Reasons to Recover

As I discussed in my last post, at times relapse can be very tempting, and I forget why I am even recovering in the first place. So to help remind myself, here is a list of my reasons to recover.

• So I can be strong. When I'm restricting, heavily depressed, or overly anxious, my body is completely out of whack. I don't exercise, and I feel sluggish, weak and awful. I don't want to feel so uncomfortable in my body. I want to become confident enough to truly invest in my body and in my health. I want to be able to exercise freely without my mind getting in the way. Being strong and muscular makes me more confident, and I want to gain that confidence back. I want to learn to do handstands and arm balances, and really push myself physically. I want to have endurance and flexibility and power. I want to rock climb and hike and swim and explore the outdoors without my body holding me back. I can't do this if I'm restricting, hospitalized, or miserable.
• So I can spend time with others. When I am deep into my insecurities, I can't really be around people. I'm too jealous and self conscious, and my thinking is so disordered that I'm just miserable around other people. I want to be okay with opening myself up to others, and I want to spend time with friends like a normal teenager. I want to go to social events where there is food or a pool without freaking out and feeling horrible. I want to let myself have friends and have fun for once.
• So I can pursue the things I love. I have so many dreams, but when I'm deep into my illnesses, they disappear. I feel hopeless, and believe that I'm not going anywhere in my life. But in reality, there are so many things I want to do! I want to travel the world, exploring and finding beauty and encountering different people and cultures. I want to volunteer in third world countries and help people (especially women) who are less fortunate than myself. I want to work at rape clinics and medical centers and provide people with the care that they need. I want to fight the stigma against mental health, and work towards getting people the care they need no matter where they live in the world. I want to volunteer at psychiatric hospitals and tell people like me that there is hope, that they can get out of there and pursue their dreams. I want to do so much, and in order to do that, I need to recover first.
• To have a family. I want to fall in love, and eventually settle down and have kids. I want a little house on a big property with three dogs, some chickens, and maybe a few goats. I want to bring my children with me to places like Haiti so they can see that there are people in this world that need their help. I want to bring them to Switzerland to gaze in awe at the mountains and Australia to see animals they've only dreamed of. I want to go to my kids' graduation, and hold my grandchildren. I want to spend the majority of my life with someone I love, bound together by marriage. So I need to recover, so I can provide for my family and let myself fall in love.
• For food. I want to be able to love food and nourish myself without guilt and pain. I want to go out to eat at restaurants and go to dinner parties and have dessert and feel comfortable around food. I don't want to stress out before going to an event because I know there's going to be food there. I want to be able to overeat without wanting to hurt myself. I want to be able to under eat without wanting to keep going. I want to have pasta and pizza and ice cream and chocolate and just feel good.
• For confidence. I want to wear a bathing suit someday without hating myself. I want to look in the mirror and smile. I want to approach someone and talk to them without fear. I don't want to dread the summer. I want to wear clothes that make me feel beautiful. I don't want to care about every stretch mark and awkward feature. I want to know what it's like to feel comfortable in my own skin.
• To put positive energy out into the world. I want to be a positive person. I want to be like Rachel Brathen or Jen Converso, spreading light and love throughout the world. I want to make the world a better place. I want to summon a smile in a second, and radiate love and joy in everything I do. I want to run to the hilltops and spin and smile and soak in the sunlight. I want to be so happy that I make others happy just by being around them.
• To be a yoga teacher. Yoga is so important to me, and it's something I want to share with other people. In order to become a yoga teacher, I'll have to keep eating so that I'm strong enough, and I'll need to gain the confidence to be able to be in front of a whole class and feel comfortable. It's a huge recovery goal.
• To love myself. I've spent my entire life consumed with self hatred. I don't even know what self love is, but I'd like to learn. It's got to be better than despising yourself day after day.
• So I can start saying yes to things. I don't want my mental health issues to be holding me back for the rest of my life. I want to be free. I want to say yes to opportunities that come my way, regardless of any anxiety I have towards it. I want to take each day as it comes, and stop living in fear. I want to do things that scare me, overcome my fears, and start living wildly.
• To watch the scars fade.
• To be able to look back and be proud I never gave up. I'm doing a hell of a lot of work right now to try and recover, and someday, when I'm happy and content, I want to look back on these days and thank myself for keeping going and never giving up.
• To share my story. I want to connect to other people struggling with mental illness and share my experience and struggles. I want to help someone else who is where I am now, and show them that recovery is possible, and that things get better.
• To be one year clean of self harm! This is a huge goal, and it's one I'm working hard towards. The longest I've gone is around three months, but I'm determined to kick this addiction to the curb.
• To go to the beach. Someday, I want to go to the beach and enjoy myself. I want to wear a bathing suit -- heck, even a bikini, and not want to cry or run away. I want to sit down and let my fat roll without covering it up with a towel. I want to run and play despite everything that jiggles. I want to lay out and tan because it feels good. I want to let people take pictures of me without running away and covering my face. I don't want to keep dreading the summertime.
• To be independent.
• For ice cream. For cookie butter. For chocolate. For nutella. For cereal! Cereal is a huge trigger for me, and someday I want to eat a bowl of special K red berry and smile.
• To go off my medications. I don't know if I'll ever be off my meds completely, especially since I'm on quite a few. But someday I'd like to go to bed without having to pop nine pills every night.
• So I can compliment myself and actually mean it. So I can accept compliments from others and actually believe it.
• So I can bake/make all sorts of vegan treats and feel good about it. I love baking, and I miss it. I'll still bake every now and again, but it's tainted with guilt and shame. I want to go back to the mindset when I was 8 years old and baking cookies. I want to be excited about what I'm making, and not feel out of control. I want to eat the treats and feel happy, but not go overboard and binge. I want it to be a positive experience.
• To be stronger than my thoughts and urges.
• To beat trichotillomania, and have long hair again.
• To be able to go to college and do well on my own. Right now, I'm right on the path to be able to do okay in college. But I wasn't always like that. Just several months ago I was in such a bad place that if I didn't get better, college would've been out of the question. I want to keep up the good work and eventually gain that independence.
• To feel confident about the future. Although I'm more optimistic than I used to be, often times when I look to the future I see nothing but darkness. I want to get rid of that toxic feeling and see light in the future.

