The following is a story of a young woman's eating disorder. Congratulations with your recovery!
MY RECOVERY PROCESS FROM BULIMIA NERVOSA:
A MESSAGE TO ALL
By: Kristin Jaworski
Date: January 19, 2002
BACKGROUND
Well, here I am on January 19, 2002 writing a story that I never thought I would be writing: My Recovery Process from Bulimia Nervosa. Who would have thought? Certainly not me. It’s hard to believe that in August of this year I will be passing my ten-year recovery anniversary. I have remained quiet and out of the loop this entire time but I promised myself many years ago that if I ever reached this milestone that I would only then consider myself to be in a solid state of recovery and could begin to share what I have learned. My experiences are specifically directed to those with Bulimia, since that was my disorder of choice, but many issues cross over into Anorexia Nervosa and into obese overeating.
Let me begin by stating the obvious. Variation exists in everything in life and that includes Bulimia. I believe that those with this disorder can place themselves on a Bulimia continuum, if you will. On the left side of the continuum are those who dabble in the behavior briefly and then are able to quickly get themselves back out. On the right side of the continuum are those who allow the behavior to completely envelop their lives to the point of not knowing how else to live. And, of course, there are all of those who fall in between the two extremes. I think it is important for those reading this story to know that I was as far out on the right hand side of that continuum as one could possibly get. I am not saying that to be melodramatic. I am saying it because it is true. I was absolutely addicted to food and exhibited the textbook signs of addiction. I lost friends because of this behavior, I lost jobs because of this behavior, and, yes, I even stole to support my habit. Once I started stealing I knew that I had a SERIOUS problem and I also recognized for the first time that Bulimia is most definitely a form of addiction and must be recognized as such.
Allow me to offer further proof that I was indeed on the far right wing of this continuum. I was in the behavior pattern for a solid ten years of my life. Yes, an entire DECADE. The first time that I remember engaging in the binge / purge pattern was when I was fifteen years old and I continued in it until I was twenty-five. Think about that - at that point in time I had been Bulimic for almost one half of my entire lifetime! I was hospitalized three times for it and had been in and out of therapy for the majority of those ten years. Towards the end of that time frame even my counselor had given up on me. How sad is that? She said that she had done all that she could do for me and she thought that perhaps a different counselor might be able to help me more. If this does not prove my point that I was a “professional” when it came to this disorder then I do not know what will.
I am writing this story to chronicle my efforts and to offer hope to all of those reading it that recovery is possible. Absolutely no one reading this story can be any worse than I was and if I can kick and scratch my way out of that behavior pattern then anyone can. What follows is the process that I went through in order to get to where I am today. There are many lessons that I have learned that I want to share and I hope at least one person out there can benefit from my mistakes. Please take to heart anything that you find helpful and disregard anything with which you may not agree or find offensive. No two people are alike and, therefore, no two recovery stories can be identical but I do believe that common threads do exist.
THE PROCESS
Again allow me to state the obvious (I’m good at that) and say that everything in life is a process. That includes recovery from Bulimia or any eating disorder for that matter. Some are able to breeze through the process while others, like myself, prefer the long, hard, dragged out version. I have always been a hard head after all. In the words of John Mellencamp, “I do things my way and I pay a high price.” I certainly paid a high price when it came to Bulimia.
I think the first step to my recovery (this probably holds true for many others) was to blame everybody else for my problem. I mean, why not? It’s certainly the easiest thing to do. Why not do the easiest thing first? So I did. You bet. I blamed everybody. My controlling mom, my dad that I had only met once and who didn’t want anything to do with me, my step dad, my brother, my dog, bird, whoever. I wasn’t particular about whom to blame - as long as it wasn’t myself. But one day it dawned on me that while taking a look at my various relationships allowed me to understand how I allowed myself to fall into the behavior pattern, blaming those relationships didn’t help me at all in getting out. Alas! I was forced into blaming no one but myself for continuing in it. Although I am presenting this realization with a hint of comic relief, I cannot stress its importance as the very first turning point in my recovery. However, it would be many, many years from this realization to the first day of my recovery. It was a long road indeed.
