Not Perfect, Just GOOD

It's been almost two years since anyone has written on this blog. I don't know if anyone still visits here. If you have landed on this page for whatever reason, I want you to be able to read a post on here that can lift and help you along your journey. Whatever journey you are on.

Because LIFE is a journey.

"Path to Enlightenment"

On these journeys we are each on, all different from the next person's, there are a couple things I have come to know for certain. One thing is....

everyone has their own hard trials.


We cannot compare our own to the trials of another because we are each given such individual hardships.

I learned recently that many Buddhists consider huge difficulties to be a sign that you are an old soul — the bigger your misfortunes, the closer you are to enlightenment.

I felt that gave a nice perspective to the things we must endure in this life.


And whether you're Buddhist, Muslim, Mormon, Catholic, Jewish, Agnostic, atheist, or just have no religion at all --- it doesn't matter!
Spirituality is what matters on this journey through life. 


Spirituality is a very individual thing -- it is about your belief in some power greater than yourself. Some call it a Higher Power or Higher Being. Throughout your journey - the trials and the sorrow - this Higher Power is particularly important as a strength that can guide you on your path. The difference between religion and spirituality can best be expressed in the following visual:

Venn Diagram for Religion and Spirituality's Relationship

Being a Christian myself, I believe I have three Higher beings who work together in purpose but are separate. As I have worked through my eating disorder and the tremendously large amounts of personal issues that contributed to it, I gained great strength and comfort as I grew closer to these Higher beings.

If you are agnostic or atheist, surely you can believe there is spirituality in and of yourself. Or maybe you choose the universe as your Higher being. Or nature. Something bigger than your thoughts and feelings that can sometimes keep you stuck in one place.


I am excited to say that I have transitioned from "eating disordered" to "disordered eating!"

haha that may not be a big accomplishment to people who have lived a "normal" life, but to me it's a big deal. I've struggled up and down with my eating disorder most of my life. Even when I was "in recovery" I was using other tactics that were technically part of an eating disorder.

But I am free of all of those tactics. I eat every single day - the question is not IF, anymore.
Rather, the questions are when and is that how much a "normal, non-disordered eating" person would eat?

I'm happier.
I'm more stable.
I see more of a future for myself over the horizon.

Life can be so good, even when it's not perfect. And it took me a LONG time to comprehend that. I'm just so very glad I did.

Challenges

I've been struggling lately.  A lot has been going on in my life (besides the new baby!) and I've been having a hard time coping with it.  I had to have my gall bladder removed this week because of gall stones that developed while I was pregnant.  That was hard enough to deal with, because I had to go on a non-fat diet.  Great diet plan for someone recovering from an eating disorder, but I had no choice.  It was that, or suffer through attacks that put me in the ER.  I tried to continue to control the gall bladder attacks after my baby was born with the diet, but it turned out to be too difficult for me to do.  And I couldn't really narrow down what was giving me the attacks. So out it came.  But one side effect to not having a gall bladder is that I will now gain weight easier, and have a harder time losing weight if I need to.  I've been in panic mode.  It doesn't help that if I do gain weight, there is a good chance my mom will say something to me.  I've told her not to, that it's not helpful in anyway, but she has a hard time NOT pointing it out when she thinks I'm fat.  She does this very passive-aggressively, and I really don't think she knows how much it hurts me to hear some of her comments, even though I tell her.  She thinks she's being helpful.

Anyway, I've been feeling out of control lately and really struggling to eat during the day, and to eat better at night.  I know I need to stay healthy for my little girl, especially since I'm nursing her.  But it's been hard.  I cried on my husbands shoulder one night because I was so afraid that he wouldn't love me if I got fat (he told me he would).  And I argue with myself over whether to eat a biscuit, or have ice cream, or some other sugary or sweet thing (I have a major sweet tooth, and love white bread).