There's definitely a lot more reasons than these, but these are a few big reasons to recover. I think maybe I'll make a part II to this that will be shorter, less elaborative reasons. So tell me, what are your reasons to recover? Share them with me in the comments.

Resisting Relapse

I'm really confused.
So for the past week and a half I've been doing really well. And I mean really well. I've been following my meal plan exactly, I haven't been restricting, I haven't been self harming-- I haven't really used any negative problem behaviors. In fact, I've been happy. Truly. I've been experiencing happiness in myself for the first time in years. There have even been moments where I'm starting to feel comfortable in my own skin. Not very comfortable, but glimpses of comfort. I've been working so hard to kick my disorders to the curb, and I've been succeeding. And that truly makes me very happy.

Yet despite all of that, despite the positivity, the joy, the good progress -- I have an urge to relapse. And I mean really relapse - restricting, self harming, everything. It's like my body wants me to collapse, to fall back down, to let misery and disordered thinking take over. But why? Like I said before, things have been nothing but positive lately. So why do I have this desire to destroy everything.

I think it's because I'm so used to the darkness. The light is beautiful, but it hurts my eyes at the moment. It's unnatural to me, it's not normal. My normal is destructive - it's depression, panic attacks, self loathing, nonstop doctor's appointments, hospital visits, relapse, pain. So as this happiness starts to sneak its way into my life, my illnesses, the disordered thinking, the darkness -- it's dying. And it's fighting to try and get its way. It's telling me I haven't suffered enough, that I don't deserve to be happy. It's trying to convince me that if I just collapse, just have one more relapse, then things will be better. It's like I have this weird concept in my brain that I have to suffer a certain amount before I can ever experience true happiness. Especially with my eating disorder. My mind keeps telling me that I'm faking, that I don't truly have an eating disorder, that I haven't experienced enough pain to recover. It shames me for never being underweight and never being sent to an eating disorder residential -- never mind the fact that I've been been in so much pain because of my ed since I was nine years old. It doesn't care that I've spent every pool party wanting to cry, that I've never looked in the mirror and felt happy, that I feel horribly guilty whenever I feel too full - my eating disorder mind doesn't care about all that. It just wants me to lose weight, to obsess over food, and to feel miserable. It wants me hospitalized with a tube up my nose, and there's a sick part of me that agrees with it. That believes that that's my fate, that that's where I deserve to be. And if I'm honest, it's hard to find a part of myself that disagrees. It's hard, because still, after all my hard work, deep down, I don't feel worthy. I don't feel like I'm enough, I don't feel like I deserve love. But I need to tell that part of me to go to hell, because someday I will love myself. Someday I will accept love from others without wondering what's wrong with them. Someday I'll go to a beach without feeling like I want to cry. Someday I'll get upset without automatically wanting to restrict or self harm.

