When I initially sat down to write this blog it was titled “3 Reasons I Didn’t Recover Earlier”. Pretty quickly those 3 reasons became 5 reasons, 7 reasons, 10 reasons and finally 11 reasons… and to be honest it wouldn’t take much effort for me to bring to mind a further 11… I’ve not even included the most obvious reasons recovery is hard (aka reasons I didn’t recover earlier) such as the fact that eating feels like the worst thing in the world and in moments, you’d rather dig out your own eyeballs than put that spoon anywhere near your body…
So, why is it that it is no challenge for me to look back and see so clearly all the reasons I didn’t recover earlier?
Well, as I take the moment to read back over the words I’ve chosen to in an attempt to condense formidable, life consuming concepts into something you can use it becomes undeniably obvious that in recovery the odds are against you.
Should you achieve it, your recovery, in all honesty is nothing short of a miracle.
It truly is far easier to not recover than it is to recover. Does it seem ridiculous to read that?
After all there are so many reasons to recover and so much help to recover right?…
Surely all the positives of recovery outweigh the reasons to not recover, right?…
Surely once you or your loved one has made the decision you or they want to recovery it be fairly straightforward, right?…
Well, if you consider that everything, and I really do mean what can truly feel like everything including society, diet culture, your mind and even your body is working against you there’s not a lot of “straightforward” about it.
Perhaps, you’ll understand a little more just how easy it is to not recover after reading through these 11 reasons which held me back from recovering earlier than I did.
Perhaps as you read over the below 11 reasons you can identify that you are good on some of them, lacking in others and hadn’t even considered others…
It is my hope that through your becoming aware that there exists valid reasons to not recover you or your loved one can begin to focus your energy and attention where it is needed because in the midst of an eating disorder or when considering recovery it feels like everything and when it feels like everything the best encouragement I can give is start with something.
There are no short cuts (but that doesn’t mean it has to be slow, just that there’s no recovered without going through recovery).
Reason #1. I Had No Boundaries or Filters
I had no boundaries or filters between myself and the outside world.
I had no ability to choose to take on board or not take on board this or that thing someone did or said. Even if it had nothing to do with me, even if it was a offhand comment I overheard at a Supermarket or a brief snippet of a news story about someone dying overseas, it all went straight in.
And by straight in I mean straight to my core. I felt it as if it had happened and was happening to me. I had this overwhelming desire to make it better for them which would quickly snowball into a lot of painful thoughts about how much unfairness, suffering and hopelessness there was in the world.
Reason #2. I Had No Emotional Regulation
When these things got inside my heart and soul, I had no ability to regulate how they impacted me emotionally.
My entire body and being would become utterly hijacked.
I’d be thrown off completely off balance, I would cry for hours, I would run away, I would yell and scream, I would freeze on the floor my legs unable to hold me up and sometimes if I was alone, I’d break things or hurt myself. Not only were these my immediate reactions I didn’t have the capacity to self-regulate and bring my emotions back under my control. So, not only did I get completely blown off track it would last hours or days sometimes weeks.
Reason #3. I Was A Pathological Perfectionist
I was queen of what I now can recognise as black and white thinking or at a least very narrow view of “reality”.
Funnily enough I thought I was very open minded and It’s only now that I can see I wasn’t or at least I wasn’t when it came to recovery.
I wanted to get recovery “right”.
I wanted to go from the lowest low to the highest high in one swift, quick upward trajectory and then just get on with life as though nothing had happened.
Thinking in this way kept me stuck because if I stuffed up in my mind, I’d “failed”. In my mind failing meant I was a failure, and I would find myself swiftly back at square one.
To me a failure meant a full blown “relapse” and not simply a little lesson to take on board, learn from and alter my future actions based on that attempted thing not going well.
I now appreciate that life is for learning and growing and this cannot happen without trying, without failing, without attempting and without adjusting to the feedback of life. Truth be told I am still learning, and I plan to learn more each day up until and including the day I die.
Reason #4. The High Was Addictive?
There is nothing I’ve ever experienced that comes close to the sense of exhilaration, certainty, calm, safety, promise?… honestly, I have no word to accurately describe the feeling of my body switching back on as it came out of starvation.
I have no words for the utter relief and possibility that came with the moments I was able to give myself unconditional permission to eat and the sense that everything was going to be ok (at least for the next little bit because all responsibility was lifted).
I believe this feeling of elation, ecstasy, almost frantic hope was addictive.
