"In Recovery"

Prior to recently, any time anyone happened to ask me where I was in my recovery journey, I would usually classify myself as "contemplating recovery." Recovery sounded AWESOME...for other people. I had just started referring to my food "stuff" as an eating disorder and acknowledging that this was something a diet would not fix. But for every step forward, there was a step back, it seemed...or at least a step sideways. I would stop binge eating...and then I would start tracking my food. I would stop binge eating, but then I would read all about the newest Weight Watchers program online and even fill out all the information to sign up...stopping just before I hit the "submit" button. I would stop binge eating, but I would buy twelve tank tops and a pair of jeans I didn't like from Old Navy's website, adding the tank tops to my already complete tank top collection and setting the jeans aside to donate to the Goodwill. And then I would go back to binge eating again.

I sat in therapy one day not long ago and listened to my therapist ask me, with an earnest expression on her face, "What would it feel like to treat yourself the way those of us who care about you unconditionally would want you to treat yourself?" (I am paraphrasing, but the spirit of the conversation is still there.) And for some reason, that question spoke to me. I had never considered that there might be someone out there (no matter how many times I had been faced with evidence of this) who might care about how I was treating myself. I had never really heard someone say to me, "I care about how you are treating yourself" (in so many words), as I was only looking at the effect my eating disorder has on me. I have friends with eating disorders, and I know that it makes me very sad when they are engaging in behaviors, and I would do anything within my power to help them. I had never considered that there were people who felt that way about me.

So tonight, in group therapy, when it was time to introduce myself to a new member to our group, after giving it a lot of thought, I introduced myself as someone who was "in recovery" from binge eating disorder (and also "in recovery" from compulsive shopping and hoarding, but that is a different topic for a different time). It has been several to many weeks since I last binged (I don't have an exact date of my last binge, but I think it has been 4-6 weeks). I have been eating when I am hungry but having treats on occasion. I have not been going to the grocery store and filling my cart with produce and other ingredients that I know I won't prepare and eat (which leads to some guilt and shame when I end up having to throw those ingredients away). I have been sticking to realistic foods that fit into my life. I have realized I don't really enjoy fast food anymore. I have eaten a lot of cereal because I really like it. I have tried out different kinds of peanut butter to figure out which kind I like the best. I have kept snacks on hand for when I want a little something. I have not "given up" anything. I know that giving something up (soda, white flour, potato chips, sugar) is the quickest route to reactive binge eating for me.

Instead of stuffing my feelings down and burying them with ice cream and McDonald's, I have been crying...and laughing. Feeling fear and anxiety without trying to numb it. And for the last several weeks, I have spent a lot of time feeling happy. I spent a lot of time asking myself, "Is this happiness? No, wait. Is this happiness? Or maybe THIS?" It's hard to identify happiness when you have been trying really hard to feel nothing for a really long time. I can say this, however. Tonight, I am lying in a hammock on my balcony, with my dog asleep on the floor beneath me. My cat is inside but close by, curled up on her kitty condo, fast asleep. I got to see some of my favorite people at group tonight, and tomorrow I have my individual session to look forward to. I have exciting plans for the future. I am starting to let go of the past.

I don't know what will happen tomorrow, and I don't want to worry about it. Today, in this moment, I am declaring myself "in recovery." Right now, ED is not the boss of me. And I don't need anyone to save me...I am working instead to save myself.

Is your cup half full or half empty?

Back in the day when I was in my twenties and had not a care in the world (or at least had no insight into any cares I may have had), I used to answer that question by replying, "Filled to the top!" I don't know if I really felt that way or if I just was being cute or what, but it was my consistent answer.

At group therapy this week, our facilitator (who is my therapist) asked us who or what fills our cup. And I knew it would not be enough for me to say that my work as a nurse fills my cup (SPOILER ALERT: I was right! She was not going to accept that as an answer!). So I talked about how the families of patients I have cared for fill my cup when they tag me in a post on Facebook about how much the nurses meant to them during a difficult time. My therapist fills my cup by being someone who accepts me unconditionally and does not keep a running tally in her head of the things I have done "right" or "wrong." I have some friends who fill my cup because they are so happy to see me when we get together. My dog fills my cup with the loyalty and devotion he shows me. My cat fills my cup when she sits purring in my lap (although she empties it out a little when she pees on my bed...again).

And then we were asked...how do you fill your own cup?

And there was silence. And wrinkled foreheads as we all thought really hard about it. And I thought I would share what I came up with.

I recently bought a hammock and stand for my balcony, and I L-O-V-E it. I love to sit in it, where I am mostly hidden from the world, reading a book or playing a game on my iPad. I love the weather we are having right now, and the sun feels amazing. I fill my own cup by finding the time to spend in my hammock.

I can fill my cup by giving meditation a chance. I have had an on-again, off-again meditation practises, and it has been off-again for a while. It's one of those things that sound great...for other people. But my brain is chaotic and messy, and there is no way that I would be able to silence things for long enough to meditate, and it just won't work. Today, I used an app on my phone to do a ten-minute breathing meditation. I practiced letting thoughts pass through my busy brain instead of staying there. Ten minutes did not feel like ten hours. I filled my cup a little bit.

