assumptions

Perceived Progress.

Posted on by Rachael

This is not a weight loss journey, it is a journey to help my self become a better person and to stop fighting this obsession with food.

I wanted to talk for a minute about perceived progress.

As you know, I’ve talked about progress in the past, in a very specific way that has been more geared towards the relationship with food, and my voice in food… And really the way I can manipulate my food in order to get the results I want with my body.

This is not the message I want to get across when I talk about progress. It’s not about weight loss, it’s not about the manipulation of your surroundings to get the results you want in your body.

I will talk more about my voice in food in the future. I think I mentioned it before, but It is a huge important part of this journey.

Confession

Posted on by Rachael

I’m a fucking addict. I have codependent traits and recently they came out in different ways that I didn’t really expect.

Something that has been holding me back from my weight loss and the real picture staying on track with my food and my personal journey has been the amount of drinking I’ve indulged in lately. Actually, it’s more than just that, it’s much deeper and a little unsettling.

I have mentioned before my awkward manner, if I haven’t here is a little window into that… I am socially awkward, super introverted unless I have to be, which leaves me to be anxious and unsettled in social situations… of course this is unless i choose them myself and have some sort of investment in them.

Lately I’ve been engaging in social situations I hate, and it’s not because I want to, but because I’m being supportive of friends who want me to be there AND I want to be and like to be social (Such an oxymoron). Either way I’ve been coping with alcohol, which has been helping but not exactly in the way I am most interested.

I was using it to stay social, to numb out, to appear to be engaged, to make it through, or to listen to peoples antics. It’s something to do, to keep my mind busy while people go on and on, or to stay engaged, or to appear normal among a crowd.

Either way, it’s holding me back. It’s engaging that little coping addict inside, and feeding it in a new way. Once I picked up on this, I stopped. I stopped drinking, and using that as a crutch. What this means is that I’ve had to stop showing up to some of these things, and recognize that it’s okay. It also means that I need to be more present in the present as I’m with my friends. It also means that I need to breathe through the anxieties and the boredom.

When I say I’ve stopped drinking, i don’t mean that I’ve stopped completely. I will still have a drink, and usually it’s a beer I enjoy. It’s usually more of a mindful act and I am really careful about how and when I drink it. The mindfulness and presence I think is the key.

It also might mean that I need to branch out a little bit. Find people who’s conversation makes my spirit sing.

Progress part 2

Posted on by Rachael

I posted a while ago about the progress I’ve made with my eating disorder.

With ordering food the way I want, and the things I do less and less these days.

It’s been a while since I’ve read that post, and all though yes, I’ve made progress… In the last year, that progress has allowed me to stay complacent in my addiction issues… Lord Voldemort (See previous post), muwahahaha, has taken over and allowed me to use these progress ideas as staying intact with its evil side.

I’ve been getting better about getting out of the spiral thinking. It has taken a lot for me to call a friend, or go for a walk, write, read, make lists, make some tea, take a bath…or engage in a different activity in order to get out of it.Sometimes the dwelling takes over and I just have to wallow in it sometimes and that’s okay too. (More on the dwelling later and the importance of grieving).

I’ve been getting really good at being more honest about my food stuff with my friends, family and strangers (less likely with strangers). This has helped normalize what has been going on for me, but also has allowed my family and friends accept me for the whole person I am. I want to say that sharing my story has been much harder with strangers, but as you can see that’s not true (since I’m sharing with you).

The biggest lie I’ve been telling myself though has been… “I don’t binge like I use to”. I binge with more awareness these days, awareness of the why I do it, and when I do it and the whole time I’m doing it. I don’t zone out and I choose different foods to snack with or binge with (Mostly because I don’t keep certain foods in my house). In the end, I still do it and that is indicative of the ED (eating disorder).

The more I share also with my friends, family and strangers, the more complacent I have become with it. Somewhere and some how I have accepted it, and have made it okay to eat foods that are alluring that suck me into my ED.

