WHAT I REALLY LEARNED IN TREATMENT @whatireallylearnedintreatment - Tumblr Blog

Making Friends On The Outside World

#recovery problems #recovery probs #ed recovery

“Bring Everything To Group”

Misophonia & The Expressive Arts Therapist

1. Get that overpriced top-end mascara. It’s much cheaper than the hospitals and treatment centers. So go ahead. Buy the $23 mascara and go home and feel like a goddess. 2. The ultimate paradox of getting better is this: You cannot have a life until you are well, but you cannot be well until you have a life. Almost all of your struggles in recovery will come from this. 3. You must start creating a life, even if you don’t feel completely better yet. I know you love to-do lists, so fill them now with tasks to help you connect with the world again. Texting that friend you haven’t talked to in ages. Applying to that job. Writing letters. Reading books. These things are more of your recovery than the meal plans and doctors and perfectly-filtered pictures of your oatmeal will ever be. 4. The problems your eating disorder helped you to run from are going to be back and all-too-alive when you hit a certain point. The idea that recovery is nothing but ice cream and sunshine is a lie. If it was raining when you left, it will be raining when you come back. Don’t quit therapy. You are going to need to learn to deal with the clouds in a new way, and it’s going to be pretty terrible sometimes. 5. You may find yourself thinking about the eating disorder now more than ever. While you’re walking to class, talking to friends. It will be a drumbeat in the back of your head, whispering, “you’re not sick anymore, but remember when…” 6. You will look at sick photos and have the odd sensation of both wanting to go back and feeling that even your lowest wasn’t enough. It will leave knots in your stomach, because you will feel your get-out-of-life free card fading. If not your sickest, how much will it take to finally get the comfort you’ve been searching for? It will occur to you that the sense of peace for which you were destroying your life was all just a mirage. You will quickly tuck this terrifying thought away. 7. Recovery is not life. Recovery is a protected, pre-portioned, planned path towards Better, and life is none of those things. Life is messy. Life is heartbreaking. Life is excessive and bright and bold. 8. You were wired in such away that the world has always felt a bit too loud. Studies show that criticism hits your brain harder than your friends’, that you empathize more deeply with those around you, that you are more sensitive to pain. You became a professional harm-avoider not because you were weak, but because you were trying to survive. Don’t compare yourself to others. Remember that your brain has the volume turned up much louder than theirs. 9. At some point, the unfairness of this all will hit you. This is a good sign. It means you are coming to believe two important truths that you before never quite internalized: 1. You did not choose this. 2. You did not deserve this. 10. When the eating disorder leaves, there will be a gaping space where it once was. You will not know what to do with this. You will first try to fill it with Recovery. Then you may try other things: A relapse. An obsession with fitness. A boy. A girl. Constant reminiscing on your illness. You will wonder what on earth you filled this space with before getting sick. 11. I know you feel like you should have it figured out by now, and I know how much you hate uncertainty. But the truth is that learning how to fill this vacancy is going to be a lifelong pursuit. And you have only just begun. 12. Here’s the important part: Everyone around you is doing just the same. Those still in their eating disorders have plugged up their holes with illness and destruction, but you’re not one of them anymore. You are one of the vulnerable again, and unlike them, every day you are becoming. 13. The pain of becoming is constant and real. 14. In the end, you will have a whole life to show for it.

Sarah T., 14 Things Nobody Told Me About Recovery (via comemorningslight)

beetlestothestars

Coping with weight gain.

I have recently received SEVERAL messages asking about how to cope with weight gain/body changes and, unfortunately, an even greater number of people telling me that they are done trying because they can’t handle it anymore. For that reason, I have been meaning to write up a more inclusive post to address this topic. However, I also must admit that this is the most difficult thing for me to give advice about because it is the thing that has been the greatest challenge for me in my own recovery.

At first I was thinking about writing up a list of specific ways to cope with weight gain (i.e. covering mirrors with affirmations, throwing out old clothes, avoiding scales/measuring tapes, etc) but I think I am going to take this a different direction. I want to widen the scope because our eating disorders fixedly keep weight gain/body changes on the surface of a much greater picture.

1. Motivation How much do you want to recover? How much do you hate your current life? What are you willing to give up in order to change? I truly believe that you need to get to a point where you hate your eating disorder enough that you are willing to surrender control in order to have a new life. Sure, you could just maintain an artificially low weight by dieting/over-exercising but is that the way you want your life to be? Do you want to feel like shit all of the time in order to have your body? Do you want your thoughts to be inundated by food and weight? The sad reality is that those things may be worth it to you; if they are, you are right: weight gain will not be worth it. You will only be able to cope with weight gain if you can identify believable reasons for it that lie in accordance with the life you want for yourself. My advice is to hold on to these reasons throughout the day because you have the responsibility to construct your own motivation.

2. Reality The reality is that you can restrict/use behaviors and lose weight but what will that really give you? It will give you a little more time with your eating disorder but that time is short-lived. You will have to gain weight at some point (or die) so why not now? Why waste even more time in your eating disorder when you will ultimately be in the same body that you would be in if you had recovered sooner?

3. Passing Time Each year of your life is invaluable and you will never get lost time back. Fast forward yourself to a year from now; what will you want your life to look like in regards to your eating disorder/recovery? Decide whether physical and mental suffering each day is worth it in order to lose a few pounds. Decide when it will be your time to rewrite your future.

4. Challenge Beautiful Who told you that you must have an emaciated stomach and frail legs in order be beautiful? Who wrote the definition of beautiful and why can’t you rewrite it? Challenge your beliefs and create new meaning. The world becomes a beautiful place when you detach it from society’s predisposed acceptation. Your body is not an exception.

5. Soul Acceptance When you are 70 years old, your body will sag and wrinkle. You will carry weight in places you never have before. Your visible abs and toned legs will dissapear. The body you spent your life enslaved to will be gone but your soul will continue to live. Start falling in love with your soul because unlike your body, it will only get stronger with age.

scienceofeds

Question

What do you think about the Cyanide & Happiness “Bulimia, Twice the Taste, No Calories” t-shirt (link)? Funny? Offensive? Stigmatizing? Depends on who is wearing it? Depends on your mood?

whatireallylearnedintreatment

Disgusting! As if it’s not mocked enough. And the 0 calories is a lie.

sheruns-shelifts

“But you don’t look like you have an eating disorder...”

People with eating disorders look like this:

People with eating disorders also look like this:

And this:

People with eating disorders can also appear like this:

Or this:

Or even this:

Bottom Line: Eating disorders are mental illnesses, with weight as a side effect. Just like someone cannot “look OCD,” or “look like they have bipolar disorder.” So please, next time you interact with someone regarding this topic, please be considerate of the fact that you do not have to “look sick” to be sick.

Embracing Stretch Marks