I’M SORRY…

In the 22 days since last I wrote, I have been in a period of continual relapse. I waited to become unrelapsed before writing again in my blog – for the sheer shame of having to yet again confess to another failure on my behalf – but alas, the days pass on by and nothing changes. Relapsed I remain.

And a disappointment I remain.

Everyone is pissed I’m not eating. They’re tired of the merry-go-round. So am I to be perfectly honest. Since being unceremoniously told, I don’t like eating disorder patients (amongst other things), I plummeted back into full-on restriction. If it weren’t for the food being unceremoniously foisted upon me by my husband every evening, I wouldn’t eat at all. And I’d be very content with that situation.

I struggle to explain the how and why of the entire situation. I spent 52 miserable days in an eating disorder clinic at the start of 2018 – swearing never to return. I’ve been seeking the elusive recovery dragon for four years. I’ve been up and down, chased my tail, made improvements, relapsed, and now – here I am again. Back at the beginning. Pissed at me. Pissing everyone off. It’s like none of the past four years ever happened. A cloud of hopelessness descends and I feel defeated by the war.

The rest of my life cruises along like a big happy whale in calm emerald waters. I’m busy with all sorts of work projects. I finished the first draft of my memoir (a feat many consider to be a major accomplishment), and booked it in with a manuscript assessor this week. I supported a close friend to realise her dream of creating an amazing online fitness program for women – and we launched last week. I’ve been offered several different writing and editing jobs that will eventually bring in a little bit of extra cash but more importantly, keep me busy engaging my brain. I’m eternally blessed with lovely friends and family, and I live in a perfectly acceptable house that would be a lot more acceptable if I got off my butt and cleaned it. So all in all, my cloud of misery is of my own making and extracting myself from it will be of my own volition.

I can quite honestly say, I don’t know what to do.

Despite writing an entire memoir on the evolution of an eating disorder and all the recovery stuff learned along the way, I feel stuck. I go to church every Sunday and beseech God for answers. I search for spiritual release every day of my life. I attend DBT classes and do my homework. I listen to my friends and do everything they say. Except eat. The one thing I need to do feels like sculling paint thinner – not just ridiculously unpalatable, but potentially fatal.

The year is slipping by – I noticed Christmas delicacies appearing in my local supermarket this week. Which is just wrong on so many levels. Before long it will be New Years Day 2020 and I will be declaring good riddance to 2019 and hello to a whole new age of possibilities. And perhaps that will be true. I don’t know. My mood has been so low for so long that I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be optimistic about the future. Once upon a time I had no idea I was depressed and anxious.

Now I have no idea how to not be depressed and anxious.

As I dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s on the first draft of my memoir, I thought perhaps I was laying to rest the girl that was and becoming ready to embrace the girl that will be. But it seems I’m the girl in limbo who lost who she was and doesn’t know what comes next. In the meantime, the grocery bill has significantly decreased at the expense of my sanity and my husband’s peace of mind.

Part of me is confident the past 25 days will become a blip I reflect back upon as an insignificant glitch on the recovery road in years to come. Part of me is sure I’ll never want to eat again. All of me is quite sure the future is entirely in my own hands and the choices I make are mine and mine alone. Somehow – just somehow – I have to figure out where to go from here. To find a path that brings relief to those who love me and strength to my continued journey of recovery.

UNSETTLED

It takes six little words feeding the eating disorder voice, to override a year of conversations nurturing the timid voice of recovery.

I don’t like eating disorder patients

Why would someone feel the need to say that out loud? We all have a million thoughts run through our head. In polite society, they aren’t supposed to actually dribble out our mouths. Do you realise your skirt doesn’t actually cover your butt? I can smell the sweat from your hairy armpits. Your son’s a right little shit.

It’s not hard to keep your mouth shut when an unnecessary thought whizzes by. Although I noticed as my grandmother became very old – and she lived to be a very respectable 98 and two thirds – she started to vomit out a lot of thoughts that I suspect (hope) would have remained unspoken in years gone by. Perhaps freedom of expression made her feel freer, but it certainly didn’t offer any sense of freedom to the recipients of her free reign of thought.

