H.O.P.E

H.O.P.E

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

This too shall pass


 Today has been horrible, and it feels like the next few days will be around the same intensity, lots of instability, unpredictability, triggers and change.

My old coping mechanism for when things became overwhelming was my Eating Disorder. 
It blocked out the anxiety, the feelings and the vulnerability I felt, nothing could hurt me when I was already hurting myself, it didn't matter if things were going wrong because I was so wrapped up in my ED, I would just numb my emotions through my ED. I was so terrified of failing or of the things that felt so unstable that anorexia was a way of hiding from them, when you enter the anorexic bubble its all the world becomes, you effectively shrink away from everything else.

Stress and the feeling of failure makes me want to disappear, anorexia provided me with that possibility.

So now when things become overwhelming and unstable I find myself struggling to cope, I cannot use my old coping mechanisms to block out the emotions, but yet I haven't found a way to be able to sit with them. Its tough because even though I don't use the behaviors from my ED my brain tells me to, screams at me to, to help it to cope/not feel. This means that even though I am not using my old method of coping it's not because it hasn't crossed my mind, it's because logically I know that, what I would tell myself, is just a day of relief would spiral into more, and then that would be a bigger problem.

There is no purpose to this blog, I just know that a lot of people are struggling right now, and I guess that today I was one of them.

Life is unpredictable, ironically that is one thing that we can predict. Today has shown me that during times like now that my brain will automatically jump to my engrained coping mechanism. It's shown me that even though that is my automatic response, it doesn't have to be my only one. It's shown me that maybe recovery is about accepting that you have to feel the anxiety, that you can make it through unpredictable times.

Maybe it's about remembering the cliche sayings that are thrown at us in every treatment unit, that
'This too shall pass'
'A day at a time'
'The only way out is through'

There are a lot of people struggling right now, and for those people that need someone to tell them that it gets easier, it does, I'll be that person, it gets better. 
Today I really flipping struggled, the anxiety was suffocating and I cried more then I care to admit to, but I already know that tomorrow is a new day.
I already know that this stressful period will pass and I will be glad that I didn't turn to my ED to cope, and that will make me stronger.

I already know that days like this do not out weigh the days of freedom, and those days of freedom are worth it, oh so worth it.