The constant

When my world was crashing down I would in the past think: I am still thin at least. It was my only constant in a chaotic environment. It is a meager comfort, though as it doesn't give anything, but false safety. I thought it would be hard to let go of this, but gradually it was disappearing when I focused on taking good care of my body instead of making sure it was thin. The point was to focus on the body, not necessarily to make it small, but to take care of it and let no one interfere after being sexually, verbally and physically abused. I tried taking care of myself the way I was taught, but my mum was not a good teacher or role model as she was restricting herself and had a lot of rules not healthy to follow. I was ashamed of being thin unnaturally and to be driven by fear. I wanted to be authentic and brave. I also hated that I was in my bubble because everyone else is too and don't really connect. I always wanted to connect, but was taught to be in my bubble as that is what others does. I believe in caring about others, connect and share burdens because that is when we get more aware and encouraged to do the right thing and heal. 

For me the desire to be authentic helped me recover because in the process one must question all the beliefs, preferences and values wheather they are taught or our own. Many are ingrained since childhood and can be hard to see if they are truly ours or not. I thought for a long time I only thought thin bodies were acceptable and pretty, but now I know that is what my mum think, not me. My fear made me think so, but deep down I am not obsessed about looks at all. I remembered how I felt as a kid about bodies and looks and that is how I found myself again, free from the my mum and society. It was my fear of weight gain (which hid the true fear which was fear of losing control, loose face, get uncontrollably angry, sad or scared, being ridiculed, humiliated and despised) which made me obsessed with a certain look. My parents both taught me thin is good, body fat is bad. 

Recovery is self discovery. I am the same no matter what is going on, no matter what I feel. I am constantly here no matter how my body looks. I will never lose myself. I am the constant. God is the constant that loves highly and unconditionally.

Spellbound

The following is written a little black and white to make it easier to understand and instead of the word "you" it could have been written "me". 

When the people around you that matter to you don't see you, only your body, naturally you will use your body to communicate to them that you are not your body, by shrinking it to say: See, I can shrink it, so it can't be me! 

Criticism can be like a spell that binds you to the critical persons view. You understand they only accept you if you live up to their liking, so instead of saying: "I am finding someone else to be around. Someone who accept me the way I am" you stay, because you don't know anyone who can see you for who you are. Everyone you know is the same way; Only seeing the obvious, not your soul,  so you are either trapped or on your own. As trapped you think: Ok, if I only make sure I am as thin as they want me to be, they will accept me and I can be fully me, free and seen. Its just my body that is the problem. That should be possible to fix.

But if they could not see you beyond the body when your appearance was not accepted, they never will. They could not meet your need of being seen beyond the body and kind of put the blame on your body for this lack. Your body was never the problem, but their lack of ability or willingness to see beyond it, and every body else, for that matter, was.

Their criticism trapped you. They got you now so they did not have to spend their life alone even though they only cared about themselves. They knew they could not attract you with love so instead they bound you with a spell implying you are unworthy of their love instead of admitting they have none. If they got you to focus on your body they could keep on focusing on the material stuff in peace. They had you in their world. The physical world. People like that will not compliment you or acknowledge ever, so you can be stuck there for eternity. You will never experience what you hoped for, to eventually be seen, to feel free. You will instead never feel you are thin enough because the love never shows. No matter how thin you get they are still just focusing on your body.

This goes for men as well. They see your body. See you as an object. No matter what you weigh they still do this. You are trapped in the physical world. 

I wish I had rejected my parents much earlier and been on my own until I finally found someone who could see me instead of being in this trap for so long. So many years went by before I had to give up the hope of being loved by them. So many years of misery. 

Do not do the same mistake as me. It is not the body that needs to change. You need to change what you focus on even though others don't. Let the people who only care about the physical plane care about it without you. Move on to the psychological, express your emotions, find your true values, your calling and find the reality. Leave the illusions behind and let those who love them live in them until they feel trapped and need you to help them out.

Turn the love around

The love you have for your pets or friends/family you can turn around to yourself and the needs of your body. When I felt my heart bleed for women with eating disorders depriving themselves food and rest, creating a hell for themselves as a cry for help that no one thought was for them, to show others how deprived of love they were, as a kid hoping to be taken care of, in need of a loving embrace to cry out their pain in, I realised I could give myself the same freedom I wished for others with an ED and by doing so I could help others get out of their hell. 

It is all about love and to start seeing through our own eyes instead of through others eyes, to understand that even though people treated us badly we are divine beings. Our nature is to love. Everyones nature is. So if we focus on getting over our fears, love is revealed. In the ED hell we chose to listen to thoughts of fear believing they were true. We are untouchable really. Love is untouchable. It streams everlastingly. Now we just live in a dream. The more fear we have the more stuck we are in it believing it is real. But reality is beautiful. It is paradise where everyone loves. We just don't see it because we are trapped in self made cages.

