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| Yesterday morning got to see this girl after a 9 month hiatus! So naturally this had to happen xoxo |
Man, been awhile huh? I'm back and ready to get to blogging again more frequently! Took some time off from writing during the holidays to focus on recovery and to keep my mindset in the right place. To be perfectly honest, I have edited this post more than I ever have and practically just re-wrote the whole thing.this morning and I asked myself, what part of me was kept unsatisfied? What part of me kept deleting everything? What part just wanted to keep starting over? It's the part of me that judges everything I do, that if it's not perfect then it won't be good enough, that ya'll won't like it, that everyone will think I'm crazy and not making any sense. I had so much going on in my head that my thoughts were coming out quicker than I could type and when I would re-read a paragraph it would sound like a bottle of wine was writing and not ME. It all comes back to my core fear of rejection, fear of failing, and fear of being unacceptable to society. Now, let's just pause right there for a second because something pretty awesome just happened. The fact I can now pin-point where all of the back and forth, questioning every sentence I type, is coming from is a HUGE step in recovery. This time last year I couldn't begin to tell you where all of these negative self judgements were coming from, all I knew is that I believed them. I had no self-awareness nor had the motivation to find any. On this Wednesday morning, for me to confidently sit here and say, because I have a fear of rejection, failure, and acceptance, I have a hard time accepting less than "perfect" work from myself. Dare I say I am about to give myself a positive affirmation and say, Tracey, THAT.IS. AMAZING. I am slowly but surely learning how to trust myself and allow myself to feel the uncomfortable feelings/thoughts/emotions and to speak up when I am struggling because I have always drilled in my mind that showing struggle=failure, showing weakness=failure, showing my true self=rejection, failure, nonacceptance. I have always been in such competition with myself to do and to be this fictional character of no mistakes but as I learn more and more throughout this process, I just need to continue to let that competition SIMMER DOWN, and acknowledge that this life right in front of me is a pretty cool one.
So, hereeeeeee it goes. I want to take you through a little glimpse of what I am HEAVILY working on right now. Something that I have realized is one of the main features of this mental illness. Again, more self-awareness on my part as led me to pick up on things that continuously drag me down. I give you, "The Snowball Effect of Our Minds." Eating disorders are called a mental illness for a reason and a major reason being the mind games that we play with ourselves. First off, me getting through my first holiday season while in recovery was huge. I survived, let's just say that. I saw family, family friends, friends I really only see this one time a year and dealt with the reoccurring questions of "so what are you up to now? do you still workout? how often do you still work out? (my entire family and family friends know I've always continued to "heavily" workout after college so they do not just randomly ask me that, FYI) you have ANOTHER job? every year you seem to always have a different job, but, you look great! you look happy!" all surrounded by food, snacks, a meal, drinks, etc. Stick me in a room that has about 10 people just scratching their nails on a chalkboard, that would probably sound better than what I had to keep hearing and saying back, making myself feel worthless and "unaccomplished." (the beginning of the snowball effect) I would just politely say I am in a transitional time and took some time off this summer, I'm still working but more on a part-time level in a few different areas, have some ideas that I plan to do this year, yes I still workout (snowball effect: omg, does it not look like I do? do I look fat? do I look bigger than I did last year? do I not look good enough to be here? do my parents think I look fat? are my clothes too tight? W.T.F) and the subject would change. *as I am wiping sweat off my forehead* Thankfully, during these encounters, I had my family with me, a strong support system, and knew they wouldn't let anything get too far.
