Creating Space for Choice
An eating disorder is not a choice. What makes eating disorder recovery so excruciatingly hard is that recovery involves choice. Since the eating disorder won’t give you a choice, recovery demands the painstaking work of creating space for choice.
When the eating disorder was in control, I didn’t have a choice. The eating disorder reflexively responded to every thought and feeling before I was even conscious of it. So I spent a significant amount of time and energy in recovery learning to separate myself from my thoughts and feelings.
The benefit of learning to separate yourself from your thoughts and feelings is the space it creates for perspective. Space and perspective provide an opportunity to identify and name thoughts and feelings. Once a thought and/or feeling is identified and/or named you get to choose how, and/or if, to process it and what tools to use.
Creating that space isn’t easy. 8 Keys to Recovery From an Eating Disorder by Carolyn Costin and Gwen Schubert Grab and The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown served as guides to help me practice separating myself from my thoughts and feelings. Both books gave me a language that helped me identify and name thoughts and feelings. Gifts further defined terms like shame, guilt, vulnerability, connection, courage and perfection.
In 8 Keys, Key 4 taught me about cognitive distortions and gave me a framework to start challenging the thoughts manipulated and distorted by the eating disorder. I remember reading through the list of cognitive distortions on pages 98 – 100 and realizing almost all my thoughts were cognitive distortions.
The writing assignment, Gaining Insight Into Your Distorted Thinking, was very helpful. Honestly, when I read the assignment, I felt overwhelmed because I identified with every single cognitive distortion. The thought of having to write through 10 cognitive distortions made me want to close the book and run away.
I reminded myself that running away from the work would lead right back to the eating disorder. So I stayed with it. I knew I couldn’t write through all the cognitive distortions, but I could do some of them. I picked two and wrote through them. A couple days later I wrote through a couple more. Exploring what I thought the cognitive distortions protected me from and whether they even worked was very revealing. (Spoiler alert: Cognitive distortions didn’t protect me and didn’t work.)
Learning that many, if not most, of my thoughts were cognitive distortions was surprisingly validating. By pushing back against “all or nothing” thinking, shoulding myself, mindreading etc., I started to see that the eating disorder used cognitive distortions to gaslight me into believing I wasn’t enough and I needed the eating disorder to protect me.
The writing assignment on page 104 (of 8 Keys) was also instructive. First, it helped to write down some of my automatic, critical or distorted thoughts and have my Authentic (or Healthy) Self respond, because I got to practice using this new language. Second, near the end of the instructions Carolyn and Gwen referenced a client who said, “Someone once told me that ‘I am not responsible for my first thought, but I am responsible for my second.’” The client then described making a vow to counter every negative thought with a positive one.
The client’s phrase resonated deeply with me and became one of my go to mantras. I started countering my negative thoughts with a positive one. It was overwhelming at first because I quickly (like in the first 10 minutes) realized that almost all my thoughts were negative.
Most of my initial counter statements were simply the opposite of whatever the ED told me. I’d respond, “No, you’re not.” “You are enough.” “You matter.” “It’s okay to feel this way.” “It’s okay to be sensitive.” “It’s okay to take care of yourself.” As I processed through recovery, I was able to get more specific and say things like, “My body is incredible as it is.” “Food is the fuel my body needs to survive.” “My value and self worth rest in who I am, what I do and how I treat people.” “I am not defined by what others think of me or my body. I get to define who I am and what matters to me.” After awhile the negative thoughts driven by the eating disorder became less frequent and patently obvious. And like the client in 8 Keys said, it got better.
It is important to remember to take it slow. It is very easy to get overwhelmed and, I know as least for me, that often led to the eating disorder. Recovery takes time and learning to separate yourself from your thoughts and feelings can be a powerful catalyst on your road to recovered.
