In 2005 I began what I thought was my recovery road from compulsive overeating. In March 2009 I view it in a different way and I’d like to share my thoughts on this.
In January 2005, I was told by a psychiatrist that I had an eating disorder and that I needed help. Sitting there with my husband (because we were in therapy for our troubled marriage) and listening to this man put a name to my troubled past was wonderful for me. “AHA! I’m a compulsive overeater! This is what’s been wrong with me for so many years.” All my questions were answered now that I had a name for what “ailed” me. This same psych told me to look for some support and I told him I had been to OA before and wasn’t a big fan so he suggested I look for online help. It was at that point that I became involved in an online eating disorder community and it was then I started working on some issues in my life that desperately needed worked on.
I’m not saying I couldn’t have done it without the help of that community but I do feel that they helped direct me and lead me in ways I may not have done on my own. I sought some professional help during my time in that community and I beared/bore (?) my soul to that community and the therapists I had at the time. I had one therapist that I could see for a short time period that was offered through work and then later I found another therapist locally that helped me with other issues (we eventually had to part ways because we did not see things the same way and I wasn’t going to pay someone to tell me I needed gastric bypass surgery or that I “just need to lose weight”.)
I say all that to lead into the fact that at some point last year I realized I had become AS obsessed with my eating disorder as I had been with dieting. My inner focus was still on my weight but it was being disguised by me saying I was “recovering from my eating disorder.” I finally came to believe that staying in that online support group that had helped me through so many rough times was actually keeping in my “disordered life”. I wasn’t growing, I was stagnant and stuck, continuing to obsess on weight loss. I was still in the same prison I was in when I first joined the website…a prison of self hate and unrealistic expectations placed on myself. I made a conscious decision last year to change my focus from my weight to my self-acceptance.
When I shared with this online community who had supported me so ferociously for three years that I was changing my beliefs and that I was not focusing on weight loss anymore, you would’ve thought I had committed the cardinal sin. I was so much as told that if I wanted to go on my journey of self-acceptance and self-love, I shouldn’t expect support from that community. Paraphrasing, I was told that to be healed and recovered from an eating disorder that I could not be fat and that I had to lose weight to a “normal” weight and be happy. Whenever I questioned who determined what that normal weight was, I was pretty much led back to the scale which, coincidentally, was taboo on that website. Sure, they said you could base it on your clothes and if you were “comfortable”. “Don’t weigh, just use your clothing as a guage.” Ok, so what size do I go for? I’m currently a size 26 so do I go for a 24, an 18, a 10 or maybe a 6? Any time I posted to that website about how I was loving myself and doing caring things for myself I was led to believe that if I was fat, the caring thing would be to lose weight. Oh yeah, sure, take the bubble baths, buy yourself some spiffy clothes, go out in the sunshine, but make sure you lose some weight because you just can’t be happy if you’re fat. Basically they were telling me that if I didn’t lose weight and was still happy…I had to be delusional.
In my time in that community, I made some huge strides in my “personal recovery” (I will no longer call it recovery from an eating disorder) because I worked hard through some major marital issues, some abandonment issues and some horribly painful issues with my deceased father. BUT, until just a few months ago, I believe my life was as disordered as it had ever been and that community only exacerbated it and allowed me to stay stuck in some serious self-bashing and self-loathing.
It’s really cool because within that community was a contributor who helped me more than she will ever know. (I think she’ll know if she reads this that I’m talking about her.) This person lives in the Chicago area and started telling me that she was seeing a therapist who was a big supporter of Overcoming Overeating and also highly recommended HAES. That person, whom I still keep in touch with today, made a huge impact on my life. I was already a big OO fan but I had never really heard anything about HAES. My search began and I found my refuge.
My personal journey no longer includes the ED online support group who helped me so much for a few years and it doesn’t include therapy at this time. I do maintain some of my friendships I made from the online community and I still get some much needed support from them when I need it but my journey is now a very selfish one. I’m my priority. I care about me and my own well being. I do caring and loving things for me. I live intuitively now. I listen to me instead of depending on others to tell me what to do. I now look back on that fateful trip to the psychiatrist where he told me I had an eating disorder and I think: “It wasn’t/isn’t an eating disorder, it was, and sometimes still is, a disordered life with disordered thinking.” I still have bad days where not everything is rosy but I can honestly say that now, more than ever, I live intuitively and lovingly and it’s been a wonderful life change.
It’s been a leap of faith to leave that community and strike out on my own (ok, with some help from dear friends like AGR) and to test my new beliefs but it’s been the most fulfilling time of my life thus far. I was hoping to open this up and see if I could get anyone else to share with me what you might consider to be a “leap of faith” you’ve taken…anything you felt was risky but you did it anyway because you felt it was for your own personal growth. I’d love to hear about it and discuss it.