Unfortunately, while I am able to identify the first step in my recovery, I am unable to neatly and chronologically lay out all of the other steps that were involved. I believe that what “the process” truly boiled down to for me was a literal reprogramming of many ways in which I thought and of every single way that I dealt with my feelings and emotions. Because of this fact, the rest of the steps all happened so slowly and with so much unbelievable trial and error that I cannot honestly say which one happened next. Therefore, I have decided to discuss the larger issues in what I believe to be their order of importance.
As I mentioned above, the first and most important step of my recovery was accepting full responsibility for my behavior. I learned early on that I was unable to depend on anyone other than myself to take care of my problems and to see me through to recovery. Although I tried the “Give Your Problems to God” route, that road just wasn’t getting me anywhere. I needed to be in full control of my own life and not allow anyone or anything else, which included deities, to have a hand in it. In that way I ensured that all blame was placed on myself and not on anyone or anything else. I had to learn to trust and depend on myself first and everyone else second. I realize that this is not a path that works for all but it was the one that worked for me.
The next issue that I want to discuss is the concept of eating only when one is hungry and stopping when full. This was such a difficult concept for me to learn (or rather re-learn) and continues to remain such a cornerstone to my recovery that I am unable to find words with which to express its importance. I will go out on a limb and state, for the record, that I believe this issue to be a common thread to ANYONE who is recovering from an eating disorder. Those that abuse their bodies with eating disorders for long periods of time, such as I did, lose all understanding of what hungry and full feel like. It is the very first thing learned as an infant but once lost, it is very, very difficult to relearn. After I quit the Bulimic behavior, I did gain approximately ten pounds while I desperately sought to figure out what those two biological concepts meant. Since then my weight has leveled off at what I believe to be my body’s set weight and as long as I follow that basic rule of recovery, not to mention biology, my body takes care of itself and my weight no longer fluctuates.
Another big reprogramming process that I had to go through was to, first, be able to figure out WHAT I was feeling and, second, to be able to express those feelings in respectful and productive ways. You have to understand that my mother, who was my only parent, was a self-proclaimed bigot. She was the “Archie Bunker of the neighborhood.” I do not like to speak poorly of her since she is no longer alive to defend herself but I think it is important to understand how certain feelings and manners in which they are handled are learned responses. Once learned, it takes a virtual reprogramming to learn to handle them differently. That is what happened with me. I did not want to be a bigot. I am pleased to say that putting myself through college provided me with the tools I needed to be able to think for myself and to get myself out of that pattern of thinking. However, learning to figure out other feelings that I had other than those of bigotry and how to handle those feelings took many, many years of counseling and much trial and error. Of course, stuffing one’s feelings down with food isn’t helpful in this area. Because of this, I think the majority of my progress that I made with regard to identifying my feelings came after I stopped the binge / purge behavior. It was pivotal for me to be completely honest with myself as to what I was feeling and, more importantly, to establish WHY I was feeling that way. I had to learn to trace my feelings back to those circumstances or events that caused them. Once I learned how to do that it made acting, or sometimes not acting, on them much easier. The ability to trace my feelings also made expressing them much easier. It then became a matter of cause and effect: “I feel this way because this occurred or because this was said.”
With respect to feelings, I need to share one more important lesson that I have learned. Feelings are neither right nor wrong - they just are. This was a tough lesson for me. I had to learn that I feel what I feel and to stop beating myself over the head if those feelings were inappropriate or negative. Learning to trace my feelings back to their source allows me to either validate them or to alter them depending, of course, upon the situation. This continues to be one of the most powerful tools in my recovery.
One final important aspect to my recovery was the development of a respect for my body. One of the best classes that I took in college was a human biology class. I found it fascinating and developed a whole new respect for the human body. It is a remarkable piece of machinery with tens of thousands of processes occurring every day. It needs nutrition to run properly. I know that this fact goes without saying but those of us who abuse ourselves have a tendency to disregard it. There is something to be said in the phrase “ignorance is bliss”. Once I learned more about how my body functioned it made me more aware of the damage that I was doing to it. That’s not to say that I immediately turned to recovery. Again, it would be many, many years before I took that final step. But it was another turning point. That’s what it’s all about - turning points.