So here I am with my progress… Not quite where I was, not quite where I want to be, and more growth to come… After all, it’s a journey, not a destination.

Isolation is it’s favorite form.

Posted on by Rachael

I’ve always felt like I was two people. The one who is an addict and the one who is fighting to be herself. As my eating disorder shifts again, I am reflecting on it’s direction and the nasty part of myself that I really hate to admit is there. The addict inside lours me into so many things, and sometimes when I eat things it doesn’t feel like I have a choice.

I recently met with my counselor who talked about the addictive self and how sometimes it reacts and lours you in to things with out you even realizing it’s happening. It’s an entity that takes over and strikes when you least expect.

It’s also that piece that lives inside your brain that allows us to get caught up in a spiral of negative thinking. The one that goes in circles of how bad of a person you are. The one that calls you fat. The one who says, step on the scale and see how fat you are today. The one that says, you are too fat to do anything else so go ahead, sit on that couch AGAIN today (actually, it really says, go ahead sit on that couch again today because no one likes you, or everyone is too busy to hang out with you). Or the one that allows you to make excuses for your behavior, again. Excuses like… Oh you don’t want to go to the gym with me, I guess I won’t go. It’s an enabler for unhealthy behavior. **I chose unhealthy behavior instead of bad behavior because I no longer want to stigmatize myself as bad.

It likes making sure you are alone, so it can fully take over your body. No matter how many boundaries you set up for yourself, no matter how prepared you are the sneaky addicted bastard steps in and says “I know how I can get her to come back to me”. You know how Voldemort takes over people in Harry Potter and makes people act like his puppet? Gets them to do anything he wants, and makes you his puppet!?

That’s it. The addiction, says “drink, go ahead, drink with your friends, you will have fun, it’s the only way to connect with anyone, it’s the only way to not be awkward, its the only way to fit in…” What he’s really thinking is… “If she drinks, she will eat, and in a few days that girl will be all mine again”.

LORD VOLDEMORT also says things like… “It’s CHRISTMAS!!!! Everyone else are eating cookies, go ahead, treat yourself, you’ve been so good this season” What he’s really thinking…. “Later… I will have her with a whole box of Christmas snacks on the couch, where we can be alone together.”

You are probably thinking, what the fuck? This is the best way recently I can really describe it. It builds you up, allures you in with it’s goodness, and then it isolates you, beats you down and abuses you. You get so numb that you just sit there on the couch watching TV, or crying because you don’t think you can stop. Voldemort, at that time is winning.

Unfortunately it’s been isolating me lately, and after my last counseling apt my counselor spelled out all the ways that I had made excuses and was isolating myself in the last few months in about 5 sentences. She called me out, and all I could say was “That FUCKER”, relating to the addict self.

She is helping me get “Clean” again. Cutting out all the shit that allures me in and well of course I will continue to write and see her. I will no-longer be dancing for Lord Voldemort.

**In the future I will be writing about authentic relationships, and the impact while being sucked under lord Voldemort.

 

 

They are not just words.

Posted on by Rachael

You know that saying “Sticks and stones may brake your bones, but words could never hurt me?” Does that ring a bell from your elementary and middle school days?

Well, as I’m sure you have learned by now that words… will pretty much be remembered forever. In this blog post I will not use names, but will say all of the things that I can remember that has stuck with me since I can remember. I’m sharing mostly to vent, but also to let you know, you are not alone in how it affects our mind and body in the process.

First the words, then the process…

“Boar”

“Hah”, after walking in with make up too white for my face and a new haircut.

“What smells?” “Probably Rachael”

“You need mental and physical help for your weight”

After my friend donated her old Aberocrombie and Fitch jeans, I try them on and they didn’t fit “Maybe take this as motivation”.

“You would be so pretty if you lost weight”

“Do you stuff?”

Two of these statements were stated to me by friends, two were by the same person and one by a parent. None of it was said to hurt my feelings specifically (well maybe the first two were), and they probably didn’t know I heard them say things.. Either way, it has been apart of my journey and identity to this day… Okay.. It has been apart of my identity until about 5 years ago.

