Anorexia, my first rock bottom.
I’m as ready as I’ll ever be to share my first near death experience, my first rock bottom – anorexia. I’ve tried writing this several times over many months and struggled to write it. I’ve thought about how to write it, written parts of it in my head while doing other things, written it and deleted it. The truth is, I thought this would be the easiest one to write about. It was decades ago and has been the least shame producing for me. At least I thought it was. I’ve given myself the grace to come toward this story and then move away, as I felt I needed to. I’ve also dug into “Why am I avoiding this” or “What’s so difficult about this one?”. For me, I think that with drugs and alcohol there was a sense of pride in ending those affairs. A reclaiming of my story and a releasing of some of the shame I was sitting in. For my eating disorder, I’m finding that I’ve never closed the book completely on it, and that has been one scary realization to say outloud and to the world. I needed to wrestle with that truth – that I’m not in the recovery place that I thought I was. I didn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe it and had a hard time really thinking that it was true.
As I’ve shared parts of my story, and the very difficult parts, I’ve had to be brave and vulnerable. Open myself up and say “This is who I am” and “This is where I’ve been” for better or worse. And, while I can say those big hurdles of my story (alcohol and addiction) are over, I know in my heart I can’t know that for sure. If I don’t continue to do the hard work with myself, it is possible that I could slip back into those depths of despair. That said, I can pinpoint those as clear numbing techniques, and they also involve taking a substance to do said numbing. Anorexia is very similar in that it allows me to numb my feelings, but by restricting the intake of anything (food). It is also different because it is not easy to notice the behavior (or lack of behavior – eating), until you’re really sliding downhill and the weight is pouring off. Bottom line, it’s a lot easier to hide. It’s such a mental rollercoaster even before any action to restrict is taken. It can be all consuming of one’s energy without there being a piece of food in sight or meal to be eaten. It’s like being at the beginning of alcohol or drug recovery when all you can think about is the alcohol or drug and how you might be able to get it. Except it’s for food – a very substance we need to ingest in order to live – and you’re scheming on how to avoid it.
Pretty f**ked up. A real mind bender. Anorexia is an eating disorder. Anorexia is starvation. Starvation is a form of torture. For me, I think this kind of torture is how it came about. High school can be hard, it was for me. Friends came and went, even the ones I thought I’d have forever. A large part of my eating disorder came from not liking me, and not really knowing me. This dislike turned into punishing myself by controlling the food I was allowed to eat. Like many others with eating disorders, it is not about the food. It’s about control, perfectionism and numbing the feelings and emotions that I simply did not have the tools to process in a healthy way.
For years, I said that what triggered my eating disorder was an abrupt identity shift. I was an athlete and junior in high school, playing soccer and diving competitively, when I suffered a knee injury. I desperately tried to come back from that injury, to play soccer at the level I was prior to the injury. Four surgeries later, I just could not do it. I tried all junior and senior year, but ultimately just felt deflated, defeated and that I had failed. Not good enough – a belief system that I had already laid the tracks for, years before. I felt like I didn’t even deserve to be on the team. However, now being older, I think that when that identity shift occurred, I did not have the proper support systems in place. Soccer, and sports overall, were such a huge part of my life, that when they ended, I didn’t have a team or purpose to turn to.
Like I said, my eating disorder is the one addiction, of the three, that can still be an everyday battle for me. It’s reared its ugly head many times over the last 20 years. Trying to write this has uncovered how much I go into my anorexic thought patterns and beliefs on a near daily basis. These can range from wanting to see a certain number on the scale at the doctor’s office, feeling fat, feeling powerful if I forgot to eat, noticing that I’m the smallest person in the room or over analyzing every inch of my body. I’ve also realized, much like my drinking, how many situations I’ve had very anorexic thoughts, but then justified them some way or another. Or, brushed them under the rug, thinking it was OK, since I wasn’t acting on those thoughts by restricting my food. A few years ago, these occasional thoughts became more regular and I started acting on those thoughts. I lost about 20 pounds. It spireled so fast. This is the mental rollercoaster I referred to earlier. Spending the energy and time in unhealthy thought patterns about food or thinness in an effort to feel in control and perfect when others things around me are messy or seem out of control.
One of the things you learn in recovery for eating disorders is how to recognize unhealthy eating behaviors. The tricky thing, though, is that “eating healthy” can mean many different things to many different people. For me, any kind of control over food can spiral pretty fast. For example: intermittent fasting has been popular for “being healthy” or “maintaining a healthy weight”. Intellectually speaking, I don’t think I need to lose weight, or even worry about maintaining my current weight. IF I were to try this fasting, then it feeds into controlling when I eat vs listening to my body. I will feel hungry but try to ignore it. If that cycle continues then I’m dusting off the scale, looking at my body differently, talking poorly to myself and over-thinking every morsel of food. When I do eat, I feel disgusting, unworthy of love and a failure. Damn, that’s heavy (no pun intended) and, oh so slippery!
One of the hardest things about having an eating disorder or drug / alcohol problem, for me, is that during those periods I moved so far away from my true inner instinct and intuition. I developed my decision making using external substances or restrictions. My goal was to avoid feeling feelings that I couldn’t properly process. In turn, I avoided my highest self. “I’m not hungry, ignore that feeling”. “Don’t think, just do *insert whatever it was that controlled me*”. This is scary, because when I have come out of these journeys, I’ve had little to no trust in myself. I don’t even know if my inner voice is mine. Is that really my higher self or the monster I created inside?
The problem with this, then becomes, that everyone else’s opinions matter more than my own. Surely they must know better – technically they’re better people than I am. This is what I believed. Then, I try to be whatever anyone needs me to be. Whoever I need to be to please the next person. To make them proud. To just be good enough for them to want me around and love me. And the cycle easily continues from there. A new monster is created.
For decades, my eating disorder has been kept just at bay. Right there, when I need to control something, when everything else is too unknown, out of control or risky. Far enough away not to raise any flags, but just be a mental ping pong game in my head. A very tiring game, I must say. The work I do now, has opened up a whole new world for me. I’m actually taking the time and effort to notice, challenge and show compassion to those beliefs that are just doing the only thing they know how to do. Speak up when the opportunity arises. The goal is to reframe those beliefs into beliefs that serve a purpose in my life today.
I’ll stop here for now – that feels like a lot to take in. Next post, I’ll share more about my journey with anorexia. How it started and spiraled, treatment programs and the support I received to move away from death’s door.
To be continued…