I have a pretty good idea why I feel out of control, but I can't do anything about it.  Besides that, it's the holidays, which means parties revolving around food, and my family coming to visit.  It's hard, and some days, I just want to crawl into bed and stay there.  Instead, I'm constantly cleaning out the fridge, throwing away food that's probably still good, or fighting to eat something that my rational mind knows isn't going to make me fat.  I've lost my ability to cope any other way.

But I have hope that I'll get past this.  I don't want to do this again, and I'm watching myself.  I always make myself eat the thing that part of me is afraid of, and then I point out to myself that I didn't balloon.  I remind myself that my husband likes the way I look now (after gaining weight) BETTER than he did when he met and married me.  I remind myself that I have to eat, and eat right, so my baby can grow right, and grow strong.  And I remind myself how terrible and even more out of control I felt when I was in the midst of my eating disorder.  I know that I can figure this out and move on.  I just needed to vent about it.  I hope that someone out there reads this and sees that even those well on the recovery path have their bad moments.  It doesn't mean that giving up and going back is the only option.  Because it's not.  And I won't let it be an option at all.

My baby is here!  She is beautiful, and I love her so much.  All during my pregnancy, I wondered how I would approach food and having a healthy relationship with it, especially when we found out we were having a girl.  How could I teach her that food should not have any emotional ties to it at all?  Teach her that food is only food, and should only be used as a way to stay healthy, strong, and alive?  Our culture is so food obsessed, especially when it comes to using it as a comfort for emotions we don't feel we can handle.  Did your boyfriend break up with you?  Binge on ice cream and chocolate.  Know someone who is going through a hard time?  Bring them cookies.  Stressed?  Get a Whopper and Coke (make sure it's the biggest size!).  Science has shown that these foods do send signals to your brain that calm you and make you feel better, but it has also shown that it doesn't last.  It's like drugs.  The more you do it, the more you need it, so next time you have more.  I fear this will be hard for me because I still attach emotions to food.  I try not to attach any sense of my self worth to what I cook or bake and if people like it or not (I'm a perfect example of how you can't account for tastes), but sometimes, it still hurts a little if my husband doesn't eat something I made.  How am I going to react when my daughter flat out tells me she hates it?  I know kids say those kinds of things.

One plan I have come up with is to always have alternatives available.  If my kids don't like what I made for dinner, they can have leftovers, or make a sandwich.  I don't like the idea of telling them to eat it, or don't eat at all.  But I can also see the benefits of doing it that way too.  If I tell them to eat what I made, or don't eat, then they will have to try new things.  They won't end up eating nothing but pb & j sandwiches 3 meals a day.  Or only macaroni and cheese.  Or whatever it is that they happen to love.  But I worry that if I do that, try to control their eating habits and food so strictly, that my children will end up with problems with food like me.  Because no matter how I choose to handle it, there is no way they will be going into the kitchen 5 minutes after dinner is over and getting cookies or something like that for a "snack" instead.  That's just not healthy.  At least, not until they are teenagers.

It will be at least a year before I even have to worry about this, really.  Even at 6 months, when she can start solids, it's stuff like rice cereals and mushy baby food.  It's when she can start making her own choices that I'm worried about.  And if I'm lucky, I'll never have to worry about it.  Because I'll be able to control myself enough to keep from over controlling my children, and they won't learn from me or anyone else that the only thing they have control over is their food.

So, I'm taking a leap of confidence here by volunteering to post on this blog. I have my own blog, that is infrequently updated, and that very few people read. I'm okay with that. But the process of recovering from eating disorders is a subject that I feel deeply about, and I want to do what I can to help. So, here's my story, at least some of it.

I'm 29, pregnant, and have had an eating disorder since I was 14 or 15. I know exactly how it started, though I didn't consciously decide I was going to have one. I didn't even know what an eating disorder was when mine started. But it quickly spiraled into one, and I didn't mind.

