The word “Recovery” has always felt a little funny to me, and for the longest time, I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. Recently though, now that the fog of malnutrition and screaming body-dysmorphia has begun to lift, I’ve been able to explore I was hesitant to call this process “recovery.”
I have had some type of disordered eating and then diagnosable eating disorders since I was a child. I do not have many memories of food before it became wrought with guilt and shame and seen solely as a substance that would manipulate my physical body. For all intents and purposes, disordered eating was the only type of eating I knew.
Nothing is all good or all bad
I still had friends I loved, went on vacations with my family, did well in school, participated in extracurriculars, and all such manner of wonderful childhood and young adult experiences. I had all of the things that I needed and most of the things that I wanted. I had an overall happy childhood. I knew I was loved and I never doubted it.
Like many people, my weirdness around food did not stop me from having a really wonderful childhood or growing up experience. It was simply a part of it. Yes, I worried about food a lot. Yes, as a tall child who hit adult height by the end of third grade, I ached to stand with the “small, pretty girls” during the chorus concert or to sit daintily in the front row of class pictures. Yes, I learned to compare my body to others at a young age simply because I was built differently. Yes, I had an anxious temperament that caused stomach aches and raging perfectionism. Yes, bad/hard/sad/unfortunate/scary things happened. Even the best of families are notorious for causing some sort of stress to their offspring—none of us escape childhood completely unscathed, after all. None of those things are deniable.
Knowing all of these things and holding my fond and loving memories in my heart, I struggled to believe that my life is something that needed to be “recovered” from. I struggled to put together how I could have turned out “so screwed up” despite all the obvious joy and love and excitement I have felt in my life. To me, disordered eating was just eating. It was a part of my whole life experience.
Without a memory of “before” the eating disorder, I did not easily see that there was something to recover from.
It’s a loaded topic, and one I won’t broach right now, but I do not categorize my eating disorder as an addiction. Some people do, and it works well for them. This is another reason that using the word “recovery” never felt quite right when describing my experience. I wasn’t coming back from something awful. I was simply morphing into a new way of being.
Finding my own way matters
It has just been in the recent months that I have begun to see the idea of recovery differently and to really understand it for myself. I understand that just because I developed an eating disorder, it doesn’t mean my life during the illness was bad or wrong or that I was never happy. In reality, the eating disorder was, in very simple terms, a pattern of thought and behavior that, albeit often miserable and unhealthy, at one time helped me navigate and understand my world. It’s just that now, those patterns are more maladaptive than helpful. So now, I am unwinding the patterns and finding new, healthier options that meet my same needs.
While in treatment, “recovery” felt like something that was prescribed, something we needed to do, something else to be achieved. I was tired of doing and achieving, and I was certainly WAY over following anyone else’s rules. Being told what to do is not something I handle well. “Recovery” began to feel like just another thing that was expected of me, and I wanted nothing to do with it. Did I want a life free of the constant fear of food and hatred of my body? Absolutely. Did I want Recovery? That was a more complicated question.
recovery is personal
What I can see now, after many months of trial and error and thinking and journaling, is that I want my own definition of recovery. I want to decide for myself what the recovered version of my life will look like. I do not want to go back through my memories and pick them apart, separating eating disorder memories from the normal, happy ones. They are too interwoven for that. I simply want to move forward through my life, leaving the fear and self-hatred behind.
Honesty, I still don’t use the word “recovery” much in my day to day life. I just don’t feel like it defines my experience adequately. Not too long ago, I started switching out the word “recovery” to “shifting focus.” Am I worried about the size of jeans I’m wearing now? Oh, heck yes. I can catch the thought, stop it in its tracks, give myself some words of encouragement or say a mantra, and then purposefully shift my focus to something else. Something that I’m glad my body does now, something I’m looking forward to, something I’m grateful for, someone I love. It does take a conscious effort, but with practice, it’s getting easier. Shifting focus seems like a moment, one little choice in my day. It feels manageable. It feels less scripted. For me, it puts the actions of recovery into smaller pieces, normal, everyday movements I can choose quietly to myself. It allows me to integrate my version of recovery into the life that I already have, instead of feeling like I’m starting my “Recovered Life” from scratch. Shifting focus is something that anyone can do in any aspect of their life once they become aware of their thoughts. I am not so different, after all.
Recovery is simply a new way of being
To me, my version of Recovery feels like lifting my head out of my hands and looking around with new eyes. It is a lightness, a bouyancy, a flood of light made of all the colors. It feels like a warm hoodie from the dryer. It is not something that happens naturally yet, all the time, but I know that it is there when I choose it. Recovery is purposefully picking out little moments for myself, curating my thoughts, making myself a nest of things I choose to focus on and surround myself with. It requires going to the dryer to get that snuggly hoodie. It will not happen by chance or accident. It is not a return to something old or forcing myself into something new. It is simply moving aside the old, useless things and finding what has been here all along. I am not going back. I am simply standing up, stretching, and deciding to make different choices with the tools I’ve been given.
Maybe you really love the idea of Recovery. Maybe it sits well with you and it feels like a return to peace for your soul. Maybe you have beautiful memories of a life before the spiral of the eating disorder. Go chase that feeling with all of your heart and soul! Maybe Recovery makes you feel connected to a tribe of people who understand you and your struggles and you’re all working towards the same goal—go after that! Run towards those people with open arms! Maybe you’re still in a place where you need the rules and the prescriptions. Maybe Recovery feels like a safe refuge in a world of chaos. Wrap a blanket around your shoulders and nestle into your Recovery to stay out of the deafening wind. There’s no wrong way to do this, Friends.
There are so many different ways to approach Recovery and even the way that we talk about it. If what you’re doing and saying isn’t working, don’t be afraid to try something else. Keep trying until something fits. You deserve to feel safe, loved, calm, and happy. You deserve a life free of the swirling thoughts and fear of an eating disorder. That life is there for you, when you’re ready to uncover it. The words you use to describe that life is up to you.
