Inadequate coping skills to deal with the revelations also cause travel difficulties. Finding new valuable information about what we’ve been using our eating disordered behaviors to avoid is only half the battle. The other half is breaking the connection between the ED and whatever it is we are using it to cope with and REPLACING the ED as a coping skill with something healthy and NEW. And learning new patterns of behavior, learning how to actually USE new coping skills, and learning to make new neural pathways in your brain linking those healthy coping skills to coping with trouble spots in your life takes …. TIME.

So, you must cultivate patience and perspective. You must cultivate a daily sense of PROGRESS – the continual awareness of taking one step forward, then another, rather than expecting yourself to make whole leaps at a time each and every day. Completing the recovery journey successfully can only happen with regular applications of the following:

Patience, perspective, discipline, perseverance, determination (read my answers to some of the other questions in this e-newsletter about finding your ‘key to life’), and sincere belief that recovery is possible – and is possible for YOU too.

Words of wisdom….well, I’ll tell you what I always tell my support group – recovery happens on four levels. We have to ‘recover’ physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually – and each level has its own requirements, its own complimentary but nonetheless distinct journey that we must make. And if you are, for instance, doing a lot of strong recovery work to learn how to safely manage your emotions, you might find your eating habits temporarily slipping as you venture into new, scary emotional territory and are tempted to cling to your old ‘friend’ the eating disorder for support. If you are doing great work with your eating, you may discover that your mind goes crazy, thinking old compulsive negative thoughts that you thought you had long since overcome. If you are spending quality time without fail every day pursuing mental clarity and discipline in thinking, you might find yourself getting surprisingly ‘depressed’ at the end of the day, as you cope emotionally with unexpectedly missing the former chatter of your mind!

There are so many waves on the surface of the ocean that is your recovery journey. One day a huge wave may come and knock you off your feet – but then lying there on your back in the sand causes you to notice the vastness of the starry sky above in a way you’ve never seen before. Sometimes we need the change in perspective, the new way of seeing our lives and ourselves, that comes from the big so-called falls we take in recovery from time to time.

The most important thing to remember is this – it is (bumpy or smooth) a PROCESS, which means that if you are still thinking about recovery, EVEN in the midst of a big setback, then you are still walking forward towards your goals.

The trick in recovery is knowing when to push yourself, and when to pull back and rest. The perfectionistic personality type that gets us into trouble with trying to be the best at our eating disorder can be equally problematic as we try to create a perfect recovery experience for ourselves and those who care about us. We don’t recover perfectly – we recover in fits and starts, which is the same way we broke. It’s like waking up in the morning – most of us don’t just jump out of bed the second the alarm clock rings. We struggle into the waking state – trying to decide whether we are still dreaming, trying to decide if we want to hold on to the dream or accept the reality of another day. You will struggle into recovery the same way – some days wanting to cling to the ‘dream’ (in actuality a nightmare) of the eating disorder’s whispered promises, and other days fighting off the dream-fog and clinging to the light of reality – harsh though it may feel to your eyes.

Fear can be a healthy motivator – if used in moderation. Let fearfulness that you’ll return to where you were before get out of hand, and you’ll find yourself right back there again, because your perfectionistic personality type will be unable to stand the pressure of waiting to find out if you will ever heal successfully and you will convince yourself it cannot be done - so why even try. A healthy dose of adrenaline can be likened to stage fright – it is the body’s way of readying us on all four levels for the challenge and opportunity ahead. But too much adrenaline depletes our capacity to fight, and robs us of the stamina to confront each day’s challenges with a memory of small successes in days past. Apply too much fear, and all you will remember is the fear. So don’t let fearfulness stand in your way – disregard anything more than minimal doses of it as an unwelcome visitor, just as toxic in its own way as your eating disorder has been.

Just don’t give up. I don’t care how bad it gets – for me, even the worst day in recovery was still better than the best day in my eating disorder’s dangerously approving company. Remember this simple formula and let it be your guide:

SUCCESS = NOT GIVING UP.

Much love – please keep in touch and let us know how you are doing!

Shannon

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