I believe that I will be in recovery for the rest of my life, but I also believe that I can win. That I can learn how to live with my disorders and still be happy. That I can start to realize that not every thought that crosses my mind is law. Someday my distorted thinking will call my name, and I'll ignore it.

And in order to do that, I can't relapse. I need to keep fighting. I can't give in and go back to the darkness, no matter how sickly "comfortable" it is. I need to let those thoughts pass through my mind, and then kindly stick it up my disorder's ass. Because I'm not okay with the idea of me being an adult and still suffering. I want to recover, and I want to be happy. So it's time to take the initiative, and keep going. Sure, part of me wants to restrict, and wants to self harm. But part of me doesn't. And it's time to start listening to the latter.

Recovery Woes

 

 

So I had the appointment with the nutritionist, and it actually wasn't too terrible. It was only a half hour long, so there wasn't any in depth discussion, but she seems really supportive and willing to help me, which is a good sign. We didn't have enough time to discuss a meal plan, but we did outline a little mini guide of what to eat in the interim until I see her again. She agreed to let me stay vegan for now because it's what I'm most comfortable with, and our first goal is to just get me eating normally again.

If I'm honest, I thought that eating more wouldn't be that hard. I do truly like food, and I like trying new things. But the emotions that come with eating are pretty severe. This morning I was panicking over what to have for breakfast, so I had a glass of mango Naked instead. I packed some strawberries, chips, and guac for lunch, and it was hard. I eat in the guidance office so there's not a lot of people, but I only really felt comfortable eating the strawberries. The chips and guac were a bit too terrifying for me. Then after school I had a tiny snack bowl of peanut butter filled pretzels and a banana. It's a perfectly okay snack, especially since I didn't eat too much earlier in the day. I didn't have any trouble eating it, but afterwards I just felt awful. My stomach felt overly full and enormous, and I felt like I had gained 10 pounds and ruined any progress towards losing weight that I had. Looking back, it's a little bit disjointed. My reaction didn't really fit the amount of food I ate, but it was still quite difficult. Tonight I'm having a baked sweet potato topped with some rice and vegetables. I'm rather nervous, if I'm honest. I feel like I'm having so much food today, and it's hard to get used to.

Another not so good thing happened the other day. I relapsed and cut again. It was Wednesday night and I had just eaten a full meal. I couldn't cope. I didn't know what to do about all the food I had eaten, and I was so incredibly furious with myself. So I ruined my clean streak and self harmed. I'm disappointed in myself, and frustrated that it was caused by FOOD, something my body NEEDS. I've been struggling with self harm for well over a year now, and it's quite discouraging that I'm still relapsing after all this time.

I don't want to keep restricting, but I also don't really want to eat. I'm kind of stuck, in that regard. I know that restricting slows down your metabolism, and I'm scared that mine is too low and now the food I'm eating is giving me too much energy and causing more fat.

I dunno, I just really wish I could eat a meal (or even a snack) without any emotional trauma. It's really really frustrating. I've struggled with food for the past seven or so years, maybe more, and I am just so done with all of the mental pain it causes me. I just want to eat like a normal person, without there being any deep thinking or horrible consequences associated with it. So that's why I'm trying to recover, I suppose. But I still want to lose a lot of weight, and my mind is telling me that restricting is the way to go. It's such a constant battle in my mind, and it's quite exhausting.

Above is a picture of Thursday's breakfast, and below is Thursday's dinner. Have a lovely night, petals.

