Need to Change Thinking Patterns - But How? - Eating Disorder Recovery Message Board

MariaBB · 03-30-2007, 01:14 PM

Last night my therapist looked me in the eye and said, "You're going to die." I looked away, brushing it off, but when I looked back at him he was still staring at me. "I'm serious. If you keep this up you are going to die." OK, that was pretty scarry. I want to stop but my thoughts keep contradicting me. What is the best way to start stopping? Little steps, I know. But where to go first? Everytime I eat something out of my safety zone I feel so terribly guilty and angry.

livinTX · 03-30-2007, 02:02 PM

Yes, you will die if you perpetuate in an eating disorder, and even if you don't, who wants to live feeling so weak and miserable and trapped in a cycle of food and calories and exercising and purging? I hated that life. In fact, I'll bet you are not happy right now and haven't been for awhile. It's a miserable existence, and that's all it is. It isn't a life.

For me, the thought of perpetuating my ED for the rest of my life or until I did die from it filled me with exhaustion and despair. I was so, so tired. Wouldn't it be great to take a break from the gym without huge anxiety and despair? Wouldn't it be nice to eat like I did before the ED since I wasn't even fat to start with? Wouldn't it be nice to be normal again?

Some things you need to do to recover, and it's hard I know. Throw away your scale. If you can't throw it away, give it to your therapist for safe keeping until you get to a point where you can have it back without triggering yourself. If this is never, then so be it. Don't judge your life by a number on the scale. Stop looking for motivation to lose weight and don't visit triggering sites or read diet plans and exercise routines in magazines. In fact, just don't read women's magazines during your recovery as you will be hard-pressed to find even 1 without a story about exercise, dieting, food, and weight loss.

Start looking for healthy, non-ED coping mechanisms. Since you do need to gain weight (as I have seen your weight posted before), you should try to stop exercise or drastically curtail it--walking instead of running and for lesser amounts of time. Instead of purging, take a hot bubble bath and burn candles to calm yourself, listen to music or sing, watch DVDs, read books (not about EDs or food or exercise--novels or mysteries). I'm a big fan of mysteries as they engage your mind on the puzzle without any sorts of triggers. Put together jigsaw puzzles with music on. Try journalling, gardening, photography. I went to the crafts store and started a bunch of hobbies to work on especially when I felt triggered and wanted to exercise or purge after eating--latchhook, make candles or soap, draw, learn how to make clay beads & jewelry. They have a ton of hobbies you can try, and most of them are not too terribly hard even for beginners. Take a class in something you enjoy like webpage design or pottery. The key here is to keep yourself busy and try not to think about ED things.

Yes, you will have enormous guilt after eating normal meals or actually following a meal plan especially when you do not purge it or overexercise or restrict to compensate. In the beginning, you may have some bloating and water retention and yes, you will gain some weight. My weight went to the middle of the normal range for my height then settled at low-normal after about a year and really hasn't moved since. But you gain much more than weight--your skin has a healthy glow, your face isn't gaunt any more, people stop making comments to you about how you need to just eat, your hair gets thick and shiny, your eyes sparkle, and for me, I started to feel happy again and like life was worth living. In fact, now I'm even off antidepressants for a year and a half and I once had a doctor (actually, a couple shrinks) tell me I'd never live a normal life off of meds, but I am happily proving them wrong.

Recovering from my ED allowed me to move on with my life, to start dating seriously for the first time and then to get married. We bought a house, I'm writing fiction again (stopped this completely during my ED as my imagination was shot), we're now actually trying to have a baby, which I never thought I'd get to this point where I'd be OK with pregnancy, but it's actually happened.

What is your life worth to you? You deserve to live and be happy. With the ED, you have 3 options: 1) You die from the ED. 2) You perpetuate the ED, not so bad it kills you but you're miserable and depressed just the same. You might as well be dead. 3) You recover and start living again.

You can't live with a full-blown ED and be happy. I just don't think it's possible.

ETA: Look into cognitive-behavior therapy. I used a form of this on my own to recover from both my eating disorder and my depression.

YellowBikini · 03-30-2007, 03:14 PM

That's great advice, and everything cln has said is true. I would like to offer my point of view as well. I know how scary, daunting, and almost impossible it seems to think about suddenly going back to "normal". For me, I remember thinking that I didn't even know what a normal person ATE like anymore, and besides, I didn't want to blow up like a balloon. When I got completely and totally fed up and just "existing" what I did (as I mentioned in a recent post), was simply increase what I was already eating by little bits to start off. I didn't venture out of my safety zone at first -- I simply started to eat MORE of what I was comfortable with. I was fed up with feeling like crap all the time, and told myself I would eat a little more to give myself more energy. Once I'd gained a bit of weight, it became easier to continue to eat more. This is hard to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it, but it's sort of like all my manic anorexic thoughts started to fade, because my body was no longer starving. Once this happened, I was able to think and to see things more clearly, and REALLY begin to move towards a full recovery. I still have ED thoughts, body image issues, and as I've recently posted, am having trouble breaking free of my "safe" foods. But I am at a normal weight, and am enjoying life again. I by no means think about food all the time, and I can concentrate at work and fully experience social events without worrying so much about the food aspect. This post has turned into a bit of a ramble, but my point is (just like you said) to begin with baby steps. Gain a little bit of weight in whatever way freaks you out the least, and I really believe that your mindset will change, and things will become easier.