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Eating Disorder Relapse Check In
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- Category: Self-Help
I'm beginning to think that if I get through this series of 300 we might have a eating disorder relapse check in place. When you feel you are relapsing you get frightened that you are going back to the months or years of eating disorder misery. You worry or panic over your behavior. You don't know how to stop and you look for something or someone to hang on to. But while you are looking, you are bingeing or starving or throwing up.
What's happening is that you have healed and developed enough to no longer need your eating disorder. You moved beyond it. But, in moving beyond it you increased the complexity and challenges in your life. This is great. At some point you hit a psychological place where you need some psychological strength and resilience that isn't there. You moved your life beyond your development.
In that bewildering place when you can find nothing inside to help you cope, you reach out for what filled in your blanks in the past, your eating disorder. This signals, not that you are going back, but that you have moved forward and need to do more work.
But what work? That's where these 300 maxims might come in handy. I hope you will be able to cruise through the different points and see which relate to you. When one rings out to you personally then you can dig in to your new healing and development work which makes the eating disorder an unnecessary and obsolete tool.
When have you experienced a relapse? What did you discover you needed to learn or develop in order to heal and move on?
Comments
So I haven't relapsed on paper.....actually the 16th marked my 100th day of not restricting. But I'm feeling like a “dry drunk.” I'm emotionally withdrawing again and I'm finding myself stuck in my “internal dark places” again, where my ED likes to take control. The desire to lose weight is getting strong again and I seem to be avoiding “life” by focusing on my struggles in recovering......then I tell myself that I might as well do the ED activities...at least I'd be a smaller size. I know I'm avoiding looking at parts of myself and my life. I know I've learned things about myself these last 100 days, but I seem to be stuck now. Not sure if I'm scared of what's next or if I've fallen for “numbing” again.
I will continue to follow your posts and hopefully something will relate to me! I may not feel really good about myself right now, but I know recovery is the most important thing to me.....or I would have given into my desires long ago!
Thanks for sharing with us!! I still get excited when you have a new post!
Kym
Those dark places are places in you that need healing attention and must come up in order to get the attention and care you need. I'm so glad you are steadfast on your recovery path.
It's interesting to me that you write about your avoiding looking at parts of yourself and your life just when I finish posting the Wave Dream on my blog.
The maxims. I'm intrigued with them too. I'm using them more as prompts now rather than as specifically as I had originally planned. They are too powerful for brief commentary.
And yes, my posts are about different phases and moments in healing. As you develop you will find something different in a post you've already read. That's the way it should be. As you heal your perception expands and your ability to receive deepens.
warm regards,
Joanna
Thanks
Kym