 

So Much Fear

So my mom sat me down yesterday to talk about my eating. I feel like my parents do this often, and it always makes me really really uncomfortable. But this time it wasn't just an awkward open conversation. She had a proposal for me, if you will. She knows that being in eating disorder programs with other girls is really triggering for me, and I'm pretty sure that neither of us want me to go to a day program, so she gave me the option of seeing a nutritionist first. If that doesn't work or I'm noncompliant we'll look into a PHP or IOP.
Now, I have a pretty bad history with nutritionists. It's like the dentist for some people - they scare the life out of me. If I had it my way I would never ever see a nutritionist/dietitian. I want to avoid them like the plague. I've had two pretty bad experiences with eating disorder specialists. One was when I was at a residential over the summer. I was in the eating disorder (EDO) program at the hospital, and it was absolutely awful. It wasn't even the other girls that were super triggering. I just hated the way the whole group was run. I was made to feel guilty for having snacks outside of my meal plan, most of the EDO staff were anything but warm and fuzzy - it was a bad experience. If I'm honest, I think they made things worse. Another thing that bothered me about that program is that every single EDO staff member was extremely skinny. And that's not an exaggeration. They were very thin to the point that I questioned some of their health, which for me was quite triggering. It's hard when someone who is stick thin is telling you that you need to eat more/less. It felt like they were being hypocritical.
I had another bad experience with a nutritionist this past fall, although it wasn't as dramatic as over the summer. Anyway, the point is that I generally do not trust nutritionists/dietitians/people who specialize in eating disorders. Perhaps that's narrow-minded, but it's how I feel.
My next point - veganism.
Being a vegan is something that's very close to my heart.  I believe in the vegan lifestyle very strongly and am fairly repulsed by the thought of eating animal products. Being vegan is a part of me - a part of me that I actually like. And unfortunately, I am 99% sure that the nutritionist will not allow me to continue a vegan lifestyle. And my parents are on the side of the nutritionist. If she tells me I need to eat eggs, they're gonna try to make me eat eggs. And that absolutely sucks. You can get ALL of the nutrients and good things you need through a vegan diet, no problem. Nutritionists don't care, they just brush it aside because they think it's a form of restricting. Guess what, it's not. I became vegan because I don't want to support the abuse, exploitation, and murder of innocent animals. I didn't do it so that I could limit my calories. And the restricting I'm doing now has nothing to do with me being a vegan. It's because I have an eating disorder, not because I choose to love animals rather than slaughter them.
But I have agreed to see the nutritionist. I know I need to. My ed is slowing tearing my life into shreds, and I can't let it continue.
So what will I do about the veganism? I have already told my mother that the only way I will eat eggs is if we get them locally at a farm or household I trust. I have worked with chickens before, and they can have wonderful lives if they are treated right. They are not just for eggs, they're animals before they're food, and I had no problems collecting their eggs and giving them to others, because I know that there was no abuse involved. As much as I'd prefer not to eat boiled chicken menstruation, I know that I will have to come to some sort of compromise with the nutritionist. So that is where I can allow a little bit of leeway.
But at milk/dairy, I draw the line. I cannot honestly justify what goes on in the dairy industry. I cannot support an industry that forcibly impregnates an innocent creature only to take their child away from them seconds after birth. That child is then tied to a post in order to ensure that they do not grow any leg muscles. Cows have a very strong mother-calf relationship, so this poor newborn calf spends four months crying for their mother, in agnoy, before their life is brought to a bitter end for the sake of veal. The mother who lost her child is carted away and hooked up to a machine where she can hardly move. She is fed with unnatural foods. She should be eating grass, but they force her to eat corn or hay so that they can fatten her up. She lives a life without ever seeing the sun again, crying for her child as a machine squeezes her udders and cause her pain. Sometimes they even drill a hole in the side of the cow so that they can shovel the food in, since it's not natural for the cows to eat them on their own. Seeing any red flags? 

