“You look so much healthier!!!” Must.Remember.This.Is.A.Compliment. (repeat as necessary)
OMG!!!! So much this! For those of you in the early stages of recovery that include weight gain, please please please keep this in mind.
You will get told this. Many times. By many people. Believe me when I tell you, it is a good thing. It won’t feel like it is, but it is. The ED voice is going to mock it, telling you that what people are really saying is that you are getting fat. That is not true. Remember that. The ED feels threatened. It is loosing its hold on you. It knows it. It will begin to use all the tricks in the book to keep you by its side. Don’t fall for it. Stay strong. Keep working your recovery.
One of the things I did was tell people not to mention my weight. To keep it to themselves. Not everyone did this, mind you. So when I got told how much healthier I was looking, I would tell myself that healthy does not mean fat. It means healthy. I was no longer looking sick. And that was a good thing. It wasn’t always easy. It was very hard to let go of something that I had for over ten years. I remember my grandmother telling me once how she was happy my face was “looking round” again. At the dinner table no less. That meal ended rather quickly and in tears. (That also was years before I was ready to commit to recovery.)
People who have never had an e.d. don’t know how it feels to recover from one. “They know not what they do.” Don’t take it personal. Keep chugging along with your recovery. Eventually you will be happy when someone tells you that you look healthy. I promise.
“All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won’t succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.” Wayne Dyer
The blame game. We’ve all played it. It’s safe. It takes the responsibility off of us. But does it do us any good? Hell no.
I used to play it a lot. It wasn’t my fault I had an eating disorder. It was my mother’s for agreeing with me that I needed to lose a few extra pounds. It was the media’s fault for always having stick thin models walking down the runway. It was my boyfriends fault saying I needed to tighten up my stomach (which was brought on by all the drinking I was doing). It was everyone’s fault but mine.
Does this sound familiar to you?
To get better, I had to get real. Who was starving me? Me. Who was sticking their finger down my throat? Me. Who was forcing me to do hours of exercise? Me. No one else, but me. I had to take total responsibility. It wasn’t fun. But until I could take blame, I would remain stuck in my disease.
As soon as you do recognize that it is you that is keeping you sick, PLEASE practice forgiveness towards yourself. Do not remain stuck in the blame game with yourself. It does not serve you. You have beat yourself and mistreated yourself long enough. It is time for self love. Practice forgiveness everyday, towards yourself and others. You will be a much happier person, believe me.
“Whatever is true is eternal, and cannot change or be changed. Spirit is therefore unalterable because it is already perfect, but the mind can elect what it chooses to serve. The only limit put on its choice is that it cannot serve two masters.” (Course Of Miracles)
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can’t serve both God and Mammon.” (Matthew 6:24)
The other night when I was meditating, the saying about not being able to serve two masters came to me.
There are so many ways to interpret this.
The Bible’s meaning is you can’t serve God and money or false idols at the same time.
The Course breaks it down to where you can’t serve love or fear at the same time.
This concept relates to recovery perfectly! Which master are you going to serve? The one who belittles you every chance it gets? Or the one who tries to lift you up in spirit? You can’t do both. Recovery isn’t about keeping one foot in the disease, and one foot in recovery. You can’t. You have to choose. There are two separate masters fighting for your attention. Your disease is a hell of a lot louder though. Recovery is quieter. But it’s peaceful. It feels nicer. It’s not easier though. But trust that in the long run, you will be better off. You will be. I promise.
I received this question in my DMs recently. The first thing that came to my mind after reading it was the word control.
Control came in many forms for me while I was suffering.
We all know that the control you feel while in the depths of an eating disorder isn’t real. It’s an illusion. But we believe in it none the less. It gives us a false sense of security. Nothing and no one can hurt us. We are in complete control of our body and emotions.
Which is utter bullshit. The eating disorder is in full control. It just lets us believe we are until it’s time to give it up.
Giving up the false sense of control was the hardest.
To get better, I had to put trust in my treatment team. Release the reins to them. Let them take control. As hard as it was to admit, I wasn’t doing a very good job at handling my life.