Before I go further, I'm going to put out there that there might be some triggers in my story for some people, but I am trying to keep them out. To continue:

I was never overweight, nor was anyone in my family. I was always the skinny girl who could eat everything and then some. But food was always a big deal at my house. I'm not going to get into that, other than to say that a lot of emotions were tied up in the food prepared for our meals. At some point, I realized that I was skinnier than all my friends. I knew that it was genetics, but as my girlfriends started to express their envy for the fact that I was skinny and they "weren't", I became obsessed with staying skinnier than all of them. This also tied in with my not wanting to eat what my mom would pack for my lunches. I didn't understand that I didn't get the kind of food my friends got because we didn't have much money, and my mom wanted us to be healthy. So she packed fruits and vegetables and sandwiches rather than chips, candy, or Lunchables. All I knew is that I didn't want it, and she couldn't make me eat it if she wasn't there.

But I had to hide the fact that I wasn't eating her lunches; I couldn't bring them home uneaten, or I'd get in trouble. So, I started throwing them away. It gave me such a feeling of power. I don't recall ever feeling faint from not eating lunch. But I loved that powerful feeling I got from rejecting food. And it just kept going. I weighed myself enough to make sure I didn't break the weight I wanted to be at, and I was always so proud when I was less than that. I started to panic if it got close, so I would eat even less. It got worse, and worse. And food, and thoughts of food, took over more and more of my life. I just had to stay thin. If I gained one pound, I would be fat and ugly and no one would be my friend, no one would envy me, no boys would like me. I thrived on the comments. Being thin was my one true accomplishment, the one thing I was really proud of.

This went on for years. I had teachers telling my parents that I wasn't eating at school, that I never took my coat off, even when it was 70+ degrees outside. I had friends (the same ones who told me that they wanted to be as skinny as me) trying to get me to eat SOMETHING (this made me think they were trying to sabotage me). But I was powerful. I didn't have to give in, I didn't need to give in. But I was also getting more and more depressed. I started hiding from the world as much as I could. I slowly started to realize that I had a problem. It came to a head after I left home for college and was spending hundreds of dollars on food that I didn't eat. That was my first wake-up call. Who buys so much food and then doesn't eat any of it, just gives it away, or throws it away when it goes bad? I ended up moving back home, and then to an in-patient treatment program. It didn't work. I wanted to go, but once I was there, and they started to take away my control over what I could and couldn't do, I pushed back. I stopped wanting the help. I failed.

I did learn some things while I was there, and I tried for a while to get better. But I had also learned some tricks on hiding that I wasn't eating, and soon I was doing them. I convinced my parents and myself that I was ready to live on my own, and moved out again. My relapse became worse than the initial problem. But I finally felt completely out of control of what I was doing. I was terrified at the thoughts that were constantly going through my head. I started cutting myself, and once tried to kill myself. I had no control over anything I was doing, and I no longer felt powerful. I felt completely powerless. But still, it took a very, very good friend to get so mad at my twisted sense of logic on how much I could safely weigh that he pretty much stopped talking to me for a while, for me to get help. Through the help of my church, I was able to get some outpatient treatment at The Center For Change.

Going there was the best thing I ever did for myself. It worked only because I wanted it to, because I was ready for it to work. I went for at least a year, though I'm not entirely sure as to the time frame (my therapist there was my 11th one at that point). I had so much support. The nutritionist I had was great, working with me on finding food goals that I felt I could reach, and my therapist was completely understanding. She was the first one I flat out told that I didn't trust, and if she wanted me to work with her, she couldn't sit there and stare at me, she had to talk to me. My bishop kept tabs on me to make sure I was doing what needed to be done, and there was a group of girls in my church who volunteered to eat lunch with me every day so that I would at least eat something. None of them judged me, and they made it seem like we were just hanging out. No one said anything if it took me a while to eat my food, they just stayed until I was done. And all of these people were proud of me when I accomplished something that seems so small, like eating 3 pieces of pizza and not really thinking about it. I also met my husband during this, and he was, and is, a tremendous help for me.

