recoverbee

sometimes i like to write stuff .... ^.^ .... i write about my feelings, about recovery, about love, about hate, about whatever is on my mind really

[recover-bee]

the thing about recovery

I've always had that thing about the word recovery and what it meant to most, if not all of my therapists.

Recovery was always portraied as the one goal you needed to achieve in order to be done with therapy or to be 'healthy'. But what does healthy in regards to mental health even mean?

I remember that every time I gained weight or had a somewhat normal and healthy eating habit people, including therapists and psychiatrists thought that I was somehow magically healed and good to go, which I wasn't. The problem was that from the outside I appeared healthy but on the inside I was still struggling.

A lot of times I was forced to eat, I didn't have a choice but as soon I was out of hospital I started losing weight again. So during that time I never actually was healthy and I'm still not today.

Mental health starts on the inside and that's why it is so hard for people on the outside to know. I had to start with battling my own beliefs, how I saw myself and find out what was lying underneath my eating disorder before I could start gaining weight on my own.

And even though I'm doing fine regarding my eating disorder I wouldn't consider myself healthy or recovered. There are times when I still hate myself, when I feel fat and ugly and not loved, when I feel like I need to lose weight again. And sometimes I do, I lose a pound or two but I'm able to stop myself and gain those pounds all on my own because I know it is the right thing to do.

And I think that that will never change. I probably won't ever be able to eat like a 'normal' person who never experienced anything like an eating disorder.

While I belive that I will get even better and I will be able to reduce those negative thoughts to a minimum I know that 50 years from now I probably still will struggle with loving myself. There will be times when I will think negative about my self and maybe it will be once a year or even less often but it will happen and I'm okay with that. I can handle it and I feel great thinking about that future.

But still that would mean that I won't ever be able to fully recover from several of my mental disorders and I won't ever be able to consider myself healthy even though those symptoms may not be enough to actually diagnose me with the illnesses I'm diagnosed with now.

I've always found that very discouraging until I started to think about recovery differently.

I like to use metaphors for abstract things and that's what I did with recovery as well. In thought about it a long time and came up with the so called 'road of recovery.

Recovery isn't the end goal, it is the path, the road, the process of getting better. It is a very bumpy road with lots of ups and downs and crossways but it will always continue without the purpose to lead me somewhere specific but to guide me for my entire life.

Before I thought about recovery like that I always hated myself for failing, for relapsing, for going back to old habits. I had the feeling that every time something like that happened I had to start from scratch and that's what made me give up on myself.

After a long time and with a lot of hard work I started to learn that I had to accept those relapses and destructive behaviours while still trying to change them.

In the beginning that seemed to be impossible because I thought by accepting things like that I was encouraging myself to do them ad therefore getting worse and worse.

What helped me in the end was visualising what relapses were on my 'recovery road'. Maybe it's taking a step back or falling down but it does not men leaving that path and no matter how often that happened eventually I would always continue walking that way.

It helped me to forgive myself for what I did all those times and to move on no matter how bad it was.

Let me explain that with he example of self harm. I tried to stop so many times but I did it again and again and every time that happened I gave up and in to the urge to stop trying to stop. I failed so I didn't have to try again cause I would fail again anyways.

The truth is that relapsing doesn't mean that you fail, it is a normal part of recovery.

So every time I self harmed I tried to tell myself that I took a step back but that I was still able to go on walking. It didn't mean that I stopped recovery anymore it just meant that I had to go on trying.

What helped as well was telling myself that my goal wasn't to be healthy forever but to work on standing up after relapses quicker, hating myself less for it, forgiving myself every single time, making the gap between to relapses longer and eventually self harm les often over time, step by step.

Guess what, it kind of worked. I didn't think that I was able to do it myself but today I can say that the last time I hurt myself is almost a year ago even though I think about it more often. And I can even say that I am somewhat proud of myself even though I am not 'healthy'.

