BITTERSWEET SPOT

I’ve been absent. Did you notice? I noticed. When I don’t write I feel lost. And when I feel lost, I don’t write.

As part of my ACT course, I recently did the “sweet spot” exercise. It was very confronting. I’m not sure Russ anticipated that exercise would be as confronting as it was – some of the other exercises come with warnings, but this one – not so much.

It’s a nine-minute audio where he walks you through a fond memory. You get to choose the memory. This was mine…

I was so happy then. I can’t even begin to express the happiness. I realise it’s a dreadfully pixelated photo, and you’d think perhaps I was miserable because I was exhausted with three little people to run around after, and I was really overweight which isn’t ideal for someone with body image issues and an eating disorder. But I was blissfully happy and completely content. I had hopes and dreams – for myself and my children. I felt useful, needed, purposeful and wanted. I was a quintessential earth mother.

And did I mention I was happy? Not every minute of every day – because that’s unnatural and unhealthy. But I was content with my lot in life. I look back on that photo and miss every ounce of it. I miss breastfeeding my babies and feeling that incredible bond between mother and child which I was so blessed to have from the very beginning with all three of my children. I miss my beautiful toddler just sitting there leaning against my shoulder while I feed his little brother. I miss being 20 years younger and having frizzy hair and wallowing in the luxury of carefree afternoons out in the park with my young family.

During the audio exercise, you focus on every detail of the memory – sights, sounds, tastes, smells and feelings. While my memory is usually slightly shoddy, in this particular case it’s crystal clear. I can still feel the cold hard earth of the stone steps. Smell the fresh earthy autumn air of the gardens. Hear the sounds of the distant birds, the hum of the traffic, and the gentler murmur of passersby. And I can still feel my babies, warm and snug against my body.

So why did I subject myself to this memory? It was an interesting exercise. In ACT there is a lot of focus on finding values – deciding what we stand for in life. And by delving into a really positive memory, it is an exercise in identifying values in life.

The values I identified most strongly are kindness, compassion, caring, nurturing, empathy and love. All embodied in the simple act of being with my children.

I miss it intensely. I feel lost without little people to nurture. It’s just not the same now they tower over me, or roll their eyes when I remind them how important it is to me we all eat together once a week.

I’m not sure how valuable it was to identify my values, but it was painful. It was bittersweet. I cried for the whole nine minutes. It was far more bitter than sweet. And I am so glad I had the opportunity to live those precious moments.

FEED ME

Every morsel of food passing my lips is feeding something. This is a universal truth. I am not special.

Physical Hunger

We all have physical hunger and we all need to feed it. The body needs nourishment in order to function. Feed it badly, it will treat you badly. Feed it well and you’re on the road to good health. If you’ve nourished your body regularly over the years, you experience appropriate hunger cues. Haven’t eaten? Your belly will grumble. Overeaten? You’ll feel uncomfortable – and stop eating.

If you have disordered eating you’ve probably learned to ignore these cues. Perhaps you restrict so frequently your belly no longer bothers to grumble and mental fog descends like a heavenly blessing. For bingers, discomfort is delayed until you’re ready to vomit. If you purge, you’re going through bingeing and restriction – simultaneously. Before you know it, your body has no clue how to send out hunger signals or regulate metabolism. You’re either always hungry or never hungry and you become expert at storing fat – your body never knows what’s happening next. Physical hunger becomes an intellectual concept and no longer a reliable method of gauging when or if to eat.

Emotional Eating 

Happy. Sad. Stressed. Excited. Afraid. Hopeful.

Name an emotion and chances are, I eat it. Emotional eating is pretty normal – almost everyone I know has comforted sorrow with their own version of a tub of ice cream. The difference – in my humble opinion – between healthy and disordered eating, is the emotional severity, how regularly you find yourself scraping the bottom of the ice cream barrel, and the degree of emotional numbing.

