"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?

Turkey and sales and family, oh my!

And here it is, Black Friday, thought by some to be the busiest shopping day of the year (unless you have ever worked in retail, in which case you know that the busiest shopping day of the year is the Saturday before Christmas, unless that day is Christmas Eve, in which case it is the Saturday before that). And here it is, also, the day after Thanksgiving, a day filled with food and fun and family. It's like a one-two punch.

So if you have an eating disorder, Thanksgiving is a mine field dotted with triggers and good intentions. "Oh, look how good you look! You have lost so much weight!" (Yes, I have been starving myself. Thanks for noticing.) "Wow, you look so healthy!" (Yep, weight restoration worked, but now that you mentioned that, I think I will go back to restricting tomorrow.) "Why are you eating so little? Wow, you can sure pack it away! So now you're a vegetarian? Good for you!" Any comment can wake up the beast that we call ED. We might enter the dining room intent on enjoying our food and tasting everything we put in our mouths and stopping when we are full so that we don't have to hate ourselves later. But then the meal is over, and we aren't sure where the time went, and our plates are empty, and we are looking around to make sure we didn't eat everything, and that warm flush of shame makes its way up our chest and to our face, but it's easy to blame that on the wine.

And then, as a reward for getting through that day, you wake up the next day on Black Friday. Sales are EVERYWHERE. Maybe you will just LOOK. Check out the deals. There might be something that you "need." After all, Christmas is coming, and you have some gifts to buy. So you hit up one popular website, and there are deals galore. So you fill your shopping basket, mostly with things you don't really need. One of the things is a gift, but you have to spend $50 to get free shipping! So you fill the basket with a few more things to meet that goal...and just as you are about to hit "buy," you remember that you have made a promise not to shop. Cold turkey, remember? So you delete everything and close the web browser.

But then you think of something that you have been looking for, something that you could probably argue you need. And maybe the deal today will be worth making the purchase. There is a bit of wiggle room in the budget. The cable bill can be paid a couple of days late. So you make the purchase...a $200 item that will be here in two days. Amazon! Love it! Another great thing about Amazon...they have a "cancel" button. So nine minutes later, you are back on the website, cancelling that order because, although you do eventually need to make that purchase, it does not have to be today. And the deal is not really that great.

I wish I could say that all of my shopping endeavors went that well today. However, instead of spending $400 on stuff that I really didn't need to order today, I kept it to under $100, and I bought a couple of gifts, and I should still be able to pay my cable bill on time, so I guess that is a draw, even if it's not a win.

Anyway, that's a peek at the last two days of life as someone with an eating disorder and a compulsive spending disorder who is supposed to be avoiding all shopping (cold turkey!) and whose eating disorder has risen strong as a response to that plan. So the expectation is that I am working on changing my thoughts and behaviors and moving toward recovery. The reality is that I am back at home on my couch, hermit-ing the rest of the night away and wondering how I will make it through the rest of this festive season relatively intact. And wondering if this is something that I will talk about in therapy this week or if it might be time just to start "I'm fine"-ing everyone again.

Post-therapy thoughts...

I see my therapist once a week, and I often (always?) find myself with a LOT to think about when I leave her office. This week, she was fresh from a conference at an area eating disorders treatment facility and had some new resources to share with me, which the science and research nerd in me really enjoys. I think a part of me thinks that if I can learn enough about my eating disorder and related issues, I can wrestle it to the ground and kick the shit out of it and send it on its way.

However, right now, ED is going strong. One of my goals on my latest treatment plan is to be honest about my behaviors, and I mostly meant that to be with my therapist, but I think it's also probably important for me to honest with myself. I have been semi-restricting to restricting lately (my low days are in the 500 net calories range, with days ranging all the way up to 1200 calories net, and most of them hanging somewhere in the middle), so that was a big topic in therapy this week. I have referenced before in this blog that I know that ED is trying to kill me, so when the conversation turned to the fact that what I was doing is dangerous and could eventually lead to death, the first thought that came to my mind and right out of my mouth was, "I feel like it is worth the risk."

For what feels like my entire life, the goal has been to be skinny(er). In high school, I weighed about 80 pounds less than I do now, and I felt big and fat and conspicuous...but I can look back in photos and see I was not. When I was a child, I was taller than the other kids, and I had a lot of "baby fat" that my mom said I would lose once I hit puberty (I am still waiting for that "baby fat" to disappear.). I can't remember a time when I was not aware of being one of the bigger kids (even if the pictures I see of me as a child don't support that belief), and my entire adulthood has been one long battle with my weight.

A popular topic right now in the eating disorders community is the Health At Every Size (HAES) movement, which seeks to show people that it's not the size of their bodies that matter, that they can be larger and still be healthy. I can't wrap my head around HAES, however. I canNOT accept that the size of my body is "okay" and that I should not keep trying to change it. I understand, cognitively, that restrictive food behaviors lead to bingeing. I get that. I have lived it. And I have always said that I would never say to someone with anorexia, "Man, I wish I could do what you do." In fact, once, when in group, my therapist brought up this topic, and when asked if I was jealous of a then-member of the group who did restriction "better" than I did, I vehemently denied it. But as my desperation for a smaller body grows, and as my desire to have SOMETHING in my control increases, I do find myself wishing that I could do just that. HAES does not seem like an option for me. This body is NOT okay. I can't imagine ever accepting it as such.

