It seems that talking about eating disorders and positive body image is en vogue lately. Stories of recovery, calls for help, and encouragement to heal are splashed all over social media and major online publications. The stories that I am seeing are heartbreaking. They are all from individual perspectives, and yet they have a lovely sense of sameness.
It is the story of a woman struggling with self worth and self esteem as a result of an onslaught of images of unrealistic hypersexualized women from the popular media. It is the story of body shaming experiences that were endured at a tender age. It is an infuriatingly common story that chills me to the bone and lights an activist fire in my soul.
But, it is not the only story. I know it wasn’t mine.
I heard only positive things about my body when I was young. I was always told how tiny I was, how flexible, how talented, how fearlessly willing to push myself to my limits. All good things to hear as a young dancer.
When I began getting the attention of boys and men I continued to hear only praise. I can remember standing in the basement of a house that belonged to the parents of a friend of my first boyfriend surrounded by a group of 16 year old guys. I was the only girl. They were discussing how flat my stomach was and how luck my then boyfriend was to be dating me.
The positive feedback was not limited to my body. I was also told regularly that I was smart, creative, a good student. I followed the rules so well. I was so responsible. I was a good friend, a democratic leader. I was a role model.
The praise from so many people in my life felt amazing. It felt sustaining. If felt like a part of me, like part of my own internal dialogue.
Until it didn’t.
I began to realize that my perception of myself wasn’t mine.
I began to go deep into myself to figure out what I believed in, what made up the core of me. I jumped down the rabbit hole – silently, without warning, without telling anyone.
My eating disorder was a misguided attempt at independence. It was a way for me to feel that I didn’t need anything. It was a distraction from all of the anger and sadness that I didn’t want to feel. It was a way have something for me that was not in concert with the needs, beliefs, and desires of someone else. It was a way to be my own person. It was a turning away from the deep connection to spirituality that I was feeling, but which was in direct conflict with how I perceived the religion in which I was raised. It was a way to mirror physically the way I felt – unseen and unheard.
In truth though, it wasn’t any of these things. It wasn’t really working in any of the ways that I thought it was. Instead of finding my true self I had given complete control over to a part of myself that was terrified of living life on my own terms. I gave into fear and uncertainty and the eating disordered part of me took control.
Just as my experience with Anorexia was not about my appearance, neither was my recovery. The process of deep healing was long – much longer than it took to get to a healthy weight and cease all eating disordered behaviors.
I had to question everything. I had to let go of all that I believed and clung to. I had to drop the story that I had been telling myself. I had to drop the meal plans, the “therapy talk,” the identification with my self as an Anorexic. I had to leave behind my tendency to be the good student and the desire to rebel against system. I had to accept the unknown and get really comfortable with letting faith guide the way – even without a plan or set of rules to follow or break.
I had to take what resonated deep within in my soul and leave all the rest. I had to drop judgement of myself and others. I had to get really vulnerable and really brave. I had to find my Self and my voice.
Finding my voice and using it to create a life that felt authentic continues to be a phenomenal journey. I made many wrong turns at the beginning, but each misstep taught me a lesson and propelled me further into freedom from my eating disorder and into a place of trust and love for myself.
I see this time and again with my clients. They come for help with healing from eating disorders. They have made some progress in recovery in the recent past, but they are not happy. Just as I was over a decade ago, they are hyper-focused on food, exercise, and numbers of all kinds – on the scale, food labels, clothing tags, and on the clock.
The real issue is never the food or the body. The real pain is never healed by just gaining weight, losing weight, or letting go of eating disordered behaviors. The real healing comes from getting to the core. We truly heal when we find our voices and begin to use them. Full recovery is possible and it happens when we go deep and open ourselves up to knowing and being who we really are.
* Written for my regular blog at Women Enough
* Photo credit Katie Ashley