Soon, The Hurt Will Hurt Less
I am often thinking about timelines and sequences of events. Time has been the one thing that has always seemed to eventually heal wounds and lessen pain (or maybe numb it). For instance, I started this blog a little over a year ago. It was then, around a year ago, that my depression was worsening and I was flailing to find purpose and meaning in everyday life. Like, to the point where I was painting rocks in an effort to kill time and not engage in destructive behaviors. Or, it has been about a year an a half since I left Austin and started treatment at CFD, and tomorrow it will be three weeks since I left CFD via AMA (against medical advice).
I know I talk about treatment a lot. I worry that people are going to think all the feeling and thoughts I have wrapped up in which particular level of care I was in were superficial and that I "did recovery wrong" by letting such trivial variables effect me. In truth, it takes loads of self-compassion to validate my own feelings about the treatment process I have endured. Especially the grief. We commonly associate grief with the death of someone close to us, however, we all experience grief from countless experiences that bring up similar emotions and patterns. Grief can be the result of the loss of a whole range of things: a person, a job, an identity, an opportunity, a dream, a home, etc. I try to remind myself of this when I start beating myself for feeling "stupid" for having a difficult time coping with leaving CFD. It was a safe space for me. It had probably the greatest density of safe people for me in one place. It was somewhere I felt (occasionally in a warped sense) supported and cared for. By departing from that, I am grieving all those things and having to trust that I will find them again. So I hold on to time. When my emotions were so intense in those several days following my discharge to where I felt nacreous and my whole body ached, all I could hope is that soon it would be ease. Soon, the hurt would hurt less.
And it did. My episodes of spontaneous sobbing reduced in number. My chest felt as if the elephant sitting on it was beginning to bear its own weight limb by limb. I could now listen to some music without getting teary eyed from the random connection I made between the lyrics and the transition I was going through in my life. I was able to focus marginally better on studying for my midterms that were conveniently that same week. Through the past three weeks, I am able to truthfully report I have made small small steps in the right direction. They are small steps in the grand scheme of the rest of the work I will have to do, but they were huge in the context of recent events. The only kind of steps I had allowed myself to take in the preceding months were backward ones.
Today when the medical specialist (and honorary therapist) I see for my eating disorder told me she would call my vitals stable based on the small window of the past few weeks, I wasn't distraught. The thought of improving or even stabilizing typically sent me through a whirlwind of thoughts including, but not limited to, "great, now that they think I'm doing better, I am gonna get left in the dust", "I need to prove I need support by proving I'm still sick" (instead of, I don't know, asking for more support), and "The eating disorder is the only reason people like you and it's the only reason you like yourself, don't let it go". Eventually I learned to expect these sorts of thoughts when given anything other than negative news, but it didn't do much to take way their power. This time though, I had been doing some uncomfortable things in the sake of stabilizing, so I was relieved to hear they were paying off in part. The absence of a freak-out I think was also attributed to my continued devotion and excitement about school and my future in general. I know that without stabilization, not only would I not be permitted to stay in school in the short-term, I wouldn't not be able to fully align my life with my values by the time I was further in my career. I don't want that. I want this approach to work. I want to be able to pull this off without having to be sent off again and putting my life on hold just to be taught concepts and skills that, frankly, I already know.
I am a relatively insightful person, and after over a year of extensive work on eating disorders and emotional intelligence, I feel comfortable saying that. I would say also generalize and say that most people with eating disorders, particularly those who have been through treatment, have a unusually high radar for noticing disordered comments/behaviors regarding food in everyday life. Most people fall into the "disordered eating" portion of the "eating disorder to intuitive eating" continuum in our society. In other words, lots of people engage occasionally in compensatory behaviors, restriction of food, labeling foods as good and bad, or counting calories/macros, but these behaviors don't consume their lives in the way that it would for someone with an eating disorder. Not to imply that these behaviors and beliefs aren't harmful, they are, and they can become eating disorders. The point I am trying to make, is that there is an excessive abundance of opportunities for these radars to detect diet culture bullshit. Sometimes it doesn't take a radar though.Unfortunately these normalized ideals and behaviors can be directed right at us, the last people who want to hear it.
This relapse took a toll on my body. I harmed my body. My health declined. But because we live in a world that falsely equates thinness with health, I received many unnecessary comments about how "great" I looked during my decline. They came from people who I had known for minutes and from people I had known for years. They praised me for looking "healthy" and asked if I had been going to the gym. Even people who knew that I had an eating disorder said such things. Of course no one meant to say things that hurt me. They were trying to give me compliments, I suppose. But this is why commenting on bodies should just not be done. Ever. We have no idea why someone's body changed, and by making an assumption that it was done a)intentionally and b)healthily (with my definition of health in mind) is one that cannot be made accurately based on appearance. I am living proof that people assume someone is healthier if they are smaller, when really it was the exact opposite in my case. The odds that these comments will negatively affect the person should be reason enough to simply find something else to comment on if you must (i.e. their smile, their outfit, their knowledge, their accomplishments). What I interpret from direct comments that applaud changes in my body is that if people think I look better now, it must mean I looked worse when I was in a larger/fatter/recovered body. And what feels even worse is that I then believe that people were straight up lying to me when they complimented my previous appearance because now it feels apparent that they thought that person wasn't good enough. Of course these interpretations may not be accurate, but I have heard renditions of these sentiments over and over from people struggling and how these comments can really set someone back. It is not entirely the responsibility of society to filter everything they say to protect people with eating disorders, I understand that would be unreasonable to expect. I would hope it to become taboo to comment on other's bodies. Also, I hope that people who are aware someone they care about has an eating disorder would do so much as taking one minute to Google, "what not to say to someone with an eating disorder".