THE EVENT
Here it is - here’s what you’ve all been waiting to read: My Epiphany. What was it about that one day in August 1992 that allowed me to take that final step? I’m sure this is quite a let down but I have no idea. Honestly - I do not know. For many, it takes a “bottoming out” of some sort but for me, I truly believe that there was no bottoming out. I could have continued in the Bulimic behavior pattern until my little heart finally said, “no more, I’ve had enough” and quit working before I would have ever bottomed out. As the years have passed I’ve spent many hours thinking about that eventful day but I am no closer to an answer now than I was then. Like many of you reading this story, I had made the commitment to stop the behavior many times in the past but had been unable to follow through. Why did I follow through that particular day? I just don’t know.
I think there is a part of me that does believe in a higher power of some sort. I don’t know if I would call it “God” necessarily. I find myself wondering if it’s more planetary than anything else. Certain stars and planets that are aligned just right to create such change as to render them “unexplainable.” I believe that August 1992 was one such period of time, at least for me. I have no explanation for it. Perhaps part of it was the fact that I had worked on all the other parts of my recovery that I could over that ten-year period and the only thing left was to finally leave the behavior behind. To let myself fly so to speak. I just made the decision that I was finished and it was time to move on. It sounds trite but it’s as close to an explanation as I can offer. I wish I had more insight into that day but I just don’t.
MILESTONES
Again - more of the obvious - all processes have milestones that serve as benchmarks to success. This holds true to the process of Bulimic recovery as well. I have not kept up on the literature but, in my day, there were two benchmarks used in order to gauge one’s achievement. One such milestone was to pass a two-year consecutive period of binge free behavior and the other was to experience a traumatic event. Well, I can say that I definitely have both of those covered. I passed my two-year mark almost eight years ago, and my traumatic event I passed approximately seven years ago when my mother died of breast cancer. She had been diagnosed with it five years previously and had undergone a radical mastectomy in addition to taking an experimental type of medication. Unfortunately, the cancer reappeared in her lungs five years later at which time she refused all other treatment and allowed the cancer to consume her. It took eight months for her to die and it was, to date, the second most difficult thing that I have had to live through (my recovery, of course, remains the hardest).
Although I can’t say as though I ever had thoughts at that time of returning to my old ways of dealing with stress, I can say that my eating patterns did change, which I believe to be a normal reaction given this type of situation. I was working full-time, finishing my last year of college full-time, and watching someone that I love die a long, slow, and extremely painful death. I was physically sick to my stomach more often than not, which made eating an unpleasant affair. I ended up losing approximately fifteen pounds during that time frame. After she died and things returned to a quasi-normal state, I put five pounds back on and have remained at that weight ever since.
Of course, as one might guess, I have my own opinion concerning benchmarks that can be used to gauge just how solid one is on his/her path to Bulimic recovery. I completely agree with the traumatic event milestone. What I do not agree with is the two-year consecutive period of binge free behavior. I think this period of time needs to be more flexible and case specific. In my opinion, I believe that one must be out of the behavior for as many consecutive years as one was in it. For me, I was in it for ten years. To be out of it for two years wasn’t nearly long enough. Now that I am approaching year ten I will allow myself to believe that I am on a solid road to recovery but I will NEVER allow myself to say that I am recovered (past tense). I think that stating my recovery in the past tense is extremely dangerous. To exemplify my point, let me say that approximately three years ago my husband and I started having marital problems. We ended up separating a couple of times. I had been in my seventh year of recovery at that point and I cannot tell you how perilously close I came to slipping. It was the closest I have ever come and I had already been in recovery for seven years! As I have stated previously, because I believe that Bulimia is an addiction, I know that I can NEVER use the binge/ purge cycle again to handle my feelings and emotions. Never. Not once. Not ever. I will do whatever else I have to do (as long as it’s productive) but I absolutely cannot use that as my outlet. This is the thinking process that I have acquired that has allowed me to stay out of the behavior and in recovery for as long as I have. I believe this to be another commonality to recovery.
So there are my most important lessons learned neatly laid out and appearing so easy. I wish I could have learned them sooner and without all the damage. But that is a “What If” scenario and not the reality of my life.