I think yoga can fill my cup, and one of my former favorite classes was being held this morning, so I thought, "Yes! I can go to yoga! More cup-filling!" So I dug out my yoga mat and checked to make sure the class was not cancelled...and then I realized I really did not WANT to go.

Like many people who struggle with eating disorders (and other addictions), I am a very black-and-white thinker. I am either being "good," or I am being "bad." I think today I interrupted myself in the middle of being the best "good" I could imagine. "Let's do all these things because if one cup-filler is good, then four will be better!"

Going to yoga would mean giving up time in my hammock. Which did I want to do more? The sun is shining, and the sky is a beautiful spring blue. I went walking with a friend this morning, so I had some physical activity under my belt (Endorphins!!). I decided to stay home. Yoga will always be there as an option, in some form. However, we are supposed to get some rain over the next few days, so weather like this might not be back for a while.

I filled my cup without overfilling it.I actually did it! I filled it just enough while practicing a little bit of moderation. Instead of thinking about how I will repeat this tomorrow, I am trying to stay with today, which is hard for me to do. I often am living in the past or worrying about the future. But today, I am going to attempt to stay in the here and now.

And if you need me, I will be in hammock, watching the clouds go by...

Changing thoughts to change behaviors...it sounds simple, but it feels impossible.

I have not written on this blog for a while, but I had therapy today, and I find myself with some thoughts that I want to think about and write out and come back to and ponder. If you were to ask me introduce myself in a therapeutic setting (like maybe in group therapy), I would first tell you what I did for a living and then tell you what is "wrong" with me. "I am a nurse. I am divorced. I am a binge eater. I am a hoarder." That is often how I see myself...the sum total of those four sentences (or sentences like them).

My therapist has said to me several times that she wants me to consider changing my thoughts and beliefs about myself and not my behaviors. I usually nod my head, start thinking about what I am going to grab to eat on my way home from her office, and wonder if there is some other "tool" I have not tried that can get me to where I want to be. A new budget spreadsheet? A new organizational system? A new diet? A better understanding of gluten? Of sugar? Of fat? Intermittent fasting? One meal per day? How can I change my behavior so I can feel better about myself?

When you are a dieter, you wait for the day that you have lost all the weight, and you know that everything will be "better" then. If you are beating yourself up for being fat, once you aren't fat, you will no longer beat yourself up...right? I have done this with my debt (once I have paid off my debt, I will no longer beat myself up about how much debt I have), with the clutter in my house (once I clean up and come up with a system to keep it clean, I will no longer beat myself up about what a mess I am ), and with multiple projects that I have procrastinated on (well, it feels shitty to have to rush this way, but when I am done and still ON TIME, I will no longer beat myself about how I suck at time management and saying no and am always doing things at the eleventh hour).

So of course, it probably is not that easy. After all, I have been a size that looks damn good to me in pictures now, even though I thought at the time that I was still fat. There was a time when I did not have credit card debt, and I was not necessarily happier then. When I moved into my current home, I started with a blank slate, and no method I could come up with could stop it from becoming what it has been recently. As for procrastination, well, I usually over-schedule myself to the point that down time becomes REALLY down time (usually involving a nap and binge watching a Criminal Minds marathon), instead of a calm, set aside block of time where I can work on things ahead of time. 

Anyway, it usually take me about fifteen minutes to get from the therapy office to my home. And I usually spend that time pondering what we have talked about and trying to separate the "fluff" (which is often from me deflecting or staying very "surface") from the "meat" (which usually is whatever leads me to cry) of the session. And today, the thought I left with was this: "What would my life look like if I were to willing to forgive myself for all the things I did that were not in keeping with taking care of my "inner child" (or the little girl that still lives in me...take your pick of terminology)?

My childhood was a good one (I think I have written about this before). We had plenty to eat, clothes to wear, a good education. We went on vacations, often more than once per year. My mom stayed at home with us, for the most part, and we didn't spend time in day cares. My dad worked hard to provide for us, and he paid for our college careers in full. We remain geographically and socially close, and we see each other often. I thought this meant that my family life had been alright.

But. Emotionally? Not so close. Nurturing? Not this group. Affectionate? Nope. Connected? I don't really think so. Generous with money? Absolutely. Willing to treat each other to lunch out or to ice cream or cookies or a bag of candy? Yep. At ease with saying the words "I love you?" Certainly not. But my family life was still alright...wasn't it?

A long time ago, my therapist said something that has stuck with me through this journey. She said that, while someone who has been abandoned or abused or physically neglected has a specific "reason" to point to when they find themselves in a therapist's chair, subtle things can, over time, be just as damaging. So for a baby who is left alone to cry in her bed who grows into a toddler whose mom is not free with affection and then to a child who is given treats but not told that she is loved and then into a teen who is afraid to rock the boat because "that's not what we do," the end result might just be a place like this one, where I find myself. My impression of myself is that I have fucked up a lot of stuff, and THIS is why I didn't get what I needed (at least emotionally) in my family. I see my life as a series of bad decisions (even some that I "made" before decisions were really mine to make), bad choices, and bad behaviors that inform my view of myself (I must be bad...right?) and have me stuck in this place where I am pretty sure I don't want to spend the rest of my life feeling THIS way, but the other side is far, far away, and the fog is too thick for me to see it clearly.