I want to encourage you to think about what recovery means to you and what definition of that word will benefit you the most and in the best case ease your personal journey and help you feel the best you can.

And at last I want you to know, that even if it feels like for every step forward you take two backwards doesn't mean that you won't ever get better. I know how fucking hard it is and that you feel like giving up all the time but it is possible. Not gonna lie it needs a lot of work but I know that you can make it through.

I never thought that I would be where I am now. I still feel like shit a lot of the time and I struggle often but I already came so far and I know that I will be able to work through so much more because it is worth it. It's s worth it.

You're worth it!

[recover-bee]

How I got over my ex boyfriend

Everybody who has been broken up with probably knows that feeling of infinitive sadness pared with infinitve love for the person you hate at the same time. What was different for me, and probably a lot of other people with bpd, was the intensity of those feelings and how long they were part of my daily life.

For a long time I couldn't spend a minute without thinking about him. I couldn't feel anything when it came to stuff that had nothing to do with him, I was way to consumed by my feelings for him.

I started stalking him on social media, trying everything to follow his every step, which wasn't particulary hard thanks to the map function of snapchat but it consumed every second of my life.

In every situation I was I imagined him being on my side, which made it impossible for me to enjoy any moment, cause after a time I would always realise that my imagination didn't match reality.

Whenever there was a free minute I started dreaming about him coming back for me, apologising for what he did and making up for it. I started to build a life for us, a life in which we would always be together and where I was the happiest person alive.

At it's worst I couldn't stop all the daydreaming, no matter where I was and what I was doing. So I started to lose contact to the real world and got even lonlier and more desperate. Desperate for him to love me back.

The only problem was that I got disappointed every day cause he never came back into my life, he never even showed me any sign of interest or regret. I tried to reach out to him but he pushed me away.

Still I couldn't give up all my hope and I made up all sorts of explanations why he wouldn't admit that he still loved me. I didn't allow myself to think about that maybe he did break up with me because he just didn't love me anymore.

There were some moments in which I realised that it may be over forever. These moments felt like hell because my whole world came crushing down on me. The thought that I had lost him forever destroyed everything I had, which wasn't much anyways.

But no matter how heartbreaking these moments were I always got back into my imaginative world in no time. Hope, dreams and disappointment became a vicious circle I couldn't escape no matter how hard I've tired.

So how did I get over him? I wish I could give you a definite answer to that question, I wish I could give you one advice that would get you over whatever person you obsessing about in a negative way. But I can't.

The only thing I can tell you for sure is that it is going to take time. A lot of time.

It's been over a year since he broke up with me and most of that time I was sure that I still loved him the same if not even more. We've only been a couple for like four months but I ended up needing three times the length of the relationship just to start to deal with the break up in a healing way.

The most important thing for me was to realise that I wasn't in love with my ex boyfriend anymore but with the person I created in my imagination. He may have his name and his appearance but he became a completely different person, a person who the real boy would never be.

No matter how much I loved him and how nice he could be, I know that our relationship was toxic as hell. He may be a good person but he never was anything good for me. That's why he broke up with me. I was as toxic for him as he was for me. The only difference was hat he realised it after several weeks while it took me a year longer to come to that conclusion.

So I may not be able to tell you how to get over a break up or a loss of a loved person but I want to tell you something I had to learn the hard way. It all happens for a reason.

I'm aware of how cliché that sounds and I always hated people who told me that but it's true. Most time we just don't see the reason right away.

And even more importantly I want you to know that things can get better. For the first months I thought that I could never stop loving him, that I could never love somebody else, that I would never stop feeling that desperate sadness, that I wouldn't be able to get over him.

Yet here I am, sitting in front of a laptop with tears rolling down my face because I am so happy that I am better today.

I know that I don't love him, sometimes I even ask my self if I ever did or if I just wanted to be loved that much that I didn't care about who gave me that love.

