to make it through a full day having consumed every calorie I need to, even with the epic war raging in my head. While I battle with my eating disorder every day, I have also had to battle recovery. It truly feels like a no win situation.

I have woken up lately with insanely high anxiety. It feels like I can barely handle the day ahead of me, because I am anticipating the meal plan that I have to fit in amongst the other crazy in my day. It feels like a chore. I wish I could just get to the point where I just could eat when I'm hungry and not have to obsess about the number of calories it has or if I am going to lose weight or face repercussions from skipping it. Recovery is a full time job in itself; one that makes facing the day to day that much harder, and I am tired.

I am happy being in recovery, because I know that this is where I need to be and don't feel awful every single day like I used to. Recovery has led me to things that I never knew were possible and happiness that I haven't had in a long time. Yes, my ED voice and negative body image are still there everyday, but they are nowhere near as bad as they once were. Recovery is a beautiful thing. It just consumes so much mental energy, but is it any worse than anorexia?

Today, I am tired from the daily focus on recovery; however, I still have more energy than I ever did when I was sick. Even though I am tired of eating when I'm not hungry and what feels like huge quantities every 2 hours, my body has the energy to actually go and do things now. I am tired of thinking about what I need to cook, but it's better than thinking about how fat I'll get from eating that cooked meal. I am tired of my recovery record alarm, but I am grateful that I am still alive today to hear it.

I may be tired of recovery today, but it's only because I was tired of living a miserable life in my eating disorder.

All of the Changes

Well, it's been an interesting few days to say the least. I have found myself on another precipice to another major life transition, and it happened much faster than I thought it would; however, it is at the sake of keeping my recovery intact, which has to be the main focus of my life. If it isn't, I'll end up back in partial hospitalization or residential treatment in no time.

I made the decision to put in my 2 weeks notice at my job this week. While I love my coworkers, the actual work I was doing felt very tedious and mindless, and ultimately, it went unappreciated by many people. It felt very monotonous going into work every day, and I could feel the restlessness creeping in. I just have not been happy doing this unfulfilling work of making schedules and dealing with student demands everyday. It ultimately came to a head when I was told I would be facing a pay cut with no notice and shaky rationale. It was my breaking point, because I know that, for my own mental health, I cannot continue to work for this company; however, I have no plan.

The idea of up and leaving a job with no plan when you have bad anxiety is unsettling, to say the least. I had been thinking about leaving for about a month, so I had at least started to apply for other jobs and had 2 interviews back in December; however, nothing really had panned out. So, I went on an application frenzy, attempting to find any job in my career field that would be more fulfilling. As of today, I still have no real plan; however, I did have a second phone interview for a position today, which I am hoping will turn into an in person interview and maybe even a job. So, I have no plan, but I have a lot of motivation to keep going, which is a big change from previous situations.

Ultimately, the stress and unhappiness in this job led to more struggles in my recovery. When my mood is low, I tend to restrict, which ends up derailing my meal plan for the rest of the day. The worst part is no matter how hard I try, I can never quite make up the missed calories before going to bed. Sometimes I'll come close, but it's still hard to tell if it's my full day's worth. Also, with feeling unappreciated, it feeds into my negative core beliefs of "You're worthless" and "Why would anyone reward your work? Clearly, it's not good enough, because you're not good enough." Dealing with these thoughts in my head all day on top of mindless work has been difficult to manage. So, ultimately, I have decided that it was best for me to protect myself and move on.

If I have learned anything in my journey over the last year, it's that if you don't take care of yourself first, everything around you may remain stable for a while, but it will ultimately fall apart. When I'm eating my full meal plan and taking the time to destress, I am at my personal best in those moments. While I recognize that not everyday in recovery is easy, having more bad than good days catches up with you. Sometimes, we need to make the hard choices in order to keep ourselves happy and healthy. If I don't, I will ultimately relapse, and that's a life I don't wish to live anymore. Put yourself first, and the rest falls into place.

Finding Motivation

Do you ever have those days where you just don't have the motivation to do the things you need to do, but you have to do them anyway? Lately, recovery has started feeling this way. While I'm doing what I can do each day, there's still a distinct lack of motivation that I'm trying to overcome.