THE HERE AND NOW
Today, I believe that I am one of the most normal eaters that I know. I eat approximately four meals a day and I eat REAL food. I do not eat food that is diet, low fat, low calorie, or low sugar. I go out to eat at restaurants and no longer worry about the holidays and all of the food associated with them. I eat anything I want and I NEVER allow myself to be hungry. The funny thing is I no longer want all that junk food that I used to eat as a practicing Bulimic. That’s not to say that I do not eat any junk food because I certainly do but my body craves foods with substance such as meat and potatoes. I can do all of this because of my basic rule of recovery, which again, is to only eat when I am hungry and to stop when I am full. I am five feet six inches tall and weigh 125 pounds. That is the weight that my body settled at after my mom died. It remains a constant with a normal variation of two to three pounds. I am a female and whether I like it or not, female body weight fluctuates. I deal with it and no longer worry about it. I still do occasionally weigh myself perhaps three times a year but it just isn’t necessary. There are many bigger issues to deal with while in recovery other than normal weight variation. Ten years ago I never thought that I would get to this point so I will say this again for emphasis, if I can get here then anyone can. It is possible. I am living proof.
Looking back I wish I could have found a more productive and healthier way to learn all of these things about myself other than falling into the food obsession cesspit. But, to be honest, if that was the only way for me to get to where I am today then I would do it all again. I am not ashamed of the path that I took and I will not remain anonymous. The person that I am today, with all of my good qualities and with just as many bad qualities, is a direct product of my Bulimic recovery experiences. I have evolved from a person who had absolutely no self-esteem and no self-respect into a person who now emits those two qualities in the air that I carry around me. As a matter of fact the major non-food related motto by which I live today is that I no longer care if people like me but I demand respect. I will respect others as long as they do the same and if returning that respect isn’t possible then I expect them to stay away from me. It’s that simple. This is a far cry from the person who I used to be.
I am certainly not finished recovering nor am I finished becoming the person that I want to be. I remain a process of continual improvement. What I do believe is that I have finally reached the point of self-acceptance. It has been a very long hard road but I do believe that the trip was well worth it. For those of you reading this who think that you can’t reach this point, then think again. Keep trying and don’t ever give up (even if your therapist gives up on you)! I know that you CAN do it. Remember, that statement comes from someone who has been there - and I mean who has REALLY been there. Who better to offer proof?
MY RECOVERY PROCESS FROM BULIMIA NERVOSA:
A MESSAGE TO ALL
By: Kristin Jaworski
Date: January 19, 2002
BACKGROUND
Well, here I am on January 19, 2002 writing a story that I never thought I would be writing: My Recovery Process from Bulimia Nervosa. Who would have thought? Certainly not me. It’s hard to believe that in August of this year I will be passing my ten-year recovery anniversary. I have remained quiet and out of the loop this entire time but I promised myself many years ago that if I ever reached this milestone that I would only then consider myself to be in a solid state of recovery and could begin to share what I have learned. My experiences are specifically directed to those with Bulimia, since that was my disorder of choice, but many issues cross over into Anorexia Nervosa and into obese overeating.
Let me begin by stating the obvious. Variation exists in everything in life and that includes Bulimia. I believe that those with this disorder can place themselves on a Bulimia continuum, if you will. On the left side of the continuum are those who dabble in the behavior briefly and then are able to quickly get themselves back out. On the right side of the continuum are those who allow the behavior to completely envelop their lives to the point of not knowing how else to live. And, of course, there are all of those who fall in between the two extremes. I think it is important for those reading this story to know that I was as far out on the right hand side of that continuum as one could possibly get. I am not saying that to be melodramatic. I am saying it because it is true. I was absolutely addicted to food and exhibited the textbook signs of addiction. I lost friends because of this behavior, I lost jobs because of this behavior, and, yes, I even stole to support my habit. Once I started stealing I knew that I had a SERIOUS problem and I also recognized for the first time that Bulimia is most definitely a form of addiction and must be recognized as such.
Allow me to offer further proof that I was indeed on the far right wing of this continuum. I was in the behavior pattern for a solid ten years of my life. Yes, an entire DECADE. The first time that I remember engaging in the binge / purge pattern was when I was fifteen years old and I continued in it until I was twenty-five. Think about that - at that point in time I had been Bulimic for almost one half of my entire lifetime! I was hospitalized three times for it and had been in and out of therapy for the majority of those ten years. Towards the end of that time frame even my counselor had given up on me. How sad is that? She said that she had done all that she could do for me and she thought that perhaps a different counselor might be able to help me more. If this does not prove my point that I was a “professional” when it came to this disorder then I do not know what will.
