Something Even Harder

...for people who experience it is the tendency towards theft than sometimes accompanies an ED.  I think (not sure, too lazy to check now) that there's a higher incidence of this with bulimia and binge types than with restrictive types of ED's. 

Essentially what's going on here is that we try to fill an emotional emptiness with food.  And sometimes we try to fill it with things.  Things that we take.  The rush of the theft is momentarily distracting the same way that a binge is, and sometimes the two get mixed together and then we're shoplifting the food we will binge on. 

Thing is, ED people are usually pretty convinced that they're no good.  And compulsive theft just underscores that feeling.  We're obviously bad, we think, because bad people steal.  So if you have experienced this phenomenon, understand that it's not you being bad.  It's that you're reaching out for anything at all that will shove away your feelings for a second or two.  And understand that you are not alone.  This is a really common thing, it's just even harder to talk about than all the rest of it which we already know is damn hard to talk about. 

Personal Blog Established!

There will be some crossover, still, since a lot of my personal stuff is ED related.  But thisiswhereiblogthings.blogspot.com is where I shall be putting more general stuff I feel like sharing.  Goodenougheddiscussion.blogspot.com will be pretty much just for ED talk and related talk.

Feel free to scoot over to This is Where I Blog Things to bask in the very first post there.  It has stick figures ;)

Well, I won't have the internet for very long, so I thought I would just toss out some things.  I like vegetables.  People from the ghetto look at you funny when you tell them you don't weigh yourself.  Mental contamination happens when one thing is associated in your mind with something bad and it takes on the bad feelings even though there is nothing bad about that first thing other than it's proximity to the second thing.  Writing with carpal tunnel is hard, but it distracts from self criticism.  I miss my fingertips, though.  Paragraph breaks make things easier to read.

Sometimes I wonder if my occasional breakthrough binge/purge behaviors occur (in part at least) because so much of my identity is based on my ED experience and recovery and I am afraid to be totally without it.  The bites all over my legs are healing up, so I feel less like a leper.  But I am so afraid of bedbugs now that I spend half the time convinced that my awesome new place has got them, too.  And then I wonder, am I being paranoid, or are my fears legit.  Since I am much more of an anxious person than I used to think, it's hard for me to know exactly how much credence to give my fears.  I bought new shoes from a guy selling them on the corner (oh, the ghetto!) and I love them.

Tonight I am buying a vacuum.  Chores are easier and more fun in a house that it just mine because it's not work, it's making things how I like them.  When I was younger, I had a big cackly laugh.  It went away for a while, but seems to be coming back.  My friend is making another upswing of progress against his depression and alcohol dependence and somehow that makes me feel a bit useless.  I get the feeling this blog is going to be trending towards personal entries.  Or maybe I should make a personal blog and keep this one for ED topics only?  Thoughts, oh nine followers?  Ha!  You're like the Fellowship and I must be the One Ring.

Boyfriend and I had our very first fight a few days ago.  Hardly a fight really.  A tiff.  He startled me, then teased me about it.  I got mad and a little bit shrill.  He was taken aback.  Basic two-people-interacting stuff. 

This was pretty significant for me, though, for a couple of reasons.  For one, I am pretty sure it was my first real relationship fight.  My first boyfriend only ever was with the me that was too occupied with food obsession to be mentally present, and it's hard to fight when you're not really engaged with your own life at all.

Second, it led to a talk about me and how my brain works.  See, right after we settled our little fight, I needed to quell the part of me that was screaming that I screwed up and nobody would ever love me and I was BAD because I'd gotten angry.  Boyfriend wanted to go into a related discussion.  I stopped him and asked if we could table the serious discussion until I processed some things.  This was only moderately successful because then I had to explain why I needed time (Boyfriend liked to get to the heart of things as they happen, which I admire, but was not capable of) which wound up being a serious discussion itself, but less draining than the other one would have been.

Fun fact, I cry when I'm overwrought.  And since outside of my own head there was nothing particularly upsetting going on, Boyfriend was understandably confused.  He took it all like a champ, though.  He didn't say anything stupid like "don't cry" and he took my word for it when I explained my needs and that everything was long-run fine but short-term overwhelming.