So changing my thoughts...forgiving myself...engaging in meaningful self-care...seeing myself as being worth achieving all those "goals" (less weight, less debt, less clutter) instead of waiting to achieve them in order to become worthy...how do I do that? I want an instruction book or a recipe. "Take two vitamin C gummies, eat an apple, and dance in the moonlight on a warm, rainy night while burning incense and balancing a book on your head." Okay, step one, done. Step two, done. And step three...well, as long as no one is there to see it. But I hear my therapist when she says that is not what it's about. And I am thinking about it. And I have not found her untrustworthy in the years that I have been seeing her, so there is no reason to think she is lying to me now. And she seems to really believe it. She believes that I am worthy of love, even with my load of credit card debt and my messy house and my fatness. Could that really be true?

I am not sure where to go from here. I guess a first step to forgiving myself is to figure out just what it is I need to forgive myself for. I do firmly believe that all the mindful eating work and body love advocacy and anti-diet reading in the world cannot "fix" what's going on here. I have tried medication that was supposed to cut down on binge eating by changing the way I felt physically, but that didn't address why it was I was binge eating. And I went off that medication because I saw that it was maybe a quick fix to a lifelong struggle I have had. Before I can profess to the world, "I love my body, curves and all," I have to be able to say that I love myself...the me inside this body, not the body as the world sees it. 

So I guess it will take talking about it over and over again, having my irrational beliefs challenged over and over again, and leaving therapy exhausted after spending my time there crying over and over again to move in a healthy direction. And maybe the rest will follow. But even if it doesn't, it would stand to reason that that would not matter as much anymore, right? If I truly love myself, what the rest of the world thinks about my body should not matter. If I truly love myself, I should not feel the need to keep feeding the vortex that I am trying to fill with more and more things. If I truly love myself, I should be able to take care of myself by doing things like taking the trash out and vacuuming on a regular basis and occasionally saying "no" when I am over-scheduled and need some time to myself. My therapist today said that she knows that I am standing at the end of the cliff right now, and that feels very true, and I feel like I can't see the bottom. But can I let go of what I have known and believe in something better? Can I finally take that leap and believe that I can build some wings on my way down?

The beast is back...

The good news is that I have been doing Morning Pages! I have done them for several days, and I am finding them beneficial, although sometimes it's a stretch to write three pages. This morning, however, I decided to forego Morning Pages and blog instead...because ED is alive in me, and it's been a rough week.

I had two weeks of pretty "grey" eating (in that I wasn't having black-and-white thinking about food...not in that everything I ate was grey). And there were different shades of grey. I had some food that was balanced fuel for my body. I had some Skittles. I had some Christmas cookies. But I did not binge, and I did not restrict, and I felt like I was being kind to my body. But I also didn't shower for five days, so while ED may have been dormant, my depression certainly was (is) not.

My psychiatrist added another antidepressant to my own particular cocktail, but I am not up to full therapeutic doses, so I am not sure what the final result of that will be. I am pleased that the medication she chose has been shown to increase dopamine, and since increasing serotonin and norepinephrine has made me better-but-not-best, maybe this will work in tandem with my other medication to improve things in that area.

Anyway. ED. Sometimes, the trigger for a binge is clear. Getting bad news. Getting good news. Stepping on the scale and seeing weight gain. Stepping on the scale and seeing weight loss (I am not currently stepping on the scale at home, but I did get weighed in a medical context a week ago, so that could be part of it). Going out with friends. Staying home alone. Having a hard day at work. Having a good day at work. I am sure you can see a pattern here...anything really bad can trigger a binge for me, but something really good can too. I am not sure what happened this week (I have had a lot of anxiety, so it might even just be general anxiety that sent me into the food), but my black-and-white thinking is back, and everything I am eating is "bad." Bad. BAD. And therefore, I must be bad.

It's a new week, so there are a lot of dieters out there who are starting fresh this week (and it's the first Monday of a new year, so that makes it even more true), and part of me wants so badly to start fresh as well. Maybe this time a diet will work. Maybe I should give Weight Watchers 2016 program a try. Maybe I can just track calories. Maybe I can give up carbs. Or dairy. Or meat. Or sugar. Which one is going to work?

And the other side of ED's coin...the shopping bug. I definitely overshopped last week. I did some of it mindfully, buying things I really did need to buy either to replace worn out things or to otherwise contribute to a clear planned activity. But some of it was mindlessly perusing Old Navy and adding to my (already extensive) wardrobe. Some of it was buying yarn, even though I already have a burgeoning yarn stash (BUT IT WAS ON SALE! Just because a store is having a sale does not mean you have to go shopping.). Some of it was groceries (YAY), but some of the groceries were candy and binge foods (BOO).

Balance is so hard, y'all, and it's clear I have not found it. But I guess my only option is to keep showing up...because any other option ends up in a really bad place.

Oh, wait...HAPPY NEW YEAR!