Bulimia Recovery Uncensored: Teeth Dreams and Breaking ED's Shell

Raw Ramblings of My Recovery for Bulimia.

Day Five

Some content could be triggering/disturbing, so please read at your own risk. These are actual journal entries written when I was deep in the depths of the eating disorder, depression and anxiety, trying desperately to get out.

Before my recovery for bulimia even started, I began to have a reoccurring dream about my teeth falling out! They felt so real and were terrifying at the time. I write,

October 23, 2006

I had a #*!&#* up dream last night. It was one of the worst “tooth” dreams I’ve ever had. All of my teeth were falling out. Some were loose and being pushed out by new teeth. I would try to pretend they weren’t gonna fall out but they would fall out anyways. I couldn’t even talk without them falling out. I was bleeding everywhere. Even my molars came out. They’ve never came out in a dream before. All my teeth came out together, kinda like a retainer or dentures – they were all connected. But I would try and push them back in cause I didn’t want them to come out. It was scary but no one would help me.

I used to have this reoccurring dream, over and over again throughout my eating disorder recovery and even before I began treatment for bulimia. My teeth would literally fall out of my mouth. It felt so real, I would wake up grabbing my mouth to make sure that all my teeth were still there. It would manifest in all sorts of different ways, in different settings with different people but my teeth would always be falling out somehow. One dream my teeth literally crumbled out of my mouth. Other times the teeth would break off or just simply fall out… Eeeek that feeling of having my teeth falling out still gives me the willies.

It kinda freaked me out because I was having these dreams pretty frequently. I understand now the meaning of these dreams and it was a lot about change. The teeth falling out symbolizes me having to grow and change and grow into the person I had to become. I realized I had to change. The teeth were falling out whether I liked it or not. As much as I could pretend they weren’t falling out – or things weren’t falling apart in my life – it was going to happen, and new ones were coming in behind them. The teeth falling out didn’t feel good and it was scary to not be in control when the teeth were coming out unexpectedly.

From TeethFallingOutDream.org:

As a general rule, a dream about teeth falling out echoes the emotional disturbances you may be experiencing as you or your environment is going through a period of change. Teeth falling out in dreams usually represent the emotional impact of letting go and grieving.

This type of teeth dream is most likely to occur in periods of radical changes in one’s life. Teeth falling out in dreams are useful indicators of our underlying fears when we transition from one situation, mindset or relationship to another. As one ventures out into unfamiliar territories, teeth may show up in your dreams as symbols of insecurities and loss.

Dead on! These dreams were a great metaphor for my life and my recovery for bulimia and it was almost as if they were letting me know ahead of time of the changes and the great upheaval that I would have to make in myself, my life.

Saturday Oct 28, 2006
Today was my 2nd full day of treatment. I haven’t written because I have been afraid to feel. I can’t be afraid anymore. I can’t be afraid to speak what I feel in group. It’s been going a lot better. The first 2 days I got here were really scary. But the sad part is that I belong here. It took me until today to realize that. I may not do everything exactly the same as everyone else – we all have had different experiences and manifest our disorders in different ways but we all feel the same emotions. A lot of the time in group I feel like they are speaking my innermost thoughts. It’s crazy. I can feel it hit me – something inside of me feels that pain and I just tear up and start crying. I need to work on opening up more. I’m just afraid of being vulnerable. I can’t be that here. I need to get better. I need to open up. I can do this.

Reading this entry again…it’s almost as if I’ve forgotten how far I’ve come in my recovery for bulimia and anorexia. This entry really shows how broken I was, how scared and alone I felt. I was so afraid that if I opened up to what was inside, that I would surely – burst or maybe explode? What was I afraid of happening? I was so afraid of those overwhelming feelings I had been avoiding feeling for so long.

It’s amazing to look back 6 years and say – wowwww. I can’t believe how much I’ve changed, how much I’ve grown. It feels like it was a whole different person who went through this, I’m so dramatically different now.

I am so grateful for how far I’ve come. I’m a totally different person. I can only hope that you can understand how far I’ve come in such a small period of time and that it’s totally possible in your recovery for bulimia or anorexia or binge eating or ednos too. I was terrified when I first went to treatment for bulimia, and humiliated, ashamed, guilty – you name it. But it was meant to be and it was all given to me as a gift so that I can sit here today, a grateful woman to have gone through such pain. Now I can only share what I’ve been through and hopefully it might help you to avoid or alleviate some of your sufferings, your struggles, your pain.

Just as Kahlil Gibran has said,