wow, i so needed to read this post. this is exactly what i have been really grappling with lately. giving up, not being the best anymore. you got me thinking and i really appreciate that. thanks for this!

I can really relate to this - and I think that you've hit on a key point in the last paragraph, and certainly one that helped me.

When I stopped viewing recovery as a sign of weakness or a failure, it was because I recognised that there was a difference between choosing proactively to get better and recovering because I couldn't stick at being ill. If recovery was the result of an active choice rather than my incapability of doing an eating disorder, I could move beyond the giving up theme.

This was by no means easy, and included using CBT like reminders - why I am doing this, oh yes, I want to get bettter, but it did make a huge difference.

Great post - and such an important point!

So so true. Excellent post.

So often it seems that beating an eating disorder is a failure (gain weight, lost control, lose identity, etc.) but you've got a point about how failure truly comes by allowing the eating disorder to ruin everything else.

Definitely thought-provoking and helpful. Thanks!

Good on you! I relate to so much of what you said, its just chaotic logic really and ever so frustrating. I'm glad that you're repurposing and gonna give this a go :).

xo

Despite what I wrote yesterday (about finding intellectualising helpful to my own recovery) I guess I have to admit that the things that really helped me with my recovery were 'daring' to make changes (in order to recover).

You know the Nike advert 'Just Do It'? Well that's the point I was at 4-5 yrs ago when I was a physical and mental mess. Years of AN had made me quite 'mad'. But I couldn't make those changes alone. I have had A LOT of support - from a very skilled and kind psychiatrist (who I still see), close friends and family.

For many years I had seen recovery as failure. AN felt 'safe' and it also felt to provide me with a sense of 'power' - the latter associated with having the 'guts' and 'endurance' to put myself through pain and suffering. I was an ascetic who derived a sort of 'satisfaction' from hurting myself.

I know that a lot of people dislike the term 'rock bottom' in EDs, but with hindsight I feel it is very sad that I was only able to make changes and kick AN out of the door when I was in a life or death situation.

Great post Carrie!

Similarly to the last post where I said I thought I focused on being smart because I didn't think I had anything else going for me, I think last year I had gotten to the point where part of me was scared to recover because losing weight was the only thing I was doing 'successfully' in my life anymore. I had a sense of feeling like if I was going to be a failure at life, I could at least be 'good' at anorexia. I can't tell anyone how I stopped equating recovery with failure because I KNOW I used to feel that way, and now I don't. Maybe it's because I know how incredibly hard I have worked to gain up to a healthy weight, pretty much on my own. Maybe it's because I know that staying anorexic would have been a lot easier. It's a horrible way to live, but at the time you don't care because you're numb, so staying anorexic would have been the path of least resistance. Looking at it in that way, how can recovery be failure? Surely failure is something that happens because either a person is not trying hard enough or they are lacking skills in some area, and to recover you need determination, hard work, courage, and the willingness to learn as many new coping skills as you can cram into your head in the quickest amount of time. I don't see anorexia as failure either, I see that as an illness. But I see my recovery as the biggest success of my whole life so far.

You always seem to be right on with what I'm thinking. Amazing.

"Everything has trade-offs" is the first of the ten principles of economics. So not only are you right, but leading business experts agree with you.:)

No one can have it all. It's such a simple truth, but no one seems to remember it. Even more frustrating is that it's currently the 'in' thing for women to try to have it all, just like dieting.

I struggle with this all the time - that anorexia is the only thing I've been really good at and if I recover, I will be a failure and weak on my part.

But with each day, I get more and more tired of anorexia's presence in my life and the wreck its left behind. I'm beginning to think I'd rather fail at being anorexic than continue to live with it; it's become too painful.

I was having a lapse a couple of months back; the kind where you've already dug yourself back in deep before you've skipped a meal, and you've reclaimed the ED as the "truth" to such an extent that you cannot believe how you could have let it go before. Two days into not eating and my mood was even lower, I felt controlled for the first time (I'd always felt like I was in control of it before) and trapped and remembered all over again why AN doesn't work for me anymore. The thing was, I didn't feel I could get past the "well, if I give in and start eating normally again after only a couple of days people will see what a failure I am, I will not be able to see it as anything but failure.

Something someone said to me which was very simple and somehow broke the spell at the time was:

"quit to win".

