“Unprecedented”, “crisis”, “apocalypse”.
I’ve heard many words used to describe what’s going on around the world at the moment and I’m not going to add to this here because I don’t think there is a single word that encapsulates for all people just what we’re experiencing.
It is a strange and surreal situation we have all found ourselves in, the world over and rather than attempt to address the entirety this blog is my offer to a very specific and very close to my heart group of people only, those in recovery from eating disorders.
If you are currently in recovery from an eating disorder during this time of uncertainty, I want you to consider that while it very well may be that we can justifiably describe what’s happening with words such as unprecedented, crisis or apocalypse what we can also describe it as is the possibility of the opportunity of a lifetime.
They say pessimists predict the future accurately and optimists do too.
I want you to consider that you have before you now the opportunity to do things as you have never done them before.
The Opportunity of a Lifetime
It may sound simple or even patronising at first, but I truly do believe now is an opportunity of a lifetime for recovery.
I want to offer that during this time where the world has come to a standstill and your routines and distractions have likely been turned upside down or at least disrupted in a way that’s out of your hands, may just be the opportunity you need to look inside yourself and take this time to recover.
If I could transport back and tell my sick self anything it would be that recovery is only ever meant to be temporary and to get in and get it done.
However, during the time I was attempting recovery after recovery after recovery, the reality is recovery was more painful that the illness and I’d resort back to the distraction behaviours of the illness to cope with that pain and distress. With one million and one daily distractions it was so easy not to focus completely on me and recovery, something, and someone else always needed my attention more. What we find ourselves in now is a different situation and there is likely less opportunity or ease to engage in those distractions you once used. Consider using this. Really using this as the opportunity of a lifetime, as an opportunity for this to be your final recovery.
Remember One Day Recovery Becomes Recovered
Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, ARFID are not life sentences. No eating disorder is a life sentence. Nor are they something you will have to fight and manage for the rest of your life because if you do the work now you can live the rest of your life completely free.
No matter what your past, your future only depends on the decisions you make from here on in.
Make This Not Just the End of Something Terrible but the Beginning of Something Incredible
I know it may feel inconceivable in this moment that COVID19 will one day be over and I certainly know in my years of sickness whatever was happening in the moment was all consuming and the future was an ephemeral almost fairy-tale like concept, but I assure you it will end, and life will go on.
The world will go back to the way it was, or in my most optimistic of moments I imagine it not going back to the way it was because we learn from this catastrophe what other catastrophes have failed to teach us and make some great changes as a united species.
However, whichever scenario happens and whichever path we take from here, what is certain is that one day we will move beyond COVID19.
While it’s definitely too soon to make calls about what will come out of this, especially the potential for positive changes because currently people are losing their jobs, income, businesses, homes, families and lives my loyalties lie with those still suffering with eating disorders. Which means at the risk of getting into the positive side of it perhaps too early I want you to know that amidst the chaos or even because of it you can heal.
I want you to know your recovering now, even among the heartbreak and pain of the world does not mean you do not care for them.
I want you to know that your ongoing pain and suffering will never detract from the pain and suffering of others because you cannot suffer enough to make others well or happy.
You can however learn to take care of yourself. Taking care of yourself does not require ignoring, positive thinking or pretending the suffering does not exist but instead choosing to live despite it all.
You can make this not just the end of something terrible but the beginning of something incredible.
1 Reason Why Now Is the Perfect Time to Recover: Distraction Free
A dysfunctional relationship with food is only ever a result of a dysfunctional relationship with self.
Read that again and alter it however you see fit but please know that at the end of the day it’s not possible to have a great relationship with yourself and a dysfunctional relationship with food.
Which means recovery really is as simple as creating a great relationship with yourself.
Clearly no mean feat as evidenced by the fact that many people die of eating disorders.
I’ve read stats citing 1 person dies as a direct result of an eating disorder approximately every hour and while I don’t know the accuracy of this it doesn’t really matter because what matters is that eating disorders kill. That’s not up for debate.
Of course, the task of undoing years or what can feel like a lifetime of being unkind to yourself can seem a daunting one, but it is by no means impossible. Some people do this quickly, some do it slowly but just as you’ve become great at the habit of being unkind to yourself you can become just as great at the habit of being kind to yourself.
Perhaps now more than any other time during any of your recovery attempts so far is the time to learn to do this because now you have no distractions.
As you practice “social distancing” or “self-isolating”, have maybe found yourself out of work for a bit, not able to go to clubs or bars, the beach even, whatever ways it was you distracted yourself from yourself are now gone, reduced or less attainable.
All those things you’ve used to distract yourself from sitting with yourself in the past may no longer be easily available or available at all and this can either destroy you or it can be the moment everything changes.
Recovery does not happen by hope, accident or in the background of a busy life. It happens only through choice and with intention, over and over again multiple times a day. Not one day but today.
Now is your distraction free time to do the work that will take your recovery to recovered and make your experience of recovered stable for life, including:
- Clarifying your values (what’s important to you).
- Getting clear on who you really are.
- Getting clear on the kind of life you’d like to live.
- Deciding what energy levels, you’d like to have as you live this life.
