Accepting a Lack of Complete Recovery
As someone struggling with an eating disorder, my ultimate goal has always been complete recovery. I've looked towards it in hope on good days, and punished myself with the idea of it on bad days. It's something that has consumed me.
I feel like I haven't gotten anywhere. This sounds really dumb to even me when I think about all the lessons I've learned along the way, and the weight I've lost, and the progress I've made in dietary habits.
Even as I typed that, I wondered.
And then I remembered this week. Horrible week....my eating went down the drain, my self esteem plummeted, and I lost focus. Again.
It's as if I had never made any progress at all.
Then I remembered something a favorite youtube blogger of mine said. Her name is Beckie0, and I highly recommend her channel. Warning: some of her content is potentially triggering, but not intentionally. For me, it's been more helpful than harmful.
She struggles with a condition called trichotillomania. It's a complicated condition that causes her to pull out her hair. She's been completely bald at times.
One of the things she said in a video stopped me in my tracks. She's doing really well right now, and her hair is growing well, and her depression is better than it's been in a long time.
She said she's going through a good phase. The bad phases and times will come again, and she's enjoying the good time all the more because she knows that the bad will come again.
She's not striving towards ultimate healing and recovery, because she knows that she'll have trich for the rest of her life.
She's accepted it.
I compared what she said in the light of my own life.
I trick myself. I convince myself that if I even have a good day, a good week, a good month, that I am recovering. That I will never struggle with my eating disorder or anxiety again. I get so excited at the idea of being totally fine. So when the bad days come back, I plummet deeper into despair and depression, and I feel more and more like a failure.
I wonder what I'm doing wrong, and why this isn't working.
And who knows? Maybe one day I'll be able to afford a magical treatment program that the advances of science have designed that will cure me.
I doubt it.
I am admitting that I might never recover. That I might always struggle with this.
It's almost freeing to have that thought...to take the days as they come, good and bad, and acknowledge what I deal with for what it is...a mental condition that won't be fixed with the flip of a switch.
Thoughts?
Hey Truth! I do see what Beckie0 was trying to say, and I do agree with her. Some things you just have to finally accept that they will never go away, so that you can appreciate the good in life, the good times, good people and good feelings, a little more each and every day. It's kind of like the 5 stages of grief. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and finally, Acceptance. Beckie0 knows that there isn't a cure so far for her condition and she has accepted what she has to live with. This acceptance will ultimately make you a happier person because you are content with life and what you have to deal with, and therefore, each happy thing should be a little happier because you know when it's gone, bad will eventually come back. Unfortunately, rainbows have to come after storms, and even rainbows don't last forever, with another storm following. You just have to fight through the wacky weather life throws at us, make it through the storms, to be able to feast your eyes upon the rainbows.
@truthspilling22, I applaud you for the realization that you will probably have to fight this off and on. I have a niece, who had an eating disorder, and at one point, we thought she wouldnt make it. But little by little she got better, there is still a thing or two that she will have to deal with. She is doing pretty well now. I look at her and what she did and know it can be overcome. I believe that you will probably live with things but you can make it very manageable. I know you can do it. I am hopeful and praying for you. :)