Upon hearing of my unlikeability as an eating disordered person, I promptly slumped into a regressive pity party. Those six little words echoing endlessly, inflating the ego of the barely suppressed eating disorder until it was puffed up like a porcupine fish – popping all the little pearls of hard-earned wisdom tenuously floating by.

Ed the Eating Disorder voice has lived inside my head for five decades.

Honing skills. Mastering craft. Manipulating thoughts, situations and events until everything about my existence is crafted by Ed. Everything. And Ed’s priority is how I look. How I look was determined by my mother. And those looks were determined by perimeters physically impossible for my body’s predetermined genetics. Ed wins. Simone loses.

Over the past few years, I’ve been learning new ways of thinking, practising new ways of believing, experimenting with new ways of behaving. It’s unfamiliar. Foreign. Little Simone with the golden curls finding her voice. And she’s not very good at it. Six little words from a voice of authority and she’s back in her box, silenced.

Onlookers stare and wonder why.

Why can’t I just let the words wash over? Let them go. Focus on things I’ve learned and forget about a handful of words from someone who should know better. It isn’t that easy. Those words feed a voice that hungers to be back in the spotlight. Voila. Centerstage with a microphone and a willing audience of one. Those six words give strength and courage to an ego that needs little encouragement and collapses the faith of a voice that’s inexperienced and unpracticed. The scales aren’t yet balanced. Small waves unsettle the equilibrium.

I don’t like Ed. He sucks. But he’s also familiar and safe. He makes promises I believe. He’s delivered on a lot of them. As time goes by, my job is to teach the girl with the golden curls how to stand in the spotlight with the microphone, work that audience and deliver better promises. To balance the scales forever.

ABCD THERAPY

It takes very little time in the world of mental health treatments, before acronyms and mnemonics become everyday language. Psychiatric therapies have come a long way from the induced seizures, exorcisms and lobotomies of the past. Today there are countless methods of treatment – pharmacological, behavioural, community, and medical. Psychiatrists tend to be the big boss of drugs and medical treatments like ECT or TMS, while psychologists tend to deliver the behavioural and community therapies. And they love their acronyms. For anyone out there that hasn’t been blessed with the opportunity of gracing the couches and uncomfortable plastic chairs of therapy groups, I thought I’d share a summary of my experience of the ABCDs of therapy.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) – perhaps the most well known modern day therapy – commonly used to treat conditions such as anxiety and mood disorders, disordered eating, anger issues or stress. CBT looks at thoughts, feelings and actions, and the way they affect perception and wellbeing. It focuses on altering unhelpful or unhealthy patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving and is based on the idea that negative thinking is a bad habit that needs to be broken.

My personal take away from CBT? You are what you think. Reinforcing old ways of thinking, reinforces old ways of behaving…

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a behavioural approach to psychotherapy that stems from cognitive behavioral therapy. Clients learn to stop avoiding, denying, and struggling with inner emotions, instead, accepting deeper feelings are appropriate responses to certain situations that shouldn’t prevent them from moving forward in their lives. With this understanding, clients begin to accept issues and hardships and commit to making necessary behavior changes, regardless of what’s going on in their lives, and how they feel about it.

My personal takeaway from ACT? There’s a time for everything, and everything has its’ place.

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) provides clients with new skills to manage painful emotions and decrease conflict in relationships. DBT specifically focuses on providing therapeutic skills in four key areas. Mindfulness focuses on improving the ability to accept and be present in the current moment. Distress tolerance is geared toward increasing tolerance of negative emotions, rather than trying to escape it. Emotion regulation covers strategies to manage and change intense emotions that are causing problems. Interpersonal effectiveness consists of techniques to communicate with others in a way that is assertive, maintains self-respect, and strengthens relationships.

My personal takeaway from DBT? Life is full of distressing moments. Learn the skills to manage them effectively. I personally believe this is the most effective therapy for me as it’s so practical.

