Living by the rule book

What I was given yesterday was permission to publish version two of the anorexic rule book that I've learnt to live by. A redrafted edition.

It's not like the edition I lived by back then, not like it was before. By giving me this permission in my head -is basically stating that I am okay and can be 'content' and cope with living within the restrictions this rule book states. It's normal and okay that I still put these controls on my life. What I don't get there is that she can't see that I opened up and said the reason I can't commit to therapy fully, give my self over and burn the book - is not because I am not fed up with the way I'm living, I am. I'm too addicted to the rules and I know they hold me back. But it's about trust. I don't trust anyone at all that it can be different for me. I also need to turn pages carefully because of the commitment I have to my life too. By that I mean work, mortgage and my plans.

It's just yet more proof services take their eye off the ball when you've got a high-functioning mental illness. When you're able to read and live by anorexic rules day to day to cope with life, but when you're able to be a 'rebel' and break the rules from time to time.


It's like eating disorders services are almost relieved that one of me comes along now and then. Self aware enough to write my own rules to cope, with the awareness that going back to volume one is NOT the life I want or need. But still not being able to put the rules down.

Unable to trust myself or my body to cope without them. Worried that living without them would be too much to bear. Apparently, when I can't break the rules any more and my life is governed by them completely, that's when they'll help me put it down.

I was sat there, admitting that I still live by the rule book, still count calories, still hate my body, still hate when I break them, still control everyone and everything I can to stick to them - and still know I'd be better with help to get rid of the book - but nothing.

Apparently, It's my fault for not trusting that burning the book would be the best thing to do. Maybe I needed help lighting the match and watching the pages burn...but I don't have a light, that's why I went back, but they can't help.

So I'll keep the book under my pillow for now. I need it like in needed a security blanket as a child. After all, I am able to break the rules from time to time. So what harm does keeping the book do? Really.

Hmmm.

Shaking Up and Breaking Up

For someone who doesn't do very well with change, I seem to be shaking up and breaking up left right and centre at the moment. 

I have been in my very own home for a month now already. People are right though, buying a house is one of the most stressful things I've ever done. But my gosh, when I turn the key and sit on my huge chaise sofa, it's nice and comforting to know it's all mine.

That's shake up No.1. The second is my recovery.

I went back to the EDU for the follow up to my review session a fortnight ago. Another go on the scales. I didn't like that at all. It messed with my month system of weighing in the same place, at the same place that I've had going since I was discharged. Despite not wanting to lose weight and actually wanting to get better - It stabs like a knife when its a different weight to 'my weight' and higher, at that. But I guess the fact the number bothered me, and the controls around the scales, is proof enough that I need what's coming next.

I am now on a longggg waiting list for another dose of  therapy. This time CBT-E. For four years I never worked to a specific type of treatment. The service itself admits that my emergency admission in 2011 meant I never really got the care I needed, and sort of made-do-and-mended with a range of different approaches.

I got the choice of CAT or CBT-E. I actually wanted to opt for CAT, but I was told the latter would be me best chance of kicking anorexia for good. It's going to be a wait and a half now. Time for me to get into a better place on my own so it's not too much of a shock to the system with calorie increases and challenges when I start up.

I am OVER the swallowing my pride stage. I need to do what I need to do to be freed, completely this time. I am stuck in that bid in the middle, Jenni Shaefer calls it 'Almost Anorexic' I think. Holding on to an unhealthy relationship with food. Letting rules and behaviours I was once a slave to still affect me. The thought of gaining weight still stresses me out, even if eating doesn't. But it's more about the fear of 'shaking up' my routine that bothers me.

So, the breaking up bit? Well, after I year, I decide I needed to break up with C. It wasn't working for me anymore. As good as things were, I found myself torn between so many things, I couldn't add therapy in there too. I need to focus on me again. I need to be free to listen to my head, and not feel more guilt about not being a good-enough girlfriend. I will miss his company, of course. I feel guilty for breaking up with him - but at the end of the day. I need to be authentic. I haven't chosen anorexia over a relationship. I have chosen me.

So, in a way, the shake up and break up actually leads to me making up with myself. Good deal that.

When's a habit a behaviour or a decision a deal?

It'll come as no surprise that I've always been a creature of habit. But when a large chunk of your life has been spent with unhealthy habits, sometimes the comfort of said habits is actually doing more harm than help. 

What I still struggle with is the internal debate on where the line is on habits and eating disordered behaviours actually comes. With the routine and habits that on one hand I see as 'just getting on with life' but on the other are maintaining a semi-recovered status quo. 

