A Post Originally Written For Instagram Towards The Start Of My Recovery:
Eating disorder recovery is exhausting…
You have to keep your wits about you at all times.
The thoughts of cutting back, being more active, using any small eating disordered behaviour that will keep you stuck can be very sneaky and so automatic that it is hard to spot them.
An eating disorder causes an irrational but very real and very strong fear (panic) response to food or weight gain.
The fear causes fight, flight, freeze to kick in before you realise.
I have been working at trying to identify when the thoughts I’m having are fear generated and breathing through when they occur so as not to allow those old disordered automatic neural pathways to respond.
I know that any resistance to facing more food, different foods, eating at different times or in a different place, no matter how logical the thoughts generated to rationalise that resistance are, are in fact rubbish and need to be blocked!
Resistance to more food = FEAR!
Resistance to resting (no matter how much) = FEAR
Resistance to any behaviour that could cause weight gain = FEAR!!!
To overcome the eating disorder is to overcome the fear.
To overcome the fear means facing it and sitting with it.
Fear won’t kill me but this eating disorder might.
This mocha was one way of overcoming the fear response.
In a coffee shop deciding what to order- tea (nice and safe)… cappuccino (bit scary as milky!)…. or the mocha- full on milky and chocolate-y coffee?!?
Automatic fear response?
Have the tea.
Negotiations with the eating disorder – nope, not negotiating – walking into the scariest option so mocha it is.
It was delicious too and even better with a chocolate biccie!
RECOVERING NOMAD 