My meal plan is becoming more and more of a chore. It's like taking out your trash. You never really want to do it, but if you don't, you'll end up with nasty consequences. One of the biggest focuses is treatment is transitioning from seeing food as this negative thing to learning to enjoy and embrace it as a necessity for life. I have just had an overwhelming feeling of dread everytime my Recovery Record alarm goes off lately. It's an instant "Oh no, not again. That went way too fast." Then, I begrudgingly retrieve my food and eat it in a very disconnected fashion. It's like I don't even taste or recognize that this is delicious food. It's made following through with my total meal plan everyday that much more difficult. With no motivation, how do you keep moving forward?

My biggest motivator right now is avoiding returning to inpatient or partial hospitalization treatment. The first time I went, I had to give up everything and attend treatment 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. Treatment became my life. While I met the most amazing group of people there, it still is a difficult thing to go to, especially if you're returning. You already feel like a failure, but when you see the look on the staff members faces that you've returned, it feels even worse. I still have some motivation to maintaining my life outside of treatment.

Another motivator is my continuing therapy. I have continued with EMDR, which is a completely exhausting process. 45 minutes of sitting with feelings and negative images is the most  uncomfortable situation ever; however, I feel like it's helping in some aspects. The catch is my therapist has stated that she will not continue with this if I relapse. Addressing those behaviors would have to come first, which is never a fun topic. Again,  it feels like failure.

There are always smaller motivators like: my family, my boyfriend, friends, the ability to work, freedom, choosing what I want to eat to fulfill my meal plan, and more.  But my biggest motivator will always be avoiding feeling like I have failed.

Looking for motivation on bad days can be hard,  but it's still important. I have learned in recovery that there will never be days that are truly easy. There are new obstacles to face everyday. But if you lose all motivation, you lose all hope of remaining in recovery.

Enough?(!)

Enough. A word that I hear in my head entirely too often. Everyday, I feel like this is the one thing that comes up in conversation and self-talk most frequently. It's such a loaded word, and for me, it's always used negatively.

Enough to me has always symbolized a baseline. It means I have made it to an adequate level, but there's still more to strive for. There is always something better that I need to try and get to.

My Eating Disorder voice loves this word. ED latches onto it and uses it to make my self-talk that much more negative. On my really bad days, I have a constant cycle of You aren't thin enough or You aren't strong enough to handle recovery, and the most popular one: You will never be enough.

I have always felt a huge sense of inadequacy. Even as a child, I remember feeling that, even though I was a fairly good kid, I was never enough for anyone else in my life. That idea was perpetuated more and more as I got into middle and high school as I fell into the unknown middle of social circles and classroom standards. Then, as I began entering romantic relationships, it came to have a whole new meaning: I will never be good enough for someone else to love me. When that idea was reinforced by my father, it got even worse.

I constantly feel like I am falling below that baseline. One of the biggest reasons is because I set that bar so much higher for myself than I do for other people. I have to hold myself to a higher standard, because I can only control myself, not others. ED doesn't help that bar fall any lower, as it is constantly pushing it higher and higher until that baseline isn't even obtainable anymore. Then, I am stuck in this realm of imperfect purgatory, doomed to stay there until I find something to validate me. Another is my intense skewed self-perception. I don't see myself the way others do, in terms of: body image, intelligence, shape, personality, talent, and more. I have never been able to see what others do, even with their validation and my own lack of evidence. To me, I am not enough; a core belief I have held onto so strongly that I have sacrificed relationships because of it. But when is enough enough?

In this journey of recovery, I have learned that I have to have self-compassion and use the opposite of the phrases my ED voice has been telling me for years: I am enough. I am good enough that others love me. I am managing things one day at a time, and that is enough for now. We all know that that's easier said than done.  I can tell myself these phrases over and over, but saying them doesn't make me believe them. My most difficult task is deciding when I have had enough of the behaviors and thought processes I have been surviving on. Not allowing myself to have enough food. Not ever being thin enough. Isolating because others won't think I'm worth enough, and in turn, believing that I am not. I have been punishing myself for 10 years for my "inadequacies," and I realize that I have had nothing but self-sabotage and self-hatred most of my life. That's when I know:

Enough is enough.

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.