Dear Bee,
How is harming yourself going to make the situation better?
Simple question, but a tricky one to wrap my head around, especially when my eating disorder was my coping mechanism for so many years. At one point, certain emotions became too unmanageable and certain distorted thoughts became too succinct, and I needed to binge, starve, or exercise to take myself to a more familiar place.
Food (or the absence of it) does not alleviate pain. It does not bring happiness. It does not inherently do anything beyond nourish and provide our bodies with fuel. And yet, when we develop an eating disorder, we contort food into this almighty force that we somehow turn to when the world seems too difficult to face.
I am still upset about my neighbor, and I felt triggered enough to want to binge over it the other day. Talk about ironic. From a clinical standpoint, I find my triggers fascinating. Why would mourning over someone who died over an eating disorder trigger me into wanting to engage in mine? The human mind is an insane vortex.
It was a bad urge, one of those ones where it feels like nothing is going to get in the way of me and the food. But I’m stronger now. I’m healthier now. Stronger and healthier in my recovery than I’ve ever been. So, I recognized the distorted thought. I recognized that my eating was not going to bring her back. I called my therapist, because she lets me call her when I’m in a triggering situation, and I explained all this to her. And that was the question she posed to me: how is harming yourself going to make this situation better? It’s not. In my rational head, I know it’s not. In every fiber of my being, I know it’s not. You, my eating disorder voice, were the only one talking me into it. You were the only one who wants me to harm myself: nobody else wants that. Nobody else believes I deserve it.
I didn’t binge, because that would do nothing to remedy the situation. It takes so much awareness in recovery to even get to that point. To realize that I don’t have control over certain things in life. To realize that there is no good reason to harm myself. I’ve been eating normally for a long time now, and every so often, the rumination of leading such a rigid lifestyle makes me panic. I occasionally will get trapped into thinking I can get away with skipping a meal. I will sometimes chew gum to ward off a craving or find myself eating the “healthiest” choice on the menu, simply for the lowered caloric content. I still get caught into thinking life will be better when I lose ten pounds, as if an arbitrary weight embodies a new sense of positive emotions. But these habits and thoughts are not my norm anymore. I am now able to mostly eat anything in moderation–at least when I’m out. I still don’t feel very comfortable having my trigger foods around me at home, but then again, most normal eaters struggle with that as well. It’s gotten better. Even though I don’t particularly gravitate towards processed foods, I’m no longer afraid of them the way I once was. I listen to my body more. I’m okay with leaving food on the plate. I’m okay with eating at different times and following my internal hunger cues.
Normal eating isn’t glamorous or secretive. It isn’t as seductive or enticing as it once was. I savor and enjoy food now, but I don’t sit around thinking about it all day. If this is how true recovery feels, with its subtle ups and downs, with the occasional trigger and the coping skills to manage it, with its healthy medium of vegetables and sugar, with a body that I can feel good in, I can take this. This is peace. This is happiness.
