#edxorcism

[whsprings]

yesterday I had to explain the sunk cost fallacy to my therapist so I will do it again for you in case it resonates.

say you've been waiting in line for something at a stall. you've been in this line for hours, and you really want this thing. you notice that nearby another stall is selling something very similar to what you want. but you've been waiting for hours!! surely it must be worth it to stay in this line since you've already invested so much time and effort into it. and so you stay, even though you could easily go and buy a nearly identical item at this different stall. this is the sunk cost fallacy-- to refuse to give something up because of the time and effort you have invested into it even though quitting would be beneficial.

I couldn't have tortured and starved myself for all these years just to give it up now for nothing.

[whsprings]

I don't want recovery to be my entire life in the same way I don't want my ed to be my entire lofe, because in both circumstances my life is still very connected and intertwined with sickness. I just want to have a life!! a normal life!! and that just doesn't seem possible a lot of the time

[whsprings]

I feel like I have managed to just sorta. integrate my ed into my life. like I am still restricting and have very very limited foods that I will eat on my own but I also do not hate myself (usually) and my body image is fine and my mood is decent (if you disregard the loneliness) and work is going well and I am at a weight I can tolerate and today is almost 4 weeks without purging.

like today I had all safe foods but then got ice cream with my family and it was fine (because I restricted earlier). I have been having increased sh urges, but I've been managing and am about 2.5 months clean. it feels... surreal almost. like this is as good as things are going to get and that I've cracked the code for keeping behaviors at a manageable level, though that might just be wishful thinking. I mean I do want to increase the number of foods I can eat without wanting to kms purge and I actually have been working on that with my dietitian. idk it just feels like things are... fine. I am sure my ed therapist would disagree but for right now I'm okay with this.

I feel like treatment centers often push this idea that unless you are doing everything perfectly (following your mp and not using behaviors) you can't possibly have a decent quality of life or be in recovery, but I think I disagree. perhaps for some people recovery looks like never using a behavior ever again, but maybe for others it's just a decreased frequency that lets them live a life they're okay with. there's this pressure to have it all together all of the time, any slip is labeled a lapse and multiple slips and you've relapsed and are threatened with a hloc. maybe there's more to recovery that chasing a new form of perfection.

[whsprings]

dietitian said she will never force me to go to treatment or give me an ultimatum and then offered to start seeing me more often if that's what I want 🥺 so different from past providers who would threaten to fire me unless I did what they said. we also discussed options for moving forward (whether that's hloc or staying outpatient with modifications for more support or something else) and she is going to talk to my therapist later today to see what she has to say abt everything. my past ed treatment rlly has been just losing more and more autonomy and I am so glad to have a provider that sees me as a human and not an eating disorder

[whsprings]

my dietitian has been trying to get me to move my scale into a less easy to access place and I have been fighting her tooth and nail but I could not figure out why. then I was thinking and I came to the realization that moving the scale feels like getting a step closer to having it taken away from me and I am not willing/ready to do that. and this is how I feel about a lot of behaviors-- that if I stop or reduce them now I will be giving them up forever (because someone else is telling me to stop/taking them away) and that doesn't feel like something I am ready to do. treatment often preaches that you are either relapsed or recovering-- and when they say recovering, they mean full behavioral abstinence. for some people maybe recovery does look like never going near a behavior again! but maybe for me it looks different. I want to have a "normal" life, AND I am not ready to leave my ed behind. I was always told that I can't have a normal life unless I achieved full recovery, and I am not sure that's true anymore. I know my current level of behaviors etc is not sustainable AND I also am relatively functional. idk if this even makes any sense and now I'm just rambling but I guess what I am trying to say is that low level behavior use-- and I mean LOW-- is not necessarily a bad goal to have.

[whsprings]

"my ed almost killed me" yeah well mine didn't. I was very much alive and "healthy." no one noticed I was struggling; I didn't get treatment until I asked for it myself because I didn't "look sick." and guess what! I still had to recover! I am still just as worthy of a better life, of a life free from my ed! you do not need to be near death to deserve recovery. you do not need to be medically compromised to deserve recovery. just because you can sustain this disease for what feels like forever doesn't mean that you should or that you need to. normalize recovering for reasons other than "I almost died."

[whsprings]

i feel like my ed is a weed and I have been chopping off the leaves every couple months hoping to kill it off but it never works because the roots are still there

[whsprings]

the fucking psych np incident has managed to half convince me that I do not have an eating disorder and am, in fact, actually fine because medically i am fine and my lowest weight was still a healthy bmi (and "not unreasonable" according to her) and erc told me I was inappropriate for residential and therapist A told me that "if you were smaller you'd certainly have anorexia but because you're not you don't" and therapist B told me I hadn't lost enough weight to have an eating disorder and therapist C told me "if you're concerned about body image try eating healthy and exercising" and my psychiatrist literally looked me up and down a couple weeks before my last admission and told me I was fine and my old treatment center admitted literally everyone to inpatient acute care and not me!! I was fine!! didn't even have to be in the goddamn wheelchair that everyone fucking despised!! and insurance kicked me out of res after 24 hours and insurance wanted to know why the fuck I was tubed because it didn't make sense to them and insurance wouldn't give me more days because my weight was too high and FUCK insurance and I don't know why I am still doing this when CLEARLY I am FINE. so fucking fine. and yes it's all bullshit and yes the system is fucked and yes not sick enough is a symptom but goddamn is it hard to want better for yourself when so many "professionals" have told you you are fine.