I am writing this story to chronicle my efforts and to offer hope to all of those reading it that recovery is possible. Absolutely no one reading this story can be any worse than I was and if I can kick and scratch my way out of that behavior pattern then anyone can. What follows is the process that I went through in order to get to where I am today. There are many lessons that I have learned that I want to share and I hope at least one person out there can benefit from my mistakes. Please take to heart anything that you find helpful and disregard anything with which you may not agree or find offensive. No two people are alike and, therefore, no two recovery stories can be identical but I do believe that common threads do exist.
THE PROCESS
Again allow me to state the obvious (I’m good at that) and say that everything in life is a process. That includes recovery from Bulimia or any eating disorder for that matter. Some are able to breeze through the process while others, like myself, prefer the long, hard, dragged out version. I have always been a hard head after all. In the words of John Mellencamp, “I do things my way and I pay a high price.” I certainly paid a high price when it came to Bulimia.
I think the first step to my recovery (this probably holds true for many others) was to blame everybody else for my problem. I mean, why not? It’s certainly the easiest thing to do. Why not do the easiest thing first? So I did. You bet. I blamed everybody. My controlling mom, my dad that I had only met once and who didn’t want anything to do with me, my step dad, my brother, my dog, bird, whoever. I wasn’t particular about whom to blame - as long as it wasn’t myself. But one day it dawned on me that while taking a look at my various relationships allowed me to understand how I allowed myself to fall into the behavior pattern, blaming those relationships didn’t help me at all in getting out. Alas! I was forced into blaming no one but myself for continuing in it. Although I am presenting this realization with a hint of comic relief, I cannot stress its importance as the very first turning point in my recovery. However, it would be many, many years from this realization to the first day of my recovery. It was a long road indeed.
Unfortunately, while I am able to identify the first step in my recovery, I am unable to neatly and chronologically lay out all of the other steps that were involved. I believe that what “the process” truly boiled down to for me was a literal reprogramming of many ways in which I thought and of every single way that I dealt with my feelings and emotions. Because of this fact, the rest of the steps all happened so slowly and with so much unbelievable trial and error that I cannot honestly say which one happened next. Therefore, I have decided to discuss the larger issues in what I believe to be their order of importance.
As I mentioned above, the first and most important step of my recovery was accepting full responsibility for my behavior. I learned early on that I was unable to depend on anyone other than myself to take care of my problems and to see me through to recovery. Although I tried the “Give Your Problems to God” route, that road just wasn’t getting me anywhere. I needed to be in full control of my own life and not allow anyone or anything else, which included deities, to have a hand in it. In that way I ensured that all blame was placed on myself and not on anyone or anything else. I had to learn to trust and depend on myself first and everyone else second. I realize that this is not a path that works for all but it was the one that worked for me.
The next issue that I want to discuss is the concept of eating only when one is hungry and stopping when full. This was such a difficult concept for me to learn (or rather re-learn) and continues to remain such a cornerstone to my recovery that I am unable to find words with which to express its importance. I will go out on a limb and state, for the record, that I believe this issue to be a common thread to ANYONE who is recovering from an eating disorder. Those that abuse their bodies with eating disorders for long periods of time, such as I did, lose all understanding of what hungry and full feel like. It is the very first thing learned as an infant but once lost, it is very, very difficult to relearn. After I quit the Bulimic behavior, I did gain approximately ten pounds while I desperately sought to figure out what those two biological concepts meant. Since then my weight has leveled off at what I believe to be my body’s set weight and as long as I follow that basic rule of recovery, not to mention biology, my body takes care of itself and my weight no longer fluctuates.