My emotional hunger is constant. I have certainly experienced the dark depths and zany zeniths of emotional extremes, but I also feed everyday emotions. I don’t know what my emotions are because they’re constantly being fed. A normal emotional appetite may feed extremes, but the unhealthy appetite feeds continuously. And I mean continuously. Every. Single. Day. The regularity with which I find myself wondering why I’m eating, is staggering. Food is numbing. Especially mindless eating which is a frequent guest in the land of disordered eating. There are loads of ways to numb ourselves out of existence, but drug addict, alcoholic, or nymphomaniac aren’t my chosen methods of escaping reality. I eat emotions. All of them.

Feeding Fatigue

Oh this is a biggie. I see it all the time – especially in myself.

In the 21st century we’re all exhausted. The world we live in never turns off. We wake up tired and go to bed tired. Life is filled with endless lists of things to be done – our lists all vary, but they’re long and never finished. Work, appointments, socialising, volunteering, exercising, cooking, caring, entertaining, working, working, working. We’re physically and mentally exhausted, then we crave carbs. High sugar, high GI, carbs. That 3pm slump craves a Kit-Kat more often than a carrot. Why? Because instinctively our bodies know the rush will propel us through the next few hours, and intellectually we’re too exhausted to delve into the rationale and consider the consequences. Sure the carbs will hype us up – right before we crash again.

Bad Habits

I suspect – although I can’t be sure – that eating out of habit is far more prevalent for those with disordered eating. For me personally, the moment I walk through the door at home, I hang up my bag and keys, head to the kitchen, open the fridge. This is tied in with emotional eating, in that it is mindless and senseless. Perhaps there is procrastination involved. Or avoidance of emotions or situations I don’t want to acknowledge or accept. But staring into the fridge is a mindless habit. It is also a sad fact of life, that to develop a bad habit takes very little effort, and replacing it with a healthier habit requires energy, strength, and eternal vigilance. I have replaced dreadful habits in the past – but it was no easy feat. Certainly not an overnight fix.

Social Eating

Humans like to socialise and congregate in groups – big or small – and the consumption of food and beverages is one of our most common social activities.

Let’s meet for coffee! Are you free for a meal on Friday night? Dinner and a movie soon? 

Social eating is awesome. It can also be problematic. When you have disordered eating, the voice of idiocy whispers constantly in your ear. Suddenly you have to try everything on the menu. Or make sure you don’t choose the same food as your friends. You need your “money’s worth” at the buffet. Maybe you can’t say no or leave anything on your plate. Or you have to leave a bit of everything. You eat dessert just because. You need to match the speed of everyone else’s eating – which might be far faster, or slower, than normal. You might have to time when and how to get to the bathroom to purge. Or work out how to get through the meal without everyone noticing you hardly ate. Or you eat everything in record time and order four courses.

The social event becomes a source of constant shame, guilt, remorse and self-loathing. And once it’s over? You head home and wash all that guilt down with another bucket of ice cream.

Feed Me

And the point of all this? No idea. I’ve just been noticing how other people behave around food and realised I’m not alone in feeding fatigue and eating emotions. I’m just more consistent and extreme.

My psychologist described my eating disorder as very severe. I was a little shocked by that to be honest… But I do know I’ve lost all sense of when and how to feed my body. I understand intellectually of course – I know how to nourish my physical being – but I don’t know how to nourish my emotional being.

Perhaps a good starting point for now is to question exactly what I’m feeding – every single time the spoon moves from bowl to mouth.

IT’S RAINING & POURING & MY HUSBAND IS SNORING

I haven’t been writing. I need to write. I don’t know what to write any more. I’m incredibly lost and directionless. Without writing I can’t clarify my thoughts and find direction.

I’m currently surrounded by people in distress. There are people in my world with significant worries. Beautiful people who were there for me when I was dark and desperate and incapable of knowing what I needed. Now in their own individual ways, my lovely people are experiencing varying degrees of stress and pain in their own lives and I want to give back in any way I can. In order to be there for others, I have to look after myself and I haven’t done the most fabulous job recently. I haven’t done a terrible job, but I could be doing better.

Self-care is not one of my superpowers.

Sometimes it takes the perspective of seeing other people’s problems to remind me to stop wallowing around in my little pit of self-inflicted sorrow. I need to spend time looking out, not in.

