2/17/2021
Welp, nobody needs to know this or asked about it, but today marks the first day I started recovery and entered eating disorder treatment. February 17th 2020, I left my job, my team, and started an intensive program at Opal: Food & Body in the University District.
I’ve been going back and forth about sharing personal stuff, but what the hell normalize mental health issues. I’m excited to communicate my story to more folks in my life than having the hard sit down multiple times, cause that's just as fucking hard. I have a lot I want to share and my ED has been realllllly loud recently so I thought this might be a nice way to reconnect with recovery. I journaled every day, I learned a bunch of stuff, made a bunch of art, and today seems like a place to start sharing.
To the folks who I started treatment with, you are amazing and honestly treatment wouldn’t have been the same without you. And thank you thank you thank you to the community of folks who dropped me off, picked me up, and support me. I’m getting clammy just typing all this🥵HMU if you have Qs about ED stuff. I’ve been thinking if other folks wanted to start illustrating their stories I would love to work with you!!!!
2/22/2021
#NationalEatingDisorderAwarenessWeek One of the hardest parts of treatment was working on perfectionism, people pleasing, and care taking others. No surprise, took me weeks to finally put my healing first.
We did an exercise in Nutrition Education that involved listing “Food Rules”, the consequences, and answer some questions about the rules.
Do you have rules around food? What happens if you break the rule? Does the rule allow flexibility for all situations? Would you tell anyone else to follow this rule? Does this rule inhibit relationships or enhance them?
It wasn’t until this point in treatment when I finally saw on paper my list of rules that I was like oh shit and I thought I really didn’t have a lot of rules but I had a LOT more consequences to breaking the rules than I realized. A lot of what I learned in treatment had to do with flexibility and relinquishing control for responsibility to myself and for myself, not rigidity from rules that were derived from fears that weren’t even my own ideas!
Anyhoo, if you think you have rigid food rules think about writing some down, asking some questions, and asking yourself how can you challenge these rules? Try it!
2/23/2021
#NationalEatingDisorderAwarenessWeek I’ve tried to illustrate my ED voice several times and I never can get it right. After talking to a friend of mine from treatment, she explained to me that there’s just so many versions of the voice that of course I wouldn’t be able to simplify it into one thing.
The nice thing is I recognize it now, I see it for being a big LIAR and very maladaptive coping mechanisms! I’m at the point where I can have a conversation rather than accept ED voice as my only reality. 👏👏 That's a W, I’m working on it, but it's just really fucking exhausting.
My recovery is challenged every day from culture, from my own head, from people who think talking about “good or bad” bodies or foods is a conversation starter, and sometimes even by people who know I am in recovery. I am so lucky to have an amazing community that supports me, but fatphobia, diet culture, and weight stigma are deeply woven into our everyday lives, even in some of my safest places I hear it.
I know my recovery will get less hard, I can totally see that when I encounter these challenges now. I don’t freeze anymore, I’m not stuck in a cloud of shame, or hurt, or confusion, but I am reminded of how lonely recovery is. Another friend from treatment said “the world does not recover with us!” and so I guess I just cry about that, too.
2/24/2021
#NationalEatingDisorderAwarenessWeek I had this doodle in my journal of what a panic attack felt like.
What no one tells you about eating disorders is that they are mental illnesses and a coping mechanism, it's not JUST vanity and body shaping. My eating disorder provided me with relief, comfort, control. But, the damage of defining my identity as being the caregiver and not the caretaker, all of my self hate, avoidance of harder feelings and presenting as if everything was fine fueled my eating disorder which, very temporarily, alleviated all feelings.
During treatment for the first time in my life I started to have panic attacks. I was no longer relying on my eating disorder to numb myself. During my first appointment at Opal, I told the intake specialist that I didn’t have anxiety. She later became my primary therapist and we joked about how certain I was about it. I never considered naming or understanding what my internal experience was. I didn’t understand anxiety, I couldn’t explain anxiety, experiencing it was even more confusing, and here it was crushing me physically and psychologically.
In treatment I was learning so much about myself, I was learning a language to express myself, I was learning about Health At Every Size, biases in our healthcare system, how useless the BMI is, lies diet culture teaches us, and listening to incredible people be vulnerable every day. Many parts of treatment were terrible, but there were also many beautiful moments and ”we can hold both”, a notorious line from treatment.
The community I had at Opal was absolutely one of the greatest parts of recovering there. We joked about our eating disorders, we laughed at ourselves, we cried, we listened and learned how our eating disorder helped us and how it stole parts of our lives.
2/26/2021
#NationalEatingDisorderAwarenessWeek Sharing my experience with my ED online has been actually so liberating. It’s just one less thing I have to think about when spending time with folks. No more “do they know?”, “should I tell them”, “how do I tell this story about something that happened at treatment?”. I can just go for it, because I know folks in my life can choose to engage with my story if they want to. It’s been really nice.
Being out of treatment and working on my own shit is fucking hard, my relationships have changed a lot. My relationship with exercise, movement, and time are all messed up.
I can’t move or exercise without listening to the excitement of my ED. As a practice I’ve been going totally opposite of my ED voice. If it says “don’t eat that” I’m going to eat the whole damn thing, if it says “don’t eat breakfast” I’m going to make my roommates a delish breakfast and eat the shit out of it, and seeing it excited about exercise, how that lights up my fatphobia, I have just completely stopped moving.
I love movement, I love playing Ultimate Frisbee, I love what my body has done and does for me, I like the challenge of completing a workout, the feeling sore after, the list goes on. But I have to renegotiate every type of movement I do and why it is of value to me and not my ED.
The other day I cried on my way to a workout with my partner, the first workout I’ve done in months. I didn’t stifle it, suppress it, lie about it, I told him I needed to cry and did the damn cry thing. Completed the workout as a sack of emotions and was really happy and proud that I did it afterwards.