This is only a sliver of the atrocities that exist in the meat/dairy industry. Humans seem to forget that animals feel pain, that animals have emotions. There is little evidence that their pain spectrum is any less severe than ours. If someone were to try and kill a human by slitting their throat or zapping them with a electroshock wand, that person would be locked up for life. Yet we do it to innocent creatures every single day. Just because animals can't fight back or defend themselves doesn't mean that we should torture them. And for what? For you to enjoy that hamburger of yours? So that you can put extra butter on your toast? It's a horrible, sick industry, and I do not feel comfortable supporting it. So many people turn a blind eye. There's a quote that goes something like "if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian." And I believe that's true. It will take a lot for my nutritionist to convince me that eating dairy is okay. Who knows, maybe she will change my mind. But if she gets to inform me about how she's "right" about food, I get to inform her about everything that's wrong with the animal byproduct industry. If she can go home and watch Earthlings and Forks Over Knifes and still come back and tell me to eat cheese, then I will realize that she has a heartless element to her, and I will feel bad. But no good, self respecting person would be able to watch Earthlings while eating a steak. If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here to watch the documentary, Earthlings. It exposes everything we've been taught to shove under the rug. I'm not saying you have to be vegan after watching it, but it should give you some insight as to what you're really supporting when you're scanning the meat aisle at the grocery store.
Okay, sorry for the rant. It was unintended, I swear. I tend to keep my thoughts about veganism to myself, because people love to attack you when you say you're a vegan, but I needed to get that out.
So, moral of the story.
I have agreed to see a nutritionist. I want to fight it tooth and nail, but my desire to stay out of an IOP is motivation for me to at least try to trust them and go along with their plan. I am by no means happy about this, but it has to happen. I can agree to eggs, but not dairy. Not yet anyway. She might require me to eat dairy, which would kill me, but I'm going to listen to her. As much as I don't want to, I will. Wise mind? Maybe. But I'm definitely reluctant.
Goodbye my petals, I'll see you in the next one.

Update

So things have been tough lately, to say the least. My eating disorder has taken control of me in a way I didn't know was possible, and it's making me feel completely miserable. I've been restricting pretty badly, and when I eat anything - a boost, a pretzel, a strawberry, it doesn't matter - I feel massively guilty and am full of such a toxic self hatred that is hard to deal with. Then come the urges to self harm and purge, which are also difficult to deal with.
And as the past couple days have showed me, my eating disorder is starting to make me crack. I'm having a lot of trouble keeping it together, and things are feeling eerily similar to times right before hospitalizations in the past. That stresses me out like you wouldn't believe. I can't stress how much I do not want to go inpatient. I don't think I need to, but it still scares me so much. I don't want to do an IOP or day program either. I just want to be normal. I want to be able to handle things like a normal person, I want to be worrying about boys and prom rather than my eating disorder and other issues.
My anxiety has been through the roof lately, and this morning it was exceedingly hard to get out of bed. The thought of facing the world terrified me. Somehow I got to school, and I spent the first two periods in guidance, listening to my Calm app and trying not to have a panic attack. Not fun. I don't want my anxiety to severely cripple me again, but I don't know how to stop it.
I think I need to be more proactive with coping skills, so this week I'm gonna go out to Michaels and buy some art supplies. I'm going to get a big pack of colored pencils for mandalas, some watercolors to see if it'll be soothing, and some henna. I think henna will be a really good self harm substitute. I'll create beautiful designs on the places where I want to self harm, and hopefully it'll keep me occupied and prevent me from harming myself. I also have a huge obsession with henna (and Indian/middle eastern culture - I always say that I need to marry an Indian man so I can have the gorgeous wedding festivities and clothes. Also, Indian men are hot. Have you seen their beards?), so hopefully I'll have fun with this. The watercolors are a shot in the dark, I've never been good with painting, but we'll see.
I'm going to try and work on occupying myself with these coping skills instead of spending time online. I find myself looking for fashion pictures with skinny girls as "motivation" and eventually I just make myself so upset. I also spend way too much time on YouTube - it's an addiction. So once I've beefed up my coping skills hopefully I'll spend my time on those instead. It's so much more positive to create something beautiful anyway. And once it's warm I can combine them and do art outside in the grass, or go to the hiking trails and paint by the water. Being outside brings me so much peace, and I hope to be spending much more time out there from this point forward.
So yeah. That's a little summary about how things have been and my general plans. See ya later skater.

Mental Health as Adjectives

"Aw man, I'm out of breath, I feel so lung cancer today."

 

"I need sugar to wake me up, my diabetes is so bad."

 

"Look at that bruise, it's like you have leukemia."

 

"I can't remember, my Alzheimer's is flaring up today."

 

"Ugh, I'm so nauseous, it's like I'm on chemo."

