fbpx

Tag: eating disorder

THE EMOTIONAL TRUTH

The universal human need to be needed. The basic human rights of love, care and acceptance. The intimacy of belonging to community. These are the emotional truths I wish to explore. How my needs, rights and sense of belonging have, and have not, been met. The consequences to me, and to everyone I connect with, from my lack of self-love.

FORGIVEN

There are many people in my world who have wronged me. No more than anyone else – we all deal with irritating twats, ignorant loudmouths, and just plain rude arseholes. Forgiving the sins – big and small – of others, is a powerful tool that benefits the forgiver more than than the forgiven. At the end of the day, most irritating, ignorant, arseholes are probably blissfully unaware of their foot-in-mouth disease.

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE

Relapse. For those of us in recovery from one mental health issue or another, it’s a filthy word. Who wants to relapse? There’s a classic meme showing the difference between reality and expectations when it comes to mental health recovery – expectation is a nice straight line on a consistent upward trajectory. Reality looks like a ball of wool under siege from a horde of rabid kittens.

GIVING & RECEIVING

The trouble with pendulums, is you never know where the highs, lows, and status quos are. Part of having mental health issues, is swinging wildly from one extreme to the other – eat too much, too little. Sleep too much, too little. Work too much, too little. But being kind?
Who would think you could have too much kindness.

THE EATING DISORDER VOICE

People with eating disorders often talk about the eating disorder voice that natters away, telling us what to do. Or not. Undermining recovery. Making us doubt ourselves. But I wonder what that means to someone without an eating disorder voice? Or even what it means to other eating disordered people – I doubt we’re all the same.

THE GIRL I USED TO BE

Decades of maladaptive coping mechanisms crashed down around my ears, and the words severe depression and chronic anxiety were bandied about – in relation to me. I was in the depths of self-induced starvation, self-harming, highly suicidal, too depressed to function, and suffering the physical misery of high anxiety – pounding heart, shaking hands, internal catastrophising, panic attacks. I’d become one of “those people”.

BACK DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

While you’d think fear and loathing around body size would make me eat less and move more – proven methods of weight loss – it does in fact increase my anxiety which makes me eat more food, more often, and much faster. Counter intuitive. But my reality. This in turn makes me more unhappy and I find myself in a vicious downhill spiral.

SWAMPED

My house flooded. It’s a bit of a bummer really. And caused a lot of angst and stress. We’re fortunate in many (most) ways – floors are ruined but no structural damage, and we have good insurance to cover most of the repairs. But getting flooded is a pain in the arse. Aside from extra expenses insurance doesn’t cover, it’s a week of packing up the house to store in the shed, and several weeks of living without floor coverings while listening to the gentle roar of three industrial fans. It’s also forced us into unplanned, premature, costly renovations. I know in six months time this will all be history and I’ll have lovely new floors and plaster work, but right now, the stress has got to me and my recovery journey is not solid enough to avert relapse. So relapse I have.

TRANSFERENCE

When the word addiction is bandied around, images that come to mind frequently involve drugs and alcohol. But addiction has as many varieties as there are addicts, and the compulsion is a symptom not a cause. What it’s a symptom of, varies for individuals, but we’re all numbing something.

PROGRESS: NOT PERFECTION

I challenge anyone not to collapse to some degree under all the stress I experienced. The grief and trauma of losing my mother and sister, as well as my grandfather, both my in-laws and a handful of aunts and cousins – eight deaths in six years. Dealing with my teenage son running off the rails and looking dangerously ill, and taking in my adult nephew with all his issues after losing his mother. Our marriage in utter turmoil. My grandmother’s decreasing health and cognition requiring constant care and demands from me. Ending over three decades of performing and teaching music. Losing my identity as my children left home, my career was gone, and my youth was a distant past. It was a lot to deal with.

FEEDING TIME

It’s easy to know when your body needs food – physical cues are given out. We all know what they are (even when some of use choose to ignore those cues), and we know drinking a glass of water doesn’t make them go away. So feeding physical hunger is easy. And yet I do not stand alone when it comes to yearning for food regardless of physical hunger.