I felt that giving myself that kind of permission was only ever temporary because it came with a whole load of conditions and timeframes. Now, I give myself that permission without thinking about it, so I don’t need to seek it in moments as temporary relief because I now have it as my baseline.
Reason #5. I Had No Self-Esteem
In the years I was sick I was consistently behaving in ways that weren’t in congruence with the things I valued.
I lied constantly about how much I ate and exercised and if I didn’t do it outright, I lied by omission. I cancelled on friends, didn’t show up to important events. I didn’t treat myself with any semblance of compassion, kindness, or care. I wasn’t fully present with the people I loved (I could barely stand up for my sister’s wedding let alone be any form of fun company) and so on and so on.
The evidence that the things I did were not congruent with the things I valued mounted higher by the day, hour and minute.
I felt and acted in ways that weren’t in line with what or who I wanted to be, and if you’re not aware this is exactly the formula for creating low or no self-esteem.
We only hold ourselves in esteem when what we think, feel and do are relatively congruent.
You must earn your own respect and trust before you believe you are someone worth valuing, before you know you are someone worth holding in esteem and the only way, you’re going to do that are when your actions support your values. That is, when you are someone you value.
I am now that person who I value and respect perhaps more than anyone else because I am me professionally, personally and in all aspects of my life I am congruent in what you see is what you get. There are no secrets, no lies and no shame.
Reason #6. I Had No Resilience
One of the most useful things in life and which I truly believe has one of the largest impacts on our success is our ability to take on board and adapt our actions based on the feedback we get from the things we do.
When I was sick, I truly believe I didn’t have that ability.
I wasn’t able to objectively look at my actions, look at the outcome of those actions and make alterations based on the outcomes.
No matter what happened it seemed I couldn’t change what I did.
In essence I had no resilience. I had no “bounce back” at all.
When things went “wrong” I wasn’t able to learn from it, take a lesson from it and not do it again or try something slightly different next time. I just got stuck and added more fuel to the fire that said I was unchangeable, beyond hope, too far gone, alone, different and broken.
I now know at any point in time we possess the ability to change our actions and the best means of deciding how to change our actions is based on the feedback we get from those actions (external and internal). Learn to do this and you will go far in life because the truth is our lifespans are quite long, you don’t have to get it all perfect, right or even close to right the first time. If you make daily alterations and adjustments, you will grow and succeed.
Imagine for example, the experience of hitting a wall and being back at square one every time you made a mistake vs making a mistake and continuing forward with the learnings you gained from making that mistake… How far could you get in a year, 5 years without the constant setbacks?…
Reason #7. Shame
In hindsight shame prevented me from giving things a true shot.
I had a suffocating level of shame over a pile of things I can’t even remember now (that’s how important they actually were!).
Some of the shame I harboured was around being 18, 21, 24, 26 years old and not having ever been able to hold down a “proper” adult job, never having done taxes or owned anything significant, not having kids or even certain that I wanted to get married (the thought of being the focus of attention for a marriage ceremony was enough to make this not an option of me!)
Shame kept me paralysed and unable to learn all the things I “should” know how to do them because I was too ashamed to ask or to share that I didn’t know.
Augh I have so much compassion for past Bon. She tried so hard but all she ever did was try.
Reason #8. I Believed I Was Different
I didn’t believe it was possible.
This is a hard one to describe because I’m sure parts of me must have believed it possible or must have begun at some point to believe it possible otherwise I’d never have made it but I honestly don’t remember ever truly believing that “full” recovery was possible or in particular that full recovery was possible for me.
I believed quasi-recovery i.e. maintaining a healthy weight was possible with a monumental amount of willpower and effort (that I can see now would actually make it impossible) but not to be free of the thoughts and emotions.
How very wrong I was.
Reason #9. I Lacked Purpose
If recovery was possible what was the point?
Eventually, I’d been sick so long and my self-identity so tied into everything that maintained the eating disorder that I didn’t have the vaguest idea of who I was or what I was really “fighting” for.
What was the point?
For anyone who is there or has been there this is a scary place to be.
It is only now with a fully functioning healthy brain and body that I can easily reflect and see that from a position of being so deep in the illness (even when I wouldn’t have considered that I was) of course I couldn’t see the point! This makes perfect sense to me now but at the time I wanted to know that it was going to be “worth it” before I could possibly have known it would be (or wouldn’t be) worth it. I wanted to feel good about recovery before I had begun to have any experiences that recovered was worth the battle, effort and energy that goes into it.