I stopped thinking about him every second and if he comes back into my thoughts, which does happen sometimes not gonna lie, I don't start imagining anything, I don't feel desperate anymore, I don't want him to come back, I actually want him to stay out of my life.

He's a memory now. He belongs in my past and I'm able to keep him there.

I don't think that I'm completely over him yet but I have come a long way and I know for sure that I will be able to go the rest of the path as well.

My biggest challenge right now is to live in the reality again. I've been absent for so long that I felt like I was all alone when I finally started to recover. I was so consumed by my daydreaming and by him that I thought I didn't need anyone else.

Now that I'm back I feel quite lonely but at the same time I'm eager to change that and this time not only in my thoughts but also in actions. I feel like I'm even able to fall in love again.

What I wanted to tell you is that even if you feel like things are never going to change I can promise you that they will. Sometimes it just needs a whole lot of time but I know that you will be able to carry on and pull through to come out happier at the other end. Also it's okay to ask for as much help as you nedd when you feel like you can't make it out on your own.

And if you feel like there's nobody to talk to you can always contact me and I'll do my best to give you whatever you need.

You deserve someone who makes you feel good, not just sometimes but all the time. You deserve to be loved and if a person can't give you that you will be better of without them even if it doesn't feel that way.

[recover-bee]

A new year has just begun and to be honest I didn’t have the best start. Every year on new years eve I promise myself to do everything better next year, to have the best year of my life, to be in a better place this time next year. It never works out though. Today I feel just a sad, depressed and lonely as I felt last year. Realising that makes me feel even worse. It feels like everything still is the same, like nothing’s changed at all, like time is standing still. That’s not true though. Nothing’s the same, I’m not the same. I’m a different person from who I used to be a year ago. It just doesn’t feel like that. A friend of mine told me to write down all the things that happened to me the last 12 months, the positive and the negative moments. I would really recommend you to write down everything that happened to you if you feel the same. So what about me? Was there really nothing that changed at all? I’ve been hospitalised three times for several weeks and months, gained 40 pounds but losing 30 of them later on, finally decided that I really wanted to recover, didn’t cut or purge for more than 9 weeks. I survived some of the darkest moments but also created some of the happiest memories of my life. I moved from home to a new city and started working in a new place. I got in and out of a relationship that was amazing an toxic at the same time, cried my eyes out over a guy that wants worth the tears, started to trust people again just to lose some of them on my way. I lost one of the most important people in my life but got to know so many new people. I met a guy that seems to be really nice. I had a lot of ups and downs, good times and bad times. I had some of my lowest lows but also some of my highest highs. What about you? We may feel the same but we are not. We made mistakes, learned from them and moved on. We grew from every challenge that life gave us no matter how hard it was. We managed to survive every bad day so far. Just because our emotions are the same they were a year ago it doesn’t mean that everything’s the same. Things can change but it needs time until you really feel the change. We still have a long way to go and the hardest thing probably is that we don’t know how long it will be. We don’t know if we have to fight for another year or ten or even longer. That’s scary and sometimes we don’t know if we’ll make it that far but from my experience things will work out. No matter how long our way may be, we are one year closer to the day we’ll finally say that we are okay or even good. Every year, month, week, day, hour, minute and second we keep on trying our goal gets a little bit closer. Every relapse brings us closer to the time when relapses will be a long gone memory. We managed to get through so so far, we survived not matter the odds and I know that we have the power to go on doing that for how ever long it’s necessary. It’s not only the good times but also the bad times that’ll move us forward on that stony path. We are so far from where we used to be and that is something we should be proud of, and this time next year we will be even further on our way to recovery.  With this in mind I wish you a happy new year that will let us grow even stronger. We can go the rest of the way. I believe in you and so should you.

(It would be really cool if you could repost this post and write down the things you did in 2017 and what has changed for you from a year ago. I think that would be such a nice thing to read.)

