You could say living with anorexia for almost 15 years opened my eyes to a thing or two about what it means to be stuck, about what it means to be alone, about what it means to be ashamed, and ultimately about what it means to be human.
When I was sick my entire existence was consumed by the desire to lessen the suffering of others (overcompensation for the suffering I was experiencing myself much?) and in particular the suffering of others living with eating disorders. I was obsessed. (I guess I was so deep in my pain I couldn’t imagine a worse way to live and therefore a more noble cause to devote my life to. Spoiler alert a more useful and noble cause to devote my life to would have been giving a damn about my own life first…)
Interestingly I now feel very differently about recovery from eating disorders than what I did when I was sick. I remember the moment I had the realisation that even if I could give you the exact step by step formula for a successful recovery I would not.
Why on earth not? You may wonder.
Because there is no guarantee you will do it.
Because knowing what to do is not the same as knowing how to do it.
Because more than anything my work, my core passion, mission and purpose in this life revolves around helping others to gain a level of control of their minds, a level of responsibility over their lives and ultimately of choice over their thoughts and actions and therefore how their lives play out. And what I’ve come to understand is that this comes from internal learnings and not from external strategies and protocol. I can guide you, but I can’t do it for you.
I have now facilitated hundreds of others through their recovery from various eating disorders and I can confidently share that your understanding of how your mind and body work and your ability to steer your own ship is more valuable than your ability to follow instructions. No matter how great those instructions because believe me I’ve got some good solid instructions. As do thousands, millions perhaps billions of others which is exactly why I made the leap from purely academic and valuing intelligence and knowledge above all else to incorporating the practical, the “what works” into life because you can learn all the theory you like but until you begin to action it, to live it, it’s value is arguably negligible (let me tell you knowledge on how to and motivation to recover without ability is more than a recipe for frustration it is utterly soul crushing).
Hence why I am committed to being one of the ones that does versus not one of the ones that teaches. We’ve already got a lot of thinkers, theorists and teachers.
Therefore, in this blog I am going to share with you 3 things persisting with recovery attempt after recovery attempt, after recovery attempt, after recovery attempt until I eventually, unbelievably made it to recovered (aka a life) taught me.
I share these because I honestly think my understanding of these 3 things not only contributed a lot to directly fuelling my recovery but also because I believe my learning of them makes the quality of life I live now possible.
And because it is a phenomenal quality of life I now live; I want to share them with you. I want you to feel welcome to use them in your own life, if you are in recovery from an eating disorder or not, they’re valuable.
At the same time, I want to encourage you to come up with your own to add to the list because there are far more than 3 things recovery from an eating disorder taught me about life and I am sure there are far more than 3 things recovery from an eating disorder will teach you about life. As I am perpetually insisting recovery is about making your own learnings and lessons and trusting yourself. Go find out what they are for you.
It may sound absurd to some (it certainly would have to past me) but there are a great many positive and useful learnings the process of recovering from an eating disorder can teach us when we are open to those teachings including these 3;
- You Must Put in the Work When No One Is Looking
Recovery from anorexia nervosa or any other diagnosed or undiagnosed eating disorder or mental health issue is the most unsexy thing you will ever do.
Take it from someone with a resume’ complete with 15 years of failed attempt after failed attempt at recovery from anorexia nervosa.
Recovery is difficult in a way words cannot capture.
Why? Because, for the most part your recovery hinges on the tiny little things you do each day.
And that’s on you.
All on you.
Your real healing, your true recovery doesn’t happen in the therapy room, the moments people are holding your hand, giving recognition to your pain, supporting you or even cheering you on.
Your true recovery happens behind closed doors.
Your true recovery happens on the floor of your room, at the nightclub, at your work desk and at lunch with your friends.
Your true recovery is in the micro decisions to run 5 steps less than your usual route, to not spit that piece of bread you so easily could into your pocket and to stay in bed an extra 7.5 minutes this morning.
Your true recovery happens piece by piece with puffy red eyes and an even puffier belly and for that there are no stars, no gold medals, no pats on the back and often no external recognition at all.
Your real recovery happens when you begin to do it for you.
And coming from a position where you don’t trust yourself, have low sense of self-worth and are endlessly looking to the outside world for validation; that’s a tough thing to know.
It’s tough but it’s a lifelong lesson that shall you learn it and even more crucially use it (because knowing is not the same as doing) your success in life is almost guaranteed because our success in life is always going to be limited by our ability to be honest with ourselves and to follow through and that follow through must come from you. You’re not in school anymore, no one is going to check up, punish or praise you in a way that’s meaningful.
No one cares about your life as much as you should care about your life.
You must decide the things which are important to you and the things which make your life worth living (values) and go about aligning your actions with those values.
A large chunk, if not the majority of our lives are lived on our own and in any case the entirety of your life is lived in your head and your body.
Consider learning how to do recovery for you.
Consider learning how to do life for you.
2. You Change, Nothing Else Changes
All those heartbreaking things I saw as proof that the world was messed up, that human beings were horrible and that I didn’t want to be a part of this species are still real.
All the injustices of the world remain just as real and just as plentiful now as when I was sick.
Not a single one of them lessened, in fact many of them have become even worse.
The only thing that changed was me.
I changed, nothing else changed.