As we go around in life we pick up identities that we may or not intentionally create for ourselves. One for me was fat. Not just the identity that you were fat, but that being fat was bad. Being fat was gross, unhealthy and something that no one wanted to be.

The funny part was, I wasn’t that fat. No one talked about me being different at the time, I just got this idea that I was because I was so much taller and bigger than everyone else. I was 5’10 in the 7th grade and probably a size 12-14ish. I was probably the right size for my size, and the poor naive girl that I was didn’t even know what stuffing meant.

But because I had all of these people telling me that fat, not even fat, but being big was bad, I hated myself. I isolated myself, ate out of loneliness and well, eventually I became fat and became that person they hated and I hated myself even more.

I never threw up, or starved myself, it never really appealed to me. I did though remember thinking about food a lot in high school. I remember eating soy beans and thinking that they would be a good snack to help loose weight. That’s when I found out that I was allergic to soy, beans. They made my tummy hurt so bad, which was incentive to eat more, because then I wouldn’t want to eat at all.

The past 5 years I’ve spent undoing this damage. Undoing this “I hate myself” mentality. People like me and i’m starting to embrace that, and have started to like myself as well. It has taken a lot of time, and a lot of patience with myself to get to a healthier place, but it is possible.

 

 

 

Practice.

Posted on by Rachael

Ever hear the phrase “Practice makes perfect”? Annoying right? It’s something that is really hard to hear. At least, I think it’s annoying. It reminds me of something my mom would have said when I was in middle school. I played the clarinet in band, for two years, big deal. The less I practiced, the more my mom said things like “Practice makes perfect”. Now because of that, the phrase seems like nagging. Nagging sucks, it only makes me want to practice less.

Though I have to say that practicing is the only way to get better and make progress, so unfortunately… my mom was right, love you mom.

I have always struggled with my writing. I struggle with focusing and I give partial blame to that, but a significant amount of blame has gone to my confidence. I never thought that my writing could measure up to other people and their masterpieces. I would use procrastination as an excuse not to write, turn my stuff in late and or not do it. I loved learning, just hated writing. Look at me now!

In graduate school I took a writing tutor class as an elective, for three quarters. I did this to supplement my writing and to help me write my final synthesis paper. The teacher for this class had combined psychology with writing, and had a deep understanding for people’s fear of writing. She offered something that would change my life in more ways than she could even imagine. She gave lectures every class period about different tips and tricks of writing. The one that changed my life taught me about practice.

She said that when we grow, we create neural pathways in our brain which are what we do every day when we do things over and over. They are learned behaviors. When we practice new ways of living, we create new neural pathways in our brain. The more we practice along these new neural pathways, the more likely we will continue to follow them. The old ones will always be there, but we will be less likely to follow down those pathways.  (You can google neural pathways right now and it will give you 10 ways to train your brain.)

I have been struggling with food for about 20 years or so. The earliest memories I have with my relationship with food goes back to about 9 years old. I remember being bored, so bored that I would eat to fill time, to fill comfort. Comfort from what? Comfort from loneliness probably. It was stimulation, stimulation that I needed to feel. I remember that I would often go for salty salty foods, or ones that were sweet (when we had sweet things in our house). I remember chicken noodle soup, tuna fish, and baking. I developed a lot of comfort in my relationship with food.

It takes a lot of practice to undo years and years of what the opposite is of what you are trying to accomplish. I have practiced a lot of new ways of living in order to get where I am today. Some good, some not so good, some that have made my brain crazy, some that have helped and some that haven’t helped. What we know from learning new things has been that I’ve made progress. How so? Because I’ve made an effort, I’ve put work in. I have committed to trying out new things and practicing them over and over again.

The point is, when it gets the hardest and you are at your most vulnerable, you put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward because you are worth it. You are deserving of healing. You are deserving of being healthy, and or following your dreams, no matter what those dreams are. All it takes is a little practice and eventually you will no longer be practicing.