[recover-bee]

I’ve had a fear of gaining weight. I’m 15, 5’6, and 118 lbs which is on the lower end of healthy. I feel super guilty if I eat unhealthy or gain weight. I always want to get the motivation to diet and eat healthy. Could this become anorexia or some eating disorder or is it normal teenage problems? I just saw your account and I’m hoping you would have some insight.

I think there’s no definite answer to that question. There are probably a lot of teenagers struggling with their weight and theirs self esteem but that doesn’t mean that it is completely normal. Everybody can develop an eating disorder but some are more likely to than others. I think you’re part of the first group but again that doesn’t mean that you definitely will get an eating disorder. The fear of gaining weight may be the first sign of an eating disorder. Realising that though will make you more sensitive towards unhealthy developments regarding your eating habits. I have to mention that I’m not a trained professional so if you want to be sure go and see a psychiatrist or therapist and ask them for their opinion.Remember one thing: Yoyre perfect the way you are. You don’t have to lose weight to be loved. If you want to eat healthy do it but do it to be healthy and not to lose weight. And if there’s something i can help you with reach out.

[recover-bee]

So Christmas is over and a new year is just about to begin. I’ve already told you that this time of the year isn’t the easiest one for me. I’ve had an eating disorder for the longest part of my life and I’m still fighting to get better. Christmas has always been a struggle since there’s so many things to eat. There’s the big Christmas dinner at grandma’s house, hundreds of mince pies wherever you go, a little piece of chocolate ever day for 24 days and all the sweets you get for Christmas. Christmas is all about eating. Even people without an eating disorder struggle with overeating and weight gain. Now imagine how hard it would be if you had problems with eating anyways. You want to eat but at the same time you don’t want to, there all these delicious things that have a ton of calories. It’s all either sugary or fatty what makes those things taste like heaven but also make you fat. Or at least that’s what I think. So I’ve always ended up eating a lot, feeling guilty and disgusting, than throwing up just to eat again. And that’s obviously unhealthy as hell. This year was the first year in a long time I didn’t purge at all and it feels so good. It still was hard because the guilt and the anger I felt towards myself didn’t just vanish but somehow I managed to get through it. I tried to accept these bad feelings without acting on them. The real problem started after Christmas when everybody got back to their normal eating habits except me (and a lot of other people but hey that’s just how it feels). There’s a loud voice in my head telling me to skip meals, eat less or just eat nothing at all. It’s telling me that I need to lose weight as fast a I can because I’ve gotten so fat over Christmas ( I actually just gained a pound but my minds not interested in the real facts ). The challenge I face now is not to listen to that voice and to always remind myself that I want to get better and that skipping a meal is not an option. Skipping a meal should never be an option. Neither to erase your ‘mistakes of the past’ nor as a regular habit to lose weight. Even if you gained weight over Christmas or any time of eating a lot and you go back to your normal eating habits (and by that i mean healthy eating habits not like 300 calories a day) your weight will go back to normal by itself without starving. Another thing that I have to learn is that by eating a little bit to much for three or four days I won’t gain 20 pounds. Over the last few days I realised that my perception of calories and weight gain or loss still is very unhealthy and bluntly said wrong. Eating healthy and not being underweight is only one part of recovery. The other part, questioning your beliefs and principles and gaining a sense of normality regarding your body and your eating, feels even harder. I know that I still have a long way to go and I don’t know if I can ever say that I’m fully recovered but if I don’t try it I’ll never now. And it’s worth the effort. I already feel a little bit better and I can’t wait to say that I feel a lot better. One last thing I wanted to tell you: Try to allow yourself to sometimes eat a little bit to much or sweet and unhealthy things. Even if you’ll feel horrible afterwards just remind yourself that one day you want to be able to enjoy these things again.

[recover-bee]

Oh god I just need to thank you for what you are doing with this blog. Really, thank you! This is beautiful and so are you!💕 Stay strong💖

And I just need to thank you for telling me. ♡ it feels so good to see that I can reach people with what I wrote and maybe change a tiny little thing in someone’s life.