I appreciate that there is someone out there who cares enough about me to want me to eat. And I am willing to make an attempt to "normalize" things a bit. But ED has me convinced that is not true, and I don't always  have the energy to ignore him right now.

Not doing such a great job of adult-ing...

I am in kind of a deep shame spiral right now, and it all has to do with a lack of functionality as an adult in some aspects of my life. There is something in my home that needs to be repaired right now. It will not cost me anything to repair it. Being without it is a major inconvenience and has resulted me needing to come up with creative ways to fulfill some very basic daily activities. However, I also look around my home and see nothing but a mess...the kind of mess that caused me to believe I fit the definition of a hoarder. And that leaves me paralyzed...unable to make the call that will result in this repair being accomplished. I have done some frantic "cleaning" this afternoon, in an attempt to make things passable enough that repairmen can come in without me being afraid of their judgment (and I do recognize that there is a very real chance that they will not give a flying fuck what my home looks like), and I think that if I vacuum and then close all the doors to the bedrooms and the bathroom (under the guise of locking up my pets because that also will have to happen for someone to come in but mostly to hide what a shithole it is in here), I may be able to bring myself to send an email tomorrow alerting the maintenance service to the issue and setting up a time for them to come in and deal with it.

I also continue to hang out on some pro-Ana sites, and one thing about hanging out on social sites filled with people who feel very much the same as you do about themselves is that you learn all kinds of other fun ways in which you can be reminded of what a mess you are. I was introduced this week to a word that I did not even know was A Thing, but it was not only A Thing, but it was A Thing That I Do. The word is "dermatophagia," and if you know anything about the roots that make up a word, you know what that means, and yes, it is as gross as it sounds. I asked my therapist quite a long time ago about the condition "dermatillomania," which is similar to trichotillomania, which is the compulsive pulling out of one's hair. I definitely am someone who picks at my skin, especially around my cuticles (although I used to do this on all my fingers and am able to limit it now just to my thumbs), and I thought it was a leftover habit from when I used to bite my nail, but now the idea that it is more than that has taken hold and is doing a great job of fueling my anxiety (which does not need help, really).

So this is not about me self-diagnosing (which is also sometimes A Thing That I Do), but it is about getting an idea out there and mulling it over and deciding whether to investigate it further. I get a little touchy about that because my psychiatrist once asked me, when I asked her about the possibility of me having some OCD-type behaviors, if I thought perhaps I was someone who wanted to have a lot of psychiatric disorders. But I am pretty sure that I don't have a large audience out there, so I guess that disclaimer is for myself...mostly.

Neurobiology

So the other day I got an email from my therapist that said something like this: "I want us to talk tomorrow about the neurobiology of the trauma response." She has said more than once that, while someone who has experienced a very clear event such as abuse or rape or homelessness in their past is usually seen as someone has definitely experienced trauma, it is also true that subtle, insidious events can also add up to lead to one big issue. When she first mentioned this to me, I was very resistant to the idea. After all, I had a good childhood, never wanting for anything material and from an intact family. I was raised with my one sister, and we took family vacations together to popular family spots. We went to college, on my father's dime, and we were given the opportunity to take dance lessons and go to summer camp and take part in extracurricular activities. It was your basic Generation X childhood.

So why did I spend so many years unable to cry? Why, when someone reached out to hug me, did I feel like I was doing it "wrong?" Why have I always let myself get swallowed up in relationships? Why can't I identify my emotions when I am experiencing them? Why do I feel like I have a vortex within me that I am trying to fill with food and stuff and internet games? Why do I feel about myself the way I do?

My therapist: "I think your amygdala is jacked up." So for those who don't know, the amygdala is a little walnut-sized part of the brain that is responsible for, among other things, emotional learning and reactions. As I usually do when something like this is introduced in therapy, I headed into the research to see what the "experts" have to say about this idea. Some studies have suggested that the size of the amygdala may be increased in cases of childhood trauma, as well as its reactivity. In addition, the corpus callosum, which is the primary pathway between the left and right hemispheres of the brain have been shown to be affected by such experiences. This can diminish the integration between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which means that someone who is predominantly right-brained (which I believe I am) does not have her right brain as well-integrated with the left brain, which affects emotional regulation and expression.

Okay, so the research seems to say that she has a point. Jacked up amygdala. Diminished corpus callosum. Lots of thinking. Not so much with the feeling. Insidious, subtle happenings from childhood adding up to what has become a big problem. I come from a family of internalizers. We don't "do" emoting. We don't do communicating, either. We don't do hugging or comforting or feelings. We do grudges and judgment and passive aggressive behaviors. We do white lies. We do shame.

So the other thing my therapist said this week is that maybe we have been doing things a little bit in the wrong order. Maybe the neurobiology has to be addressed before things can get "better." Because right now, things don't feel better. Right now, things feels really, really hard. The money stuff is hard. The food stuff is hard. The emotions are hard because they are coming to the surface, and I am spending some of my time trying not to numb them, and feeling them sometimes feels excruciating. I am trying to stay busy roughly 99% of the time, but when I am in her office or in our group therapy sessions, when I am somewhere safe with people I trust, the emotions demand to be felt. And I am fortunate to have a little village who makes that possible for me.