It is my belief and my experience both personally and with the people I work with that when we truly do these above steps and then crucially begin to live by them, recovery becomes not just a possibility but inevitable. You have this opportunity now more than ever before to make this your reality so you can hit the ground running after COVID19 with the brain, mind and life you want.
Finding Calm in A Culture Intent on Distraction
We live in a culture intent on distraction.
If I am going to be cynical about it we live in a culture that survives only because of the perpetuation of this need to distract from ourselves, our inner sense of peace and certainty and instead search for meaning, belonging and what to do, buy and have outside of ourselves.
You just have to walk into a club, bar or often even restaurants to see this (or remember having done so). There is music so loud no one can hold a conversation, people on their phones more than connecting with those they came there with, high definition TV screens dominate the rooms and in those spaces (and similarly behind our own closed doors) it can seem we’re all drinking alcohol, taking other substances, starving ourselves, overeating or overexercising in order to feel something other than what we’re feeling.
Distracting yourself through this life is more than a viable option, it is the easiest option.
It is the option so freely offered that it’s difficult to know sometimes that there is any other option, which is why I was inspired to write and share this post with you in the first place, it is the driving force behind why I do most of what I do. I want people to know they have options because once upon a time I didn’t know I had any.
During the 15 years I spent living with anorexia nervosa I distracted myself with just about everything you can imagine and some things you probably can’t. I wish someone had told me I didn’t need to do this and taught me how to recognise, sit with and learn from my feelings sooner than I did find this help because that time I spent hating myself, in shame and despair is time I will never get back.
The Life You Desire and Deserve is Real
Learning how to be with yourself will be a little harder (understatement of the year) at first than endlessly pursuing distractions but it is the only way you will truly experience the life you desire and deserve. If you knew this to be true do you think it may just be worth the effort?…
You may not feel like you have many choices in this time and it is true because what is happening with COVID19 is out of your hands and believe me I’ve spent my moments crying over the loss of business, people I could help, speaking gigs I had coming up and numerous other opportunities and plans for 2020 none of which involved social isolation, one of my offices closing down and moving to the mostly online space. What I am saying is I am not immune to the feelings of loss and unfairness of it all. No one is. However, I have learnt the skills to sit with myself and feel them as I feel them and I really did have to learn how to do this because a few years ago I know had I experienced COVID19 without these skills it would have been cause for immense overwhelm and no doubt a rehospitalisation. You can learn to do this too and it is not just you who will benefit but the whole world.
Your feelings are valid, whatever they are and to learn to sit with that instead of trying to downplay or ignore them is where your power will come in.
Consider sitting with your feelings in a similar way you would comfort and listen to the feelings of your child if he were to come to you with the very same feelings. Would you tell him he was silly, to go away or to ignore those feelings? Probably now, you’d probably listen with compassion and offer kind words rather than telling him he was stupid for feeling that way.
From this place of self-compassion we find we can then move on with energy and insight and without becoming completely drained and useless to ourselves, others and what this world needs because you can’t truly offer help to anyone else until you first help yourself.
Take Care of Yourself
The very best thing you can do during this time, whichever label you want to put on it, is take care of yourself.
If you don’t know how to properly take care of yourself it’s worth using this time to learn because you will use this for the rest of your life and I mean really learn by diving deep into the 4 questions I offered earlier in this post. Your answers to these questions is where your connecting to your magic lies.
Parting Words
While the concepts I talk about in this blog, learning to allow yourself to be you and love and respect yourself just as you are may sound straightforward (because they are) if you are out of practice with them (which if you are living with an eating disorder you are) you may need help to learn to truly do them (where their entire use and magic lies).
It is one thing to know you are “supposed to love yourself” and another to know how to do this.
It is one thing to sit with your feelings and it is another to do this with compassion and it is yet another again to do this and find productivity and energy coming out of it versus collapsing into the overwhelm of it.
It is only in hindsight that I can now see during the years I spent sick a part of me often knew what I had to do, I just either couldn’t hear it or couldn’t follow its advice because I didn’t trust it. Which is why I want to reiterate that while caring for and loving yourself are entirely possible realities for you, they don’t happen through chance, hope or divine intervention. They happen through choice and deliberate action and often this takes great outside help and guidance. It did for me and that came in the form of something I did not believe in (clinical hypnotherapy) and something I had never heard of (Neurolinguistic Programming).
Would you consider that during this time while the outside world is transforming may just be the best time to get the help to learn how to transform your inner world?
It may feel like recovery is for you, but it is the whole world which will benefit.
COVID19 can be a reason to fall back harder than ever into your eating disorder and no one would judge you for this, it makes sense and would be completely understandable, but this is not your only option.
COVID19 could also be the thing which changed everything and a place to start would be by taking moments to yourself to go inside and get clear on the following 4 areas:
- Clarifying your values (what’s important to you).
- Getting clear on who you really are.
- Getting clear on the kind of life you’d like to live.
- Deciding what energy levels, you’d like to have as you live this life.
Everywhere You Go, There You Are
You’re never getting away from yourself.
So, you have two choices who you hang out with most often, not just during social distancing but for the rest of your life:
- Your worst enemy
Or
- Your bestfriend
With my whole heart I hope you found this information useful and inspiring.
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie.