I have been doing this ACT course and its overall focus is acceptance (hardly surprising – ACT stands for Acceptance & Commitment Therapy). Lots of strategies on sitting with thoughts and feelings. Don’t push them away – just acknowledge and accept. Sit with pain. Notice the world around. Keep perspective. Mindfulness. Mindfulness. Mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the buzz word of the 21st century. Sit mindfully. Eat mindfully. Wash dishes mindfully. Great in theory but who has time to wash dishes mindfully? I don’t even wash dishes. That’s what dishwashers are for…

While it’s raining sorrow around me, I need the emotional resilience to reach out and be there for loved ones, while retaining perspective on my own life. Chanting the old classic serenity prayer…

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

The courage to change the things I can;

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Always been a rather weak area for me – in particular, that last line: the wisdom to know the difference…I can’t solve other people’s problems. Geez… can’t even solve my own. But I can listen. And while I suck at taking advice, I’m pretty jolly good at dishing it out. So that’s what I do. Listen, dish it out, stay in touch, send out hugs – real and virtual. For a lot of life’s problems, there is nothing else to be done.

When I was fresh-faced and young a lot of problems were solvable. Need a driver’s licence? Do the hours, pay the money, sit the test. Need a job? Pound the pavement until you get one.

Now that my face is no longer fresh and youth has long since bid me a fond farewell, problems are less readily solved. Incurable illness, relationship breakdowns, terrifying teenagers. I could catalogue an interminable list of issues that bring grief. And grief can be contagious. It must be shared though.

They say (not sure who “they” are), a problem shared is a problem halved.

If your problem is gonorrhea please don’t share. But if your problem is emotional, trust me – you need to share. Be it large or small – a little worry or paralysing grief – share the pain. Emotional pain left unexpressed simmers away, eating you from the inside out. And one way or another you’re affected. The choice is whether or not you are letting the pain go, or hanging onto it and watching it grow.

Trust me – I know this. Because that’s what I did. For 50 years I swallowed every piece of worry and stress, no matter how large or small. I brushed it off, stayed strong, and stayed silent. Silence = shame. Nothing is so shameful you can’t tell somebody. You are never alone. Just choose your somebody carefully… Nothing is ever so burdensome to others they can’t help you shoulder the load. That’s why we have friends – to share the load. A night of joy and unbridled laughter is nothing without a good friend. And when the tables turn, we still need each other.

So my little world is full of pouring rain at the moment. I’m fortunate it’s not my rain, but I’m going to pop my umbrella open and see if I can rescue a few drops from landing on others.

And as for my husband’s snoring?

Well… You know what they say about when it rains it pours… He has man flu. I banished him to the spare bedroom so I don’t have to listen to the earth moving for all the wrong reasons. This too shall pass…

TROLLS

In Australia, we are currently going through a heated same sex marriage debate (oh joy…) For reasons not worth discussing, our illustrious leaders are putting the debate to a popularity test – all eligible voters have the option to express their opinion (Yes or No) on a piece of paper. Politicians will spend a lot of money having the opinions analysed then do whatever they want – because there’s nothing legally binding about an opinion poll.

The point of this is not to be political (got sidetracked for a moment…), nor to share my opinion one way or the other. Because let’s face it – no matter what I post, your personal opinion on same-sex marriage won’t change. And that’s the crux of every debate and argument – right?!

At the end of the day, we can engage in heated debate until the cows come home, but we will all leave with the exact same opinion we had when we arrived, except now we’re pissed off. I realise some sit on the fence and don’t have a strong opinion either way, so they can perhaps be swayed in an argument. But most of the time, we all know what we believe and that belief doesn’t change.

Which brings me to Trolls.

I don’t get it. Why do people troll? Why get nasty and spiteful and agro? There are things I believe in passionately, subjects I have strong knowledge and opinions on, and there are times when I feel completely bamboozled by beliefs diametrically opposed to my own. But never – never, ever – would I engage in disrespectful debate.

First of all – why bother? Yelling at someone. Belittling them. Telling them their opinion is wrong/stupid/uneducated, will not clarify my own point of view. It just makes them feel defensive. And makes me look like a nasty piece of work.