Another big reprogramming process that I had to go through was to, first, be able to figure out WHAT I was feeling and, second, to be able to express those feelings in respectful and productive ways. You have to understand that my mother, who was my only parent, was a self-proclaimed bigot. She was the “Archie Bunker of the neighborhood.” I do not like to speak poorly of her since she is no longer alive to defend herself but I think it is important to understand how certain feelings and manners in which they are handled are learned responses. Once learned, it takes a virtual reprogramming to learn to handle them differently. That is what happened with me. I did not want to be a bigot. I am pleased to say that putting myself through college provided me with the tools I needed to be able to think for myself and to get myself out of that pattern of thinking. However, learning to figure out other feelings that I had other than those of bigotry and how to handle those feelings took many, many years of counseling and much trial and error. Of course, stuffing one’s feelings down with food isn’t helpful in this area. Because of this, I think the majority of my progress that I made with regard to identifying my feelings came after I stopped the binge / purge behavior. It was pivotal for me to be completely honest with myself as to what I was feeling and, more importantly, to establish WHY I was feeling that way. I had to learn to trace my feelings back to those circumstances or events that caused them. Once I learned how to do that it made acting, or sometimes not acting, on them much easier. The ability to trace my feelings also made expressing them much easier. It then became a matter of cause and effect: “I feel this way because this occurred or because this was said.”
With respect to feelings, I need to share one more important lesson that I have learned. Feelings are neither right nor wrong - they just are. This was a tough lesson for me. I had to learn that I feel what I feel and to stop beating myself over the head if those feelings were inappropriate or negative. Learning to trace my feelings back to their source allows me to either validate them or to alter them depending, of course, upon the situation. This continues to be one of the most powerful tools in my recovery.
One final important aspect to my recovery was the development of a respect for my body. One of the best classes that I took in college was a human biology class. I found it fascinating and developed a whole new respect for the human body. It is a remarkable piece of machinery with tens of thousands of processes occurring every day. It needs nutrition to run properly. I know that this fact goes without saying but those of us who abuse ourselves have a tendency to disregard it. There is something to be said in the phrase “ignorance is bliss”. Once I learned more about how my body functioned it made me more aware of the damage that I was doing to it. That’s not to say that I immediately turned to recovery. Again, it would be many, many years before I took that final step. But it was another turning point. That’s what it’s all about - turning points.
THE EVENT
Here it is - here’s what you’ve all been waiting to read: My Epiphany. What was it about that one day in August 1992 that allowed me to take that final step? I’m sure this is quite a let down but I have no idea. Honestly - I do not know. For many, it takes a “bottoming out” of some sort but for me, I truly believe that there was no bottoming out. I could have continued in the Bulimic behavior pattern until my little heart finally said, “no more, I’ve had enough” and quit working before I would have ever bottomed out. As the years have passed I’ve spent many hours thinking about that eventful day but I am no closer to an answer now than I was then. Like many of you reading this story, I had made the commitment to stop the behavior many times in the past but had been unable to follow through. Why did I follow through that particular day? I just don’t know.
I think there is a part of me that does believe in a higher power of some sort. I don’t know if I would call it “God” necessarily. I find myself wondering if it’s more planetary than anything else. Certain stars and planets that are aligned just right to create such change as to render them “unexplainable.” I believe that August 1992 was one such period of time, at least for me. I have no explanation for it. Perhaps part of it was the fact that I had worked on all the other parts of my recovery that I could over that ten-year period and the only thing left was to finally leave the behavior behind. To let myself fly so to speak. I just made the decision that I was finished and it was time to move on. It sounds trite but it’s as close to an explanation as I can offer. I wish I had more insight into that day but I just don’t.
MILESTONES
Again - more of the obvious - all processes have milestones that serve as benchmarks to success. This holds true to the process of Bulimic recovery as well. I have not kept up on the literature but, in my day, there were two benchmarks used in order to gauge one’s achievement. One such milestone was to pass a two-year consecutive period of binge free behavior and the other was to experience a traumatic event. Well, I can say that I definitely have both of those covered. I passed my two-year mark almost eight years ago, and my traumatic event I passed approximately seven years ago when my mother died of breast cancer. She had been diagnosed with it five years previously and had undergone a radical mastectomy in addition to taking an experimental type of medication. Unfortunately, the cancer reappeared in her lungs five years later at which time she refused all other treatment and allowed the cancer to consume her. It took eight months for her to die and it was, to date, the second most difficult thing that I have had to live through (my recovery, of course, remains the hardest).
