For me there’s no quicker way to kick start feeling bad about my body image, than to start restricting my food intake. You’d think this was something that worked the other way around, but for me it does seem noticeable that if I get overloaded with stress or feel the despair associated with depression, then straight away I begin to turn to restriction to solve the problem, or at least numb the pain. Within a day or two I can guarantee that my level of distress surrounding my shape, and mental-weight (Obviously it’s an imagined figure as I have no scales) shoots up into a danger zone. Then comes more restricting, and more dissatisfaction, and more despair, and more stress. Pack this on top of all the other stuff that has been afoot lately, and it’s really quite apparent why I’ve been dangerously low.
This is pretty much what happened during the last few days of my holiday just gone, and since then I have certainly not been eating the way I need to. It’s not major restriction, but then I have learnt to my detriment, that it’s the mentality and not the actual size of the action. I was, despite my better judgement, leaving just a little on my plate when I could easily have finished, cutting something in half, leaving out the filling of a sandwich. Taking a spoonful less here, skipping a snack there, and always with the thought, well just this once, I’m OK so this is fine. And bingo. ED gets a foot under the table, and my thighs are suddenly the fattest thighs which ever existed. It’s like leaving the door open when the wolves are outside, and sometimes black and white thinking is a good thing. There is a thin end of the wedge where eating disorders are concerned, and the behaviour breeds quickly. I like to kid myself that my ED is dormant, but it’s patently not. Despite not having binged for so long that I cannot hazard a guess to the time scale, and having only purged twice in the past 6 weeks, I still have an ED. Ironically it’s far quieter when I am conscious of it, but like the sea, the minute I turn my back, it sends me flat on my face in a wave of surf. Then before I know it I am going under.
The trouble with recovery from an eating disorder is that whilst starving or binging, I really felt like I was slowly drowning, but in the midst of recovery it becomes fairly apparent that air can choke as well as water. Whilst I’d been using an ED to cope with day to day life, I’d also seemingly been using it a great deal to subdue the knowledge that I was destroying my life. When out of the water I’m constantly reminded of the trail of devastation that an eating disorder leaves in it’s wake, all of sudden I have to cope with the real world with no crutches, plus come to terms with the realisation that I’ve damaged my mind, body, and future, all in a fruitless effort to control an uncontrollable world. Which should light up the mental switchboard with a “Eureka this clearly doesn’t work!” But then I have twice as much crap to deal with and none of the coping mechanisms.
Things are better today, a lot better. I’m still a little anxious, and the sadness is under the surface, but nothing seems as pointless as the past week or so. It won’t last forever, there is still much work to do, but it’s a relief. Sometimes it makes considerable sense to be in a crisis, everyone has a breaking point, and I found mine. I figure it just takes a little longer for me to work things out in my head than other people. I guess I’m still learning.
For me there’s no quicker way to kick start feeling bad about my body image, than to start restricting my food intake. You’d think this was something that worked the other way around, but for me it does seem noticeable that if I get overloaded with stress or feel the despair associated with depression, then straight away I begin to turn to restriction to solve the problem, or at least numb the pain. Within a day or two I can guarantee that my level of distress surrounding my shape, and mental-weight (Obviously it’s an imagined figure as I have no scales) shoots up into a danger zone. Then comes more restricting, and more dissatisfaction, and more despair, and more stress. Pack this on top of all the other stuff that has been afoot lately, and it’s really quite apparent why I’ve been dangerously low.
This is pretty much what happened during the last few days of my holiday just gone, and since then I have certainly not been eating the way I need to. It’s not major restriction, but then I have learnt to my detriment, that it’s the mentality and not the actual size of the action. I was, despite my better judgement, leaving just a little on my plate when I could easily have finished, cutting something in half, leaving out the filling of a sandwich. Taking a spoonful less here, skipping a snack there, and always with the thought, well just this once, I’m OK so this is fine. And bingo. ED gets a foot under the table, and my thighs are suddenly the fattest thighs which ever existed. It’s like leaving the door open when the wolves are outside, and sometimes black and white thinking is a good thing. There is a thin end of the wedge where eating disorders are concerned, and the behaviour breeds quickly. I like to kid myself that my ED is dormant, but it’s patently not. Despite not having binged for so long that I cannot hazard a guess to the time scale, and having only purged twice in the past 6 weeks, I still have an ED. Ironically it’s far quieter when I am conscious of it, but like the sea, the minute I turn my back, it sends me flat on my face in a wave of surf. Then before I know it I am going under.
The trouble with recovery from an eating disorder is that whilst starving or binging, I really felt like I was slowly drowning, but in the midst of recovery it becomes fairly apparent that air can choke as well as water. Whilst I’d been using an ED to cope with day to day life, I’d also seemingly been using it a great deal to subdue the knowledge that I was destroying my life. When out of the water I’m constantly reminded of the trail of devastation that an eating disorder leaves in it’s wake, all of sudden I have to cope with the real world with no crutches, plus come to terms with the realisation that I’ve damaged my mind, body, and future, all in a fruitless effort to control an uncontrollable world. Which should light up the mental switchboard with a “Eureka this clearly doesn’t work!” But then I have twice as much crap to deal with and none of the coping mechanisms.
Things are better today, a lot better. I’m still a little anxious, and the sadness is under the surface, but nothing seems as pointless as the past week or so. It won’t last forever, there is still much work to do, but it’s a relief. Sometimes it makes considerable sense to be in a crisis, everyone has a breaking point, and I found mine. I figure it just takes a little longer for me to work things out in my head than other people. I guess I’m still learning.