There are heaps of therapies around – attachment therapy, eclectic therapy, guided affective imagery, Jungian psychotherapy, nude psychotherapy, Reichian therapy, transpersonal therapy, vegetotherapy. And a whole lot more. I have no idea what any of those things are… But I’m sure they’re all fascinating. We’re all so different. What works for me, won’t work for you. My therapist is great and I love her to bits – maybe you wouldn’t like her at all. I’ve discovered heaps and heaps of different tools and tricks. A handful of them are useful to me. It’s so important for all of us – mentally challenged or not – to be learning skills to manage our mental wellness, and to be learning what works for us, so the next time the excrement hits the proverbial spinny thing, we have tools at our disposal to manage things before they get out of hand. And better still, if we don’t need them, we also have tools to dish out to those in need. The TIPP skills come in ever so handy when friends are in high distress – especially the first two. Easy to talk someone through on the phone – plunge your hands into cold water, now go for a fast walk. Ring me when you get back. Those two things will usually deescalate a crisis quite quickly.

What works for you? What ABCD therapies have you found helpful? What helps in a crisis? What helps as ongoing self-care to keep you grounded and in a good safe state of mental safety? I’d love to know. I’m sure others would too!

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MARIA

TUNE IN TUNE OUT

I left my phone at a friend’s house on Tuesday – quite a shock to the system in our modern society. The following day I had an early morning appointment with my psychologist, but my car Bluetooth was busy hunting for a signal it could no longer reach – so I was forced to turn the radio on (silence is not an option).

I HATE THE RADIO.

As fate would have it, the first station it landed on was a Christian station. Being new to the Christian (or any other religious) faith, I actually didn’t realise there were Christian radio stations. Who knew? So as I had nothing else to do, I decided to tune in and have a bit of a listen.

Now the traffic was busy – Hobart was experiencing its peak minutes as happens each morning – so I had plenty of slow time to tune in and listen. Frustratingly however, it turns out the station is not local, and the frequency of the station is very close to another station – which was determined to ruin my concentration by cutting in and out. As I was driving along, trying to listen to my God station, I realised this was the story of my life.

Just like you, I have a voice of wisdom, reason, logic, common sense, knowing, intuition, God – whatever resonates with your personal belief system – but for the vast majority of my life, there is another frequency butting in and drowning out the word I want (and need) to hear. Sometimes the noise of the unwanted station drowns the other out completely – I know it’s there, but it can’t be heard. Sometimes the station appears clear as crystal. Then it goes again.

When the radio station tunes in nicely, there’s a sense of peace and acceptance – and enjoyment that the voice I want to hear is coming through loud and clear. The rest of the time, there’s utter discord and the stress becomes overwhelming. The temptation to let go of searching for that disappearing frequency is really strong – it’s far easier to tune into the intrusion, as it becomes stronger and clearer. To give up on the station I want, and go with the one that’s easy and comfortable.

THIS IS THE VOICE OF INSANITY.

My Christian friends call it the enemy. I call it the eating disorder voice – I don’t know where it comes from as I’ve listened to it prattling away for half a century and it’s only quite recently I ever even noticed another voice hidden in the background.

Tuning in to the voice of God is no mean feat. What does that even mean? Anyone of us can talk to ourselves to the point where anything is acceptable and logical, but that’s the deceptive voice. To muddle through a decision and come to a real knowing of its rightness, requires not just self-knowing, but external validation that your thought processes aren’t just coming up with good excuses to do whatever it is you probably shouldn’t do.

I am not schizophrenic – and for that I’m grateful. I have enough problems and schizophrenia would be a biggie. But I do have long diatribes with myself that almost always end up leading to some kind of ineffective, destructive behaviour. Naturally I spend a lot of time wondering why I’m such an idiot, but my radio experience, of two competing stations drifting in and out, making it impossible to concentrate on the preferred station, gave me the insight to realise there’s a lot of external noise inside my head, and that finding recovery – especially long term recovery – is going to be completely dependent on tuning in to both voices, and gradually turn the good voice up and the bad voice down.

BURDENED

The burden of not wanting to be a burden…

Part of the psychological recovery toolkit is reaching out. We hear it all the time.

Phone a friend.

But it’s not easy. If it was – we’d all do it. Rumination, catastrophising, isolation, wallowing in self-pity – they’re all part of being in a depressive state. It’s normal – or feels that way at the time.