 

Don’t just put a band-aid on it.

Posted on by Rachael

I am a fairly emotional person. Most people I know already know this, though you may have gathered this information from reading my posts, OR you might be psychic. I am also empathic which challenges me on a daily basis. It’s hard sometimes to decipher my own feelings from other people’s feelings often which SUCKS. Through time, I’ve come to figure out ways to find a balance in my life with this.

In addition also have attention issues, which has been a detriment to my writing, food journey, life journey etc. I tend to get derailed often because I have the ability to lose focus quickly. I found some comfort though in coffee shops, with no time agenda, and headphones with loud music from the 90’s helps me stay on track.

One tactic that helped me significantly, especially while I was in graduate school getting through my papers was using a metaphor to describe what I was talking about. I found that it was a great way to merry two of my strongest personality traits when describing things to people. It helped me map out what I was trying to say in a way that helped my thoughts flow easily and effortlessly.

I use metaphors to help describe my experiences, break them down to understand them deeper and when I haven’t gone deep enough I will create a plan to help overcome barriers and create meaning.

With this new blog title I will complete this post.

Passion and direction through metaphors:

I was writing a previous blog post and wanted to use a metaphor to describe my own experience with eating disorders. The deeper I got into the metaphor the more wrong it felt. It is weird because I have used it often to describe my own personal experience to myself. The idea was being raw, raw and vulnerable during some of the darkest times of my journey. I described it originally as an “open wound, deeply cut, fresh, pulsating, hurting and bleeding. What you do next with that wound is very crucial for its healing and with any healing, time, healing takes time”. When you get wounded, specifically if you get scratched by a cat or cut with a knife, you first asses it and maybe ask yourself some questions: How deep is it? Do you need stitches? All the while you may be getting it to stop bleeding. You might clean it, put antibiotics on it and then what do you do next?  Most of the time you then put a band aid on it.

Finishing out this metaphor I thought “Hmm, well no wonder I’m not being successful right now, I just put a band aid on it.” I don’t want to say this metaphor has been the sole reason for holding me back, but it has been keeping me from moving forward.

When I was going to graduate school, we talked a lot about assumptions. We learned to identify our own assumptions on every level. We are always assuming or judging things, no matter what we do they will always be present in our brain and there is no getting over that. It’s what we do with them when they are identified is what matters.

Like everything that I’ve talked about, assumptions are multi dimensional. We have our own assumptions which are developed because of experiences we’ve had, and then there are the stories we tell ourselves based on those assumptions. The stories we tell ourselves are based on things that we don’t know, and based off of an experience we’ve had. In another blog post I will dive deeper into assumptions because that deserves way more attention than this blog post can offer (and understanding my own assumptions has been a crucial part of my healing on this journey).

The metaphor that I was using in the story previously, I was telling myself was that it was okay to just put a band aid on it. Which is what I’m sure you have gathered by what I’ve been telling you.  I’m  giggling to myself as I’m writing this because when I think about it, it’s kind of obvious why I haven’t been moving forward in larger strides as I had at the beginning of my food journey almost two years ago. You can’t just put a band-aid on something so deeply rooted. The story that I had been telling myself with this metaphor was holding me back from letting my wounds heal. If you do not treat a wound properly you can get an infection, and that infection only gets worse the longer you neglect it.

ALSO…. If you just put a band-aid on it, and pretend it’s not there, you are only doing a disservice to yourself. You are not giving yourself the compassion you deserve. Putting a band-aid on it, and ignoring the issue is only making it worse and festering that wound till it oozes over.

At some point, you need to peel back the band aid and re asses what is going on again, and again and again. You have to disengage from the pain, look yourself in the eye and create a list of new things to try to help heal this wound and really try them. If you are committed to healing and committed to yourself and moving forward… You will try them. You will do whatever it takes to over come this beast.

After all it’s a journey, not a destination.