#actuallybulimia

[carrotzcake]

reallyy determined not to use symptoms tonight. I successfully went for two brief walks without going to the liquor store so that's a success, I suppose. and having dinner now...this next few hours is the bewitching hours. fingers crossed

[thecagedbird]

another sober living 'complaint'

i was literally kicked out of the kitchen in the middle of making dinner because the house manager was doing an intake. she said "can you give us some privacy here?"

a.) no one told me i wasn't supposed to be present during an intake b.) i have to make dinner because i have to eat because i have a fucking eating disorder (not sure she knows/understands all that; no one eats regularly here or cooks) c.) it's 6pm, we're going to an AA meeting as a house at 7 so... d.) i went back downstairs (to turn off the oven & stove) after i heard her go over the new client's history and progressed to house rules (ie no personal info) and again she asked me to leave. mk sorry i'm trying not to burn down the house? e.) she [the house manager] was also complaining that no one told her we were getting an intake today, but i definitely remember someone mentioning it during the sunday house meeting

ughh. THIS. IS. NOT. WORKING.

[depulsorii]

Why do I want my eating disorder back fully?

Why the fuck is my brain trying to romanticise something that destroyed years of my life?

Fuck off

[muttgirl]

“...Anorexia is a person, and she’s your best friend and she comes up to you and she helps you out, she comes up to you and says, “Hey, I know your life isn’t going that well, it’s cause you’re chubby. Everything you’re going through, everything that’s wrong with your life. It’s cause you’re chubby, so let me teach you. Let me teach you how to be thin, If you listen to what I’m saying, if you go by what I’m saying, you will be head of the cheerleading squad, Brad will be your boyfriend, everyone will love you and adore you and compliment you and say, “*gasp* she’s so skinny and so beautiful!” and they will love you! So just dont eat. Don’t eat anything because food is dirty, food is filth, food is for slovenly, disgusting people. If you don’t eat you will be pure, you will be thin, you’ll be able to dance through the raindrops without getting wet, you will be able to walk in the snow without leaving a footprint, you will be purity itself... and if you fuck up… If you fuck up just once, its okay because we’ve got another friend! We’ve got another friend called Mia, Bulimia, so Mia can help you out if you fuck up one time... just go and be Mia’s friend for a while. Go into the bathroom with Mia, stick your fingers down your throat, puke up everything, lose all your electrolytes..and then you can come out and you can join me again, and you can be Ana’s friend again and be purity itself but... if you fuck up again and if you keep eating like a slovenly, disgusting cunt, everyone is gonna hate you and i am gonna hate you and you are gonna have no friends left and you are gonna rot in your flabbiness you fucking disgusting cunt.” -Of Herbs and Alters

[findingmypeace]

12/28/2019

Strong trigger warning. Eating disorder talk behind the read more. Also, this is really long. I don’t blame anyone if they want to skip over this.

You’ve been warned!

I’ve talked about this before but my eating/intake has been out of control for the past year. Although I’ve already posted about this I’ll recap for new followers. I’ve had an eating disorder for 25 years. To summarize the last few years: In the summer of 2017 I started PHP, then did residential, then PHP again, then IOP. That whole process took until March of 2018. Immediately after discharging from treatment I relapsed. I will probably never go back to treatment again. I’ve been to a HLOC 5 times and relapsed after discharge each time. Aside from symptom interruption I don’t see the point in a HLOC (for myself) when I relapse each time I discharge.

In March 2018 I was working for an agency. This is the agency I worked at until my suicide attempt. My caseload was 90-100 clients and I was routinely seeing 8-9 clients a day (that’s a lot for a therapist!). My schedule was such that it was conducive to restricting and I lost a lot of weight. (I saw clients all day and didn’t bring anything to eat for my lunch break. I would eat nothing all day and then come home, eat dinner/binge, purge it, and that’s all I would eat in a day).

In September of 2018 I became suicidal and my psychiatrist suggested ECT. I started ECT in October of 2018. At the start of ECT I was having 3 treatments a week therefore I couldn’t work and I wasn’t allowed to drive. I took a leave of absence from work. During this time off work I started gaining weight. At first I couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t think I was doing anything different and the weight gain was drastic. (Nearly 10 pounds in 2 weeks.) I asked my ECT psychiatrist if ECT caused weight gain and he said, it’s a really rare side-effect but isn’t unheard of). Looking back, I think what was happening was that I had time off work which meant I had more access to food during the day which meant I was b/ping more. I was still purging everything I ate but the actual act of binging more often probably led to the weight gain.