I'm now in a good spot. I won't say I'm 100% recovered, because I'm not, and I know it. But I'm so so so much better than I was. And I'm grateful for that. I did have to do a lot of my recovery on my own, when most people would have said that I needed to be inpatient. But that wasn't an option for me. If I had gone in, things may have gone a lot faster, but I feel that since I didn't, and I had to fight tooth and nail to even keep wanting to fight, that my recovery is sticking better. Now I am proud of the fact that I can sit down and eat a meal that I made, either by myself or with other people, and not freak out (I do have my days, but they are very few). Most people don't know, and can't tell, that I ever had (and have) an issue with food. I am very, very proud of this.

I want people out there with this same problem to know that recovery really is possible, no matter how you end up having to deal with it. I've done in-patient, out-patient, and a kind of self-therapy to get where I am, and they all work, they all have their merits. The only way any chosen path will work, is if you truly want it to end, if you truly want to beat this. I had no idea that I really wanted that, until after I got past the worst of it. I had a very, very difficult time letting it all go. But being miserable was no longer an option, so I kept fighting. It's possible to win. It really is. I promise.

Triggers

I've been thinking a lot lately about TRIGGERS. I guess maybe because I am trying to be more aware of my thought patterns and feelings. What I've noticed is I sure have a ton of them. In a recent therapy session (yes, I admit I do go to therapy) I couldn't help but smirk when my therapist asked what percentage of time I was worried about or thinking about and being triggered by body image issues. I replied about 90%, but the more I've become aware of my thinking patterns the percentage is probably even higher than that.

Why am I so easily Triggered? I'm not sure but I'm fairly certain most of you can probably relate. I guess noticing them is a step in the right direction... you can't fix something you don't realize is broken but I am so open to suggestions on how to deal with them and not give in to them!

STEP 3

Made a DECISION to turn our WILL and our LIVES over to the CARE of GOD as we understood GOD.

We decided to trust that as we let go of rigidity, we would not fall. As we took and continue to take careful risks, our faith grew- in God, in ourselves and in others.

Last night we shared with each other what we have learned about this step. One major point was that step 3 is very much an action step. It's a choice, a decision to surrender our will and to trust.

For me I believe this step is the hardest so far. I had no problem with step 1, admitting that I am powerless over my eating disorder and my life is unmanageable or with step 2, that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. But since my eating disorder is in large part a control issue and a lack of trust in other people and things turning my LIFE and WILL over is one GIANT leap of faith.

I guess this step to me is a lot like repelling which I did last weekend, completely terrified. I was afraid and grew more so with each step I climbed. My decision to take that backwards step of faith onto the repel platform was almost paralyzing. Letting go of even a little part of my dysfunctional rigidity took almost more then I thought I had in me. When I was safely back on the solid ground I realized that in taking a careful risk I really had gained faith and trust in others, in myself and in God.

What I constantly have to remind myself is that it doesn't have to be all at once. By taking and continuing to take these careful risks will in time help me more fully surrender my will and life over to the care of the God who loves me.

STEP 2

Step 2 reads... Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. We began to believe that we could get better, that there was a fundamental healing power.

Group last night was motivational. We spoke of belief or hope and why its something that's necessary for recovery yet difficult sometimes to cultivate. I myself sometimes have a hard time believing that true lasting recovery is attainable for myself. I have no problem cheering for others, truly believing that they can have that healing but for myself it's a much more challenging thought.

What is this "greater power"? The answer to that question for everyone is different. For most it's likely God or our Savior but like a wise group member pointed out last night, sometimes a "greater power" can be found in others. We might overlook the fact that a greater power could lie in conversion with a friend or neighbor, spouse, parent or therapist.

I've heard many a time in my life that the more you tell yourself something the truer it becomes and I know first hand its true with the overwhelmingly negative garbage ED feeds me daily. So this week I'm hoping with lots of time spent conversing with my greater power, I will truly come to believe that I can be restored to sanity.

P.S. I removed the blog followers on the sidebar in case there are those of you that would like to follow the blog but wish to remain anonymous.