All of this led to a talk the next day which covered a lot of things, how ED's work, how long I'd been affected, how it affected my previous relationship and so on.  I learned that I'm getting better at speaking out loud about these things, even if they're about me in particular and not just general ED facts (that has been a problem for me in the past, being able to discuss ED's in a generic way, but not able to articulate my own experience).  I also learned that I like the kind of questions Boyfriend asks, and that he does, in fact, ask them at all.  So many people are afraid to pry, but I crave their interest.  After all my ED and recovery are a part of who I am and that part gets routinely avoided.  So it filled a need to be grilled gently for a while.

The less emotionally able parts of me want to be able to just tick "fight" off the list of Relationship Things and never come back to it.  But Boyfriend can be as infuriating as he is adorable, so I doubt that's going to happen, and it wouldn't be a good thing if it did happen, anyway.  But hey, maybe a few more fights and I'll start getting more comfortable with expressing my anger and learn to do so effectively and appropriately.

Because Guin and I have both been feeling inappropriately responsible for things lately.

Mental Checklist to Determine if it is Appropriate to Feel Guilty, Responsible or Generally Bad

• Did you take direct, specific and conscious action to cause this situation?

No?  All right, then, you're fine.  A lot of us have tendencies towards control and towards self directed negativity.  That means we tend to think "I should have prevented this, I should have done more, or be doing more.  If I can't fix this, then it's my fault."  Not true.  You only need to feel accountable for things you did knowingly.

This doesn't mean you need to walk away from situations you're not accountable for.  If a friend is in a bad place, for example, you may choose to help her.  But it is your own choice and not something you are required to do.  Nor is it your fault if a problem is too big for you to fix, and all you can do is offer support.  Just remember it's not something you SHOULD do.  Should is a word that means I expect myself to do this for no good reason and I think I'll be a bad person if I don't do it.  And some situations, though not your fault, do require action to keep yourself safe and happy.  But having to respond to a thing is totally different from having caused that thing.

So, in conclusion, stop taking on more trouble than you've earned.

STRESS!

You may or may not know it, but my life isn't characterized by an overabundance of good luck.  In the big areas like friends and good health, I am pretty lucky, but in the day to day business of my life things go to hell on a regular basis.  Like this month.  This whole month is really sucking a lot of eggs.

Now, recovering from an ED is difficult enough under ideal circumstances.  When things start going downhill it gets really complicated.  And since people who develop ED's tend to be sensitive and prone to overthinking things, even the smallest of disturbances can have a big impact.

So let's say that you've been on what you feel is a good track: Steadily maintaining your recovery, maybe just starting to learn your own needs, or taking regular steps towards healthiness.  Whatever it is, you feel like you've got life set up in a way that allows you to grab this problem and work with it.  Then all hell breaks loose.  Your support system breaks down, or your havens become unsafe or your calm is disturbed or maybe your bed is full of bedbugs and it is really pushing your triggers.  What are you going to do?

Congratulations! You have found yourself in a Shitty Learning Experience.  Feel free to hate them, because they truly are shitty.  But learn from them.  They have a lot to tell you.  They tell you where your breaking points are, and your strengths.  They teach you to invent new coping strategies, often on the fly.  They show you what you can do without and push you to choose the things you will not do without, come hell or high water.

But most importantly, you learn that you can survive anything.  Anything.  When things go tits up, the common mantra is 'I can't handle this."  "Oh, work is so stressful I just can't handle it."  "This guy is crazy and I just can't take it."  "I am so alone and it is going to kill me."  Not true.  You can and will get through all of it.  Gracefully?  Maybe not.  Easily?  Nope, it's stressful -maybe even heartbreaking- for a reason.  But you're   going to make it through.  You are going to be OK, in time.


Realize that, and it changes your focus.  You stop wondering how you're going to make it through and you start seeing what you can do now to make it through easier and faster.  You can stop dreading that you'll be crushed and start finding your power.  It's there for you, even in the Shitty Learning times.  Maybe especially then, because that's when you need it.

I have not forgotten you or given up!

It's been a weird few weeks and I just couldn't formulate a whole blog post.  Expect one probably Thursday evening.  Thursday shall be laundry and blog post day.