-Thoughts are so powerful. I’ve been convinced so many times that I’m doing the right thing and making the correct decisions, to be told that I’m becoming more and more unwell. Anorexia has a funny way of distorting every disordered thought and making it feel like your own. Talking through your thoughts and letting them rationalise them, is the best way to manage this.
-We form habits very quickly! Introduce new foods, add extra snacks, push yourself further and you will very quickly get your head around it, allowing it to become part of your routine.
-You can’t just challenge something once- you have to keep doing it to overcome it. An example of this for me, may be eating a food that I have always avoided – pasta for example, If I have it once, I can’t just tick it off and avoid it again – the barrier remains.
-Our support system is everything – even if it doesn’t always feel that way.
-You will never feel ‘ill enough’ or even ready to take on recovery.
-It’s about thinking something and doing the total opposite. I find it really hard to explain my eating disorder to people, being a lover of an analogy, I found one that seems to summarise it pretty well. Imagine being told to hold your hand under a tap, as the water starts to get warmer your automatic response would be to pull it away- everything within you would be screaming to take your hand away from the tap as you’re convinced it will burn you – but everyone around you is telling you to hold it there, promising that it won’t. That’s what recovery often feels like, going against everything that I think and feel and putting trust in to others – it may feel too dependent, but it’s the way things sometimes have to be. Remember this is temporary.
-Eating disorders are extremely consuming. If you give your illness an inch, it takes a mile & will do everything in its power to hold on to you.
-Everything people say will be twisted by disordered thoughts. I’ve recently got to a point in recovery where I’m extremely vulnerable to people’s comments- somehow my eating disorder can twist any comment in to something negative. In these cases, I have to give myself a little talking to and remember that it’s the illness that’s against me- not my family and friends.
-People are never going to understand - unless you tell them!
-I’ve used my eating disorder to avoid/cope with problems for as long as I remember – My eating disorder has become the problem, leaving me feeling completely overwhelmed and unaware of how to cope. This means that all of my emotions are natural and expected, whilst I’m learning to manage them and overcome this battle.
Most
importantly, the biggest lesson that I’m learning is that food doesn’t just
taste ‘as good as skinny feels’ – it tastes a million times better.
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