Although I can’t say as though I ever had thoughts at that time of returning to my old ways of dealing with stress, I can say that my eating patterns did change, which I believe to be a normal reaction given this type of situation. I was working full-time, finishing my last year of college full-time, and watching someone that I love die a long, slow, and extremely painful death. I was physically sick to my stomach more often than not, which made eating an unpleasant affair. I ended up losing approximately fifteen pounds during that time frame. After she died and things returned to a quasi-normal state, I put five pounds back on and have remained at that weight ever since.
Of course, as one might guess, I have my own opinion concerning benchmarks that can be used to gauge just how solid one is on his/her path to Bulimic recovery. I completely agree with the traumatic event milestone. What I do not agree with is the two-year consecutive period of binge free behavior. I think this period of time needs to be more flexible and case specific. In my opinion, I believe that one must be out of the behavior for as many consecutive years as one was in it. For me, I was in it for ten years. To be out of it for two years wasn’t nearly long enough. Now that I am approaching year ten I will allow myself to believe that I am on a solid road to recovery but I will NEVER allow myself to say that I am recovered (past tense). I think that stating my recovery in the past tense is extremely dangerous. To exemplify my point, let me say that approximately three years ago my husband and I started having marital problems. We ended up separating a couple of times. I had been in my seventh year of recovery at that point and I cannot tell you how perilously close I came to slipping. It was the closest I have ever come and I had already been in recovery for seven years! As I have stated previously, because I believe that Bulimia is an addiction, I know that I can NEVER use the binge/ purge cycle again to handle my feelings and emotions. Never. Not once. Not ever. I will do whatever else I have to do (as long as it’s productive) but I absolutely cannot use that as my outlet. This is the thinking process that I have acquired that has allowed me to stay out of the behavior and in recovery for as long as I have. I believe this to be another commonality to recovery.
So there are my most important lessons learned neatly laid out and appearing so easy. I wish I could have learned them sooner and without all the damage. But that is a “What If” scenario and not the reality of my life.
THE HERE AND NOW
Today, I believe that I am one of the most normal eaters that I know. I eat approximately four meals a day and I eat REAL food. I do not eat food that is diet, low fat, low calorie, or low sugar. I go out to eat at restaurants and no longer worry about the holidays and all of the food associated with them. I eat anything I want and I NEVER allow myself to be hungry. The funny thing is I no longer want all that junk food that I used to eat as a practicing Bulimic. That’s not to say that I do not eat any junk food because I certainly do but my body craves foods with substance such as meat and potatoes. I can do all of this because of my basic rule of recovery, which again, is to only eat when I am hungry and to stop when I am full. I am five feet six inches tall and weigh 125 pounds. That is the weight that my body settled at after my mom died. It remains a constant with a normal variation of two to three pounds. I am a female and whether I like it or not, female body weight fluctuates. I deal with it and no longer worry about it. I still do occasionally weigh myself perhaps three times a year but it just isn’t necessary. There are many bigger issues to deal with while in recovery other than normal weight variation. Ten years ago I never thought that I would get to this point so I will say this again for emphasis, if I can get here then anyone can. It is possible. I am living proof.
Looking back I wish I could have found a more productive and healthier way to learn all of these things about myself other than falling into the food obsession cesspit. But, to be honest, if that was the only way for me to get to where I am today then I would do it all again. I am not ashamed of the path that I took and I will not remain anonymous. The person that I am today, with all of my good qualities and with just as many bad qualities, is a direct product of my Bulimic recovery experiences. I have evolved from a person who had absolutely no self-esteem and no self-respect into a person who now emits those two qualities in the air that I carry around me. As a matter of fact the major non-food related motto by which I live today is that I no longer care if people like me but I demand respect. I will respect others as long as they do the same and if returning that respect isn’t possible then I expect them to stay away from me. It’s that simple. This is a far cry from the person who I used to be.
I am certainly not finished recovering nor am I finished becoming the person that I want to be. I remain a process of continual improvement. What I do believe is that I have finally reached the point of self-acceptance. It has been a very long hard road but I do believe that the trip was well worth it. For those of you reading this who think that you can’t reach this point, then think again. Keep trying and don’t ever give up (even if your therapist gives up on you)! I know that you CAN do it. Remember, that statement comes from someone who has been there - and I mean who has REALLY been there. Who better to offer proof?
©kimratcliffe