What I want you to know and what I’d loved younger Bon to have known was that you don’t know what’s possible. Even in my life today I don’t know what’s possible. I know where I am now and more or less what I am capable of now, but I don’t yet know what I’ll be capable of or what’s possible in 5 years, 1 year, even next week.
It truly is a journey.
Reason #10. Other People
I hesitate to include this point because it can so easily become the focus and sole reason (aka lie) you tell yourself as to why you “can’t” change but I’m going ahead and putting it in anyway in recognition that other people’s treatment of you (positive or negative) can keep you stuck if you don’t deal with it.
I want you to know that other people will continue to treat you as the “sick” person particularly if you’ve been sick for a long while and to go against that can be a challenge (ok not a “challenge” but actually confusing, seemingly impossible to go against and painful af but let’s go with challenge). It’s certainly one of the things which contributing to keeping me stuck or in the cycle for far too long and the reason why goes back to many of the points I’ve made here even point number one a lack of barriers between myself and others. I believed others before I believed myself. I looked to the outside world for answers and help to things it couldn’t possibly have given me answers and help to.
What I really want to get across is that many of the people in my life didn’t change the way they treated me during or after I recovered.
The people who were closest to me (especially my mum and family) continued to treat me as though I was the “sick” one long after I’d recovered. If I’m honest it’s no longer that she treats me as the “sick” one but more as the one she’s afraid will become sick at any moment again and my heart goes out to her but it is no longer my role to “convince” her or anyone else that I am healthy and well. It is my role to simply be healthy and well. For me.
The only thing that changed was my response to other people’s treatment of me and as I mentioned there were many things (including a strong sense of self, high self-esteem and self-trust) I had to develop in order to become the person capable of doing what, in the illness, would have been an impossibility.
I learned that recovery was my responsibility and that no one else could do the hard things for me because the hard things are the behind the scenes boring, unglamourous things. I knew that no one could make the judgement of my recovery other than me.
There is boundless freedom in that knowledge but with freedom comes responsibility.
Reason #11. I Didn’t Know How
At the end of the day after 15 years of therapy, self-education, countless morsels of solicited and even more unsolicited input and advice from friends, family and complete strangers I had a lot of knowledge. I had a pretty foolproof formula of what to do to recover.
And I pretty quickly learned that knowing “what” to do is not the same as knowing “how” to do it.
I knew all the tools and theory but the how to apply it was completely lacking.
Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) was the missing link I feel like I’d been searching for my whole life (honestly from about grade 2 I remember wanting to do the things that at 28 years old NLP finally taught me how to do).
It was the key to the puzzle that allowed me to finally step from an overabundance of knowledge, concepts and theory into the doing. And make no mistake in recovery from an eating disorder, in any form of growth and progress in life the real power, the real magic is found in the action.
Take Home Messages
Having been sick so long my sense of self greatly revolved around what anorexia meant to me. Which included being intelligent, driven, motivated, empathetic, kind, caring and selfless. I felt I had to give up all this in order to recover.
Who would I be then? The opposite of all the things I valued and admired?
Spoiler alert: as it turned out I actually gave up none of those things I valued. Instead I became able to express them in healthy ways that are one-thousand-and-one times more productive than that old ways I used to do things.
In recovery you will literally be creating a new body and that takes determination, persistence and trust to act even when if feels wrong.
However, that’s not the hardest part.
The hardest part of all is taking the moment to begin to step outside of and question all those things you are so certain of… To suspend your judgement and pre-conceived ideas and to begin to create a new mind. It was clinical hypnotherapy which allowed me to begin to see and feel things differently, find what it is that can help you and you will never look back.
It is my hope that through sharing these 11 reasons which held me back from recovery you can identify which ones you’re fine with, which ones are challenging, which ones you’ve never even considered or you can identify your very own to add to the list…
I want you to know that no matter how hard it all seems or how far you feel you still have to go, all these things I’ve shared (and any others you can come up with) are changeable.
They are all within your capability to alter, learn, develop and master.
Maybe not instantly and maybe not overnight but without exception you can develop these capabilities.
At the end of the day as harsh as it may sound the truth is your recovery is never guaranteed. Your recovery comes down to learning all you need to learn and then, crucially, finding a means of doing it.
So, go now. Go experiment with how many times you can fail and how good you can make your life as you do so… because what better mission could you devote your time to while you’re on this planet than making your life fun and meaningful?…
With my whole heart I trust you found this information useful and inspiring.
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie.
