Painfully Different

I hope you all can excuse my hibernation. It has been quite a time for me the past ten weeks (holy shit). I have learned a lot, grown a lot, and struggled a lot, per usual.

My residential stay lasted 5 weeks. A relatively short stay, but it was because I worked hard and got out of it what I could and was ready for more autonomy by the end. The first four days I didn’t complete a single meal, leaving at least half on my plate each time. I guess I was hoping people would notice or be concerned. They probably should have, in retrospect. Still, out of spite for feeling unseen, I completed my dinner on my fourth night. The next morning, I woke up and I decided to commit to a full day of 100% completion, if nothing else than to see what it would be like. I completed everything from that day forward. I was proud of myself but my worry in doing these things was that I would activate "treatment mode", which as I have previously mentioned, is when I experience my eating disorder resort to harm reduction mode and simply shuts off it's cry to me until I have more autonomy in my life. It makes it very hard to actively fight it and release myself from it's grip. How I intended to rebel against it was to take recovery decisions into my own hands. 

I realized in one of therapy sessions in residential that control, as cliche as it may be, was more of a function of my eating disorder than I had thought. I have generally considered it as primarily a way to find connection until this. An eating disorder often can give it's host a false sense of control. In reality, that person, me in this case, is controlled by the eating disorder. Alternatively, when I am not being controlled by the eating disorder, it has typically been when I am in treatment. In that setting, I am also surrendering control. In the safety bubble of treatment, particularly higher levels of care, I give up the same control to my meal plan, my treatment team, and the process as a whole. There is great fear in assuming the power over my own life. It is then that I have to take responsibility for my choices, hopes, and shortcomings. The latter is the hardest part. If I fail when I am in the driver's seat (my favorite metaphor), then there is no one to blame but myself. When my life is being directed by my eating disorder or my treatment, I can place blame for my suffering on either of those things. 

I was blessed with an amazing roommate in residential who arrived on the same day as me. She and I would stay up for hours past our 10pm "lights out" talking about our journeys, our fears and frustrations, and our questions about life. I learned one of the most beautiful lessons from her in the time when I needed it most. Since being immersed in the treatment world the past several years, I have come to view  having to care and be there for myself as a burden. Reaching out for support and leaning on those around you in hardship has been preached so heavily that when I couldn't do that for one reason or another, I felt alone and hopeless. I needed the support and concern from others in order to feel like I was loved and that I mattered. I started placing so much value into how I was supported by others which led me to feel like sitting in my pain alone was impossible. I must have forgotten the decade before treatment when all I did was force myself to carry it all inside and to self sooth. I am not claiming this route was helpful either, as it came to involve many maladaptive coping behaviors, but it has seemed like self soothing would always then be harmful. What my roommate taught me through her own experiences and insight was that it can be a gift to be able to be you're own rock. To be able to come back to yourself, your soul, and your inner child and to care for her in a kind way is a beautiful thing, and not an obligatory burden. I still believe there is tremendous strength asking for help and confiding in those around you when you can. However, this new take is to not be resentful when that option isn't available, and to view the opportunity to fall inward as a way to practice self-compassion and resilience. 

After five weeks, it was determined that I was ready to transition to the PHP program. This is a relatively short stay, but by the end of it, I was ready for something more challenging. The transition between teams, buildings, friends, and living arrangements was surely more of a shock than I anticipated, but it felt like my new normal within days, as treatment does. I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth the transition went, honestly. For the first several weeks of PHP, I continued completing my meal plan in and out of programming and surrounded myself with people outside of it even as a newer member of the milieu. This pushed me to challenge urges I had with the positive peer support I received. I ate past fullness on a few weekends when we had dinner on our own, but didn't use any compensatory behaviors despite having a higher desire to than I had felt during res. I was trucking through, and continuing to progress through the program. 

When you progress through this program, they slowly ween you off of hours in programming. This is a different experience than I have had in other programs and I think it is a huge help in limiting shocks to the system that I have had in other rounds of treatment where you drop from extensive hours of support to dramatically less overnight. However, some of the struggles I have had in those previous step downs have still crept up in this gradual step down, too, just not as exponentially. What started as a wave of depressive thoughts has accompanied a increase in negative coping skills. What started the depressive episode? I think it was a combination of more time and autonomy, meaninglessness/hopelessness, and poor body image. I fell into the "what's the point?" trap. That is a very hard thought to combat because it wins almost every argument with the healthy voice trying to get you to do the harder things in life. I mean, if nothing matters, what is the point of waging the painful and exhausting war of recovery? If going to school, finding a job, and overall just working to become a functioning adult seems so unremarkable and unfulfilling, why should I do it? It isn't hard to see how that state of mind would result in resorting to behaviors that have instantaneous gratification. The willingness that was present for the former part of this journey had eroded and now I think I was feeling the effects of it. This was probably not the right time to watch the Disney movie, Soul, all about the idea of the meaning of life, but I did it anyway. Even the message that meaning is in the little moments in life didn't sit well for me. It felt like, "if the whole point is only for small moments of joy and peace that we go through hell to be alive for, then why should I? 

I think those wildly existential thoughts have eased up in my most recent week, but finding the strength to turn things around before they get any worse has been a challenge, especially with the impending transition to IOP that I will undergo in T-2 days. I can say that I don't feel a desire to be deathly sick with this disease anymore. I am tired of the eating disorder ruling my life. I don't think I need to prove I can "do it better" in another relapse, which has famously been a pull to return to the ED for me. Still, giving it all up is something I have yet to truly want all the time. I know that I can't have just a little bit of an ED, but there is more security in the small commitments to it than you might think. Its not much of a question anymore whether or not I am going to eat my meals, for example, but eating them early or having every single component of my meal plan when I am not in programming is very difficult. Unfortunately it is probably those small things that have boiled over into are what are at times unbearable urges for things like binging and purging. I have a plan to try to get back on track. I have been totally transparent with my team. I am making recovery choices from my own brain in many moments. I am not giving up, and I am still scared that at some point I might want to. 

Glo