The Recovery Roller Coaster

My favorite roller coaster of all times is Rockin' Roller Coaster at DisneyWorld. But I'm actually not too picky when it comes to roller coasters...as long as they don't go backwards!  (That always makes me sick!) I love the ups and downs!  Nothing is more climatic than the "clink clink clink" of the motor chain pulling you up a big steep hill.  I love the adrenaline rush of the free falling feeling of a big drop. But there is one roller coaster ride that really causes me frustration...the recovery roller coaster. 

Recovery can feel like climbing (or more like clawing) your way out of a pit. There is no chain or rope or motor pulling you out and up.  You learn some tools and you fight and work for every inch. But, just like a roller coaster when you get to a high point, it's usually followed by a twisty drop. These drops don't come with breath taking adrenaline rushes. These drops come with frustration, anxiety, and exhaustion.  (And then you are left working to get back up top again!)

Over the past couple weeks I've been evaluating my annual progress. I sat down with my therapist and shared with her my list of all that I had learned from her in the last year. Then I shared with her the things I still wanted to work on. We had a great session and talked about ways I can conquer the problems I still face. As I left her office, I was feeling happy, strong, in control, and riding high above the deep dark pit of my eating disorder.  I know that often highs can be followed by lows but it still always seems to sneak up on me!  

So, by the next day I wasn't feeling so happy, strong, or in control any more. All day long, I was distracted and had a hard time concentrating. I felt down and blue.  Then came the symptoms of anxiety. My stomach started to feel nervous. My heart beats faster. My chest and shoulders and arms feel tight. And next thing you know I start to panic because I'm panicking. I hate feeling this way. ED totally takes advantage during the time I'm feeling down.  I long for the "comfort" I get from restricting what I eat. Worst of all, ED starts in on my imperfections and flaws and also starts getting bossy. 

So a few days were not pleasant or fun. It was discouraging, exhausting, and depressing. However, I did what I had been taught to do. I reached out for help. I still have to do the work to pull myself back up all by myself.  The thing is, help means I'm not alone. Help means moral support.  Also (and most importantly), I fought back. I woke up after a feeling so down and decided that day was going to be better. I'm not going to lie and say it was perfect smooth fun carnival ride after that decision. I still had ED in my head. I still had to make very deliberate choices to eat. I still had to work through some anxiety.  But I dusted myself off and started back up to the top of the recovery roller coaster. I know I can't ride at the highest peaks forever.  However, when I come down those drops, I can continue to work hard to get back on top!

All I really need to know about recovery I learned from Landry

When I was in high school a very popular book was published called "All I Really need to know I learned in Kindergarten". It was a huge success and spun off several copycat books and poems. Here's my version!

"All I Really Need to Know About Recovery I Learned from Landry"

Landry is the second therapist I worked with on my journey to overcome my eating disorder. My first therapist taught me a lot about eating disorders and helped me learn to trust in sharing my struggles with a therapist.   I also learned a few tricks and tools.  However, after working with her for only five short months, my family moved half way across the country and for eight hectic, crazy months I tried my best to deal with my challenges with out a therapist. It was too much and I completely hit rock bottom. It was a scary time. I decided to give up on recovery. 

Thank goodness for family and friends who all but pushed me into the capable hands of Landry at the Eating Disorder Recovery Center of San Antonio.  Our first meeting she taught me my first important lesson. After honestly telling her I no longer had a desire to work toward recovery, Landry matter of factly told me there was not much she could do to help me, if I didn't want help. She also reminded me of the reasons why recovery was worth it. I was in such a grim place but that one session shed the slightest sliver of light in my darkened mind and allowed the smallest prickle of hope to touch my heart. It also made a huge changed in my thoughts about recovery. It made me realize that no matter which therapist I worked with, no matter what challenges I faced, no matter how much I turned to others for help, no matter how much my family and friends loved me and worried, recovery is on ME!  It is my choice, it is my job!

So I took Landry's challenge and I decided to work.  Work is exactly what we did. Most of our beginning sessions were more like classes. Landry taught me all about dialectic behavior therapy (DBT). (I joking told my husband it was diabolical behavior therapy!)  After sharing certain struggles I had encountered during the week, Landry would be prepared with tools and tricks to overcome them. With dry erase marker in hand, she'd explain to me on her little white board how I could use these tools. Some sessions I'd leave and think, there is no way I can remember all that!  But each week I'd find myself remembering portions that I'd try hard to apply when I hit rough patches.  The tools worked!