Secondly – anything and everything can be discussed in a respectful manner. Which doesn’t mean agreeing with everything, or biting your tongue, or timidly saying almost nothing. Debate can be lively and heated, but still respectful – by focusing on the topic, not the individual.

If you have a strong view (most of us do) on same-sex marriage, then, by all means, discuss it. Let’s all discuss it! But don’t get personal. Don’t tell me, You’re blah blah! because I believe something different. Don’t start down the path of, All the Yes crowd are stupid! All the No supporters are ignorant! It’s not true.

I love to hear opposing views – but I don’t want to be judged or belittled for my opinion, I just want to understand yours more. I’m not going to fight and argue and carry on, because I’m confident and comfortable with what I believe. I also know me yelling at you won’t change your mind.

It will in fact, make you more set in your own belief.

So trolls… ‘Keyboard warriors’ who sit in the safety of their lounge room and tell someone they suck because of an alternate point of view. They pop up everywhere. On every side of every debate.

It’s easy to think if you’re in the Yes camp, all the haters are in the No camp. Or vice versa. But that’s not true. Most of our friendship group is likely to have similar political, social and religious beliefs, which means most conversations we have, are from people with a similar belief set, so we tend to discuss rather than argue an issue. With social media trolling, it’s vicious remarks made against your own belief set so without an objective view, can make it seem as though all the haters are on the other “team”.

There are always haters in all camps.

They tend to have the loudest voices and do damage to the cause they purport to support. Which makes the cynic in me wonder… Is gaining more support for your own view best achieved by secretly attacking your own camp so vehemently, the opposing side look like the “baddies”?

I love living in a country with free speech. (To be fair – I’ve never lived in another country… But I don’t imagine there’s much to be said for a country that quashes the voice of its own people). The downside to free speech, is I have to listen to things I don’t agree with. I have to hear ignorance, prejudice and hatred on my television screen and in the streets. But that’s okay. I’m glad those people have the freedom to speak whatever they want and I will never support someone who holds the same political/social/religious belief as myself, belittling, terrorising or demeaning those who hold an opinion contrary to my own. Spewing forth venomous hatred does my own cause no good.
While the marriage equality debate has brought up no controversies in my personal Facebook feed, plenty of other things have. I received political hate replies during the US elections – I’m not even American! I’d like to meet the trolls and say, Hey! I have a different opinion to you! Doesn’t make me a bad person – just makes me a person with a different opinion to you!

Then I’d slap them with a dead fish…

Online trolling is one of the ugliest consequences of the Age of the Internet. I’d love every one of those trolls to come face to face with the people they’ve maligned and see if they have the courage to spew forth the venom when they’re live and in person. Because I bet they wouldn’t…

Don’t know me in real life, and wondering where my vote lies on the marriage debate? First – it shouldn’t matter. Whether I passionately believe Yes or No doesn’t change my core value as a human being. Still curious? I’m a strong supporter of the Yes camp, but a stronger supporter of free speech – so don’t hate on my friends who vote No. I disagree with their opinion, but don’t devalue their humanity or right to an opposing view. And shame on anybody who can’t value someone with an alternate opinion.

TIPPING POINTS

I’m always intrigued at how people find recovery – from anything. What is the tipping point for someone to make lasting change? For them to really dig in and do the hard yards and to stop just thinking about it.

I’d share my own wisdom on this topic with all of you, however I don’t have any.

I hate the term rock bottom. It’s a stupid concept and almost meaningless anyway. It’s only with hindsight you can look back and go, Oh! That was the moment I changed my life. That was the decision that led to a better path. I’ve had loads of pretty devastating moments where I thought I just couldn’t possibly do this a minute longer – it couldn’t get any worse and here’s my rock bottom! Yet here I am – same shit, different day.

Some people die before they get to a rock bottom. Does that mean life didn’t get hard enough for them? Unpleasant enough? Rock bottom enough? I don’t think so. I know I’ve had enough downs and I am so fed up with myself, that waiting for rock bottom is pointless. I’m already there.

