Today I take time to inhale peace and exhale fear!
This is an excellent reminder to step back and take a moment to try and ground ourselves whenever we feel fear overpowering and crippling us, keeping us perpetually standing in the same spot. Learning to recognize when fear is blocking us from life and recovery is both a difficult and important part of the healing process, because inducing fear is one of an eating disorder's most powerful weapons.
Our eating disorders threaten us by insisting that if we don't strictly obey them and their rules then we will lose control, our lives will fall apart, no one will love us, people will call us ugly, we will become total failures, we will hate ourselves, among many, many other things. But when we step back and try to inhale a little peace and perspective, we realize that we don't know that any of these horrible outcomes are actually true. We are just too afraid of these possibilities to step away from our eating disorders, which keeps us perpetually locked in their cycles. That said, the more I walk the road of recovery, the more often I have seen that my eating disorder is a liar; when I have faced the smaller, daily fears it throws at me, I realize they weren't really anything to be afraid of after all. Rather, I have found joy and life and freedom when I let myself face my fears and move through them. These small victories lead me to believe that what actually lies on the other side of my fear is not failure, ugliness, loneliness and sadness, but actually joy, life, freedom, connection, self-acceptance and authenticity. So today, let's continue to more toward freedom by inhaling peace and exhaling fear!
Inhale, Exhale,
Taylor
Fear is powerful and destructive, and I have felt its suffocating impact at times in my life. As I move closer to retirement from my current work I feel fear's grasp of me lessening. The recent fears I have had have been based on real possibilities, but also on imagined, less likely possibilities of bad things happening. I was lucky to be able to rid myself of some of this fear by having the good fortune to discontinue in this line of work in the near future. The alternative to quitting my work would have been to work harder to change the way I perceived these fearful possibilities that I had constructed in my mind as well as those possibilities that are real. With ed, one does not have the option to change their line of work to free themselves from these perceived fears. I wish my daughters could have the option to "give their notice", and have a limit to their time with ed. I am so happy to have this option myself, but also feel the disappointment that I cannot share my relief and good fortune with them. I know that they will prevail and come out on the other side to be even more amazing than they already are. I just wish that their journey could be easier.
ReplyDeleteI've been struggling with lot of fear the last few days. Fear that I've lost assets I never knew I had, fear that I'll never be good enough to get what I want, fear that I will be in discomfort for my entire life. I use my ED as a coping skill, and unfortunately he's been there for me the past few days. I can't gain weight on top of the other fears that are plaguing me, I just can't handle that right now, so I've been giving myself an out. I just hope one day I don't need him, or even want him. I have to feel confident that this can happen.
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