While support can help in so many ways, it can only help so much when the harsh thoughts override all good. If you're reading this and the holiday season/New Year resulted in a slip, well, you slipped. Did you survive and still here reading this today? Yes. And guess what, *deep breath*, I am laying my heart out on the line here and admitting, yes, I slipped as well. However, I am still here today to actually type this and still give myself and others the motivation to move on from it and not let that slip be an excuse to continue down the road I never want to drive down again. I'm human, we are all human, things will happen that are out of our control and sometimes silence and old coping habits are the only options that seem right and will do the trick. It is the one thing we KNOW for a fact that will get rid of all the uncomfortable feelings of anxiety and negativity and leave us feeling hollow. Remember, this is an every day process and we have 86, 400 seconds a day to decide how we will live and stay afloat from this brand new chance at life. Don't let one bad moment keep you from the 86,399 moments left to make a change. LET. IT. GO. as I have learned to do from my hiccup. And speaking of the next moment, how about a full new YEAR right ahead of us. For those who follow me on social media, you saw this post a few days ago, but wanted to share to ya'll what a New Year means to me:
"This hit me this morning as the holiday season has finally come to an end and a whole new clean slate is right infront of us. I don't think of a new year as new resolutions but as another chance to write your own story on how YOU want it to go. As hard as it is to steer away from your comfort zone, that is how I want my story to go in 2016. The past 8 years and even before I stayed in my comfort zone and it landed me here, a fresh start to finally start doing the things I kept telling myself Id never be good enough to do. Last year I obviously learned a lot about myself and now things are slowly starting to become clear. I can say I'm starting to believe more in "everything happens for a reason" as I'm finally maybe starting to find out what that reason is. Make your '16 story a good one." - and then quote below
I read that quote and sat in silence for a second and thought to myself, "make myself proud". PROUD. That was just such a powerful statement to hear. Can you say you have made yourself proud? I have never really asked myself that question and when I do, my twisted mind screams...NO...but deep down in my self awareness, I know I have. Proud is one of those uncomfortable feelings of actually giving yourself a positive affirmation without feeling conceded. STOP. STOP. Right. There. Easy there bucko. To give yourself a compliment means you're conceded or at least feel conceded?! Yes, so sue me. Again, I am working on it. :)
Having an eating disorder, or any mental illness, it thrives off the negatives, I mean THRIVES. You see one thing wrong with yourself, your body, it takes it and runs with it like a bat out of hell. Let's take a deeper look in to the Snowball Effect we have with ourselves. Example: You say to yourself "hmmm, I just don't know if I like this outfit on me? I mean, I think I look pretty, but then again, think I can look better?" Your E.D. hears an alarm go off in your head (picture Batman being signaled in the sky) and immediately rushes to those negative thoughts and gives them the validity it needs to tell your brain that what you're seeing is true. "You don't look pretty, you are just full of yourself. Of course that outfit doesn't look good on you. look at you. Look at your hips, your love handles, your bulge, your arms and legs look huge, double chin, your face?!" I mean, just depicts every little thing that it could find to bring truth to the matter. Now on the other hand, lets say you say SCREW YOU to those thoughts and keep the outfit on because damnit you refuse to let your E.D. constantly win. So let's say you then go out on a date with a guy/girl in this outfit and all goes well in your mind until that one date becomes the beginning and end of that "relationship." You feel let down, left with a WTF happened in your mind, thinking everything went fine and dandy but then again, it was just A date not a marriage proposal. Soooooo, what, you put yourself out there, you go on a date, just a fun night out. Right? Well, as you're sitting there saying, "Did I say too much? Am IIII too much? Did I look okay? Maybe just wasn't meant to be..." just about to somewhat shrug it off and move on, the E.D. hears "the alarm" go off and rushes to your mind to personalize the hell out of those thoughts and turns them in to, "told you the outfit looked awful on you, always trust what I say, you're not good enough for a guy/girl like that, you won't be good enough for any one, you aren't pretty enough, you need to workout more, you're too fat, all the way down to the core root of you.are.not.enough. you were rejected." Now, coming back to the present moment right now, ummmm, what just happened? ha yeaaaaaa about that. One helluva snowball huh? It isn't just a "flip of the hair" I'm over it, moving on. It digs deep, and I mean deeeeep in to your soul to try and bring truth to every negative thing you think about yourself. Obviously not just dates, but everything.
