For a long time I believed that I was “broken” and that there was something innately wrong with me.
I believed that it was all my fault; however I also believed that I was a victim and I blamed everyone around me.
I believed that I was bad, that I was damaged goods and I totally identified myself with the eating disorder.
Do you identify yourself with the eating disorder? Probably. Ever go to a meeting or therapy group and introduce yourself like,
“Hi, I’m Lauren and I am a bulimic and anorexic… oh yeah, did I mention I am severely depressed and possibly suicidal? I’m anxious, have panic attacks and suffer from PTSD from a horrid rape I experienced. Oh yeah and I was diagnosed and treated for bipolar once and I would punish myself by being an over-exerciser. Don’t forget I am a cocaine addict too.”
Haha, okay I’m trying to have a sense of humor here…but seriously.
The point I’m making here is this… Do you see how all of these eating disordered statements above start with “I AM”?
I believed it was a part of me that I would never overcome. My sense of self was wrapped up in all these dysfunctional things I was believing about myself. I thought that what I was experiencing with the eating disorder was myself- and I HATED myself for what I had become.
I couldn’t understand how I could treat myself like that. I mean really, it felt so disgusting and embarrassing what I was doing and I definitely didn’t want to share it with anyone because I was so ashamed of it.
I could share all of the gory details of the eating disorder and the madness it created- the massive binge and purge fests, the disastrous consequences to my finances, my relationships, and my health- but I don’t really feel that it would be very helpful.
My mission is to share with you how it FELT to me because that’s what really matters…
We women with eating disorders share a common experience in feelings, emotions and the way we interact with food, our bodies, and the world around us. All of the people, places, events in our lives and the way we manifest our disorders may be drastically different, but our feelings, emotions and what we go through in our heads are shockingly similar!!
So what is the eating disorder making you feel today?
Do you feel unworthy, unlovable and not deserving of anything good in your life?
Do you feel like a burden?
Do you feel like you don’t fit in, like there’s something wrong with you?
Do you feel disgusting, ashamed, and embarrassed about yourself and your eating disorder behaviors?
Do you feel anxious and afraid and feel like you have to be perfect all the time?
Do you feel out of control sometimes?
Are you frustrated and just want to give up?
Do you feel like you’re living a lie or that you are just numbing yourself to life?
These are all feelings that we share that ultimately keep the vicious cycle of the eating disorder intact….
You feel like you’re not good enough, not happy enough, that if only you could lose the weight that you would be skinny and happy. So you start a new diet, you start restricting and you start off feeling good and confident and happy because the number on the scale went down. And then it hits you- BAM, you have a major binge episode and maybe you purge afterwards. You binge to get relief and purge to feel release. It’s an escape, a way to reward yourself and it just feels good to let go and indulge yourself, lose yourself in the rituals. Maybe the next day you punish yourself for eating too much by over-exercising or abusing laxatives. Maybe you stop eating altogether because you feel like you don’t trust yourself around food and you are afraid if you start eating you won’t be able to stop. Or maybe you just feel so badly about yourself and your life experience that you just want to numb out- so you either restrict everything you eat and majorly limit your diet, or maybe you fit in at the other end of the continuum and you just end up eating all the time. You eat compulsively to numb your feelings and keep everything stuffed down. The weight you gain is like a protective shield and doesn’t let anyone in or allow anyone to know the true you. Or you lose all the weight because you feel you want to disappear or you don’t feel worthy to take up space or you just want to go back in time when you were a child with no responsibilities, pressures and anxieties of this world. Or maybe your weight stays exactly the same and you wonder what the hell is wrong with you because you can’t lose weight. You are so jealous of women around you who maintain perfect bodies and you obsess over the media and magazines and all of the perfect bodies that you can’t seem to have yourself. No one knows you are struggling in such silent despair because they can’t see it and you smile on the outside but on the inside you are killing yourself to be something you’re not but desperately want which is just happiness and perfection and to feel worthy and loved and beautiful and unconditional acceptance and love for yourself and it all…
These are all dysfunctional eating disordered behaviors and experiences and there are many, many other circumstances or eating disordered behaviors you might be struggling with.
The point of all of this is, IT DOESN’T MATTER what your eating disordered behaviors are.
