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Tag: mental health

WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

I am trying to figure out why I indulge in actions that disgust me, but I do anyway. Sure – most of them are inherent behaviours. But I’m not as silly as I look – I do have the capacity to learn and change. My mental health stuff has become appallingly resistant to change. There is nothing we do that is without benefit to us. Nothing. Even all those things we do “for other people”, it turns out, there is also something in it for us.

HEART OPEN PLEASE ENTER

There’s a little glimmer of warmth, burrowing into my chest. And a chink of light, peeking into my spirit. If I listen carefully I can almost hear a heart-warming song. It has taken me awhile to recognise it – the song of hope. Unfamiliar. Really scary. Really positive. Hope.

THINGS I’M GETTING RIGHT

It’s so easy to focus on everything that goes wrong, everything that still needs to be fixed, and how big the fricking recovery mountain is!
It’s so easy to regret the decades where I didn’t seek recovery or acknowledge the severity of my problems. And to bemoan my many failed attempts at change, the misunderstandings of my own behaviours and those of others. To look back in frustration at not having the wisdom or strength to question my thoughts and feelings and actions.

GET BACK ON THE BIKE

Oh man. I am Struggling today. Struggling with a capital S and so incredibly tempted to give up. Give up on ever finding any type of recovery. Give up on therapy and just accept binging, purging and restricting as my normal. I am my own worst enemy. I’ve learned all the keys and steps and lifestyle changes. The insanity remains. I know all the buzzwords and metaphors:

GROGGY

I have Restless Legs Syndrome.
I rarely talk about it. It sounds like a benign and trivial condition everyone experiences at some stage. To some extent that is true, but my restless legs are severe and chronic.
And normally extremely well managed.
Like most problems, there are people who have it much worse. While I have a lot of associated nerve pain, if I take regular medication it’s fine. I rarely notice it and when I do it’s not too bad. In that aspect of my life, I found a little pocket of normality.

NURTURED

We’re born to be nurtured.
Unlike most of the animal kingdom, little humans begin life utterly dependent on their caregivers. In a perfect world, we’re raised by loving and caring parents supported by their whole community – it takes a village to raise a child. Perfection is a rare commodity.

FAILURE ISN’T A FEELING & FEELINGS AREN’T FACTS

Food tastes like failure.
I don’t savour beautiful textures and flavours. I never mindfully and sensuously nibble delicacies, inhaling aromas and luxuriating in the tantalising sensations on my tastebuds. When I eat, I scoff food down like a starving woman fighting a horde of ravenous dogs, scratching around for the last morsel on a carcass. Washed down with guilt and loathing and fear, and an overwhelming sense of failure – I’ve done it again. I’ve eaten food I didn’t want, in a manner I didn’t like. I’ve failed myself. Food tastes like failure. Day in and day out – I eat failure or I don’t eat at all.
And that failure is an emotion so powerful it’s almost tangible – I could reach out and touch it. Food tastes like failure and failure is a feeling.
But that’s a lie.

STRATEGIES

Despondency.
It’s an unpleasant feeling.
I’m currently wallowing around in misery, feeling sorry for myself but struggling to find the willingness to be willing to make the required changes to my behaviours. I’ve acquired all the necessary knowledge, tools and support networks. Still I wallow. Still I perpetuate the lifetime habits that I both loathe and cling to like a drowning woman.

VOICES

There’s a war in my head. Some days it gets so loud in there, it gives me a headache. A real one.
The voice nattering incessantly in my ear is not a healthy voice. It’s a familiar one. It feels like a safe one. But that voice is an expert manipulator, liar and thief.
There’s another little voice in the dark – the voice of reason and wisdom, sense and sensibility – but that voice is weak and timid. It has never learned to stand up to the manipulator.

WEARY

Today I want to sleep.
I want to go to sleep and never wake up. To luxuriate in the endless bliss of nothingness. I want to be free from physical pain. Free from exhaustion. I don’t want to feel worried or anxious or guilty or afraid. I don’t want to be fat and old and lost and weary. I just want to rest. To slip into eternal, blissful rest.