To recover, you must pursue and commit to change unconditional. That is you must decide to commit to your change with the knowledge and acceptance that shall you succeed you change and perhaps nothing else at all changes.
That’s a hard pill to swallow.
I know for me personally, when I lived with the eating disorder everything I did was in reaction and response to someone else or something else outside of myself, so to begin the process of developing internal regulation was monumental. I didn’t even know what that meant to tell the truth, it’s only in hindsight that I can appreciate these are the things I was working on in my consults with my clinical hypnotherapist.
It would have been so much easier for me to make the changes I needed, in fact I’d probably never have developed anorexia in the first place or lived with an eating disorder at all had the world been wonderful and all the people in my life devoid of “problems”. You may feel the same. You may feel that if people just kept their comments, looks and unconscious body language to themselves you’d have no problem recovering.
I can share with you that on the other side of recovery and looking back into the years I spent consumed by other people’s opinions (real or imagined) it is not their comments, looks or unconscious body language that were the “problem”. The problem was my complete inability to regulate myself in the presence of the comments, looks or unconscious body language of often well-meaning others.
In any case your ability to self-regulate is a far more within your control than your ability to change the thoughts and actions of others (even if it doesn’t feel possible just yet)
The curious thing you will find is that when you do change, everything changes. And yet, paradoxically in order to change yourself, you must first give up the condition that your change depends on or will cause the change of others.
I promise you I no longer dwell on or punish myself over things which are out of my control.
I do my best to be a human of integrity, strong values and a clear contributor to creating a kind and meaningful world where people are proud to belong while simultaneously happily embracing my limits. And I know with all my heart that this is enough.
I now know with all my heart that I am enough.
And that knowing, that conviction gave me the inspiration to carry on through recovery as well as now beyond recovered.
You can learn to experience this too.
Imagine if we all did.
That would truly change everything.
That’s a world worth living in, isn’t it?
So, while it can seem that recovery is for you, the truth is it is the whole world which benefits.
3. You Don’t Know What’s Possible
Just because you are incapable of something today does not mean that you are always going to be incapable.
You don’t know what’s possible.
In the midst of an eating disorder and honestly at any point in life you cannot know what’s around the corner, you cannot ever fully know the limit of your ability to learn and grow.
What is possible from where you are today is not a reflection of what will be possible in one day, two weeks or 10 years from now. That is, at this stage completely unknown…
We need to take the small steps in order to reach the big goals and there are many goals which cannot be reached by skipping the small steps.
It is the small steps, the process that makes the attainment of larger goals possible.
There is no arriving there without the getting there.
A way I like to imagine this is if you compare the rungs of two ladders. In the first ladder the rungs are very far apart, so far apart that you can’t even reach the first rung from the ground. In the second ladder the rungs are closer together and you can reach the first rung and from the first rung you can reach the second and from the second you can stretch and reach the third and interestingly the third rung is at the very same height as the first rung on the first ladder.
You reached that third/first rung only because you made use of the rungs in-between, had you tried to jump straight there you could not have done it.
If I could go back and tell my sick self-anything it would be to do the small steps.
To take the small steps that are so small compared to the big goal you want to reach that they don’t seem worth the time or effort. The steps that seem inconsequential. Those are the steps that are worth all your time and effort.
Those are the steps that have an infinite return on investment. Both in eating disorder recovery and in life because your life can be a series of progressions, but you can’t get to the next level without the basics and if you somehow manage to (as I did with willpower) the lack of solid foundations means it will not last.
There is no mastery without mastering the basics.
Summary
At the end of the day recovery is hard. No one is going to deny that and at the same time there are things you can take from that hardness that will make your life better for having lived it (believe me it is true).
The above 3 lessons are examples of what anorexia nervosa taught me and how I was able to reframe the struggle and unrelenting pain of those otherwise lost years in ways which have now enriched my life in ways I could never have imagined in the midst of the illness. A quick summary of what they are;
- Recovery taught me that the level of success you reach in life is equal to your ability to do the work and your ability to do the work depends on you, no one else. Recovery taught me that success is found in the moments you’re alone and you continue living to your values.
- Recovery taught me the value of taking responsibility for my change, and ultimately for my life despite all the reasons I shouldn’t or couldn’t. No one else can know what is best for you because no one else has the information on your life you do because no one else is living your life but you.
- Recovery taught me that just because something is impossible in one moment does not mean that it will always be impossible. You don’t know what’s possible in an hour, day, week, year or 30 years from now. Recovery taught me to never give up.
Yes, recovery is hard.
It’s also exciting, exhilarating, humiliating, terrifying, exhausting, calm, frustrating, promising, hopeful and literally every other emotion on the spectrum of possible emotions a human being has the capacity to experience.
Life is hard.
It’s also exciting, exhilarating, humiliating, terrifying, exhausting, calm, frustrating, promising, hopeful and literally every other emotion on the spectrum of possible emotions a human being has the capacity to experience.
More than anything recovery is practice for the life you want to live, for the person you want to be because at some point that practice becomes indistinguishable from living that life.
When will you consider giving yourself permission to not know?
When will you consider giving yourself permission to try?
When will you consider giving yourself permission to practice?
When will you consider giving yourself permission to live?
52 years time, 7 months time, 3 weeks time, 2 days time, 41 minutes time?
Now?
With all my heart I hope you found this information useful and inspiring.
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie.