The feelings, emotions, thoughts and beliefs are what underlie the eating disordered behaviors and ultimately what we all have in common.
We feel like we’re not good enough, not worthy, we don’t like or love our self and we keep trying to control our weight in an attempt to feel better and be “perfect.”
Do you understand now that you are not alone? We are all struggling with the same thing! How could we all have these exact same feelings, thoughts and limiting beliefs?
It baffles my mind, but it is part of our society today. The eating disorder manifests from a set of collective beliefs and thoughts that exist in our subconscious mind individually and as a whole. We believe these things because we have been “programmed” this way. Yes, I do believe that genetics play a part in it, but not as big of role as many people think.
You can change the way you think and believe and in doing so, you can change your life.
We are the way we are because of what we have been taught and the way we have reacted to our environment and situations growing up. What you are realizing now is that these beliefs and thoughts are not productive anymore!
The eating disorder developed within you because it served a purpose at the time. Whatever the reason it came to be, it really doesn’t matter. And yes, you will want to understand why you became this way. You will go to therapy and talk about it and write about your past to try to gain some sense out of it. But in the end what you really need to do in order to be free is accept your past and forgive yourself.
Now you understand that you don’t want to be this way anymore, that you are harming yourself but you don’t know how to change. You are waking up and beginning to see that you have a choice. We are waking up as a species and we are now beginning to understand how our thoughts and beliefs actually create our world.
We are conscious creators of our lives and now YOU CAN CHOOSE not to listen to the eating disorder voice.
The way that I understand it is like this: the eating disorder is NOT YOU, it is SEPARATE from you.
Yes, you have the thoughts. Yes, you experience the feelings. But, does it define who you are? Are you your eating disorder? Absolutely NOT.
These voices are common to millions of people all over the world in many different forms. We can choose to rise above by learning ways to raise our vibration, think new thoughts and believe new beliefs that do not support or encourage the eating disorder and all of the dysfunction and destruction that comes along with it.
Have you ever tried to just listen to the eating disorder voice? What did it tell you? This voice is the voice of your eating disorder. Some call it “Ed”, some call it “Ana”, I personally named mine Mia.
She is the most manipulative, controlling, deceptive lying bitch!!! This eating disorder voice is the voice of your inner critic. It is extremely perfectionistic and focuses on the things that we do wrong, all of our imperfections and the things that we don’t feel we do good enough. We’re never good enough and we’ll always feel bad about ourselves and have low self esteem and self worth if we keep listening to this eating disorder voice.
So how do we learn how to dis-identify ourselves from this voice? And once you realize that the eating disorder is NOT YOU, then you might be asking yourself, who am I then? And once you realize all of the negative things you are thinking in your head, how do you get rid of them? What do you think now?
Please comment below!!!
Peace, Love + Freedom,
There are days when I know that the bitch in my head is taking over for the day. I can literally feel her as soon as I wake up, she says get on the scale, look how fat your stomach is, that feeling is not hunger, hunger does not exist. This past year I have almost died twice. My kidney’s failed which put me in the hospital for a week, where I was pumped full of fluid that made me swell up like a balloon, due to the fact Im so severely malnourished that the protein needed to keep fluid in the tissue in basically non-existent. 3 days ago my potassium level dropped to 2.1 normal 3.5-5, luckily I had a blood test that morning and hour later the doctor called told me to rush to the hospital because my level was life threatening low. I was anorexic for the first 3 yrs and then went to bingeing and puging which I have been doing for the last 10 yrs. 13 yrs of hell. My whole life revolves around food, I cant go have fun with friends (they might want to go out to eat), I suck at intimate relationships because the secret is so hard to hide from someone when you get that close to them. I am better friends with the pizza delivery guy than anyone else, Im pretty sure he sees me more than my mom does. I went to treatment 3 yrs ago and I went back to my old ways in 3 months. Since my body is literally breaking down now , I have no choice but to get better. It is do or die. I am going back to treatment, I believe I did not stay long enough the first time and that I did not keep a good support system in tact when I got out (I moved away with a boyfriend that was never home, which left me to my vices). I will stay at least 90 days this time and I will be moving in with family afterwards. I know one thing I have fought for everything in my life, and Im gonna fight this bitch and she is going to go down.