 

Okay, hold up. Who in their right mind would say these sort of things if they don't personally suffer from the illness themselves? No one would use serious illnesses as adjectives, right? Wrong. It's something we've all done, and it's commonplace in our society. But it's not about diabetes or cancer. For some reason it's okay to use serious, debilitating illnesses as adjectives as long as they're mental illnesses. Let's see it again:

 

"I need to have the volume on an even number, I'm so OCD."

 

"Ugh, my mom keeps yelling at me, she is SO bipolar."

 

"Man, I failed that civics quiz. I feel so depressed."

 

"Wow, you scared me, I almost had a panic attack!"

 

"What the hell, you're psychotic!"

 

And that's only a few, there are so many more. I hear these every single day, and it frustrates me so much.

 

"I couldn't fall asleep until 2am last night. My insomnia is so bad."

 

"Gosh, that's so retarded!"

 

"That dress makes you look so anorexic!"

"Man, I need to clean my room, my OCD is getting really bad."

 

I think we get the point. It's very likely that we've all done this throughout our lifetime. Before I started treatment for mental health issues, I was a contender for this as well. I remember talking to a teammate about one of my coaches a few years ago, and I was complaining that she was "so bipolar." And these types of statements are completely accepted by society, while careless statements about physical illnesses, like cancer, are labeled as out of line.

 

There are a few reasons why this phenomenon bothers me. First is the stigma. Mental illnesses are more serious and important than most people know, and yet there is so much stigma around it. The stigma surrounding mental health prevents so many people from reaching out and getting help, which contributes to the amount of people who commit suicide every year. Using mental illnesses as adjectives trivializes them. If they're used as emotions that people experience on a daily basis, no one will realize how serious mental illnesses actually are. Stigma is hard enough to defeat anyway, and these types of phrases do not help.

 

Another thing that sucks about these statements is when someone with a mental illness overhears them. For example, the OCD references. I have met a lot of people with obsessive compulsive disorder throughout treatment, and it is a hellish, awful condition to deal with. It can be debilitating, it controls a person's every action, and it can make a person's life absolutely miserable. So when they hear someone talking about how they're "so ocd," can you imagine how trivializing that is? To hear something that you struggle with daily compressed into something as small as wanting a picture frame straight or your books in alphabetical order is so frustrating. This goes for other illnesses as well. When I hear people mentioning panic attacks or self harm behaviors in a casual or joking way, it makes me cringe. I know how horrible and debilitating these things are - I suffer from them myself. Hearing people talk about them as if they're nothing is really frustrating. How are we supposed to inform others on mental illness if people's only perception of mental health is either trivialized or completely misunderstood?

 

I hope that, as time goes on and people become more educated, these phrases will start to dissolve from our vocabulary. But only time will tell.

Life Lately

So I've been a bit absent as of late, and I do apologize for that. Things have been a bit tough this month, and I haven't really been posting anything, aside from tumblr and pinterest. My phone isn't working very well, and it often times refuses to take pictures or do what I want it to do, so I haven't been posting to instagram as much as I would like. To be honest, I haven't really felt inspired either.

So lets give a little backstory, shall we?

So at the beginning of this month (February first, actually), I relapsed with self harm after being almost three months clean. So that sucked. I also made the mistake of trying to keep it a secret from my parents and therapist, which made everything so much worse. I don't really want to go into details, but basically it's been a pretty sucky month. My anxiety has been through the roof and my moods have been all over the place. I did end up telling my parents and therapist about the self harm last week, and my quit date is February 20th. Whereas before I was actively hiding my self harm and not wanting to stop, now I am fighting the urges, and I've gone a week without cutting, which is pretty sweet.

On the trichotillomania side of things, I'm struggling. And it's unfortunately linked to my math class. I am pulling inordinate amounts of hair, the majority of which is done during math class, doing math homework, or thinking about math. I feel such a lack of control over my own body, and it's really been getting me down. We're going to try habit reversal therapy with my therapist, which, if I'm honest, I don't have much hope for, but I'm going to try. It's just so frustrating, because I finally have a full head of hair after being bald for months, and I'm always one step away from completely destroying it. Any bald patches I get are much more hidden, but knowing they're there really upsets me.

That's all I'm going to talk about for now, I have to do homework (math of all things). Have a lovely day, everyone.