[recover-bee]

hello. i just wanted to tell you that i found your blog a few minutes ago and it's the best thing that happened to me today. it is so pretty, please keep it up. have a lovely day!

Thank you so much ♡ that's what keeps me going.

[recover-bee]

Christmas wasn’t easy this year. It never is.

I guess I’m not the only one feeling like that. Christmas is about love and happiness, about kindness and giving. People are supposed to be happy and full if joy, which makes it so much harder if you aren’t. It’s almost like people expect you to have the best time of the year. You feel pressured to smile, to talk, to laugh. You feel like your not allowed to feel down.

What if you’re not? What if you feel like shit? What if you don’t want to be excited? What if you just can’t smile, talk or laugh?

That’s how I felt this Christmas. I felt lonely, anxious and depressed. To make it worse I tried to hide it all the time, to play the fun and loud little girl I was years ago. It was horrible. I felt like crying all the time but I couldn’t. Nobody knew what was going on so nobody was there for me.

Remember what I told what Christmas is all about?

Love. I hate myself. My heart is still broken. I miss him. I want him. I can’t have him. I’m lonely, nobody really loves me. I’m just to much. I don’t feel loved.

Happiness. I’m depressed. I wanna cry, scream and run. I’m not happy.

Kindness. I can’t be kind to myself. There’s no more strength left.

Giving. I’m empty. There’s nothing left to give.

So what if I told you that Christmas isn’t about love and happiness, kindness and giving?

What if I told you that Christmas is about yourself?

Be kind to yourself, be yourself. Don’t hide from others no matter what they expect from you. If you’re sad at Christmas that’s just how it is. You’re allowed to be sad at Christmas. You’re allowed to have whatever emotion you have at Christmas. You’re allowed to have whatever emotion every day or the year.

Allow yourself to feel your emotions, to show them. Don’t let those expectations bring you down even more. Allow others to see you, to be with You, to help you. Don’t push them away, let them in and listen to them in return.

You’re not ruining anything.

You’re making people happy by just being there no matter how you’re feeling.

That’s what Christmas is about.

And maybe about love as well. So if you didn’t feel loved this Christmas or don’t feel loved right now I want to give you some love. You deserve it.

[recover-bee]

You are the most important person in your life. I know that it often doesn't feel like it but honestly just give a shit. Even if you feel like you're the most unimportant and ugliest person in the world (which you're not) don't act on it. Do the opposite of what your mind is telling you. I know that it is hard but I also know that it is possible. You have to try again and again, not giving up, no matter what happened the day before, no matter the uncountable relapses. Treat yourself like you would treat your best friend or any other person you love very much and one day you'll actually start feeling love for yourself. That's a promise.

[recover-bee]

I absolutely love your blog. Thank you for existing. I really appreciate the posts about not needing him and that poem I reblogged about the idea of me. Relatable content.

Thank you 😊

[recover-bee]

I just found your account and I love it so much. I've been struggling a lot recently and you have helped a lot.

Thank you so much. You don't know how much thats means to me ❤

[recover-bee]

Relapses

I just wanted to tell you why I didn't post anything for the last few weeks and months.

This is a recovery blog but I didn't really feel like i still was in recovery. I relapsed so many times and I thought that I couldn't share that with anybody because it would bring them down.

Now I kind of realised that relapses are a part of recovery, a very important one actually, and that sharing my experiences would have maybe helped people who are going through things like that, just for them to know that they're not alone, that they're going through something that doesn't end recovery.

I also didn't really feel like sharing my thoughts, because they were so personal, so specific for my situation, so private, I made them my secret.

Nobody really knows how I am right now, because I am afraid that they will leave me if they just know how broken I am inside. However I also realised that hiding things from the people you love will make things so much harder. So I'm trying to clear things up.

And I really want to get back in to the whole writing and maybe even poetry thing, since it helped me cope so much.

