healing for the win

I struggled with my eating disorder for around 16 years before finding freedom. And that right there is a revolutionary statement. I don’t think it is possible to explain how good that language feels in my soul. When writing a post like this in the past, I would say something like, “I have struggled with my eating disorder for 16 years” or “I have been battling an eating disorder for over 15 years.”

For those of you who have never had an eating disorder, you might not see the difference between any of those statements. But it’s there and it’s huge. In the first statement (the one I stand by), I leave the eating disorder in the “before” and step boldly into the now. I even dip my toe in the future. I make a point to realign myself. I no longer identify as being in the eating disorder. It is not something I am currently fighting. It is something I am free from.

There was a time in my life when I refused to do this. Even if I was in a “good place,” I would never say that I was free from the fight. To me, that was a weakness. I believed that I had to be vigilant, and I thought the only way to be vigilant was to not let the illness out of my sight. I had to keep my eye on it at all times just to make sure it didn’t creep in too close to my everyday life. But in that way, I was forever chained to the eating disorder. I could never really be free.

Healing has required me to make so many changes to my life, but even more changes to my thinking. When I was a teenager and young adult, I believed in myself. I mean I really believed that I was capable of greatness and that the world was my oyster. Somewhere along the way, I got lost and my confidence slipped away. I did not believe I was capable of anything but failure and disappointment. In order to heal, I had to shift my mindset and realize that I am capable of so so much.

A lot of time, treatment focuses on our feeling of self-worth. Which is great and important and all that jazz. But I needed to dig for something more. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel WORTHY of recovery or health or joy or peace. It was that I did not think I was CAPABLE of those things.

Self-efficacy is our belief in our ability to accomplish a task or behavior.

My problem was that I had zero self-efficacy. I 100% did NOT believe myself capable of reaching recovery or ever experiencing joy, peace, satisfaction, love, hope, etc etc etc.

That is a big problem. Because I can think I am worthy of joy, but if I do not believe that I am capable of experiencing joy, then there is NO HOPE.

And hopelessness is one of the worst things ever. Without hope, there is no motivation to pursue healing. So I didn’t.

I mean I went to treatment and I did what I was told, but I fundamentally did not believe in recovery. For me, at least. I just didn’t think it was in the cards I’d been dealt.

And you know what? It wasn’t. I had to deal myself a few new ones.

I consider myself to have been in recovery for 1.5 years now, which might not sound like much. The reason I can say this statement with certainty in my voice is because I FEEL different. I have gone periods of time without acting on my eating disorder before. But “not acting on my eating disorder” and “not being in my eating disorder mindset” are two very different things. I can not act on the ED while still fully existing within the mindset of my ED. But I’m not doing either.

The only reason the eating disorder is even a thought in my mind these days is because my brain can’t stop being so damn grateful to be free from the ED’s constant imposition of guilt and shame.

More recently, I have been on a mission to figure out why and how. What did I do that set me on this path to healing? What calmed my anxiety and took away my fears? What eased the depression without launching me into mania? What steps did I take to reach this state of contentment? How on earth did I finally step into recovery?

I became almost desperate to figure out these answers. I kept telling myself that one day I would slip. Life wouldn’t be happy and fulfilling. Things would get hard. I would get hurt. Darkness would creep in. My biggest fears would all occur. I would fall apart. And if I didn’t get all those questions answered NOW, I would never be able to climb out again. I wanted a road map. I wanted to know how I got here so that I could replicate it when I inevitably got lost again.

I kept saying it over and over again to my therapist and he just kind of let me talk and talk and talk. He didn’t really seem to have the kind of urgency for answers that I did, but hey it wasn’t his joy on the line (just kidding, my therapist is phenomenal).

But then stuff started to happen. I went back to finish college (anxiety producer #1) and my parents began to struggle health-wise (absolute life fear #1). Plus the fact that it was the holidays and life gets more stressful by the year to begin with. Basically all of the things that I feared would happen…happened. And the things I was so certain would destroy me…didn’t. And the “answers” that I wanted but didn’t have…I didn’t really need.

What I needed was certainty in my belief that I was capable. I KNEW that it was my time to finish college. I KNEW that I was able to care for my parents. I KNEW that I was exactly the mother that my daughter needed. I KNEW that I was ready to face my fears and do the things that scared me. I KNEW it was safe to be excited about something. I KNEW that I would be okay if I failed, but I also KNEW that I would succeed.

I wish I had the answers to all those hard questions I asked myself and my therapist because then I could pass them on to you. But I don’t.

The best I have is this.

I spent over 15 years in and out of treatment. And it wasn’t that the last treatment cycle was magical and cured me. It was repetition. It was learning the same things over and over and over again week after week, month after month, and year after year. I can’t explain it, but eventually things started to sink in. New pathways formed in my brain. Picking the opposite action became something I did subconsciously. Asking if a behavior aligned with my values became something that happened without a thought. Noticing my body’s strengths rather than its weaknesses became a daily habit that didn’t make me cry.

If you do the hard thing for long enough, it becomes less hard. It’s true. I didn’t believe it before, but I do now. It just turns out “long enough” is much longer than we think it should be.

My journey will not be yours. “Long” might be shorter or longer for you and that does not make it wrong. It just makes it different. There is one thing that is the same for us all. Recovery is 100% all its cracked up to be and it is most certainly worth every ounce of effort you put in.