Dear Body, Love Self

At this point in recovery every day was starting to get easier. After my questioning/talking/crying/screaming phase I felt that my head was more clear than it had been in years. Each time I went to group a new light bulb seemed to turn on and my body was getting healthier too. I was taking less than half of the laxatives I was when I started and I was finding other ways to deal with my emotions.

I can remember my therapist giving me "coping techniques" for when I was feeling the urge to binge or take a laxative. One idea that has stuck with me is the idea of appealing to any sense but taste. For instance, when I was feeling urge to eat out of stress, sadness, loniliness, etc. I could choose to do something that appealed to sight. This didn't just mean to look at something. It meant to really look at something. So, I could find something that was appealing or interesting to look at and study it. Absorb it. Embrace it. Focus on that one thing for 5-10 minutes. I could listen to music, but I had to listen to every word and sink into the sound. This part of therapy was a huge help to me. By the time I did one of these things, my urge to binge or purge had subsided and I was able to move forward.

When I got down to three laxatives a day I was ready to be done with them. I didn't want to do it gradually anymore. I was just ready to say goodbye to them for good. So, at the beginning of December I stopped taking them completely and I felt insanely free. I had learned that I could survive without coping in that way.

One of my favorite memories from group was close to the end of treatment. One of the therapists was leading a Body Image group. She asked us all to write a letter to our bodies from ourselves. She gave us no other instruction. I was stumped. Everyone else was writing. I couldn't seem to separate myself from my body. My body was part of myself. Wasn't it? The therapist asked me if I was having trouble. "I just don't know what to say." I was finally able to write something. We went around the room and read our letters. I was last. It was emotional listening to these women I had come to love talk to their bodies. Some talked to their bodies negatively, some apologized, but all of them talked about how they wanted to love their bodies. I was last. It took me a minute to gather myself.

"When I started writing this letter my instinct was to write something negative about my body..."

I started to laugh and cry at the same time.

"...but i couldn't. For the first time in years, I had nothing negative to say to my body."

I was smiling so big but tears were streaming down my face and my heart was so full. The therapist and a couple of the other ladies cried too, and the therapist said, "This is why I love my job." This is what my letter said:

Dear Body,

I'm thinking about all you have endured.  I am thinking about the binges, the laxatives, the starvation, the dehydration. You haven't done anything to deserve the abuse I have given to you. You have kept fighting even when I gave you no means to do so. I have hated you so much even when you were fighting to give me a healthy home. I have loathed you even while you were doing beautiful things, like carrying my precious son. I'm so sorry.

I will look at you now with thankfulness, rather than disdain. I will reframe negative thoughts to remember the things you continue to give me. I will remind myself that you are a temporary vessel that is serving its purpose and doing it well.  I will take care of you. I will love you.

Love,
Self

I'm still trying to do these things every day. Some days are harder than others, but when I pull out this letter it helps me remember I am much more than just my body. It has done so much for me, but it's not who I am. I have bigger things to worry about than making this temporary shell look perfect and while I want to keep my body healthy, I want my first priority to be keeping my heart and soul healthy because those are the things that really matter.

Mourn. Accept. Live.

My therapist said she sees a lot of middle children with bulimia. By nature I am a nurturer, a lover, a feeler. I have always felt things very deeply. I can remember watching my little sister get spanked and crying my eyes out. I always wished they would just spank me because it would be less painful than seeing her be hurt.  I wonder sometimes if I just went around feeling everything for everything else and then stuffing it somewhere inside of me. Sympathy and empathy are such wonderful things to give, but I had allowed myself to give them in excess to the detriment of myself and my family.

Along with feeling things deeply, I also started caring way too much about what everyone thought about me. There are so many things wrapped up in this concept: the competition aspect of being one of three girls, being the daughter of a father who is incredibly fitness oriented, being part of a southern family who loves to eat, low-self esteem, moving in with my parents for two years while my husband was unable to find a full-time job. Without divulging ALL of my emotional baggage, there were a lot of dimensions to my eating disorder and they all started surfacing around this time.

