#hdrm

Sometimes I hear people express frustration at how long their recovery is taking. Especially those who have had ED for a long time. They see other people who have “recovered” in a few months or a year, perhaps a little longer, and who have now returned to their former way of life, often a very active life. How is it that some people breeze through recovery and others take a long time?  Full recovery doesn't happen in a few months. It takes a long time. Weight restoration to a socially normative weight, one that doesn't raise any flags with people around you, accompanied by a return to a high level of physical activity and lots of social media posts about how good recovery is, doesn’t necessarily equate to complete recovery. Been there, done that, have blog posts and images to prove it. There is a difference between doing what is needed to reduce harm, and allowing yourself the time and space to learn new, deeply embedded, sustainable non-ED responses. When I first recovered (in my early 20s)  it only took me a few months. I stopped using ED behaviours, and went back to a weight that other people saw as normal. I looked the image of someone who was “healthy”. But I wasn't. I still used activity (playing sports, dancing, skiing, walking, hiking, working in a physically arduous role) as a means of keeping my anxiety low. And while I baked wonderful cakes and cookies, and cooked amazing meals, in my private moments I often delayed and avoided eating. The ED neural wiring was still the main driver of my everyday life, and it was my default any time I came under stress. I was in a partially remitted state at times. But NEVER practising remission as my default method of living. 

Of course, I didn't know that was how ED worked back then. And the reasons for avoiding delay were being “busy”, having “so much to do”, needing to “help someone out”, and just loving being active. Activity for me was insidious, for sure. Notice I don’t say “exercise”. Physical activity is not always cloaked as exercise; neither is being “very busy”; neither is “just being a hard physical worker”. Remember that “levels of the neuropeptide, NPY levels increase for all of us if we are semi-starved, but for those with a genetic predisposition for an eating disorder, the result is increased activity. In fact, the drive to be active decreases as an eating disordered individual re-feeds.  That drive to be active can return at any time. And it can mask a relapse if the person is eating in public, talking the talk about being recovered, and at a weight that doesn't ring alarm bells. And it can mask a relapse where we are in the forefront of a group, being held up as an example of how recovery “looks”, and when we are able to explain how recovery works on a number of levels. ED is a tricksy fucker, no two ways about it. It is all too easy to be a leader and talk the talk when we are not quite walking the talk. And it is a part of the ED temperament that we might become that person.  For me to get to the point where I could be sure my activity was not being driven by ED neurobiology I had to make the decision to keep my activity levels deliberately low, and my focus inward. 

And now, I am coming up to 6 years of practising remission. Even so, I still struggle with the old patterns. I have been able to see more and more clearly how the anxiolytic effects of restriction helped me function in every area of my life. I feel like a person who has had a brain injury, and who is learning to do everything again, right from scratch. Somewhere I read that remission can take as long as 79 months .... and that makes a lot of sense to me. 

This is the reason for me taking a back seat and not blogging as much. I have been rebuilding myself, piece by piece, sometimes in a painfully slow manner. Although earlier on in my recovery I turned into a bit of a keyboard warrior - which is ALSO another way of being active without anyone noticing that ED is in the house. I reached a point where I needed to stand that urge down and focus on myself, and my recovery, exclusively.  Learning to practise remission effectively takes time.  Our brains may need time to make the changes to the prefrontal cortex that we missed out on because of ED - the brain freezes and keeps people stuck at the age at which they started to starve, and in patterns they forge around the same time. What this means is that because I am no longer functioning with the same ED-specific biochemistry,  I am still sometimes uncertain and unsteady in many situations. The only way I can describe it is that I have been learning to walk again, in a landscape that looks very different from what it was when I was restricting. 

I think it is common to feel this way. 

I walked in a tropical rainforest one weekend, and saw these "strangler figs"; they slowly take over a healthy tree and consume it, so that in the end only the fig itself survives, and the original tree is no longer in existence. This is how I feel - that the substance of me, the "original tree" is coming back into sight as I take the vines off from around myself, but also that it is a slow and tortuous process along the way.   This is how it starts - the vines are ED, and the tree is the person it afflicts. We don't even register that we have been surrounded and are being strangled by this disorder. 

Then it moves to this ... the middle left side shows the original tree through the vines. Notice that the vines have become stronger, and thicker, and have almost completely obscured the original trunk. What you can’t see is that the vines are consuming that original trunk and using it to sustain themselves.  We lose so much more than weight when we have ED. We end up with a parasitical network of neural wiring that drives us to behave in a certain way. Refeeding to a stable weight is just one part of the recovery process. And it is not enough. 

And finally, where we end up before recovery - on a metaphysical level as well as physiological. And also, for many, the very bones and flesh that form and cover our skeleton. The original tree no longer exists, and instead there is a hollow network of vines that stand in its place.

“Why would you even do that?”

“13 containers!?”

“Yep that’s just like her.”

“I heard Togo was like one of the calmest people she know.”

Ruben: "She's definitely right there. Hence to why I tolerate her presence. She isn't like drunky over here or any of my other classmates. Well, excpet Rochelle, but that's another story."

Aki: "When will you stop calling me drunky?"

Ruben: "Probably until the day I die, because there's no way you're human. You just- How the fuck are you able to drink 13 containers of vodka?"

“Yea she told me a lot of things about Togo so I can imagine Togo talk about her too.”

“Heh I know it just reminded me when Aliza had a crush on someone(uknowwhoitis-) once it was fun teasing her.”

Aki: "Aliza... I think I've heard that name before. Togo knows her."

“Sounds like someone has a crush~”

(I had to XD-)

Ruben: "Shut up! I do not!"