How to stop body checking

I doubt I would have stopped body checking as long as I fear weight gained and had the same goals. So working on accepting how ever the body needs to be to be healthy is one way to go about it. Another is to set new goals. Instead of the goal "be thin" have a goal of for example getting optimal health, taking as good care of the needs of the body as possible, getting strong (you feel stronger by eating enough. No need to do strength training for that.), get over fears, improve communication skills to get needs met more efficiently ( like non violent communication by Marshall Rosenberg), be more social, be more present with the inner child / the emotions and our needs on all levels of our being, have a daily meditation and prayer practise (instead of body checking you can check in on what you feel and need and use prayer beads if you need to touch something to calm yourself). 

Make a list of what is positive about weight gain / optimal weight for your body (type) for example. I can give you a list: No more feelings of stress and nervousness caused by hunger, no more extreme hunger, no more hiding my natural look and being ashamed of being fake, vain and manipulative, no more giving in to fear (of weight gain), being a body positive role model that indirectly tells others it is safe to look natural, be able to feel love instead of fear, be able to help others overcome their ED, no more dishonesty around food and exercise, finally relaxing and sleep better, less fragile.

Can you not stop weighing yourself?

I stopped because it is pointless to follow the water fluctuations and what comes in and out of the intestines, you know? I no longer have a desire to lose weight if it happens because of restriction because muscles always comes with fat loss when it happens like that and I view that as unhealthy and therefor undesirable. Restriction also reduce the metabolism I want to be high. I see no point in restriction anymore. It can not last and will show me in a manipulated version only. So if I am loved then the question will always be: Will I be loved if I was natural?

I thought not eating enough and be thin was going to prevent me from harm and rejection, but that is magic thinking. Thin people are not spared by pigs, assholes and selfish people. Thin people also lose control, mess up and get rejected. Thin people can also be met with contempt and judgement. To restrict is like holding a straw as a weapon and a skeleton for comfort. It is asking others to take care of something you are suppose to do yourself, but just never learned how to in a good way. What needs to be done is to learn that instead of looking like a beggar of maternal love, because no one will ever take responsibility for your well being like you can. You must find love the way you need it so you get support for the love you have in yourself.

Is it impossible to recover for certain people?

I think everyone can recover from an ED if they get the right tools to do so and the right support. Recovery can be likened with finding the keys to a lot of doors and all those doors reveals a part of the recovery landscape. The more doors I open the more of the healthy landscape I see. When the landscape is bigger than my ED world I move into the new one and just now and then I peep into a door to the old world, but then I am reminded of the fear based life on the other side and quickly go back.

So one actively look for the right keys. It can be topics about how to set boundaries, how to express emotions, how to find the right kind of love, how to tolerate all kinds of bodies, how to detach from thoughts, how to change mindsets, how to love, how to challenge fears, how to trust the body, how to eat healthy, how to not care about what others opinion is, how companies creates and benefits from peoples insecurities. The list is long.

For me it helped to watch a lot of recovery youtube videos, but most importantly my own questions to myself so I could understand why I did what I did, how it benefitted me, which of my unhealthy opinions were taught and not really mine, what my true opinions really were. Again the list is long.

First thing I did was to make a meal plan - that neither scared me too much to refuse to eat it nor was so meager I would be too hungry - and follow that. That gave room to think about all these questions instead of food/body/exercise/number/how to endure all the time.

Years in quasi recovery

I lived several years eating 1500 calories. Every day I ate the same foods to keep the calories in check and performed the same amount of activity. My days looked the same just to make sure I did not gain. It worked to maintain my weight, to be an anorexic person who don't end up dead, but I don't recommend it. I recommend to work on why you fear weight gain and replace the fear with love so you get a life, not just a quasi life.

I found out that my need for structure had to do with my fear of losing control of my emotions. I had strong emotions after a lot of trauma and abuse. I wanted to be "put together" within the structure I had made for myself. To be put together also means to be always tense. By living within this structure of a meal and activity plan I was not challenged, so no emotional outbursts would happen. I can get very mad in a second. I really hate it because I want to be a person who have control so I don't get hurt. I feared that I would suddenly faint on the bus not knowing what people would do to my body. I can also cry a lot. God wanted to challenge me on my fear of losing control in public so he made me lose control of my emotions even within the structure. He made me cry uncontrollably sometimes among strangers. Cry hard! Huge waves of emotions just came over me I could not stop.

I also experienced getting what later was called hysterical once I bled and the bleeding would not stop. Also something I feared I would be called. What I found was when I lost control I felt another type of control. I was detached from my emotional self and just witnessed it, untouchable. Thing is I did not trust peoples kindness. I was afraid they would bully, abuse or hurt me in some way if I was vulnerable, but God showed me otherwise. People showed respect when I cried. They just looked at me with kind caring eyes and when I was perceived as hysterical I thought the woman who disliked me or the situation was coldhearted. What she thought of me did not matter. Only what I knew was true mattered.

So ask yourself why you need the structure and challenge yourself so you can come to see that what you fear has nothing to do with your body and what happened to you had nothing to do with it either.