Despite all this training, some challenges still completely overwhelmed me.  Landry wasn't just there for me during my once a week session. She encouraged me to call or text her ANYTIME I needed her. It took me a while to feel comfortable doing this. I felt guilty for contacting her, especially during times I knew she wasn't at the office. But the few times I've reached out to her, when I really felt helpless, she would reassure me and remind me of a tool to use to take care of the issue.  She never solved my problem, but helped me remember how to fix it myself.  Knowing she will always be there has given me the courage to be a bit more daring, to try new things or hard things.  I know if I fail or get anxious, she's just a text or call away with reassurance and helpful tools to fix the problem. 

As I have progressed in my use of the many tools Landry taught me, our sessions became less of a classroom environment and more of a "heart to heart". Although Landry still teaches me something new every time, our sessions build me up with determination and confidence. It's been during these "heart to heart" meetings that Landry has instilled in me one of my most valuable tools...to wonder. When I tell her about challenges I'm working on, at some point in our discussion she almost always says something like "I think you can just wonder why you are having those thoughts."  It's funny that such a little thing like "wondering" would become such a big step in my recovery. Instead of getting all worked up and beating myself up over eating disordered thoughts, I've learned to think about why I'm thinking those thoughts without judging them or myself and then just letting them go. My thoughts are not me!  My thoughts do not mean I have to act on them. Usually I can figure out why I'm thinking those thoughts and then address that with a tool Landry taught me about. 

As I get ready to turn another page of the calendar, I proudly look back at my year with Landry.  I only see her once a month now.  However, I leave her office with renewed trust and faith in my ability to recover. Recover!  RECOVER!  I honestly never thought it was something attainable.  She's taught me "all I really need to know about recovery".  AND more importantly, she's taught me to have confidence in myself.  Thank you Landry. 

Am I recovered?

There was a hopeless period in my struggle with an eating disorder when I felt like recovery was not possible. I honestly felt like there was no way I would ever stop having disordered thoughts. I would read about recovery, listen to people talk about their recovery, but never believed it was something that could happen to me. Even saying the word "recovery" felt bitter and false in my mouth. 

But something exciting and hopeful has happened in the last several months!  I find myself thinking about recovery as something I'm actually working on and climbing into. After my last therapy session I walked out of the building and all the sudden had the strongest urge to shout out for the world to hear, "I'M RECOVERING!"  Since I've been well trained by my amazing therapist to think and wonder about my thoughts, I realized the dramatic paradigm change and decided I should investigate. 

After lots of pondering on this topic I realized I completely changed my thinking on what recovery "looks" like. When I first started working on beating my eating disorder I thought recovery was never having another disordered thought about eating...never, ever again! So anytime I'd have those thoughts I would become discouraged and frustrated with myself. It was like three steps forward, two steps back. Progress was being made but I was so disheartened.  After realizing this, my therapist taught me that my thoughts are not me and I don't have to act on them. She told me that when she sees big stacked displays at the grocery store she always thinks about knocking them over, but that doesn't mean she does it. (Which painted such a funny picture in my mind of my sweet calm therapist running through a store like a one man demolition team destroying the huge towering displays of boxed soda or paper towels.  The visual still makes me smile!) 

That's when I knew that my thoughts might never change. Eating might always cause certain feelings, anxiety, and disordered thoughts...under certain circumstances. However, I could learn to deal with those thoughts without giving into them.  This was easier to understand than to accept. For many weeks I feel like I mourned the demise of my unrealistic view of what recovery was. I felt overwhelmed by the thought of having the eating disorder in my head for the rest of my life. But slowly a new picture of recovery was coming into focus in my mind. 

And then, another big change happened. One day I realized I had not thought about my eating disorder in a long time.  Maybe it had even been a whole week!  The thing about an eating disorder is it completely takes over your brain. It's 24/7 on your mind. At my worst it was almost debilitating. I literally had so little room for other thoughts in my mind that I felt like a recluse, although I was surrounded by people. As I worked on overcoming my eating disorder my mind vastly opened up, but IT was still there occupying it's little corner of my mind. Lately, I guess my eating disorder has been taking vacations. (That's fine by me!) I notice more frequent periods of time when I don't think about it. This has given me a new prospect on what recovery feels like. 

The final difference in my view on recovery is actually a huge change in my thinking about everything. Another trick eating disorders play on your mind is it makes you color blind. Everything is black and white. You are fat or you are skinny. You are pigging out or you are eating nothing. You are weighing every day or you can't weigh at all. You eat one or you eat all. You are the happiest you've ever been or you are in the depths of despair.  You are worth it or you are worthless. You are loved or you are hated. You have lots of support or you are completely alone. I could go on. Black and white thinking is dangerous. It's another trap eating disorders use to keep you from recovery. However, as I worked with my therapist and as I did the work to take back control of my mind I started seeing colors again.  All the sudden my black and white thinking about recovery was being challenged. Either you never have another disordered thought again (recovered) or you can only think disordered thoughts (not recovered).  I realized the fallacy in that thought. I saw some purple where I might still struggle with social eating but still go out to eat with friends. I saw some red where I am having a stressful day but still take care of my nutritional needs. I see some green when I listen to my body and feed it when it's hungry and stop when it's full. The whole rainbow of colors is there!

