Welcome to the wild side.
If you thought living with the eating disorder was hard and you’re feeling fed up, exhausted and ready for recovery you’re in for a surprise. The process of going through recovery is nothing short of excruciating.
So why bother?
We all know the answer to this question, and it is of course because a part of us holds the hope, no matter how feebly or untrustingly, that life on the other side of the eating disorder aka recovered could possibly be better.
That is why we bother.
It may suck getting there but the being there makes every piece of hell or highwater you went through “worth it.” Only of course, when you’re considering recovery and when you’re going through recovery you can’t yet know that it is indeed going to pay off and be “worth it.”
There are no guarantees in recovery and that makes it so unbelievably hard.
You simply don’t know that all the effort you are putting in to do the hard things will “work”, will “pay off” or will be “worth it”. And yet that is exactly the risk you must take when you go into recovery.
You have to put in your all before you have any guarantees, before you have any feeling that it’s possible and long before you have any proof that it will “work”.
You have to let go now and make your assessments of whether or not it was “worth it” only in hindsight.
That’s rough.
Below I am sharing with you a few pros and cons of recovered that often come up in my consults with clients and which came up for me when I was doing recovery. Which means they’re most likely fairly common themes or thoughts for people contemplating or in recovery. If you fall into either of those categories then it is my hope that my candid and truthful sharing of these pros and cons will help you to go in with your eyes open.
Going in with your eyes wide open to the realities of what it means to do recovery (so much more than “just eat”) and what it means to live recovered (so much more than being able to “just eat”) is empowering because having the information means you are more able to draw your own conclusions and make your own decisions. Which is what recovery is all about. Becoming your own person.
So, here they are, 3 quick pros balanced against 3 quick cons of recovered. Which I hope will assist you to understand why recovered isn’t all sunshine and rainbows and most of all why that’s actually a good thing. As well as why recovery is by definition a journey or process which requires so much beyond the making the choice to recover and motivation.
3 Pros of Recovered
- You Have so Much More Time
If you had to take an estimate at the number of hours within an average day of your life which are taken up in some way be the eating disorder what would you guess?
I know, for me when I lived with anorexia this wasn’t a hard question to answer. It was an embarrassing and shameful question to answer but not hard.
It was always there.
I mean it was there 100% of the time.
At least I felt there wasn’t a single moment where I was fully free or fully present in the things I was doing or with the people I was with. Perhaps during an orgasm or gliding down the face of a wave on my surfboard… perhaps… momentarily but even during exams it was there, even at my grandma’s funeral it was there, even when I was dancing at my sister’s wedding it was there, even when I was hiking volcanoes in Panama it was there and even in my dreams it was there.
Anorexia nervosa was insidious.
It was my life.
It was me.
Going through recovery I began to have more time.
Those moments of time between the things we all must do to survive from work through to clean our teeth became mine to use as I liked.
Then amazingly, unfathomably, incredibly even the moments where I was doing things I “had to do” such as work and clean my teeth also became mine.
On top of this my life stopped revolving around keeping up with GP, psychologist, psychiatrist and dietitian appointments and that was a lot of hours gained. Especially because these things used to drain me to the point where even if the experience was an hour the whole ordeal would mean I was exhausted for the day or days leading up to and post.
How was I going to use all that time that was now mine?
There was so many things I wanted to do and experience that I leapt in. I did everything all at once. If truth be told I was motivated by fear. By the fear it would all be taken away at any moment. By the fear I’d slip back into anorexia and lose it all.
Further along I realised I wasn’t going to lose it, that I wasn’t going to slip back, that anorexia was rapidly leaving my life and that my time was mine from now until forever.
Now, all my moments of time aren’t always filled to the brim with doing and an incessant and frantic drive to make the most of every situation. Some moments I simply “be” and to me that’s the ultimate reclamation of my time.
Life is what you do with your time and if you can spend as much of your life simply “being” then you’ve lived your life.
2. You Have so Much More Energy
This one is interesting because living with anorexia nervosa I was the most driven and determined person I’ve ever known.
I was relentlessly doing, doing, doing.
I would have thought at the time that I had all the energy in the world and others saw it this way too.
Perhaps in my heart of hearts as I counted the hours until the sun went down and I could allow myself to finally sit, to have something to eat and crawl into bed each night exhausted and promising myself tomorrow was going to be different, perhaps in those moments I knew I was running on empty. But the sun would rise the next day, I’d wake with a shot of adrenaline that physically shook my entire body I’d be up and running (literally) before I had a single thought or choice to do otherwise. Then, the day was gone in a tornado of doing, and I’d make the same empty promises only to wake the next day to do it all again.
