Back in NYC... Day 1 of Mental Reconditioning

Yesterday, I returned from a week-long Christmas vacation in Kansas City and Tampa. After flying on the worst flight of my life, I wasn't sure if I'd ever make it home. The flight was so turbulent that people all around me were puking in barf bags. It was kind of ironic... a bulimic (in recovery) on a plane where everyone else is puking. If that would've happened years ago, I probably would have acted sick, utilizing those bags myself.
Now back in the city, I've decided to conquer another level of the ED--mental reconditioning. I've blogged before about how I feel guilty for not sticking to my food plan, even though I know I don't have to stick to it perfectly. Recovery is, after all, about balance. But I'm just sick of feeling guilty about it. So, I have two choices: 1.)Stop feeling guilty; 2.) Stick to my food plan. Because I don't know how to stop feeling guilty and can't seem to internalize imperfect abstinence, then my only option is to stick to my food plan.
Usually, I stick to my food plan all day, and then at night I'll eat something unplanned. It isn't because I'm hungry. I get anxiety about eating what I planned. Why? I don't think there is any deeply-rooted reason. I think it's just because I'm not practiced in eating only what's on my food plan. My mind is conditioned to eat off of my food plan. I need to condition it to do the opposite.
So, for today, I'm going to try it.

I'll let you know tomorrow how Day 1 went!!

Brittany Murphy Dies... Is Hollywood "Clueless' or Just in Denial???

Cross-Posted from my entry in www.the-f-word.org

I was so busy running around in preparation for Christmas yesterday, that I didn’t even know that actress Brittany Murphy died of “natural causes.” My first reaction is utter shock. For years, tabloids have rumored that the actress has had anorexia, and the fact that she died of a cardiac actress seems to support such rumors. I don’t know if it is because she’s close to my age or if it is because I love her as a comedic actress. In any case, my mentality–which, even in recovery, still vacillates daily between wanting to be unconcerned with weight and wanting to be not-anorexic-but-just-thin-enough (whatever that means)–has just received a huge dose of reality.

Within a few months of moving back to NYC, I accidentally lost quite a bit of weight, because I went from driving everywhere to walking everywhere. It just happened, really. This triggered my anorexic mindset, which has not been present for years. While I like how I look and don’t ever want to look “sick” again, my mind has become obsessed with the possibilities of losing more. What can I say? It takes years in recovery to recover from the ED mindset… at least for me.

My point in mentioning this, and why I am so shocked by Brittany Murphy’s death, is that the ED can kill you (or me) when one least expects it. You’re eating a little less here, exercising a bit more there, and then, oops, you accidentally kill yourself. Honestly, I didn’t mean to send myself into cardiac arrest… I was just trying to fit into my skinny jeans. Now I know, obviously, that there is so much more behind EDs than trying to look good in clothes. But, a notion as innocent as wanting to try to look good in an outfit or feel more comfortable in your own skin can actually be deadly. While my playing around with food is at a manageable or even “normal” degree, if I let it continue, which will eventually shift my behavior to a status of unhealthy and unmanageable, this could potentially happen to me.

Now, we don’t know the specifics of Brittany Murphy’s “death by natural causes”–the ED rumors have not been medically confirmed. We never received confirmation of an ED on rail-thin Michael Jackson either… but that doesn’t mean he, nor Brittany, didn’t have one. I’m not trying to scapegoat Hollywood, but the ridiculous standards that celebrities have to maintain if they want to continue to gain employment is just that–RIDICULOUS. How many more celebs have to die? When is Hollywood, and society, going to learn that public figures and celebrity role models need to start resembling real people, instead of real people trying to fit into these unrealistic and life-threatening ideals? Now, I know that we all make choices; but, at the end of the day, most people want to feel like they fit somewhere in the world. Hollywood anorexic iconography in the human form just doesn’t help and needs to stop.

Achieving Food Plan Perfection...Yeah, Right.

Throughout my ED career, whether it be in the pitfalls of relapse or the upward crawl towards recovery, I've consistently (and constantly) planned the Perfect Food Plan. Daily, I envision that if only I eat this or that and stick to my plan, I'll feel so much better about myself. Logically, perfectionistic logic that is, it makes sense... follow your plan to the letter and you'll feel better--poetic, yes, realistic... not exactly... at least not for this food addict.