For most outcomes, hindsight is a great teacher. Talking to people, writing things out, connecting with the human race in a meaningful and emotionally vulnerable manner, are really jolly helpful. But when mental health declines, your mental health is in decline. And while that may be stating the bleeding obvious, the words “mental health” are bandied about so often, it’s easy to forget what they actually mean.

When mental health is compromised, reasoning ability is impaired.

Much like physical health, mental health is a spectrum. We can be a little bit sick – or a lot bit sick – physically and/or mentally. As a society we understand the physical better than the mental. We usually know how to care for ourselves and others in order to maximise physical health, it’s even taught in primary school – eat healthy, be active, wash your hands, rest when you’re sick, don’t spread germs, go to the doctor, take your medication, bandage your injuries. We know this shit. We don’t expect the physically unwell to soldier on alone.

But caring for ourselves mentally is not so universal. Some people are blessed with natural resilience, healthy brains, and supportive validating environments in their formative years. Some people aren’t. If for whatever reason you end up with mental health issues (through nature, nurture, situation or circumstance), the first port of call is often denial – either self or those around you. And denial has an unwelcome friend – shame. Acknowledging depression and anxiety can feel like you’re not strong or resilient enough. You’re too self-absorved, lacking gratitude, willingness or willpower. By the time you acknowledge how unwell you really are, the trip down the rabbit hole is well underway.

Reaching out to a friend is hard. Those good at understanding, taming and accepting emotions, tend to side-step the rabbit holes, but those of us vulnerable to a spiral of emotional decline, fall into a hole before realising a step has been taken.

Everyone has problems and there’s a natural desire to lighten the load for others, not add to the burden. Logically we all know the important shit – there are clichés galore. A problem shared is a problem halved. It’s okay to not be okay. Those who mind don’t matter, those who matter don’t mind. Silence = shame. He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother…

Unvoiced distress burrows into a familiar pit in the stomach, gnawing away, poisoning the soul from the inside out. But one way or another, the soul needs soothing and the choice lies with the soul’s owner as to how it’s soothed and what those consequences are.

Number one trick is to phone a friend.

I love my friends. I love my husband and my kids and the people in my support groups and my team of eternally patient professionals. Protecting those we love is natural and intuitive. Reaching out to say, I fell down the rabbit hole – again, adds a level of distress to beautiful people who are already dealing with their own rabbits. And of course the noisy voice of derision with permanent residency in my head, rolls out the shoulds and shouldn’ts.

You should be able to handle this shit. You should know what to do – just fucking do it. You shouldn’t be back in this hole. Nobody wants to hear all this shit again. There are people with real problems in the world – think of the starving children in Ethiopia. Put your big girl panties on and suck it up. Just give in, give up, or get on with it.

When the burden of being a burden becomes so burdensome the burden can no longer be bourne, it’s crunch time. Disappear into Wonderland with the big white rabbit, going permanently mad? Or just go – permanently? Or do what needs to be done and reach out?

Clearly the latter is the healthier option.

But thinking rational thoughts with a brain that’s on vacation is kinda tricky. And at this point in time, vulnerability to inffective coping strategies is extremely high. (I seem to be channeling my lovely psychologist).

The first sharing is the worst sharing. Playing with the rabbits feels safe and familiar but more importantly, feels like protection for others. Until my external demeanour matches the internal, and a neon flashing sign, She’s Depressed! appears for all to witness, it’s comforting to internalise and try to solve the downward spiral alone. But the inside of my head is a noisy place and what I know doesn’t match what I do.

Getting back on the straight and narrow needs a conversation with a real human – not the cunning voice of fear and vulnerability that refuses to see hope and seek change. The straight and narrow path requires a real human to know the truth of the rabbit hole, so they can shine a light onto the path back out.

So we of the mentally unwell – with our huge bag of psychological tools and tips, must reach out and stop playing with the rabbits in the big, big hole.

And you of the mentally slightly better off – with the view of the rabbit hole from above – need tough, compassionate love. We can’t be forced out of the hole, but we can be guided from afar.

My burdens weigh you down, but together we can shared and shed the load, and then who knows, perhaps one day I’ll shoulder some of your burdens, and shine the light into the darkness for you to burrow back out.