It’s been a hot minute… (a hot year?) since I’ve written.. I’ll be honest, I’ve thought about it in the last year. I didn’t feel like I had anything positive to write. It felt daunting because the past year has been full of ups & downs in my recovery.
Starting in the middle of March of 2020, we all went into lockdown. For the past 13 months I have not seen my therapist in person or my dietician. I am thankful for technology so we can do telehealth or zoom calls. But it’s not the same. I don’t do well with change.. I don’t know a lot of people who do well with change. The pandemic changed everything for me. As it did for everyone. It was out of my control. Everything felt out of control. We didn’t know at the beginning of this how long it would be. The uncertainty was anxiety inducing. I can say without a doubt in the past year my anxiety has spiked. Thankfully I have an incredible team and we have found meds that have helped alleviate the anxiety.
I have found that when I’m more anxious in general, eating gets harder. When the pandemic started, my behaviors increased. Everything seemed to change over night. My regular routine got thrown out the door. I needed something to control. Of course I have learned that restricting my food intake doesn’t solve anything, but it does help alleviate my anxiety for .001 second, and for some reason, that feels like enough. That is why some days I still hold on to it. It helps for just a moment.
The last few weeks have been rough. I started trauma therapy again. I haven’t been sleeping because of my anxiety. I hate it. My feelings feel out of control because I’m dealing with stuff that I don’t want to and I’m always exhausted. If you know me, you know I don’t like feeling emotional or feelings for that matter. I don’t know what to do with them and it makes me feel like I’m spinning out of control. So what do I do? I go to what feels like control.. restricting. Luckily I have a treatment team who calls me out and reminds me how engaging in behaviors won’t help me achieve my goals.
They reminded me this past week that being a functional anorexic won’t work forever. That if I kept going on that route, I’d end up back to where I was a few years ago. Passing out. Feeling sick all the time. My brain will go offline. Barely surviving not thriving.
Working on recovery is not easy. But it’s not impossible. Even if I think it is at times. I’ve struggled a lot this past year with feeling like I’m not farther along in my recovery. I shouldn’t be struggling as much as I do. Sometimes I feel like I’m right back to where I was before residential. Some days are excruciating and the thought of eating stresses me out so much that I end up not eating. Choosing what to eat or where to go to eat are still my least favorite questions. It’s too stressful for me. The eating disorder part of me is really good at talking me out of eating. It’s mastered making me feel guilty about eating certain foods. I’d even dare say it comes up with amazing arguments and excuses of why not to eat. It’s quite frustrating. Sometimes I try to argue back (in my head of course). Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I need to have an outside voice argue back and fight for me.
I am grateful that I have been medically stable and my weight has stabilized for the past 4 months, which I think is the longest since leaving higher level of care at the end of 2018. I’d say that’s a small victory!
Inside My Eating Disorder 