I had energy but only for doing.
I did not have energy for real fun or spontaneity.
I did not have energy for anything extra.
That stuff was frivolous, pointless and I wasn’t worthy of it anyway. At least those were the lies my starved and confused brain fed me.
When you are running on empty your prefrontal cortex (PFC) which is the forepart of our brain responsible for the human in us, the logic, the reasoning, the fun is the first to be compromised.
This is because our brain “eats” in order of the importance of the brain areas. That is if there are limited calories and nutrients coming in, they are going to be rationed to those areas necessary for survival. This makes perfect sense because the need for survival comes before logic and fun because without survival there can be no logic and fun.
The most important areas of our brain are the brainstem. This is where the control centres for things crucial to survival like our breathing and temperature regulation are housed. Our midbrain eats next. Our midbrain is where components that are necessary to control our movement, auditory and visual processing reside.
It is only after these two areas (brainstem and midbrain) are adequately supplied with nutrients that the PFC gets its share.
There is nothing adequate about the eating patterns of someone living with anorexia nervosa hence it’s safe to say the PFC gets nothing significant.
The experience of this is that you want to change, you’re motivated to change, you’re intelligent and knowledgeable about what to do but the things you’d have to do in order to get there are beyond your capabilities.
Why?
Because they all require the use of your PFC.
Which is why the traditional treatment model of anorexia nervosa is so heavily reliant on people reaching a certain Body Mass Index (BMI) before therapy even begins. And which is also exactly why alternative therapies like clinical hypnotherapy which don’t rely fully and completely on someone’s ability to use their PFC are so incredibly valuable in assisting people to regain control over their minds, do the things they want to do and recover from eating disorders.
Overall, in the broad scheme of things there is only so far you can get on insight, knowledge, tools and strategies. When you are not eating enough food for your body your brain will suffer and therefore your ability to change will suffer let alone your ability to experience any form of authentic and genuine joy, peace, and success in life.
During recovery, when I began to eat what would to most people be monumental amounts of foods my energy levels went through the roof.
Everything that was, when I was starving, so ridiculously hard became so very easy.
I could concentrate and focus on work, on people, on movies, on reading and most of all I gained flexibility to say yes to simple things I didn’t even fully know I cared about like the last-minute plans to go for a night out dancing or breakfast with friends. And I really mean say yes and do it and enjoy it, not just know I could say yes “if I wanted to.”
We only truly get the chance to experience genuine fun when we are safe and when you are living with anorexia nervosa you are never biologically safe because staved is about the least safe state you can ever be in as it’s incompatible with life.
In recovery you can enjoy the experience of coming to life.
3. You Have so Much More Choice
This ties into the first two pros in that you will find you now have so much more choice in how you use your time and energy.
You have the use of your brain and you get to decide how and in what ways you use it!
For anyone who has lived with, are living with or have a loved one living with anorexia nervosa you will have no trouble understanding that the use of your brain is not your choice at all. It’s as though someone else is at the steering wheel and you’re simply along for the ride. You don’t know and can’t pinpoint the exact moment or day it began but at some point you realise your brain is undeniably no longer yours.
Revolutionary idea but when you recover you get to choose your thoughts and you get to choose what you do.
You get to start making decisions that come from you such as what you want to study, what type of work you want to do, what type of people you want in your life, what kind of relationship you’d like, what kind of dog you’d like and so on down to the microdetails.
You get to decide, and not only do you get to decide you get to repeatedly act on the things you recognise are important to you and which you value versus only being able to in moments.
It’s amazing.
3 Cons of Recovered
- You Have so Much More Time
You have so much more time…
That’s exhilarating right?
It’s also confronting because you have so much more time but what do you do with that time when what you’re used to doing with that time is no longer an option?
What do you do with all that time when you don’t know what you like or even who you are? What do you do with all that time when you don’t have work, or you don’t have work that’s meaningful to you? What do you do with all that time when you don’t have deep friendships or relationships, passions or interests? What do you do with all that time when you’re feeling lightyears behind where you “should” be and where others your age are? Where do you even begin?
It is challenging to find yourself with time where before you had none.
Our brains like to be occupied and even if that is in a way that wouldn’t on first (or second or third…) glance appear to be useful it often still “feels” preferable. Occupied, doing, busy, distracted gives us a sense of purpose no matter how misguided and deluded that is in reality.