~sas
Angry Gray Rainbows 
Who would tell someone that you shouldn’t strive for self acceptance? If you aren’t going to accept yourself, who will. Good for you for dropping those people.
http://littlemissjay.wordpress.com/
Who told me this? People who did not accept themselves. I now feel so sorry for them because they may never live up to the unrealistic expectations they’ve placed on themselves.
Thanks for the support!
Using clothing as a gauge can become just as obsessive as anything else. I know… I gave up the scale really early, but I was still body checking like CRAZY standing naked in front of the mirror several times a day and seeing how certain clothes fit, etc.
I think the fact that a fat woman didn’t want to focus actively on weight restoration was triggering for some people. Perhaps because they weren’t quite sure if they were as fully on the restoration train as they liked to talk like they were. Me thinks certain folks definitely protest too much.
Gosh… leaps of faith… that is a great topic. I can think of so many…
The leap to IE… the leap away from over-exercise… the leap towards Buddhism when I was raised to believe that anything other than conservative xtianity would send me straight to hell… the leap in adopting special-needs pets… the leap to move in with my awesome boyfriend… the leap away from that forum you mention (which was a huge leap, cuz I was also hugely attached)… the leap away from my old nasty job… the leap into not working at all… the leap into vegetarianism… the leap into 12-steps… the leap away from 12-steps… the leaps towards self-love that I’ve taken over the years…
In the case of all of those listed above, I remember clearly that all of these were scary. I was afraid that all of these were a mistake… I was afraid that these changes would ruin my life unrepairably and in many cases there were lots of naysayers in my life telling me that I was making the biggest mistake of my life… and yet these were some of the best things I ever did.
I think the important bit about a leap of faith is understanding that it is okay to make mistakes and it’s okay to leap back from where you lept to! It’s okay to try things… and it’s okay to admit something wasn’t as great a fit as you had hoped. I think one of the greatest leaps is the leap to believing that making mistakes and taking calculated risks is okay. 😉
Agreed, all of those leaps of faith were probably scary but definitely worth the risks, wouldn’t you say?
You know you’re always on to me about maybe reframing things. Maybe we can rephrase all those “mistakes” to be “life experiences”. Some of those mistakes ended up being very beneficial for our growth and we needed to live through the mistakes to become better people.
We’re definitely on the right road!
It is heartwarming to read about you being in such a good place. Self-acceptance is a huge leap of faith. Who tells us to accept ourselves as is? We are told by friends, family and the media to “improve yourself” by buying new stuff, changing our appearance by what we wear and our use of makeup etc. The biggest message of all is to loose weight. Weight loss is portrayed as the key to love, happiness and self fulfillment. Conversely, if we don’t loose weight we cannot possibly be loved, happy or fulfilled.
Where did we get this crock that thinness = happiness and overweight is clearly indicative of a serious problem? I don’t know and I sometimes still believe it, although not as strongly. I am so happy that you are able to live an authentic life and have been able to pull back the curtain of weight loss. There is nothing behind that curtain and all the promises are empty. Just like Dorothy, we have to make our own way home without the help of the wizard. It takes a lot of work and courage to pull back the curtain and claim your own life as you did.
Your realization that you had become AS obsessed with your eating disorder as you had been with dieting is phenomenal. Thanks so much for sharing as that has been a helpful realization for me as well. I have always equated my recovery with weight loss, which is where the recovery obsession comes in for me. OA, the boards and so many other recovery places tell us that weight loss is the result of true recovery. BULL – the human body doesn’t work that way. The statistics show that weight loss is rare and/or fleeting. That is why I love HAES.
I admire your freedom – you are living in your own skin and have realized that we are not defined by our bodies. Life is not perfect but it seems that you have the tools to deal with life on life terms.
Love
Jenny Rose
Hey Jenny Rose!
Thank you so much for your support. You’ve been there for me for a while. I know you’ve gone through some struggles yourself but you’ve always been there for me despite your own rough patches.
You’re right that the push is on to “improve yourself”. Every form of media leads us to believe that you’re not whole or “right” if you don’t meet certain standards of beauty or machismo. The highest criteria on the beauty list for women is size. I always believed that young girls, pre-teens, were bombarded with messages to lose weight at whatever cost but now those messages are starting as young as daycare!!! It’s so scary to think that children that age will feel “less than” so young. I remember what it was like for me at the age of 7 when my mom took me to my first Weight Watchers meeting. I can’t imagine the focus on food being a good thing at such a young age.
Recovery = weight loss…yeah, that’s what I was doing too. It was just another way for me to bash myself and ask myself what I was doing wrong.
Well, times they are a changin’. Loved your comment!
~sas