I was watching reruns of House the other day, when this little snippet of dialogue caught my attention:

Emotionally, you may be you want to run away. But in my experience, if you're staring at a pitbull in some guy's backyard, you're better off staying right where you are. Face the problem. That way, it can't bite you in the ass.

I generally try to run away from my problems.  You could look at my exercise issues as a literal attempt at that.  I've been known to deal with upticks in ED thoughts and behaviors by simply hoping they'll go away.  They didn't.  The hilarious part is that is that is really shocks me when that doesn't work.

The quote really reminded me of what recovery is about: learning how to face those pitbulls head-on. The ED allowed me to mentally run away from all of the crap in my life that I just didn't want to deal with.  Much of it was related to anxiety and depression, but plenty of it was just life.  I kept running away and kept getting bit in the ass.  My solution wasn't to turn around and face it, but to try and run even faster.

Again, it didn't work.  Again, I was shocked.

Avoidance is (in my opinion) one of the key ways an ED "works" in our lives.  By channeling all of our energies into our disorder, life starts to melt away.  Everything becomes about finding food or avoiding food or throwing up that food, and the other stresses seem less...stressful.  Because they're secondary.  All of this other crap in our lives are the pitbulls in the quote.  We run away.  They bite us in the ass.  The more we run, the bigger their teeth get.

Not to mention that the ED itself creates its own pitbulls.  I found myself falling further and further into the ED in order to avoid the pile of crap that the ED itself was creating.  It seemed much easier to avoid it with ED behaviors than it did to face the mess of my life and start cleaning up.

Avoidance of anxiety-provoking things brings short-term relief because we're avoiding the anxiety.  Duh.  But the anxiety continues to build and the urge to avoid grows higher and higher.  Facing the anxiety (returning that phone call, accepting your role in a negative situation, eating those scary foods) is harder, short-term.  I also know that I'll feel better knowing I've tackled whatever it is, and not having the task sitting over my head.

One of the hardest parts of recovery is stepping away from the running away.  Between the anorexia and the OCD, I don't remember a time when I didn't avoid life with any number of rituals and avoidance techniques.  So it's all very new to me.  And it's hard.  Really hard.  Avoidance is engrained, and so are the fears of dealing with real-life stuff.  The irony is that, anxiety aside, I'm no scaredy cat.  I like a challenge.  So there's nothing else to say but: bring it.