Remember those 'no big deals' I battled early in recovery? The NDB habits which Ms. F and Mrs W. challenged everyday when I altered, switched or left bits off my meal plan? Well I guess I should have challenged them more back then, because they're so natural to do.

It's not like the behaviours - or habits - cause me distress or upset though. But I wouldn't know if challenging them does, because I don't do it very often. That's the thing. I do just get on with life. But does that life include controlling my diet, avoiding high calorie 'junk' food and having rules around when I am 'allowed' or 'not allowed' to 'treat' myself by eating out or adding a bread roll? Yes. 

So how is that recovered I hear you ask? Easy, it's not, because I am not free to eat what I want, when I fancy it. I am not free from guilt and I feel like I need to 'earn' those treats. Do I feel guilty for eating or bad when people point out how much, or what I eat or if I think people look 'healthier' than me. Yes. 

But on the other hand, do I WANT to include most of the foods I don't have in my diet? No not really. So this is the conundrum I am in. With no 'weight restoration' plan or dietitian setting out 'challenges' to test anorexia, I don't - or feel the urge to - I just have these habits. My diet. 

I do jut get on with life, but life where I eat lots of salads and 'meat' (Quorn) and have the same 400 calorie breakfast, similar lunches and rotated dinners everyday. I have basket loads of fruit a week and pile my plate with veggies. I eat the same suppers, custard or soya yoghurt with dried fruit and granola for supper. Every. Single. Day. Unless of course, I eat out with colleagues or friends. Once or twice a month. There's some calories I don't count, some things I don't even think about anymore, but I wish I had tried harder to erase the mental calorie 'rough guide' I started when I stopped obsessing. Because that's my guide everyday.

Like I've mentioned in previous posts since discharge, I never hit the golden target weight I was first set, I was a kilo or two under (but in a healthy BMI for a year). And since starting life outside the EDU, my weight's not plummeted, but I have not gained over that number either. The thought of the month I get on the scales and I am that target, scares me. I know this is not right, ok?

But then again, are these just all habits I'm stuck with in an 'anorexia hangover' - or are they behaviours that still control my life? This is the debate I still have. The deals I still do? I don't know. I just get on with living with them and try to ignore food thoughts - and don't really tell people HOW I feel anymore. I just fit them in my routine and try to cope. 

Life goes on, and so does exploring recovery.

Isn't it funny how life just goes on, how arriving in a new place, doesn't make the old one disappear? However much we try to stop the world moving sometimes and scream "let me get off!", it just keeps ticking over. That's, as they say. life. 

When I was at my most ill, life stopped. Halted. That 'anorexic mixtape' stuck on loop, over and over and over again, with no respite, the same thing over and over. Treading water, every day, terrified to swim either way.

But one thing that's helping me move from being in treatment, to living life away from life at the eating disorders clinic, is just trying really hard to not call myself recovered, or in recovery, or an 'anorexia survivor'. Just trying to move on with life, explore my new skills now I've finished the swim.

I'm learning to accept recovery is never probably going to have the end point and golden beaches I once dreamt of reaching. The place where it all made sense and life was, well, dare I say perfect, sorted and fixed. It was a mirage I thought I saw in the confusion of anorexia and during the four year swim I've just made to get here.  

This came up in an interview I did with a magazine this afternoon. I was asked to describe where I am at now with anorexia. Am I still in recovery, or have I recovered? It's the first time I've spoken to someone new about my experience since discharge, and I didn't know what to say. In some ways, I HAVE recovered from anorexia, I've recovered my BMI, I've recovered my life, I've recovered my career. I no longer have full-blown clinical anorexia. But have I set up camp here?

Sort of, I've found my plot. But in saying that, I'm suggesting that I have totally overcome anorexia. Out the other side, reached that recovery cove I once referred to. I may have out swam the sharks, I may have reached the other side of the recovery ocean, But it doesn't mean I'm settled here.

Now is where I perhaps rest my arms and legs a little after almost drowning and the epic swim that was treatment. Now is where I start to explore the new place I am in, walk along the shore a little. Now is the time to use the survival skills I've been taught by Dr. B, Mrs. W, Ms F. and others - and make my own way here.

After all, explorers don't land in new places and have a ready made camp, do they? It's about arriving on new shores and using the skills picked up along the way to carve a new life. And this is where life, and my recovery is now. Not over, just me, my life, moving on in a new place. 

One of the quotes my recovery tattoo relates to is apt here too.