So, be aware that while the thought of having so much more time may be alluring there may be parts of you that have their hesitations and concerns over exactly how it is that you are going to fill that time… Many people simply swap one addiction or bad habit for another because they didn’t know how to do the work to get all the way through to being someone who doesn’t need those other destructive means of “coping.”
What do you do with all that time?…
Of course, the answer is you go about creating, learning and building into your life the things you want and the person you want to be who doesn’t need those old ways of doing things.
As you do this it is worth being aware that not every moment in time will feel as though you are moving forward and that in itself can be a trigger for going back to the old ways of doing things. However, you must keep in mind that while you may not know everything there is to know about the things you will come to enjoy and like and do and dislike and while you are discovering, experimenting, exploring, failing and finding out you may (will) often be uncomfortable you do know all you need to know about the old way of doing things. You know where that path leads.
Consider choosing uncomfortable intentionally.
2. You Have so Much More Energy
Having the “spare capacity” to be spontaneous, play and have fun is one of the things my clients often marvel at towards the end of their recoveries.
It is something I certainly remember feeling amazed by and which sometimes still hits me out of the blue with bursts of heart opening gratitude.
Having energy is the most amazing thing in the world. You can have all the time and money in the world but if you don’t have energy you aren’t able to use or enjoy any of it.
In recovered you have so much more energy…
That’s exciting right?
What is also is in the same heartbeat is scary because what are you going to do with all that energy when what you’re used to doing with any ounce of energy you ever had is no longer an option?
What are you going to do with all that energy when you don’t have clear goals and plans for what you want to do with your life? What are you going to do with all that energy when you’re alone and everyone else has gone to work or study and you haven’t got your life sorted? What are you going to do with all that energy when you don’t have friends to call to go out and explore with? What are you going to do with all that energy when you missed out on having kids and have no one to take care of, love or play with? What are you going to do with all that energy when you are able to listen to you and no longer have to do what others tell you?
Of course, the answer follows on from above in that you choose intentionally and consciously to channel and invest your energy into the things which you are beginning to discover matter to you.
You invest your energy into discovering and creating you.
There is no greater, more noble, more meaningful or more worthwhile use of your energy than this.
3. You Have so Much More Choice
The more mental function, time, energy and health you gain the more choice you have with what you can choose to do, or not do (because that is just as valuable a choice) that’s the magical elusive freedom you’ve been longing for, fighting for all along right?
And then you have it…
What do you do with your newfound ability to make choices for you when you are still confronted with ongoing messages from society to be, do or have this or that thing you are not and do not have? What do you do with your newfound ability to make choices for you when you still have people in your life pushing for you to be this, that or the other? What do you do with your newfound ability to make choices for you when you’ve had little experience with making choices for yourself and have instead just done what you’ve been told your whole life? What do you do with your newfound ability to make choices for you when the risk of failing at that choice is in your hands and can be blamed on no one and nothing else but you? What do you do with your newfound ability to make choices for you when doing so may end friendships or relationships that were never good for you and you know you are going to hurt people?
The answer is the same as for the other two, you listen to you.
You go in with your eyes open to the reality of the situation you are in and you follow what you know is best for you.
You make the choices for you at the risk of disappointing others, of hurting others, of letting others down because at the end of the day you must get clear on the answer to the question “whose life are you living?”
Take Home Messages
Yep, you got it. You picked up on the theme of this post. The very same pros of recovery that are so compelling, enticing and wonderful are also cons of recovery that are effortful, scary and unknown…
Are you surprised to see it put this way?
Perhaps you are and perhaps you’re not and you’d already figured this out for yourself.
The truth is recovered comes with an experience of profound freedom you are unlikely to be able to fully imagine if you’re currently living with an eating disorder and yet that freedom comes with an incredible responsibility.
There is no freedom without responsibility.
Freedom comes with the responsibility of choice.
When you are working towards freedom from and when you are free from the eating disorder how you choose to spend your time and energy is on you. It is no longer dictated and predetermined by exhaustion and the number of hours you have to exercise, what you will and won’t eat or what others determine is best for you.
In recovered there are no “rules” and that’s both liberating and terrifying all at once because now it is up to you to truly decide what those things you wish to invest your time and energy into are and crucially to do them… no excuses.
In recovered your life is in your hands and that’s one hell of a responsibility to choose to take on but the alternative is to go on living with your life out of your hands… That’s why I say it’s a choice, because by no means do you have to take it.
Both choices are hard.
Both choices come with an inexhaustible array of pros and cons (many of them overlapping) that measure far beyond the little snipped I’ve touched on here.
Choose your hard.
With my whole heart I hope you found this information useful and inspiring.
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie.