I used to avoid the word recovery. Now, I find it often bouncing around in my mind. I find it more on the tip of my tongue and it tastes a lot sweeter now.  I shared with my mentor about my changes in my thoughts on recovery and her response really rang true to me. "I have come to know that recovery is nothing tangible - it’s a process of growth, transformation, and self discovery. We can’t articulate it for anybody else and we only know what it means to us through our own unique felt sense of moving through it."  I'm grateful for my new, hard earned understanding. I'm extra grateful to feel like I'm now on the path of recovery.  Am I recovered?  Finished?  Done?  No, and I'm ok with that.  I'm still working, learning, and progressing.  I don't think I ever want to stop moving forward. I'm not recovered...I'm recovering. And it feels great!

Cotton & Sandpaper

Monday evenings are reserved as a family night that we call Family Home Evening (FHE). On this night we might have a spiritual  lesson, or focus on something we can improve on as a family, or just do something fun together.  I'm always looking for great ideas that I feel will help our family grow closer and be better people.  I just happened across an idea that I knew I needed to share with my family. I collected supplies and was so excited for the lesson. 

My three kids range in ages from 8 to 13. They are pretty good kids, but as a family we can improve with how we talk to each other. So this  particular night for FHE, I focused on that. I gave each person a cotton ball. I asked them to rub it on their cheek and describe how it felt. "Soft" and its many synonyms were listed!  Then I gave them a little square of sandpaper. I asked them to rub it on their cheek and describe how it felt. Rough was the first word they all thought of. I then told them our words are either like cotton or sandpaper.  Then we brainstormed words that are soft cotton ball words and words that are harsh sandpaper words. They really got it. We each made a card to put somewhere as a daily reminder to help us remember to use cotton ball words with each other.  Although this was several weeks ago, my children still are reminding family members to use cotton ball words!  

I was pretty pleased with the lesson. However, in an off moment I caught myself using sandpaper words with myself. That's one aspect of eating disorders that is so hard to over-come...the negative self talk. I think I've always been hard on myself, but once ED took over, it got completely vicious. But, after our FHE lesson, I started being more aware of my internal self communication. I noticed I used a plethora of sandpaper words and started working hard to soften the way I thought about myself. It's a work in progress and there are still sandpaper moments, but I'm working.  

Proverbs 16:24 says, "pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones". This is true with friends, family, and with how we think and communicate internally with ourselves. So throw out those sandpaper words and fill the world with cotton ball words!  It will truly be "sweet to the soul"!  

Recovery Honeymoon

The past month has been a great month for me regarding recovery. I've gone long periods of time with out even thinking about having an eating disorder. I realized that I completely stopped following one of ED's rules after not doing it for three weeks. I just didn't do it one day! No planning, no thought, NO ANXIETY!  (I also didn't even realize how significant an event this was for over two weeks!) For the first time, I'm thinking recovery is really possible and I can totally do this!  

This doesn't mean smooth sailing, and I'm actually ok about that.  It's life!  Tragic national headlines this month kind of hit me like a punch in the gut. I felt very sad and overwhelmed. But I reached out and asked my therapist for help. And of course, she gave me great advice and encouragement.  I made adjustments and kept on rolling!

I've been thinking a lot about where I am in recovery. I've decided to call this stage the "honeymoon" stage of recovery. Just like a newly married couple, each life event, holiday, and experience is "new". (Let me tell you, my first college football season as a new bride was a real eye opener!)  Recovery is the same way!  Experiencing life with out an eating disorder is a learning experience. First family reunion...first summer vacation...first Christmas.  Sometimes these events don't even slow me down. But if I do hit any bumps I'm getting good at asking for help and support.  

As I left my monthly visit with my therapist today, I was feeling so great!  Fighting ED has been the hardest thing I've ever done. I am proud of the hard work I've done to get to this point. I felt like shouting out loud!  "I'm recovering!!!!"  But since it's the "honeymoon" stage, maybe I should decorate my car with tin cans dragging behind, and big painted letters on the back that say "just recovered!", and hearts on all my windows!  I think recovery and I have a long promising future together!  

I HATE FOOD!

It is still amazing to me how ED (eating disorder) finds the perfect time to jump in my head. I had an interesting successful use of my recovery tools today. 