When I went back to work in December 2018 I went back to restricting during the day and b/ping after work. I had hoped the weight I had gained would come off again but it didn’t. In fact, since then I have slowly continued to gain weight. At the end of January 2019 I had my suicide attempt and took a month off work to recuperate (definitely wasn’t enough time). I b/ped a lot during that time and the weight continued to pile on. In March 2019 I started a new job and they had a cafe on the bottom floor with the most delicious wraps and danishes. My work day restricting became eating the wraps and danishes and sometimes purging but most of the time promising myself that it would be all that I would keep down that day. But keeping down anything led to weight gain since I previously hadn’t been keeping anything down.

That lasted until I took another leave of absence at the end of June 2019. Now I had more time off work, more time at home, and more time to snack. I was bored a lot of the time and found myself snacking a lot. It started out with “a few calories kept down won’t matter” and ended with keeping down more than double what I have allowed myself in decades. The weight continued to crawl up.

Over the last few months I have made promise after promise to myself that I would start restricting again and lose the weight and that I would stop the snacking. I even talked to my therapist about how my eating was out of control and we agreed that I was operating from a point of scarcity IE: I wasn’t freely allowing myself food so my mind was acting as if I would never get food again and therefore demanding I eat all the food. Anyway, each promise to restrict was broken.

I’ve been frustrated with myself and feeling like I’m out of control. From a recovery standpoint (and from an outsiders perspective) maybe I’m doing the best I’ve ever done. I’m eating regularly (although not distinct meals-just snacking all day) and I’m keeping down more food than I have, ever. (Since the start of my ed). But it doesn’t feel good. It feels out of control. None of my clothes fit and I don’t recognize myself.

Finally, I knew the holidays were coming followed by the New Year. Frustrated with my failed attempts at restricting I decided to give in. Fine. I’ll indulge all I want until the New Year. That’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve kept down thousands of calories. I went to bed last night without purging a binge.

This morning I replaced the battery in the bathroom scale and weighed myself for the first time in months. I saw a number slightly higher than I’ve ever seen before. I did weigh myself with all my clothes/shoes on and without fully purging a binge so there was added food weight. With those things in consideration I am probably at or slightly above my highest weight ever.

I am determined to get this weight off. Especially with my brother’s wedding happening in a month and a half. I probably won’t lose a lot by then since it’s not a significant amount of time but hopefully I can lose enough to be further away from my high weight. Although this is totally eating disordered I am allowing myself to eat what I want, with minimal purging, until the Monday after New Years. (To me the holidays extend until the day before the first Monday of the year since we’re all still on vacation until then). I don’t see this as a “New Year, New Me” bullshit, weight loss New Years resolution. I may still have an eating disorder but I think diet culture is absolute bullshit. Instead, to me, this is a chance to take back control of my eating. I realize it’s absolutely eating disordered as my goal is to restrict to lose weight but I am desperate. I am disgusted that I have gotten to my high weight again. It’s 70 pounds above my low weight. I feel disgusting. I don’t want to get to a new high weight.

I recognize that what I am doing is hypocritical as I would be totally against anyone else doing this. But you can know that something is wrong and still feel compelled to do it. That’s how my eating disorder operates. I’ve attended all the groups, the therapy, the dietitian appointments. I’m a therapist myself. I know that ultimately if I want recovery I have to fight these thoughts. But I don’t want that right now. Right now all I want is to lose weight. I’ve basically snacked my way up to my high weight. I feel like I have to lose this weight.

[hopeful-journey]

I ate more than usual today and I know it's okay but it feels like I overate and should just go and binge because I've already ruined everything.

[pr0jection]

everything is happening to or around me. I feel like I have no autonomy over my life and it's been on pause for as long as I can remember. I don't know how to start it. I watch all my friends live their lives and work and date and fuck and be happy and I wish I could be like that. I don't feel real. I feel like I'm tricking everyone into believing I'm a real person. I don't care about real things but that's not acceptable. I don't feel happy anymore ever. The best I got is alright. Dying wouldn't be such a big deal because it would feel the same as I do now, but when I'm dead I won't want, I won't nag or eat too much or be too much or be crazy. It'll just be hitting the stop button on a paused thing.

[6ulimic]

[naomirecovers]

sir that’s my emotional support binge food

[thefamiliarstrangers]

I looked through all of my old pictures of her and now I feel sad and shitty and like I want to eat the whole fucking house.

