I was going to title this “The 3 Things I Love MOST About Living a Recovered Life” but as I started writing it quickly became apparent that there’s no way out of all the things that I appreciate about life on the other side of living with anorexia nervosa, I could choose just 3 things I love the MOST.
There are so many things.
So.
Many.
Things.
It’s been around 6 years since I would consider myself recovered from anorexia nervosa and I still regularly experience gratitude for the monumental difference between then and now.
Sometimes these moments are short and sweet and gone with no more than a smile on my lips and sometimes these moments are deep and profound, and I find myself with tears on my cheeks.
Within this blog I’m going to share with you not the things I appreciate most but rather just 3 things, amongst many, many more I have found myself appreciating even recently about living a recovered life.
Starting with something you probably didn’t guess was coming…
- Putting the Rubbish Bins Out
Yes, you read that correctly.
Now, let me explain and please rest assured that “putting the rubbish bins out” was never on my list of motivations to recover. Nor have I had a client express this as inspiration for recovery I might add, but I’m thinking perhaps it should be!
The other night I came home from a long day at work, it was cold and dark and as I pulled my key out of my laptop bag to unlock my door, I realised I hadn’t put the rubbish bins out.
So, I went and put my work things in my office, emptied the kitchen bins into the rubbish bins outside and wheeled the rubbish bins out onto the curb to be collected in the morning.
It sounds so simple.
And that’s because it is.
But once upon a time it wasn’t!
And the novelty of knowing once upon a time it wasn’t simple hit me in that quiet moment wheeling rubbish bins alone in the cold, still air under billions of stars.
The truth is when I lived with anorexia nervosa nothing was simple.
For one I’d have had only enough energy to make it to the end of the day.
To have had to come home and put the bins out in the night-time would have been excruciating.
I would have done it, don’t get me wrong. In fact, it’s unlikely that when I lived with anorexia nervosa, I’d have left it so late to put them out. I’d already have done it the day before in preparation. After all a lot of life with anorexia nervosa was about getting things perfect. So, yes, I would have put the bins out but it would have been with pain or numbness versus honestly, the joy I felt the night I did put the bins out.
A couple of weeks ago I was at my boyfriends place after he left to go away for work for a few days and I heard the rubbish truck so I quickly took the bins down to be emptied and back up after they were emptied.
It felt like nothing, the easiest thing in the world.
And even more than nothing, even more than the easiest thing in the world is the truth that I completed both these recent spontaneous bin experiences with joy.
Actual, real and genuine joy.
The truth is you can substitute almost anything in here in place of “putting the bins out”.
Any mundane task.
Doing mundane tasks is 1000% times easier and even I kid you not enjoyable when you have abundant energy.
When you have no energy, or some weird anxiety adrenaline fuelled energy there is no room for doing things from a place of joy, there is no room for being present in that moment and there is no room for spontaneity.
It’s also more than having the energy to do it.
It’s what doing it means.
Being able to come home to my beautiful home after a long, successful, and rewarding day at work where I got to live a day to my values is a feeling of freedom and purpose I’d not known when I lived with anorexia nervosa.
I don’t know if the magic of that will ever wear off.
2. The Ability to Choose
When I was sick, making a decision about anything was excruciating.
One reason was because the threat of getting it “wrong” seemed massive.
When I was sick, I was pathologically outwardly focused which meant I had an exceptionally low to non-existent sense of self.
I was so out of touch with myself it was impossible to make choices because by definition making a choice requires knowing what you want and knowing what you want requires knowing yourself.
Undoubtably another reason it was debilitatingly hard for me to make a decision when I was sick is the fact that a starved brain finds it very, very hard to engage the prefrontal cortex (PFC) the part of our mind heavily involved in reasoning, logic and rationalisation hence pretty handy when it comes to decision making. When this part isn’t online or is greatly compromised decisions are hard.
I had a client say something in a consult recently that was profound. It was along the lines of “When I was in starvation mode, I didn’t know I was”.
Me too.
I knew it. I mean theoretically I knew it.
I understood it. I understood my mind wasn’t working correctly let alone at the top of its game.
But understanding something theoretically does not translate into experiencing something.
And I think this is one of the greatest barriers we face in recovery from an eating disorder the difference between “understanding” and “experiencing”.
They are not the same thing.
And it takes recovery to really experience the difference.
3. Honesty
One of the hardest things about living with anorexia nervosa for me and for many of the people I have worked with is the constant stress, shame and guilt of living out of alignment with the things you value.
Honesty was a big one for me.
The level of dishonesty it takes to maintain an eating disorder is profound.
And probably not in the way you’d think.
Yes, I lied about what I’d eaten or hadn’t eaten.
A lot.
That was evident and obvious to all.
But I also lied about how I felt.
I lied about what I wanted.
I lied about what was important to me.
I lied about who I was.
I let people hurt me and I told them it was ok and that I was ok when it wasn’t, and I wasn’t.
And all those times I lied about my needs and my truth hurt me more than the times lied about eating.
Now, in my recovered life there is no need to lie about any of that because I know that there is no one on this planet or in this universe that I must please.
I know that I cannot please everyone. I know that I cannot even please those I love and want nothing but the best for all of the time.
And I know that despite this I will not abandon myself.
I know my life is my life.
And there is a level of freedom that comes with the truth and honesty of this that is far more complete than the fleeting and impossible to satiate desire to abandon yourself to please others.
Summary
I wonder if you noticed a common thread as you were reading these 3 things, I love about living a recovered life?
I wonder if you noticed all 3 are just different ways of saying a similar thing and that thing is “with recovery came permission to be me”?
Recovered meant stepping from chasing a perfection that doesn’t exist to allowing myself to be me.
Recovered to me more than anything else means I get to be me.
And that is at the top of my list of things I love most about recovery.
Getting to be me.
Me who some days is powerful and bold, some days a wild child and some days fragile and unsure.
And some days a mix of all three… plus some…
But always me.
Imperfect me.
An ability that is unique to me.
Just like you being you is unique to you a freedom that I am not sure is possible to experience when you are living with an eating disorder because it always feels like you don’t quite get full permission to be you…
And that is why recovery is worth it.
Will always be worth it. A thousand times over worth it.
Not because you get to eat food without guilt, fear, shame and self-loathing but because you get to be free to simply exist as you. I just realised I’d forgotten to mention anything about food in my list of 3 things I love about recovered life… A poignant reminder that food is just one aspect of anorexia nervosa. So, I will quickly here as we part ways for now.
The truth it has certainly made life easier to be able to “just eat” but in hierarchy of what’s made recovery “worth it” to me eating doesn’t come very close to the top of that list especially in comparison to the freedom to be me.
With my whole heart I hope you found this information useful and inspiring.
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie.