I do, however, have some errors in my thinking. First, recovery is supposed to be about balance, finding the grey (and accepting it), no black and white thinking. Easier said than done. "Perfect" doesn't really fit into the category of moderation. Second, I'm still trying to define myself externally, to some extent, whether it be by how well I follow my food plan, or how much I weigh, or the size of my jeans.

While I yearn to follow a food plan so clean that even minuscule crumbs of deviation from it couldn't be picked up under the lens of a food-plan-falsifier investigator's microscope, at the end of the day, I always do something to louse it up... even in recovery. That is what is so frustrating.

Perhaps I'm being too restrictive in my food plan... Perhaps I need to give myself a break... Perhaps I need to think about what makes me so afraid to follow the food plan I devise? Ha-Ha! Yes, I think that is the issue. The easiest answer is control. But what is behind the control???

More next post... gotta go be a social work student!

The Bumpy Road of Recovery

Why is it that every time I work on one part of recovering from the ED, another piece of it tries to seduce me? Of course, the obvious answer is that it's a mental illness... duh. Technicalities aside, why does it have to happen that way? I mean, I work on not bingeing and purging, and all of a sudden I want to restrict. I work on not restricting, and then I want to overexercise. As soon as I make the decision to eat on my food plan, as planned, I get the urge to overeat... just a little... or restrict, just a little. And then the mental cycle starts again, which allows me to never fully be at peace. Throw any level of stress in the mix, and the entire thought train is magnified.

My ED symptoms are like small systems, interacting and taking direction from a larger system in my brain, my personal director of weight management...which takes direction from an even larger system, My Sense of Self. The surface problem is that I'm still choosing to define who I am by external qualities, like what my body looks like and what I achieve. The more deeply-rooted problems are... well, too complex to get into on this post.

The short of it is, at my core, I still feel inadequate. That doesn't mean I don't feel happy, because my life is better than ever. But at the end of the day, when I look at what motivates me, I have an invisible "I", standing for Inadequacy, slapped across my forehead, following my every move.

Throughout my recovery, professionals have told me that as long as I was active in the addiction, it takes the same amount of time to recover. I don't mean "recover" like cured from thinking about and engaging in ED behavior; I mean recovery from the arrested development and the issues that triggered the ED in the first place. I always thought that I would make faster progress... wrong. The complexities, and subsequent mind-fucks (pardon my French), of EDs are baffling.

So, I've been in a cycle of restricting for a couple of months. Not a lot, but enough to lose weight and have people notice. It's strange that I'm in this phase, because I haven't been "here" since before my bulimia started. Like many, prior to bulimia, I restricted... until I got too hungry one day, and decided to start throwing up. Of course, I'm simplifying my double-twisting dive into the abyss of the ED, but you get the point.

What's even stranger, is that I'm not restricting because I think I'm fat, and my goal is not to achieve anorexia. Also, I feel indifferent to the weight loss. I don't exactly get a high from it. On some level, I just really don't care; I know that I look fine and that I don't need to lose weight. Moreover, I want to become an eating disorder specialist some day, sooner than later, and so I don't want to ever become "sick" in that way again.

And yet, I still want to lose weight. What this shows me is that the mental dis-ease of this mental illness still has powerful ammunition, even in recovery.

"HOW" EDs change

As a person in recovery from a long struggle with bulimia, as well as a person studying to be an addiction specialist, I often ask myself, HOW do eating disordered persons change. I know from my own experience, it has been a long process of small changes over time, which has eventually led to large life changes. But I have to wonder, when, what was it, and how did that switch go off in my brain that said, "Okay, now you are ready to take action and change." Ya know, that paradigm shift that occurs that makes one realize that they want more out of life than the ED.

Everyone has there own process, clearly. As one who wants to be an ED therapist, I have to wonder (because of my own recovery), how much does therapy actually influence that moment when people decide to take that courageous leap of faith into recovery?

When I think of my own experience, I spent many years in therapy with no real behavioral changes. Not because my therapists weren't great, but rather because I had to hold on so tightly to the false sense of control/other benefits of the eating disorder. I'm wondering if there is a therapeutic way to "speed up" the process, allowing people to see that they don't need to hang on to the ED so long. To some extent, I think it's possible--by strengthening the rational self and helping one to create a sense of self outside of the ED. Most importantly, helping one create a support system. Without a support system, we are all pretty much screwed.

