So I've gone through my
Prelapse Signs , and my
red light ,
yellow light , and
green light signs. Although I think it's invaluable to know areas that are likely to trip you up, it's also important to be aware of (to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld) the things we don't know we don't know are going to sideswipe us.
Case in point: when I was in Europe last month to attend the AED Salzburg meeting and then tool around Austria for a week or two, I got a nasty stomach bug. This meant intense nausea, being unable to eat, and other fun symptoms that I'll leave to your imaginations. As a result, my eating was dramatically diminished for several days and dwindled to apple juice and some pretzels on one day. My mom was, not surprisingly, freaking out until she got what I had and we were both puking.
My mom's concern was that this not eating would make the ED thoughts come roaring back. I vaguely scoffed--the ED thoughts had been no worse than usual during the trip, and I'm doing better than I ever have, recovery-wise--and for much of the time, it was a moot point. I couldn't have eaten anyway. However, as the nausea started to diminish, I was at first very hesitant to start eating more simply because a) I was enjoying the novelty of no nausea and b) I was afraid it would aggrivate my stomach. Then the pushback started to take on a life of its own, and I just didn't want to eat. I started thinking that maybe this would be the perfect opportunity to lose some weight, and...
Yep. I was totally gobsmacked. I was back into full-blown ED thoughts and it seemed there was no "real" trigger. Except that bit about not eating.
Stomach bugs are inevitable, and so (almost certainly) is an inadvertantly missed meal or snack. Here's the thing: before I left treatment, I was warned about all sorts of relapse triggers, such as family problems, reading fashion magazines, hearing people talk about their diets, or other stressors. What no one mentioned was that being unable to eat (whether it was due to a virus, being stuck on a tarmac for 8 hours, whatever) for any period of time could also be a trigger. I never thought it would be such a potent trigger, either. You'll notice most of my relapse prevention plans don't really have much to do with these situations. Some of that is I can't really prevent many of these situations, and the other is that I really don't like that I'm so sensitive to changes in food intake. It really pisses me off! It seems so much less rational than an actual event to set off the ED.
Yet there you have it- the ED is the ED and my triggers are my triggers. It's not like one is "better" or "worse" than any other, and it's not that one trigger will only set off a benign relapse and another will be an utterly wretched relapse. So much of my relapse prevention planning has been coming to learn what my triggers are and accept them at face value, without judgement.
Case in point: when I was in Europe last month to attend the AED Salzburg meeting and then tool around Austria for a week or two, I got a nasty stomach bug. This meant intense nausea, being unable to eat, and other fun symptoms that I'll leave to your imaginations. As a result, my eating was dramatically diminished for several days and dwindled to apple juice and some pretzels on one day. My mom was, not surprisingly, freaking out until she got what I had and we were both puking.
My mom's concern was that this not eating would make the ED thoughts come roaring back. I vaguely scoffed--the ED thoughts had been no worse than usual during the trip, and I'm doing better than I ever have, recovery-wise--and for much of the time, it was a moot point. I couldn't have eaten anyway. However, as the nausea started to diminish, I was at first very hesitant to start eating more simply because a) I was enjoying the novelty of no nausea and b) I was afraid it would aggrivate my stomach. Then the pushback started to take on a life of its own, and I just didn't want to eat. I started thinking that maybe this would be the perfect opportunity to lose some weight, and...
Yep. I was totally gobsmacked. I was back into full-blown ED thoughts and it seemed there was no "real" trigger. Except that bit about not eating.
Stomach bugs are inevitable, and so (almost certainly) is an inadvertantly missed meal or snack. Here's the thing: before I left treatment, I was warned about all sorts of relapse triggers, such as family problems, reading fashion magazines, hearing people talk about their diets, or other stressors. What no one mentioned was that being unable to eat (whether it was due to a virus, being stuck on a tarmac for 8 hours, whatever) for any period of time could also be a trigger. I never thought it would be such a potent trigger, either. You'll notice most of my relapse prevention plans don't really have much to do with these situations. Some of that is I can't really prevent many of these situations, and the other is that I really don't like that I'm so sensitive to changes in food intake. It really pisses me off! It seems so much less rational than an actual event to set off the ED.
Yet there you have it- the ED is the ED and my triggers are my triggers. It's not like one is "better" or "worse" than any other, and it's not that one trigger will only set off a benign relapse and another will be an utterly wretched relapse. So much of my relapse prevention planning has been coming to learn what my triggers are and accept them at face value, without judgement.