A New Chapter Starts

Tonight was my last night of treatment. It came fast and was kind of a surprise. I had been feeling like treatment wasn't really helping me but was just adding one more thing on my list of things to do. With classes winding down and the summer approaching I just didn't see how treatment two nights a week for 4-5 weeks was going to be helpful. Now I am working with my outpatient team and we will see what happens. ED is still very much in my head. I am fighting him constantly. Not only that but my anxiety and inability to sleep have compounded my problems and made it that much more difficult to fight. I am feeling tire and discouraged. I am unhappy with where my weight is at and I feel gross. I am trying to move forward with recovery but it is so hard. Every step forward seems to be accompanied by several steps back. I am lonely and that loneliness is making me turn more and more to my eating disorder for comfort and safety. I know that ED can provide neither of those things but knowing that and believing/feeling that are two different things. After therapy last week I was able to look at the eating disordered part of myself and really look past the behaviors. What I saw surprised me. I saw the same scared, lonely, timid young woman that always stares me back in the mirror. I saw someone who just wanted to be comforted and happy. Someone looking for companionship. My eating disorder has given me that and continues to provide those things but I have to learn how to let that part of me provide those aspects in a healthy way.

There are so many sayings and so many words of wisdom that people spout at times like these. I know that the path I am traveling has been traveled before by many women but we each take a different way. I need to forge my way through this. As Robert Frost says "I [choose] the path less traveled." I am on my own journey to recovery and I have to believe I will make it there alive or else I am fighting for nothing. I need to do this. I need to find the motivation to keep going even when I feel like giving in and giving up.

Treatment, Meal Plans, and Weights Oh My

Three things that I find terrifying. Do you think that Dorthy, Scarecrow and the Tinman thought they would really come across a lion, tiger or bear? What we fear says a lot about who we are and how we deal with that fear even more. For a while now I  have been in treatment at Walden first in the php program now in iop. Lately I have been asking myself is this really helping me and I do not think it is. However I know that I have to really examine this question and figure out if I am running from treatment because I do not want to get better or if there really is nothing worth going there for. Now I have done a lot of DBT work in various places for various reasons and Walden is heavy with the DBT. I am spending about 80 minutes on a bus round trip to spend three hours in treatment on something that I could teach a course in and while it is good to get the support of peers and staff I do not think this is what I need. Yes I'm scared of recovery, my meal plan, gaining the weight I need to regain but these are all things I am working on and taking baby steps. I know that this is a disease that kills and I am working on taking a step or two back and really looking at what is going on within me. However this is not something I can do at Walden. This is something I can do with my therapist and something I want to do with her and have begun doing. My life is crazy right now and there is lots going on but I am learning to take breaks, to say no and to find out what it is that I want to do. I'd say that's a pretty big first step.