It's still hard to decipher exactly how my eating disorder started taking control, but my therapist described it like this. "You're like a sponge. You absorb emotion, whether it's your own emotion or everyone else's. Eventually a sponge gets heavy and it has to be squeezed out." As she was saying this I could totally see the metaphor. Graphic, I realize, but the laxatives became a way for me to rid myself. It wasn't just about the food, or being skinny. It was about a release for all that emotional weight I had carried for so long. Okay, so what do I do about it? How do I stop caring so much? 

For the next couple of weeks I questioned. I questioned God. I questioned my life decisions. I questioned my reason for being. I addressed emotions I had never acknowledged. I cried. I yelled. I journaled. I mourned things I had never mourned. I shared with the group things I had never said out loud. I told them how I pictured things would be and how different they turned out. They cried with me. I dreaded every day. I knew the only behavior I could use was to feel every single thing and for so long I had learned to push those feelings away. It was exhausting. 

After taking time to mourn, cry and question, I learned it was ok for life to be different than I expected it to be. With the unconditional support of my family, my close friends, the therapists, and ladies in my group, I started to celebrate and appreciate things I had been too busy to think about. I had been so overloaded that I was not able to enjoy the blessings God had given me. Slowly, the realization of those things started to take the place of all of the negative things I had held on to for so many years. The more I talked about my feelings and things I hadn't been able to express, the more I was able to move on from those feelings and be the person I wanted to be. Sometimes we just have to step back and accept things in order to appreciate them. I was learning a day at a time that it was okay to have feelings. I learned to welcome feelings, keep some of them, and let some of them go. I started to live and not just survive and it felt good. It felt really good.

The Guest House

It was November. At this point in treatment I made a promise to myself that I was going to stop using behaviors. I was going to stop restricting and follow my meal plan. I was going to keep reducing laxatives. It has been 3 weeks of IOP and I was losing time. I needed to do what the therapists asked me to do to make sure I got better. I made this promise not realizing the challenges that lay ahead. I had no concept of how much I had come to rely on my behaviors to deal with my emotions. The first few meals were a breeze, but by the end of the second day eating all three meals and still reducing my laxative use, I felt like I was going crazy. I remember doing an exercise in an experiential group that was really eye opening. The therapist asked us to read this poem:

The Guest House

By: Rumi

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

After reading the poem we were given a coloring page. It was a house. We were instructed to pick 5 colors to represent the core emotions: joy, sadness, anger, fear, love. We could color our picture any way we wanted to color it. I colored the sky outside yellow (joy). The house itself was blue (sadness), with a pink door (love) and green windows (fear). There was red smoke coming out of the chimney (anger). I didn't think too much about it as I colored away happily.

The therapist asked us all to share with the group what each color represented. I always felt like the therapists were so wise and all-knowing and were sort of "tricking" us into recovery. I realize now they don't always know what we're thinking. Their jobs are simply to facilitate realization and change, and I appreciate that ability so much.

So, we're going around the room, every woman sharing her house, which really represents herself, and it gets to me. I've heard what the other ladies have said and felt sorry for them all. How sad to have all that sadness, anger, etc. I'm always really good at having sympathy for other people. Me, though? I was just coloring a pretty picture. When the therapist asked me to try to analyze why I chose to place the emotions where I did, I know I looked confused. I literally could not answer because I was so taken aback. It was Tracy who spoke up to analyze me. "I think the outside of your house is happy and joyful because that's what you want everyone to see. Your door is pink because you let people in very easily and show love right away. The main part of the house is sadness because I think you feel that way the most. Your windows are fear because you're afraid to look out and see what's really going on, and your anger sneaks out sometimes like the smoke." The more she talked, the more emotional I became. I was so confused. That wasn't me. Was it? I was quiet the rest of the group (rare).

On the way home I kept thinking about that picture. I didn't want to be only "outwardly" happy. Was I? If so, why? What was I sad about? What was that smoke seeping out? It was time to explore that house a little more and figure out what was going on in there.