What I am trying to say is, that relapses aren't a reason to give up on you, they're just steps on a very bumpy road to being fully recovered.

Relapsing is totally normal and one should try to accept them as they are, without judging themselves, without giving up, but as a power to keep on working, to change things, to learn from them and to try to do things differently the next time.

[recover-bee]

I’ve been self harming for like a couple of years. There are a million reasons to do so. Inner pain, tension, feelings of quilt, anger, emptiness… just to name a few.

For me there was one reason that stood out, in a really negative way. I used to self harm in the bad times but I also did so in the good times. I cut myself even if I wasn’t in pain, if I was calm, if I felt good things like happiness and love .

But why? I needed a lot of time to figure it out. Love was the reason. In a way. Well, the true reason is that I didn’t love myself in any way.

I thought that I was an ugly, annoying, uninteresting, boring and just unlovable person. I thought that I had nothing to offer, nothing in order for people to be with me, to care for me, to love me.

Well, there was one thing I had. One thing that made people stay and care. You guessed it. Self harming. Cutting. Restricting. Purging.

I thought, that people would be with me if they had a reason to stay, to care for me.

I thought if I showed them how poorly I was even if I wasn’t all the time, they would see a small, weak and hurting girl, that needed to be saved.

I thought if I just gave them a reason to stay, they would. I basically showed people that if they weren’t there for me all the time I would self harm. I told people that if they left me I would kill myself.

I thought if I didn’t have my illness, there was nothing else to offer.

That’s why I couldn’t stop doing it. I didn’t allow myself to get better. I didnt allow myself to be strong or happy or just okay. Because I thought if I was okay, nobody would care about me anymore. Why should they?

Well, guess what, I was wrong. People left even though I was weak. People left because I didn’t stop hurting myself.

I needed to realise that in order to actually stop self harming. I needed to see that I often tried to manipulated people by cutting or losing weight.

And that was when I decided to stop.

I decided I didn’t need self harming.

Believe me, it’s been hard. I relapsed a lot of times, I gave up, gave in to the demons. The important thing is that I tried it again and again and again. It’s hard work but it’s worth it.

I now know that I have so much more that people can love about me. That I can love about myself. A lot of the time I don’t actually feel like that, but that’s the next thing to work on. Step by step.

Self harming and mental illness started to be a part of me over time. Now that it’s missing, it feels like there’s a gap in my personality. I’m not always the weak girl anymore. So who am I now?

To be honest, I still don’t really know. But I can’t wait to fill the gap.

[recover-bee]

Honestly, don't ever do that. You are the most important person in your life. Fix yourself before you try to fix others. Don't destroy yourself for whatever reason, you don't deserve any bad. You can't fix someone if they're not willing to actually fix themselves. You can be a helper but you can't be a saviour. If someone wants to be saved or fixed by someone else without working hard for it themselves, don't even bother trying to do it for them. As hard as it sounds that is the truth and learning the truth can be hurtful. Don't you always wish for a person in your life, who is there for you when you need them, who loves you no matter what, who would do anything to make you happy, who won't abandon you, who will stay forever? Well, guess what, that person is you. There's nothing wrong in caring about other people or trying to help them but don't put their needs in front of yours. Just treat them equally. Treat yourself like you would treat somebody you love. And one day you will actually love yourself.

[expandingourminds]

I deserve kindness. I deserve unconditional love. I deserve to feel respected. I deserve to be prioritized. I deserve forgiveness.

[recover-bee]

Sometimes our mind can be a dark and lonely place but that doesn’t mean that our life has to be dark and lonely.

Just because I think that I hate myself I won’t act like it. Just because I think that I deserve the worst I won’t stop searching for the good things. Just because I think I should cut myself, restrict, purge or damage my body in any other way I won’t do it. Just because I think I can’t do things I won’t stop trying. Just because I think that I’ll never be able to get better I won’t give up. I’ll care for myself, even if my mind tells me not to.

[recover-bee]