There is a very good book called 8 Keys to Recovery From an Eating Disorder by Carolyn Costin and Gwen Schubert Grabb. I have started the keys on numerous occasions in the past, but now I feel completely ready to tackle them all. There are multiple writing exercises within each key, so without giving away the entire contents of the book, over the course of eight weeks I want to share my recovery journey with you. The following is a composite of all my answers for this key.
CHANGING YOUR BEHAVIOURS
Give a person with an eating disorder anything and they figure out how to abuse themselves with it.
There are a lot of behaviours associated with eating disorders – some cross between different types of disorders and some are stand-alone. If you don’t change behaviour you can’t recover.
The authors outline two types of behaviours associated with eating disorders:
- Overt: These are the obvious and typical behaviours such as restricting, binging and purging.
- Recovery-sabotaging: These are less obvious and more easily justified. Things like compulsive exercise, body checking, eating rituals and cleanses.
Over the past twelve months many of my overt behaviours have decreased or completely stopped.
In 2016, I consciously started restricting. Prior to that, my restriction was in the context of dieting. In 2020 I stopped restricting. There have been virtually no days where I’ve eaten nothing. However, restriction refers to more than just the complete absence of food. Skipping meals or deliberately eating very small quantities in an effort to control weight is also restriction. I haven’t restricted since I was in the clinic. But I had difficulty eating in front of people when I first returned and some meals were skipped. In the past two months, I’ve eaten on a fairly flexible schedule and skipped no meals at all. Giving myself permission to eat without restriction has been confronting but the groundwork in the clinic has bloomed into regular eating.
I CAN’T PROMISE WHAT TOMORROW WILL HOLD, BUT FOR NOW, THIS PATTERN FEELS BROKEN.
Purging was something I started at age 22. It’s a long time since I was 22. The escalation began in 2012 and reached horrifying heights. This year has seen a virtual elimination of purging. I’ve had two or three single-episode relapses but in the past two months, there has been none at all. Unlike restriction, which is something I miss, I’ve completely lost the desire to purge.
When people binge emotionally they are trying to eat as much as possible to distract from feelings or fill up emptiness, cover feelings of sadness, soothe loneliness, stuff down rage, or drown out fear.
Binging is much harder to qualify. I started as a small child because periods of restriction were placed upon me. I dragged these habits into adulthood. Binging is the most familiar overt behaviour for me and the most difficult to get rid of. It brings a whole range of emotions – most of them unpleasant. But the pay-off is complete avoidance of emotional distress and that feels good in the moment. My binging behaviours this year have been good here and bad there. It’s not entirely gone. I no longer eat abnormally large quantities of food – ever – which is one of the hallmark symptoms of binging, but I sometimes comfort eat to greater excess than would be considered normal. I could count on one hand the number of comfort eating instances over the past two months and each day is easier than the last.
The past two months have brought a number of unprecedented stressors in my life. I’ve spent days curled up, paralysed and unable to carry on with my day. But I made the decision to do what DBT urged all these years – feel the feelings. They will pass. And they do. They come back again. But that too passes. Some days are better than others. I continue to make strides forward and shed more and more of the eating behaviours that weighed me down for so long. Distress in the moment now replaces my fear of unyielding and unbearable distress.
RECOVERY-SABOTAGING BEHAVIOURS ARE WHERE I BECOME MORE CONFUSED
Exercising has been big in my life. Do I over-exercise? I don’t know. What quantifies over-exercise?
In the book’s list of 11 signs of compulsive exercise, I can reasonably say I tick eight boxes. But only just and not every day. I know, I know – that’s denial and justification. This is definitely an area I’m working on, making progress and still have some psychological work to do.
My normal exercise behaviour has been to attend a one-hour gym session five times per week. I used to do five sessions per week plus a one-two hour walk each day. Is that too much? I don’t know. For a number of reasons, I’ve now dropped the gym to twice a week. It seems to be a number lots of healthy people do so I hope it is psychologically and physically healthy.
WHEN I’M NOT EXERCISING, I’M LAZY
Some days I sit on my butt so long I’m afraid I’ll get bedsores. I don’t have an active job or an active lifestyle. In the past, I did a lot of hiking purely for pleasure. Now I’m rehabilitating damaged ankles so pleasurable exercise is gone. Maybe it will come back. Maybe it won’t. For now, balanced exercise is something I’m figuring out. In this case, I’m a work in progress.
We guarantee you will be so much happier if you stop comparing yourself to others and learn to accept and value yourself for who you are inside.
I have body-checking behaviours that are hard to let go – measuring myself with clothes or jewellery. Negatively assessing myself in the mirror. I’ve cleansed my wardrobe of everything that doesn’t fit – which filled two large suitcases and left me sobbing for two days. Key six talks about disposing of those clothes, as hanging onto them is an inspiration to eat less. There are thousands of dollars zipped into those suitcases and I find them hard to let go. Clothes hold memories and emotions so disposing isn’t easy. I’m coming to terms with my new body size and I hope to let go of old reminders soon. I don’t have that courage today.
Changing behaviours seems like an obvious and simple thing to do. I’m sure people from the outside looking in just think, eat more, have a good cry, distract yourself, go for a nice walk, buy a new frock, chill out, accept yourself. It’s probably stating the bleeding obvious, but if I could do those things, I would. Developing maladaptive coping mechanisms is a coping mechanism. Take away the coping mechanism and there’s not much left. Changing behaviour is not just about taking something away, it’s about replacing it with something else. And that is a process.