My son started out yesterday with a headache before school. I brought him home to try and sleep it off so he could maybe still go to field day. It kept getting worse and worse. He started throwing up. By 4:30 I was really worried. He was in excruciating pain. I took him to a med clinic and waited over two hours to be seen. They never gave him any thing for pain. They tested his urine and said he was dehydrated and had high levels of ketones. The doc told me he wasn't eating enough - so his body was breaking down fat causing the ketones in his urine. They said I should go home and hydrate him. When I asked about an IV they said, "Well we can try to get an IV in him but if we can take him to the ER."  This was over three hours after I walked into the clinic and nothing had been done. I was not happy with the care he was receiving and I was trying to be assertive. But I was also alone with a sick kid. I finally had enough and told them we were just leaving. Then my husband showed up. We were going to take him to the ER. But he begged us to just take him home. I stayed up all night keeping medicine in him and encouraging him to drink. (They did give him ZOFRAN for nausea at the clinic and so he was finally able to keep stuff down.)  I took him to his doctor this morning. They ordered a series of blood work but one of them had to be done fasting so I will take him in the morning so he only has to be stuck once. They want to check on his blood sugar levels. We will know next week what those tests tell us. 

So, where was ED and when did I use tools?  Well after we left the lab today I kept hearing the doctor from last night saying over and over in my mind "He's not eating enough!"  I started to feel very anxious and question if I was feeding him enough. I started to feel very guilty and then I started to think about how much I hate food. I was totally full of loathing for food!  I was so angry at myself. I felt like I was a horrible parent. All my effort to teach my children to be healthy eaters was wrong. I was obviously starving them. Then all the sudden I heard my therapists voice. "I wonder why you are thinking this?"  So I did a little evaluation and of course I realized I was very tired from lack of sleep last night and a stressful day yesterday.  ED - that sneaky villain!  I had even thought about skipping meals and everything today. I hated food!  I was so mad at food and at myself. But after I was able to wonder why I was having disordered thoughts and finding a reason for them, I committed to eat healthy and not skip any meals.  I also reached out for help and talked to my mom. She assured me my son is a good eater and that I was not doing anything wrong in regards to the food I prepare for my kids. I'm still tired but I'm very proud I was able to stop myself from the extreme thinking and to understand why I was struggling with disordered thoughts.  Sorry I hated you food!

The Noose Around My Neck

Things have been going really well.  I've felt strong, healthy, and making good progress. After a great week of family vacation, I met with my therapist for my monthly appointment. My one concern that I wanted to discuss is that spring and summer are just around the corner.  The last two years, these weren't good times for me AT ALL!  So I expressed this to my therapist. She validated my concern but then basically told me I need to trust myself more and not panic every time I sense disordered thoughts about eating on the horizon.  She reminded me AGAIN of how far I've come and how much more I know now. Then she said "recovery doesn't mean never having eating disordered thoughts it means never doing what those thoughts tell you."  She called this radical abstinence. 

Cue anxiety!  Literally right there in her office, I felt my heart stop and my breathing tightened. NEVER GIVE INTO ANOTHER DISORDERED THOUGHT ABOUT EATING?!?!  NEVER?  Don't get me wrong. I don't want to go back to where I was. Honestly though, I just felt like I could keep my eating disorder in my back pocket. You know, just in case I need it.  When asked what I would need it for I wasn't  exactly sure. I guess I feel like I might need it in case something comes up and I can't handle it with out my eating disorder. 

The more I thought about giving it up...taking it out of my pocket and throwing it away for good...the more anxious and emotional I became. I know this doesn't make sense.  So I kept trying to think of how I could explain it to others. 

An eating disorder is like a rope. When the hike through life's mountains gets rough and tough I hold on tight to the rope. No matter what, if I hold on to the rope I can't fall down the mountainside!  The rope keeps me from crashing into the rocks below. But there is a catch - the end of the rope is tied around my neck in a noose. So the rope helps me survive as long as I'm holding on to it but also has the potential to kill me if I get tired or lose control of my grip on the rope.  I'm pretty fond of my rope - not the noose part of course. I am really scared to let it go and not use it. It's helped me at times when I felt I had nothing else available. However, now I have other tools (things I've learned in therapy) available. I'm not really great at using them, and most of them are untested in a big crisis. Even if these tools don't work, I've learned that I also have a safety net (family and friends who love me) below. But my rope is always right here.  I know how to use it.  It's familiar.  It's comforting.  It is close...albeit too close. 

So this is where I'm at. I think the reason I get so anxious about any sign of eating disordered thoughts is because I know I'm keeping my eating disorder in my back pocket. I haven't thrown out the rope...I'm letting it dangle just within reach. Because of this, these thoughts aren't just passing through my mind. They are still very convenient to use.  

I know what I should do. I know what I need to do. None of this knowledge changes the fact that I've grown comfortable with my rope and am scared to give it up. This one is going to take some time, some thought, some discomfort, some prayer, and a big huge dose of faith.