I guess maybe that feeling is “triggered” but I fucking hate that word.

[upgrading]

officially not eating anymore

less shit to metabolize, so drugs will have stronger effects

won’t have to take as much drugs to get the same effect if i’m smaller

won’t run out of meds as early

the house won’t shake every time i take a goddamn step

my mom won’t scowl at me in disgust any time i look in the pantry bc i won’t be looking there anymore

my mom will eventually feel guilty for putting so much pressure on me to lose weight, and not only pressure, but disapproving glances when i eat fat free greek yoghurt for a snack instead of cherries

i want to waste away into nothing and just be high and be free

[carrotzcake]

i had a really good therapy session today and coffee date, challenged myself by splitting a pastry andd made an everyplate meal (my friend gave me a coupon) without focusing too much on the nutritional info. some anxiety about it but it was tasty and felt good about trying something new! date was #3 with this person and it feels really promising. i haven't drank since thursday so fully detoxed, feeling more clearheaded, sleeping better, not urgey.

[thecagedbird]

*eats lunch* scale: doesn't change

*gets dressed* scale: increases Xlbs

this is why i have trust issues

[treatmentisthenewblack]

Trying to spin “really good at calorie counting” into something resume appropriate

[osfed-blog]

Just got the news...

After waiting 3 months to hear back from my doctor, I go in and he tells me that there is a 12 MONTH waiting list for the eating disorder clinic I’ve been trying to get into

Why?

Why?

All I want is help, I want to be better and I want to recover but even when I reach out I get nothing back

It’s hard to stay strong when the health care system wants me to fail

[findingmypeace]

Minimizing-TW-I might delete this

[read more] I am a pretty big hypocrite. I am the first to call someone out when they are minimizing but I’m coming to the realization that I minimize quite a lot. The reason I call people out is because I care and I want to give them validation. (You are valid and X is real.) I’m specifically talking about minimizing my ED and self-harm. What brought this up is that my EMDR therapist had me fill out a ‘safety plan’ for when I feel like harming myself. TW...On Wednesday I self-harmed. It’s not something I do often. Since my suicide attempt in January I have self-harmed maybe 5 times. But when I did it on Wednesday I really didn’t think it was that big of a deal. I didn’t even think to mention it to my primary therapist. In fact, I don’t even know if my primary therapist remembers that I self-harm because we haven’t talked about it in at least 2 years. And we hardly ever talk about my ED. Since I relapsed right after graduating from treatment (I did PHP, then residential, then PHP, then IOP from June 2017-March 2018) back in 2018 I just think of my ED as another part of who I am. It’s just part of my daily routine. I eat, I purge. So what? I just purged 30 minutes ago. And I’ll probably purge again before I go to bed because I didn’t get enough up the first time. I do it so often I don’t think about it. It just happens. It feels natural.

I don’t know how to stop minimizing it. Wait a minute. I hear my therapist’s voice saying, “Yes, you do. You know what to do.” Isn’t it just great when something a therapist says gets so ingrained in your brain?! Lol I guess to stop minimizing I would have to admit to myself that ED and self-harming behaviors are wrong. I know they are wrong for other people but it feels like no big deal when it comes to me. The denial is strong. I know all of this logically. It’s easy to see how an eating disorder is dangerous for other people. I just feel like, for me, it’s just a part of who I am. I don’t know. I don’t know what I am trying to accomplish by this post. I was just thinking about the confusion I had in session today when my EMDR therapist started talking about how I should use the safety plan to help myself when I feel like self-harming. Logically, that sounds like a good idea. It’s what I would have my clients do. In fact, if one of my clients was self-harming I would be very concerned and work on a safety plan together that included harm-reduction techniques. But when the therapist brought it up today I almost felt like saying, ‘Oh but its no big deal’. It happens but whatever. In fact, it felt like a waste of time to talk about it because there were more important things to talk about.

I logically know it is a big deal but, to be honest, I probably won’t just suddenly start making a big deal about it. I did that in the past. It got me no where. I’ve been to residential treatment 5 times. I’ve relapsed every time. I’m in a place right now where my eating disorder is not interfering with my life. My depression certainly is but my eating disorder is not. Maybe that’s why I minimize it so much. Because it’s become such a routine part of my life that it truly has no impact.

I am sorry if this post is triggering. I think it just surprised me when my EMDR therapist talked about the self-harming like it was a big deal. I’m not used to that.