recovery guarantees...

Lots of things in life aren't guaranteed. In fact, iron-clad guarantees are pretty rare in life. But...

There are a couple of things that eating disorder recovery (by which I mostly mean the process of it, not some idealistic, finished point, if there is such a thing...and we've already discussed this point earlier this week... :) does guarantee.

The first is: recovery guarantees you'll feel. It doesn't guarantee you'll always feel happy, or sad, or grumpy, or terrific... it simply guarantees you'll feel your feelings.

The second is: recovery guarantees you're body will adjust to where he/she is designed to be based on your genes and body type. (The disclaimer to this is that some eating disorders cause damage physically and sometimes, rarely this damage is irreparable). 

The focus of this post is the second guarantee, in honor of Sarah, who wrote something exactly that someone with an eating disorder would say! She wrote she'll "always be fat, no matter what" she does. That is SO something someone who suffers from an eating disorder would say, right?! 

And it doesn't matter which of the EDs that person suffers from, the statement would have, at its core, the same sentiment- you guys don't trust your bodies to do what they are designed to do. You worry like crazy that if you don't micro-manage your body it will get out of control and be a mess. 

Sarah, you say you are overweight, and I have no reason to doubt your word. I'm not taking issue with that. I'm taking issue with your assertion that you "will always be fat" no matter what. How do you know that? What evidence do you have?

And maybe you're going to say, "I've tried everything!"

That may be true. If so, just ignore what I'm about to say :)

But, I've found that when someone with an eating disorder says he/she's tried everything she means everything within the context of the eating disorder (bingeing, purging, restricting, over-exercising...). It's only through the process of recovery that someone tries the thing that actually does end up working: trusting your body to do what it knows how to do, and leaving it alone to do that.

This turns out to be quite a project- given that people who suffer from eating disorders tend to profoundly mistrust their bodies. The reward is great though if you can learn to trust though. When we can trust that our bodies do really know what they are doing we can stay out of their way to do what they know, and they eventually tend to settle down where they are naturally designed to be.

I know, I know, I can just see your eyes collectively rolling... it really it true though.

Comments

[Laura]

This was a perfect post for me tonight, Johanna. Thank you!

I also had to laugh at the line where you wrote, I've found that when someone with an eating disorder says he/she's tried everything she means everything within the context of the eating disorder (bingeing, purging, restricting, over-exercising...)" I laughed because it's so true. I'll try anything! As long as it's an eating disordered thing.... lol. So funny because this is just so my experience, and, I look back (or, um, even at my current self sometimes) and laugh. Because the logic is so backwards. My therapist told me yesterday that "people try to get out of their eating disorder by going into their eating disorder." I slipped a little in the past two days. My therapist said, "Your'e in the hole, but you're trying to get out of the hole by going farther in the hole. You don't climb out of a hole by going down. It's like people are hoping so hard that if they just go farther into the hole, they'll find a secret back door that will let them out more easily. The truth is, there is no back door. It's a cul-de-sac. It's painful to be in the hole, and it's painful to come out of the hole. But there is only one way out. Up."

What you wrote was like my therapist telling me that people try to get out by going down. Does that make any sense?

[wendy]

To day I love this post...on another day I might have rolled my eyes. LOL When I entered therapy I was so tired of trying to over come the disorder only to realize that all of my attempts were just to apply another eating disorder behavior without realizing it. I also agree that recovery promises that we will feel better...but for me that meant no longer feeling numb or dead but actually feeling all sorts of emotions, which makes me feel alive...i still sometimes panic and want to escape them, but they feel better (even the unpleasant ones) than the dead feeling.

[Ann]

Amen to that ("but they feel better (even the unpleasant ones) than the dead feeling.") Wendy!

[Sarah]

About the first guarantee: I don't find getting to feel much of an incentive, in general. Usually I'd prefer not to. Anyone else on the same page as me with this one?

About the second guarantee: I've read it over a whole bunch of times. My reaction is to say that some people are going to end up fat (in a technical sense, say BMI > 40) even without any kind of issues around eating. I'm well into that range and it's just not realistic to expect that I could lose enough weight to look normal or shop in normal stores, etc. But now I'm just repeating exactly what I posted last time. ;) So I don't know. I don't feel like my eating is so disordered that it could really account for my weight. But then, last week my therapist was talking about my tendency to minimize what's going on. So.... I don't know. I think I will print this one out and take it in.

As usual, you've left me with lots to think about, Johanna! :)

[Sarah]

So I have thought more about your second guarantee and why it bothers me so much. I guess, for me, accepting that I will very probably always be fat is all about trusting my body. After all, I got into this mess as a kid when my doctor and my family felt that my fat body was unacceptable. Then I spent most of my life hating and feeling ashamed of myself and my body and living in "one day when I'm thin"-land. If giving up on all that means trusting my body for getting where it needs to be, then this also means trusting my body if it decides to stay fat.

When I read your post the problem for me is that I still read it as saying that being fat is totally unacceptable. Does that make any sense at all?