I follow a lot of eating disorder recovery accounts on Instagram and there’s much talk about diet culture. We live in a diet-cultured society. Before I express my highly uneducated opinion I want to clarify the confusing difference between diet, diet and diet.
Now, I have talked endlessly about body image at different times. It is something I have struggled with my entire life. As my journey of recovery took on an upward trajectory in the past 15 months, I worked on the acceptance thing. Trying to accept myself as is, right now. I hear other people do this and it’s good for you.
But simultaneous to all this positivity, I have been triggered. (I am learning to hate that word.) You would think after all this time that I would be used to managing difficult emotions and situations, but a small incident has flipped me on my head and my eating disorder is struggling. Well, let’s be honest here – today it is winning.
There’s a thing called red car syndrome. Who knew?! It’s the phenomenon where you don’t notice how many red cars there are out there until you decide you want to buy one – and then all of a sudden they’re everywhere.
I’ve gained weight. I would hazard a guess that most people don’t want to gain weight, but when you’re recovering from an eating disorder it’s especially hard. The eating disorder wasn’t entirely about weight, but it was a big part of it. For me at least. I have an intense fear of gaining weight and being overweight and now both have happened.
I’ve been absent. Absent from so many things in my life. One of the key components of my recovery has been writing. Since 2016 I’ve been writing up a storm. I couldn’t even hazard a guess at the number of words that have dribbled out of these fingers in the past five years. But let’s just say it includes 390 blog posts, 40 insomnia articles, an awful lot of journal entries and one whole book. Amongst other things.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. I’m not sure who “they” are, but sometimes I feel that absence means the heart grew sicker. Writing is my cathartic outlet so when I stop writing I know something is going on.
Make a cup of tea, put your feet up and join us for our chat. Let me know what you think!
Everything in life is transitory – the good, the bad. The ugly, the beautiful. Nothing lasts and my father’s demise and death […]
Over the past two years I have been penning words and putting together my memoir – Stalked by Demons | Guarded by Angels: The Girl with the Eating Disorder. I AM NOW AT THE SCARY END OF THE PROCESS
I don’t know if my official mental health diagnosis is bipolar II – or not. There appears to be no consensus on anything aside from the fact I have emotional dysregulation and severe insomnia issues. In my opinion, those two things are more than enough to make anybody go crazy. But mental health diagnosis or not, my life is full of highs and lows.
It bothers me when I don’t write in my blog. Not because I think my writing is doing anyone a public service, but because this forum is my outlet for internal rumination. And if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s internal rumination.
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.
Eating disorder behaviour isn’t about ignorance – we all know how to eat properly. Rather, it’s a coping mechanism that is extremely hard to let go of and the thought of not using ED behaviours is, quite frankly, terrifying. If I’m not numb, what will happen? But this girl had transformed from full-on eating disorder patient to completely recovered.
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.