Another example, work. Say you are an event planner and the feedback you got on an event was, "it was okay, everything was fine, it was nice," the client was completely content, but, the perfectionist you are, you were wanting the "OMG PERFECT, exquisite, could not have gone better," type compliments, and take a guess what happens next. You start thinking to yourself, "hm, okay, well, that's that, next event....wait a tic...it was just okay? everything was just...fine?" In the words of Beyonce, ring the alarm!! The little beast comes finding those thoughts and digs deeper. "hell no it wasn't perfect, nothing you ever do is perfect, you could be doing so much better at your job, maybe you're just not good enough at this job, are YOU even good enough? do you even work hard? WORK. HARDER. and workOUT harder while you're at it." I'll be right back. Going to read the definition of confidence and tattoo it on my forehead really quick. We give ourselves no grace, ever. One of the most triggering scenarios in my opinion, especially for eating disorders, (and for those who I was in treatment with, I'm sure ill get an AMEN for this one), may come as a shock is... "You look healthy." or "You look better, you look happy" Oh boy. Prepare for mass destruction. It's sad a friendly compliment is one of the most triggering phrases we could hear. It sucks, completely sucks because heaven forbid someone say you look healthy? BUT, in our minds, the whole snowball effect comes to in to play and it immediately tells us that we either look like we have indeed gained weight from previous times or could it be that we are accccctually taking care of ourselves now and it is still just so uncomfortable to live with. We ultimately want to go back to our comfort zones of being in our eating disorders because we would not have to deal with these unwanted thoughts coming from outside sources. Do I actually want to look healthy? Do I really want to look better? Does this mean I am actually losing mt best friend (the disorder) and starting to learn how to live without it?
When someone has said "You look healthy now" to me since being home from Denver, yes, I immediately think to myself I look like I have gained weight because in my mind, I want to hear "you look skinny now." (to put it bluntly we "think" healthy=fat, there I said it) You feel violated because you think that people ARE scrutinizing your body and making truth to the fact that maybe people really do look at your body when they see you, all you are is your body and hollow inside. Obviously, that is not true and people are just trying to offer support but again, your mind will tell you what to believe. So, even though it sounds contradictory to admit "you look good, better, healthy" to someone who is battling an eating disorder, just blow past it. It's already hard enough to try and live with a new body, the one that God intended us to have, but to hear validity that there is a visible difference in the way we look (good or bad) just doesn't help. Sorry :(.
Okay, think ya'll get the picture and I mean I could compare the snowball effect to any type of life scenario but it feels good to get that out and bring light to what goes on in our wondering mind. A lot of it does come back to appearance but it's not JUST about appearance and we know that. It just means we are covering up something deeper inside of us that we don't want to show to the world. We cover it up with body image, food, exercise, anything to distract the public eye from seeing beyond the "mask" we put up in every day life.
Of course it's hard as hell to train your mind into thinking in a whole knew way but it's the thrill of the chase and excitement of what CAN be if you keep to your values and stay strong through the process. You are you for a reason, you were created for a reason. We are seriously our own worst critic and judge ourselves way too harshly and sometimes even feeling like a mistake. It's about believing in yourself that this life battle you were given is the one that was meant for you to win. You were dealt these cards and there is nothing you can do about it other than how you react to them. This "hand" is taking you on this obstacle because YOU ARE smart enough to get through it, you are strong enough to handle it, to come out on the other side, and to know exactly what defeat and victory feels like. When rock bottom hit, I was strong enough not to stay there. I used the hand I was dealt and still dealing with to get me up after falling. This deck of cards was given to me for a reason and maybe that reason is this very blog. It could be to show my internal strength that I have never had the confidence to show, to believe, to trust. I could have given up and said screw treatment, screw trying to live a better life, this is my life and I will live in sorrow until the day I die. I don't think that is why I was put on this earth. I wasn't put here to just mope around, feeling sorry for myself that "shoot, I have an eating disorder, guess that is why God made me, just to be another person with one." NO, it's time to start believing in maybe WHY I let myself have one, why I let myself have it for so many years, and why I finally let it out of hiding. It is time for me to start finding out my WHY. (thank you to an awesome friend who put that saying in my head) Wouldn't it be great to be told exactly WHY you were created? Yea. Sure. But isn't more fun to find out for yourself? To breathe in life's mysteries that are only made for you to solve? I don't know if it's just the athlete in me that finds that to be so competitively awesome (does that make sense? ha) but in this very moment I just want to stand on top of a mountain and yell, "HELL YEA LIFE, Bring. It. On."
What is YOUR why?
After reading novel #15, LOVE YA'LL,
TLC
