So I took a walk.
On this walk, I broke down and admitted everything that I was afraid to admit. I was losing control again, I was succumbing to ED, I was falling apart on the inside, yet I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.
I cried and cried, spilling my heart out to the trees around me. I told them everything, even the things I had never told anyone. For some reason, I believed that if I spoke out loud what my problems were or what I feared most, those things would happen (suspicious much?!)
My biggest problem at the time was my eating. Although I was finding a way to get the required amount of calories in during the day, I was binge-eating. I had never talked about this out loud or even in my head, because I didn't want to believe it was true. If I didn't notice my thoughts, maybe they weren't actually true, right?
This walk changed my whole recovery process because from then on, I knew it was okay to opening talk about how I legitimately felt, what my actions suggested, etc.
Honesty goes hand-in-hand with awareness. First you have to be aware of your own thoughts (which most of us are), but then you have to have enough honesty to really face those thoughts because you can't change what you refuse to confront.
It was simple, I refused to confront my thoughts, so there was no change in my recovery or eating. I wasn't facing the real problems. I knew they were there, but I chose not to see them. And this never works unless you want to stay stuck forever.
Changes didn't happen overnight of course, but as I went deeper in search for my own truths, I was able to make tweaks here and there which eventually helped me be able to eat more intuitively.
Awareness is easy, honesty takes courage. This is what I've learned from this experience. It's easy to notice your thoughts, most of the time my thoughts beg to be noticed, but to actually look them in the eye and face them, that's the hard part, the part that requires a lot of courage.
But this courage (and pain) has allowed me to get to where I am now. I'm not healed, I'm still recovering, and my bad days still seem to outweigh my good, but I'm honest with my feelings and with who I am. And this honesty gives me the knowledge to change what I need to in order to be stronger and happier.
Example:
My thought I would constantly avoid: "I don't feel good enough"
Step one: I need to become aware that I have this thought. Notice it.
Step two: I need to face this thought. Why am I having this thought? Where is this coming from?
Step three: I need to answer honesty to this thought. I'm having this thought because I never feel good enough. I never feel as though I do anything right. This thought might be coming from some event in the past where I didn't feel acknowledged or maybe it's coming from a whole lot of things.
The main point is to stop ignoring these types of thoughts. Notice them and ponder them? Ask why? And then go deeper. What's causing you to have these thoughts, problems, struggles?
xoxo
Tayla Anne