Two Brains, One Body
Some people gives their eating disorder a name. It can be helpful by allowing you to separate your own thoughts and values from thoughts fueled by the illness. I have not done this. My eating disorder truly does feel like I have another person living inside me, a stranger in my head, if you will, and giving it a name would only personify it more, which freaks me out a little. It feels like I am working with someone to drive a car, someone is in the drivers seat and the other one is in the passenger seat either keeping to themself or trying to tell the other how to drive. When I say my eating disorder is loud, that can mean there is a lot of back and forth between the two, my eating disorder and my healthy self. This is the middle ground in my experience: where both the voices have enough of a say on my consciousness to hold their weight, so they pick fights when they don't agree with one another (which is constantly). The other two extremes of the spectrum are when one of the sides is virtually silent, maybe asleep in the passenger seat, and the other has complete control. It's quiet in it's own way because there is no arguing, no internal battle waging. Whether that is a good or a bad thing depends on who is where. At points when I had made lots of progress and was at peaks in my recovery journey, the ED thoughts are quiet and I don't have to think much to make choices that align with recovery. Those choices are routine and it is the ED thoughts that are few and far between. When they do come up, it would cause me to ask myself what is going on that would cause me to be hearing them instead of immediately acting on urges or believing what those negative thoughts are telling me without doubt. When I am really in the depths of the ED, it is the only thing I hear. The logical, healthy thoughts are so powerless to the sick ones that I can completely lose trace them all together. I imagine this extreme is when the disorder slips some kind of sedative to my healthy self, making it impossible to even attempt to backseat drive. My identity fuses with the sole captain of the ship, and it becomes difficult, almost impossible, to hear the thoughts the disorder imposes on me as thoughts that are not my own. How could they not be mine when they are the only thoughts I seem to be capable of generating?
I have noticed I have been feeling pretty lonely lately. I am sure that with the current atmosphere of the world, many of us are. I feel lonely and alone sometimes even when I know I am not and that there are lots of people there to support me. It's sort of a nuanced thing: finding the right kind of support in recovery. I think the difficulty at the moment stems mostly from two things for me: not knowing what I need in terms of support, and then also having someone who is capable of giving it to me. Having them both is what makes support really effective but that is much easier said than done. Because of what I am struggling with right now, I have found it to be most helpful to relieve support from someone who personally understands more or less of what I am going through (someone in the "recovery community"). I have reached out to people outside of this circle recently, and, to no fault of their own, it seems like it can be hard to validate something that isn't easily communicated through words. I found myself only feeling more upset and isolated when the responses couldn't cater to my specific need to be validated in the distress my eating disorder was causing me. "No one understands me", I would think to myself. I knew this wasn't totally true, but I was frustrated with not being able to receive the support offered when I reached out for it from people who care about me. It is not an easy thing to ask for help, especially from people I don't typically share my struggles with, and so when it doesn't give me a real sense of relief, I feel like I must be at fault. All of this to say: you can have people who love you and want to do their best to support you when you need it, but you can still feel alone.
When I was sharing about this with my therapist last week and what it was that I wanted people to understand, I told her, "it feels like I'm on fire". Like every thought is so intense and immediate regarding food that it's lit up like a flame. There are so many of these thoughts and urges that it just feels like I am on fire on the inside. In this state, this hyper-focused, irrationally-rational state, it's like a drug. You feel unstoppable most of the time, maybe 80%. But for other that 20%, you aren't as numb as you are the rest of the day and reality peeps in. The fire goes out in enough places so that you can see the charred, blackened bits remaining. Those are the damaged parts, but also the most fertile. When the ED fire goes out inside me, even momentarily in small areas, it provides a place for old seeds to sprout from the new earth. Old seeds that are core values and dreams I hold for myself. Through the dirt they peek through. They may not stay for long before the neighboring flames incinerate them once again, but it doesn't erase the moments of renewal and revival that once held space there. I have had a lot of seeds planted through the work I have done already, and they grow quickly when given the chance. However, the fire can still give rise to them, and it still burns.
Just because I have struggled with this before does not mean it is easier now. Just because my eating disorder might be old news, doesn't mean it feels any different to live with it. Fire is still fire and will always need water to put it out regardless of how many times the same ground has caught aflame.
Glo
I have noticed I have been feeling pretty lonely lately. I am sure that with the current atmosphere of the world, many of us are. I feel lonely and alone sometimes even when I know I am not and that there are lots of people there to support me. It's sort of a nuanced thing: finding the right kind of support in recovery. I think the difficulty at the moment stems mostly from two things for me: not knowing what I need in terms of support, and then also having someone who is capable of giving it to me. Having them both is what makes support really effective but that is much easier said than done. Because of what I am struggling with right now, I have found it to be most helpful to relieve support from someone who personally understands more or less of what I am going through (someone in the "recovery community"). I have reached out to people outside of this circle recently, and, to no fault of their own, it seems like it can be hard to validate something that isn't easily communicated through words. I found myself only feeling more upset and isolated when the responses couldn't cater to my specific need to be validated in the distress my eating disorder was causing me. "No one understands me", I would think to myself. I knew this wasn't totally true, but I was frustrated with not being able to receive the support offered when I reached out for it from people who care about me. It is not an easy thing to ask for help, especially from people I don't typically share my struggles with, and so when it doesn't give me a real sense of relief, I feel like I must be at fault. All of this to say: you can have people who love you and want to do their best to support you when you need it, but you can still feel alone.
When I was sharing about this with my therapist last week and what it was that I wanted people to understand, I told her, "it feels like I'm on fire". Like every thought is so intense and immediate regarding food that it's lit up like a flame. There are so many of these thoughts and urges that it just feels like I am on fire on the inside. In this state, this hyper-focused, irrationally-rational state, it's like a drug. You feel unstoppable most of the time, maybe 80%. But for other that 20%, you aren't as numb as you are the rest of the day and reality peeps in. The fire goes out in enough places so that you can see the charred, blackened bits remaining. Those are the damaged parts, but also the most fertile. When the ED fire goes out inside me, even momentarily in small areas, it provides a place for old seeds to sprout from the new earth. Old seeds that are core values and dreams I hold for myself. Through the dirt they peek through. They may not stay for long before the neighboring flames incinerate them once again, but it doesn't erase the moments of renewal and revival that once held space there. I have had a lot of seeds planted through the work I have done already, and they grow quickly when given the chance. However, the fire can still give rise to them, and it still burns.
Just because I have struggled with this before does not mean it is easier now. Just because my eating disorder might be old news, doesn't mean it feels any different to live with it. Fire is still fire and will always need water to put it out regardless of how many times the same ground has caught aflame.
Glo
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