That's all he said to me and at that moment it just made the illogic of anorexia very clear. I was surely losing out by sauntering back to whence I had come (working hard to get away from the ed).

Thanks for posting this Carrie -- I still feel like this and it hurts to live with the shame everyday. It is funny how illogical and very little sense it makes, given your last post talked about intellutualizing things. . .

I have stayed in recovery, by promising myself that I could go back if I didn't like it and recovery was a temporary experiment that may or may not become permanent. This may not be as great as "banishing my AN from my life forever!" but it has got me farther in the last 20 months than ever.

I am hoping that eventually these feelings of inferiority will fade. I don`t think there will be any huge realization that AN is bad, or recovery is something to be proud of. I just think that as someone recovers, that issue will matter less and less to the point where the individual fills their life with other things than ED.

I think one of the biggest hardships of this illness is that mental recovery lags behind physical restoration. Think how much easier things would be if our mental processes/distortions improved in tandem with weight? I bet there would be a lot less relapse. . .

A:)

Reading everyone's comments, I think I've more formally synthesized my thinking on this: I'm not actually "quitting" at anorexia. I'm putting it "on hold," the way I did my original plans of getting my PhD. As time has passed, I think less and less of that seeming "missed opportunity" and more of all of the other doors that have opened as a result of scrapping my initial plans to be a researcher and instead going off and being a writer.

Thanks!

"Many of my friends have careers and children, and I'm living with my parents." Yes, exactly. Same here. It doesn't exactly make me feel very successful. And I know that I still feel like I've failed big time by being in recovery. If I was a better, stronger person I keep telling myself, I would be super-anorexia, have my own home, and a fabulous career. Of course, this is not true. And thank you so much for writing this because I think so many people feel this way. I think it's so amazing how you manage to take these thoughts and deconstruct them so well to show how absurd they really are.

I relate to this. For a long time I felt that if I gained weight, then all the energy I had put toward being thin would be "lost". I felt that recovering would be the same as acknowledging that everyone else had been right all along, and I didn't want that to be the case. I wanted my little personal mission toward thinness to have been, somehow, "worth it".

I also feared that once I gained weight, no one would care to help me anymore. Well, actually, this happened to a certain extent. It is very hard to get anyone to listen to your struggles (even professionals) when you aren't wraith-like. I wonder if they know how much this affects us? At one point I actually lost weight, because I figured, "Hey, if I can get down to X weight, then maybe I could talk to therapist and recover." Yeah, totally rational.

soooo very true.. i get the remorse and regret "leaving and giving up" anorexia because i am giving up my comfort and secuirty which is hard for anyone to do. it's like telling a schizophrenic to have just a few cumpulsions and give up their medicine..

"let they food be thy medicine and they medicine be thy food"

i couldnt view recovery as failure because i never would have gotten better and everyday would have been a battle. the vicotry in anorexia is death and i am not interested. the vitory in recovery is love and that, i am interested in

finding ourselves throughout recovery though is all part of "giving up" because i am still learning who i am what i like, what i want, what my passions and even my opinions are

Love this post - completely relatable! I can be quite the annoying cheerleader for anyone else recovering, but when it comes to myself. . I shun any encouragement because 1)It's a sign of my weakness that anyone has a reason to encourage me about anything and 2) I already feel like i'll fail at recovery. glad to know I'm not the only one that feels this way!

I love this. It's so hard to switch mindsets because they seem to be simultaneous, but I found that facing my anxieties (both E.D.-related and not) helps me to see that recovery is SO worth it!! When I live and learn without any "safeties," it's always worth it, even though it's hard. The most recent thing I learned was a realization that I now use as a self-affirmation; I am much more proud of the me that does not use E.D.

I also appreciate your previous entry. It helped me, so thanks!

There are a number of different treatment programs and approaches to support people suffering from eating disorders who decide to get help. I’ve found Silver Hill, a substance abuse and psychiatric hospital, to be a good source of information and resources. Talking/blogging about eating disorders can be extremely helpful not just for yourself, but for others in need. Keep up the good work.

This has helped me. I still feel like a failure but at least I know that I'm not the onnly one who thinks this way. One part of me knows that my ED made me unhappy but another part of me is so reluctant to give it up. Thank you for posting this.