Glo
I know I talk about treatment a lot. I worry that people are going to think all the feeling and thoughts I have wrapped up in which particular level of care I was in were superficial and that I "did recovery wrong" by letting such trivial variables effect me. In truth, it takes loads of self-compassion to validate my own feelings about the treatment process I have endured. Especially the grief. We commonly associate grief with the death of someone close to us, however, we all experience grief from countless experiences that bring up similar emotions and patterns. Grief can be the result of the loss of a whole range of things: a person, a job, an identity, an opportunity, a dream, a home, etc. I try to remind myself of this when I start beating myself for feeling "stupid" for having a difficult time coping with leaving CFD. It was a safe space for me. It had probably the greatest density of safe people for me in one place. It was somewhere I felt (occasionally in a warped sense) supported and cared for. By departing from that, I am grieving all those things and having to trust that I will find them again. So I hold on to time. When my emotions were so intense in those several days following my discharge to where I felt nacreous and my whole body ached, all I could hope is that soon it would be ease. Soon, the hurt would hurt less.
And it did. My episodes of spontaneous sobbing reduced in number. My chest felt as if the elephant sitting on it was beginning to bear its own weight limb by limb. I could now listen to some music without getting teary eyed from the random connection I made between the lyrics and the transition I was going through in my life. I was able to focus marginally better on studying for my midterms that were conveniently that same week. Through the past three weeks, I am able to truthfully report I have made small small steps in the right direction. They are small steps in the grand scheme of the rest of the work I will have to do, but they were huge in the context of recent events. The only kind of steps I had allowed myself to take in the preceding months were backward ones.
Today when the medical specialist (and honorary therapist) I see for my eating disorder told me she would call my vitals stable based on the small window of the past few weeks, I wasn't distraught. The thought of improving or even stabilizing typically sent me through a whirlwind of thoughts including, but not limited to, "great, now that they think I'm doing better, I am gonna get left in the dust", "I need to prove I need support by proving I'm still sick" (instead of, I don't know, asking for more support), and "The eating disorder is the only reason people like you and it's the only reason you like yourself, don't let it go". Eventually I learned to expect these sorts of thoughts when given anything other than negative news, but it didn't do much to take way their power. This time though, I had been doing some uncomfortable things in the sake of stabilizing, so I was relieved to hear they were paying off in part. The absence of a freak-out I think was also attributed to my continued devotion and excitement about school and my future in general. I know that without stabilization, not only would I not be permitted to stay in school in the short-term, I wouldn't not be able to fully align my life with my values by the time I was further in my career. I don't want that. I want this approach to work. I want to be able to pull this off without having to be sent off again and putting my life on hold just to be taught concepts and skills that, frankly, I already know.
I am a relatively insightful person, and after over a year of extensive work on eating disorders and emotional intelligence, I feel comfortable saying that. I would say also generalize and say that most people with eating disorders, particularly those who have been through treatment, have a unusually high radar for noticing disordered comments/behaviors regarding food in everyday life. Most people fall into the "disordered eating" portion of the "eating disorder to intuitive eating" continuum in our society. In other words, lots of people engage occasionally in compensatory behaviors, restriction of food, labeling foods as good and bad, or counting calories/macros, but these behaviors don't consume their lives in the way that it would for someone with an eating disorder. Not to imply that these behaviors and beliefs aren't harmful, they are, and they can become eating disorders. The point I am trying to make, is that there is an excessive abundance of opportunities for these radars to detect diet culture bullshit. Sometimes it doesn't take a radar though.Unfortunately these normalized ideals and behaviors can be directed right at us, the last people who want to hear it.
This relapse took a toll on my body. I harmed my body. My health declined. But because we live in a world that falsely equates thinness with health, I received many unnecessary comments about how "great" I looked during my decline. They came from people who I had known for minutes and from people I had known for years. They praised me for looking "healthy" and asked if I had been going to the gym. Even people who knew that I had an eating disorder said such things. Of course no one meant to say things that hurt me. They were trying to give me compliments, I suppose. But this is why commenting on bodies should just not be done. Ever. We have no idea why someone's body changed, and by making an assumption that it was done a)intentionally and b)healthily (with my definition of health in mind) is one that cannot be made accurately based on appearance. I am living proof that people assume someone is healthier if they are smaller, when really it was the exact opposite in my case. The odds that these comments will negatively affect the person should be reason enough to simply find something else to comment on if you must (i.e. their smile, their outfit, their knowledge, their accomplishments). What I interpret from direct comments that applaud changes in my body is that if people think I look better now, it must mean I looked worse when I was in a larger/fatter/recovered body. And what feels even worse is that I then believe that people were straight up lying to me when they complimented my previous appearance because now it feels apparent that they thought that person wasn't good enough. Of course these interpretations may not be accurate, but I have heard renditions of these sentiments over and over from people struggling and how these comments can really set someone back. It is not entirely the responsibility of society to filter everything they say to protect people with eating disorders, I understand that would be unreasonable to expect. I would hope it to become taboo to comment on other's bodies. Also, I hope that people who are aware someone they care about has an eating disorder would do so much as taking one minute to Google, "what not to say to someone with an eating disorder".
Glo
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