Ed wasn’t very happy about this.
“They’re going to make you fat.” “Don’t believe anything they tell you.” “They’re lying about all of this.” “They’re jealous you have willpower and they don’t.” “I have your back, they don’t.”
And on and on and on it went.
So how did I relinquish control?
I looked at my current situation in a very compassionate way and saw that I wasn’t doing a very good job. I told myself that they know what they’re doing and have my best interests at heart. They are safe to trust. This did not happen overnight. It was something that I had to constantly remind myself of time and time again. As with anything that takes practice, it soon began to get easier. Eventually I surrendered. I came to the realization that wherever treatment was taking me, it had to be better than where my eating disorder took me. And it was.
Journal: Does control play a part in your eating disorder? What do you think would happen if you allowed others to help you? What would be scary? What would be a relief?
Isn’t the past kind? It’s always over. Byron Katie Can I get an Amen? When I first saw this quote, I immediately loved it. Isn’t the past kind? It’s always over.
I for one used to live in the past. I would rehash all my mistakes over and over in my head. I should have done this or I wish this had happened instead. On and on. Beating myself up over things that did not matter anymore. That held no meaning in the present.
If you are doing this, I have one thing to say: STOP!!!
You are robbing yourself of peace. The past is in the past. There is nothing you can do to change it. It’s over and done with.
Forgive yourself of any wrongdoing you may have done in the past that is still upsetting you. Forgive yourself of any of the feelings that come up with that. Anger, regret, bitterness, all of the negatives. Get it out and be done with it.
If there is someone that you have hurt and you are able to, ask for their forgiveness. If they are able to forgive, great. If not, that is their issue they need to handle. Remember that. You did your part.
We can not let the past have this hold on us any longer. Leave it there. In the past. Learn from it. Grow from it. And then get the hell away from it!
I’m going to leave you with one more quote. It’s paraphrasing a Buddhist quote:
“If you have one foot in the past, one foot in the future, then you are pissing on the present.”
Please do me a favor and throw the damn thing away. Do yourself a favor and throw the damn thing away. It’s not helping or serving you in any way. It’s only hurting you. Taunting you. Ridiculing you. You know it’s true.
I used to be a slave to what the number on the scale said. How my mood was going to be that day was determined by what the scale said. Instead of asking a magic 8 ball how I was going to feel, I’d just step on the scale. I mean, Lord forbid, I try to actually see how I’m really feeling.
I remember once my brother pushing the scale numbers back, so that when I got on the scale, I’d think I had lost weight. He said he did that because he got tired of how upset I would get after weighing myself and wanted me to think I had lost weight. Though his heart was in the right place, he did not understand I was in the depth of an eating disorder. All that made me do was get pissed at him for tricking me. I would also have to make sure the line on the scale was perfectly lined up with 0 before stepping on the scale.
For those of you who been in treatment, you know that they weigh you standing backwards on the scale. Oh how I hated that in the beginning. I would try to gauge where I was by examining their reactions to my weight. I would ask if I gained or lost any from last time. In the beginning they would tell me. Never in numbers though. “You gained a little bit.” Or, “Your weight has dropped from last week.” They stopped telling when it was noticed how I would get depressed over the weight gains and happy over the weight losses.
For a few years after treatment, I did continue to stand backwards on the scale at the doctor’s office. I wasn’t ready to see the number. It was about three or four years later when I did finally start to face the damn thing head on.
I will admit that even to this day, it is one of my least favorite parts of any doctor visit. But so what?
Your weight is simply a measure of your relationship to gravity. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is not a measure of who you are as a person. It does not measure how caring you are. How sweet you are. What a great friend you are. It does not measure any of your qualities that make you YOU. The doctor just uses your weight to notice any sudden gains or losses that may signal a problem. Also for you to try to stay in the “healthy” range for your height and shape.
Don’t allow the scale to rule your life. Throw it away. Smash it to bits. You don’t need that negativity in your life, let alone, in your own home. Get rid of it.