[whsprings]

today was actually okay?? like I was in a good mood?? it probably has to do with my boss and coworker being so sweet about me leaving and telling me a million times to take care of myself and that they'll miss me etc etc 🥺 food was still dogshit lol but at least everything else was fine. and because I am in a good mood I feel more motivated to Try when I get to treatment. even a few days ago I was like there is absolutely no fucking way i make it through without getting an ng. and in this current moment I am like... maybe. just maybe. the variety of foods is really intimidating after months of safe foods and the fact that purging will be significantly more difficult.... yeah im still SO scared. but willing. I also had a really good conversation with my dietitian over lunch support where she pointed out that I have managed to reduce purging on my own in the past week. ed brain was like WHAT THE FUCK, WE MUST REMEDY THIS IMMEDIATELY but like. purging kind of sucks ass and I don't want to be doing it. and the other thing she made me realize is that... changing a behavior on my own, of my own free will, is far more rewarding and feels better than being forced to do so. absolutely wild.

[whsprings]

remember the time I told my old therapist that society values thinness and she said "no it doesn't." LMAO!!

I recently said this to my new dietitian and she responded with "yes, and I understand that with thinness comes a type of societal acceptance, but is an eating disorder truly the only way to be accepted? and is it considered societally acceptable to have to leave to go to the hospital/treatment every couple of months? just something to think about."

the difference is astounding

[whsprings]

"Maybe you haven't been successful in your recovery... YET. That one word makes all the difference."

- lessons learned in therapy, the book I will never write

[whsprings]

I love beverages and sipping on my little drinks and having my little coffee with soy milk and my juice with my snack and lemonade with my meal and once upon a time beverages were my worst nightmare but now? now I am free and life is so much better when you don't have to worry about the nutritional content of what brings you joy.

[whsprings]

just got off the phone with C and ajhshsdgdgsh. she said if I don't want to go back to treatment that I'll have to significantly increase the amount of op stuff I'm doing, which fair enough I guess. she also said that i am "medically heading in the direction of treatment" so that's just 🫠 idk. she also said I need to start doing meal support "as a requirement" and that I should find out the leave policy for my job 🥴 which i have refused to do thus far because that is way too real. she's also sending info on erc and on some place called suncloud that I had never heard of so if anyone has been there lmk your experience. not that im planning on going. oh fuck me I hate this shit

[whsprings]

for the longest time I people pleased my way through recovery and just did what I was told and for a while now my team has been like. pushing me to take control. and while I appreciate that and know it's what I need it also is so hard. ed brain doesn't want me making recovery oriented decisions and I lack the internal motivation to do so anyway.

regardless my dietitian messaged me about scheduling more sessions/meal support and I am so conflicted. she said, "...at the end of the day it is your choice whether or not to increase sessions! And, I will highlight that you went out of your way to point out a few times that things are feeling like they are slipping and not getting better, feeling out of control, etc. You've been down paths like this before, and now is the time to see if you want to make some changes this time around." I know all of this is true but I live in constant fear of recovery AND of going my whole life in my ed. give me a brain transplant plz

[whsprings]

the aspect of harm reduction that makes me :( is the whole "some people might fully recover and never use a behavior again and others won't so instead we aim for a better quality of life" thing. bc even though i haven't been at this that long in the grand scheme of things (just over 4 years of trying to recover) I feel like truthfully I fall into the latter category even though so much of me fights against the idea of still doing ed things for the rest of my life. I don't want to think of time in my ed as "time wasted" but I do. and I feel like I am giving up hope of a full recovery by entirely getting behind harm reduction. I think of me as a little girl and me as an old lady and never having known body peace and idk. everything just makes me so sad.

[whsprings]

I don't think that having an ed is a choice but also if had I made different choices as a young teen I wouldn't be in this boat. for example if I had decided to start counting calories and mfp hadn't given me a goal of 1200 calories per day I would have been far less likely to cut my intake as much as I did. or had I never gotten an assignment in 8th grade to track everything i ate using the infamous myplate website, i would have been far less likely to become overly aware of how many calories and grams of fat were in my favorite breakfast. or had I never clicked on the "whale" tag on instagram under a drawing of a narwhal and found it flooded with pro-ana posts of people doing body checks and calling themselves "whales," I would have been far less likely to explore that community as a vulnerable, impressionable young teen. I don't think I even meant to click the tag. I forget what my original point was going to be but I guess it just sucks that such seemingly small moments led my life astray in such a massive way, and that corporations have some level of responsibility for the way their content influences lives. it makes me wonder what other small moments/choices have dramatically influenced my life like that. and it's wild how even if these things hadn't happened I still could have ended up with an ed anyway.