On the other hand, because we are dealing with a mental disorder, which comes with firmly planted irrationalities, maybe a therapist's job is to be there to plant therapeutic seeds, so that when one is ready, then they will be able to tap into that information and use it as a tool for change.

What prompted these thoughts, I guess, is that when I see friends who are completely entrenched in this disease, I wish I could say or do something to help them get out of their own way and experience life! It's so much better than the isolation of the ED!!!! Yes, I know... I'm powerless over people, places and things.

Living the Dream...

Wow, I can't believe it has been this long since I last posted. I apologize, however, I have a great excuse... I'm in graduate school! I have not had a single moment to do anything outside of studying, attending my internship, and working. Anyhoo...

As I sit here, looking out of my 12th-floor apartment window, onto the drizzly streets of Broadway, I feel so grateful to be back in the city. When I left NYC 8 years ago, and carted myself off to rehab, I felt so awful that once again my eating disorder had beat me. All I ever wanted was to live in this city, free from the desire to binge and purge, so that I could live out my dreams; which, at that time, was dance. While I did do that, my entire experience was overshadowed by the cloud of dysfunction hanging over my head.

Now, I'm back, this time pursuing my MSW in clinical social work at NYU, and I have to say that life tastes pretty darn good. I don't binge and purge anymore (just for today), thankfully.

The eating disorder mindset, however, is still quite present. I feel caught between the person I was, and the person I want to become. While I know intellectually that I don't want the private hell of the eating disorder, I still have a constant desire to lose weight (don't all women--even those without disorders?). Because I have been pounding the pavement of NYC like a maniac, out of sheer business, and because I'm making better choices of not emotionally eating, I have lost weight. I think that there is nothing wrong with my body, yet, I want to lose more. This is why eating disorders are classified as a mental disease (dis-ease).

Ultimately, I don't want to lose too much, because if I look "sick," then I won't be able to work in the area of therapy I want to--working with eating disorders. So, that's what I mean when I say I'm caught between my unhealthy and healthy self.

Anyway, for today, I will eat my food as planned. For everyone (like I used to be) who doesn't trust that a food plan works, it does! In fact, many of my bulimic friends in recovery have lost weight! I know that self-knowledge avails us nothing, and that the reasons for staying in the ED extend far beyond the possibility of weight loss... so I don't mean to sound reductionist.

Well, off to do homework! I will try to post much more often.

It's so nice to be caught up in life, instead of food!!

Living Within the Parameters of Imperfect Abstinence...An Interesting Dilemma

When I think of "abstinence," as I learned in treatment, I think of no sugar, wheat or flour, no restricting, bingeing, or purging, weighing and measuring, following a food plan to the letter, etc. While this was great for me at the time, I eventually began to seek out moderation in my food practices.

Moderation is wonderful, except when you have a brain that defines abstinence as perfection; meaning, encompassing all of the above, every single day. Moderation has allowed me to not follow the "no sugar, wheat or flour" regimen--because, unlike the compulsive overeater, who has an allergy to those substances, my addiction doesn't send me off running to the races when I ingest sugar, wheat, or flour. While I'd spent plenty of time b/p, I was most-addicted to purging, thus alleviating any feeling of fullness (i.e., uncomfortableness).

Where guilt ensues is in the following my food plan perfectly bit. Every day, I plan my food. Some days I eat exactly as planned. But on most days, I will eat an extra of this, or skip that, which makes my perfectionistic brain go crazy!

My dilemma is that I want to achieve what I have defined as perfect abstinence. But, the real question to ask myself is, do I really need to? Why do I have to do it perfectly? Couldn't "perfect abstinence" be just as mentally shackling as the ED itself? I'm beginning to think so.

So, the question then is HOW do I mentally train myself to accept imperfect abstinence? A lot of mental conditioning and cognitive restructuring is my guess...oy vey!

FOR TODAY: I will attempt to follow my food plan perfectly, but if I don't, I will practice being gentle with myself.

Off to do some mental push-ups!!!