Instead what I’ve read in a few places lately, is those who finally do practice (not just preach) recovery, have a reason to live. They have something to recover FOR. This is very similar to the, Picture My Future, concept. What does freedom from disordered eating look like? What could the future hold? These seem far more pertinent questions, than wondering if I’m suffering enough yet.

Sometimes you stumble across people in life – or cyber life – and think, wow. They’ve got their shit together! As I stumble across recovered women, I really want to know how they got there. Not just WHAT they did – I’m getting to the point where I’m confident I know WHAT to do! It’s about finding out WHY they did it. Because I think that’s my big stumbling block.

The decision was not to “get well” – the decision was to live my life, and that is essentially a decision to act. Every day, you get up, you take care of your body, you feed and water yourself, you nourish mind and spirit… So the issue really isn’t food or size etc – it’s how do you want to live. Are you going to scrape the bottom of the barrel of living, and just survive? Or do you want to live fully and thrive? The former has its comforts, I know. But the latter is inspired, rich, weird, scary, and honestly, probably divine. – MH

What beautiful words! The decision is to live. So simple

How am I able to do this now? Simple. I am no longer controlling my weight. My whole entire life I was never willing to let go of wanting the perfect body. I was never willing to let go of controlling my weight. So I could never do this work… I heard another voice inside me – a very gentle voice – and I listened to it. I let go. I simply let go. As I move away from my ED and more firmly into recovery, I am finding myself building a solid relationship with me. Simply because I’m doing this. Simply because I’m showing up for me. Simply because I’m finally doing what I wanted to do for so long. Break free. – AY

I find these words so inspirational. Am I in the same place? Not at all. I haven’t let go of controlling my weight and I’ve known for some time that is a problem. Perhaps the biggest of all. But coupled with no real sense of caring about the future, I think I know where my work now lies.

I don’t need to keep scratching around at the rock bottom of this dirty barrel. I’m already here. There are no more levels to plummet down. What I need now, is to look up and picture what’s beyond the rocks. What will my tipping point be? I don’t know yet. As soon as I do, I’ll be sure to let you know!

NOT BROKEN. STUCK

I’ve started a course in Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, and while I’m very early in the process (halfway through week one 😀 ) I have already found a lovely little snippet that really resonated with me. And I mean REALLY resonated!

I’m not broken. I’m stuck.

How simple is that?! After completely falling apart, it was very easy and natural for me to assume I’m broken. That I was beyond repair and could never be the same again. In fact, even prior to falling apart I worked on eating disorder issues for many years and often said I felt, beyond redemption. I still worry about that… But five little words can really change perspective.

When something is broken, it is forever altered. It can be repaired, but those repairs are always noticeable. There is a weakness that wasn’t previously there and scars provide a visual reminder of the damage.

When something is stuck, it just doesn’t know how to move yet. It’s not damaged. Perhaps it may never move, but there is always potential. Stuck things might need a little grease and oil change. Maybe a different approach or change in direction. But they’re not necessarily broken and they’re not beyond repair.

But a stuck thing will break if you force it too hard.

I have to say though, reading those five little words sent a spark of hope through me. They helped me to believe change is not only possible but probable. Because honestly, I have always believed change possible, but never believed it probable.

I have many things to fix. I’m not special, we all do. And I know some issues have been laid to rest. I’ve done a lot of work and developed a lot of insight and self-awareness. Like most people, however, the first successes come from the newest problems. The more ancient and deep-rooted the issue, the more difficult it is to make change. Thankfully a lot of mental health issues relate to each other – so work done on improving depression or anxiety, pays off in all areas.

So does this light bulb moment change anything right now? Absolutely not. I had a pretty appalling weekend of black & white thinking and behaviours. I fell for the classic faulty thought if I eat anything I’ll eat everything. And I did. I ate everything and was struck down with the all too familiar disgust and self-loathing.

But now I have hope, which is such a precious commodity, so hard to come by, and impossible to fake. My new little catchphrase is giving me hope:

I’m not broken. I’m stuck.

Every little nudge gets me a little less stuck. And one day I will be free.