Fears.

We all have them. We don’t want to admit them.  They creep in when we least expect them.

Is Fear Holding You Back In Your Recovery From Bulimia?

(or Anorexia, Binge Eating, Compulsive Overeating, EDNOS, etc.)

 

This is an interesting question to ask because I know there are so many fears associated with recovering from an eating disorder. When I was bulimic and anorexic and especially when I began treatment for bulimia, I was afraid of everything.

I was afraid of food. I was afraid of losing control. I was afraid of gaining weight.  I was afraid I wasn’t perfect, afraid I wasn’t enough.  I was afraid of making a mistake, afraid of being rejected, afraid of failing, but most of all I was afraid of being “found out.”

Now this is intriguing to me because just last week I was doing a bulimia recovery coaching session with an amazing woman, who after so many years still has not told anyone that she has been getting treatment for bulimia.  Only her parents know about her recovery for bulimia, however, what they don’t know is that she’s still suffering with the eating disorder behaviors.

This is typical of many woman who suffer with eating disorder symptoms and even those in recovery from an eating disorder; they simply suffer in silence.  On the outside they appear happy and may even be outgoing with many friends. But on the inside they are dying to be heard.  Dying for someone to listen, for someone to hear them and understand.  They are hiding who they truly are and are being controlled by the eating disorder itself. The controlling part is the eating disorder thoughts, the eating disorder voice, if you will, that takes over.

See at first we think we’ve found something amazing and the eating disorder symptoms are a secret of weight control and emotional control.  It suppresses emotions, memories, and traumas which many women feel are overwhelming and too much to handle.  And of course in our weight-obsessed society, woman are desperately striving to attain the “ideal body” or “perfect weight,” which is really an endless pursuit, because it will never make you happy.

The eating disorder symptoms – the binging, the purging, the restricting, the compulsive overeating, the overexercise, the food rituals – all serve as a distraction to what is really going on.  We are afraid.

We are fearful on so many levels.

• We fear gaining weight.
• We fear we’ve eaten too much.
• We fear feelings and anxiety so we binge and purge, stuffing down the feelings and releasing them with the purge.
• We fear being alone so we turn to food, yet we fear letting people in emotionally.
• We fear emotions so we restrict and starve them away.
• With anorexia, we fear we’re taking up too much space.  We fear growing up.
• With binge eating and compulsive overeating we fear getting close to people so we eat to gain weight.  The extra weight acts as padding so we don’t have to feel close to others or let them in emotionally.
• We are fearful of letting go of the control that the eating disorder behaviors once gave us, and we fear admitting that we have a problem, for we fear that others might view us as flawed if we get treatment for bulimia or if we ask for help with eating disorder.

Fear plays a huge role in developing an eating disorder.  Isn’t it ironic that fear also plays a huge role in recovering from bulimia, recovering from anorexia, or recovering from binge eating?

Fear is the block that holds us back from truly recovering from bulimia 100%!

We are fearful of failure, of success, of our power.  Many women are deeply afraid to fail. We are perfectionists by nature; many women with eating disorder symptoms are overachievers and strive to be the best at whatever they do.

Maybe that’s why I was so good at the anorexia and bulimia disorder: I wanted to be the best at it (by the way, now I want to be the best at bulimia recovery

So I binged and I purged over and over again to calm the fears, to numb the pain.  I restricted because – God forbid – I allow myself to indulge in the “forbidden” foods.  I kept losing weight and chasing that happiness, that satisfaction that so many of us are trying to obtain by getting to that “ideal” weight.  But I’ll tell you something, that satisfaction never comes no matter what weight you reach, and by the time you realize this it’s too late.

I’ve been friends with girls who literally were dying: they were only skin and bones and their organs were shutting down, yet they looked in the mirror and still said, “I feel fat” (fat is not a feeling).  What is the fear here? Fear of life, fear of being yourself and doing all you can to run away and hide who you truly are under the mask of the eating disorder behaviors.

Why Is Fear So Scary?

So what did I fear the most in my recovery from bulimia?  Being found out.  As I write this blog post this fear is again coming up for me.  Maybe that’s why I chose to write about fear as a block when recovering from an eating disorder.  Even now years after being abstinent this fear still haunts me.

What am I so afraid of?  Being rejected.  Being ridiculed, having people think of me as “weak” because I couldn’t “control myself.”  I fear that people will look at me different for having bulimia disorder.  Still, years after treatment for bulimia and even after fully recovering from bulimia, I am still hiding this fact to the world.

Why is that?  I guess it’s just another layer that I need to work on.  Bulimia recovery is simply a journey where we continually keep learning and growing and peeling back the layers as they come up in our lives as challenges, no matter how “recovered” we are.  Maybe my lesson here is to face the fear of other people’s opinions about me.  I still fear rejection at some level, for its human nature to want to be accepted and loved.  I am learning more about how to let go of what others think about me, accept myself for who I am, love myself no matter what, and forgive myself for [what I perceive to be] my failures, mistakes, and regrets.

One major change I have made in my recovery for bulimia is viewing the circumstances in my life differently, from a whole new perspective. Instead of asking myself, “why is is happening?” when something happens that I perceive to be “bad” or “negative,” I immediately ask myself, “what am I learning now?”

The universe has a grand plan for us all and each lesson comes to us in our lives packaged as circumstances and events, or people are also used to teach us things about ourselves.  Because if we aren’t growing and learning, we are stuck, static, standing still.  We will always be stuck in the vicious cycle of the bulimia disorder if we don’t face our fears!!!  If we choose to ignore them and binge and purge and stuff them down or distract ourselves using other eating disorder symptoms and eating disorder behaviors then we don’t grow.  We don’t learn and we certainly don’t face our fears.

Fear is really just…

False

Evidence

Appearing

Real.

Fear is only an illusion and it is best friends with the eating disorder behaviors because they both work to keep us trapped within the vicious bulimia disorder cycle.

Are you afraid of being vulnerable?  Are you afraid of being successful? Are you afraid of allowing yourself to be happy? Are you afraid of failing in your bulimia recovery, and the eating disorder voice says, ‘why even bother to start treatment for bulimia because I know you’ll fail.’

The only way I grew in my recovery from bulimia was by facing my fears and doing exactly what is was that I was afraid of.  Which is why I’m writing this post right now because I’m proving it to you that we need to face our fears to move past them and grow in our eating disorder recovery.  To learn more about who you really are, and to understand that you are strong enough to face your fears.  You are worth the effort.  So for once, do what you are most afraid of.  Feel the anxiety.  Let the fear come up and once you do this you can allow the fear to pass.  And trust me it will.

“This too shall pass.”

And next time it gets easier.  So I’m facing my fear today by saying, yes world!  I have been recovering from an eating disorder.  I am a recovered anorexic, a recovered bulimic.  And it was #*$%^!* hell.   I have been through the darkness, through such depths of despair, and I’m so grateful that I got treatment for bulimia.  That I didn’t give up learning how to recover from bulimia (if you don’t give up, you’ll never fail, right?!).

I emerged through the light a changed woman.  A grateful woman.  Grateful to have seen such struggle at such a young age, grateful to be alive today, healthy as can be.  Grateful to have faced my fears and to have gotten through it alive.  I’m stronger, more sensitive, and know myself much at a much deeper level by facing what I have been most afraid of.  And so I challenge you to do the same:

What do you fear the most in your bulimia recovery?

What are some ways that you can take action and face your fears right now?

 

 

Peace, Love + Freedom,