Unlike at other times over the course of my eating disorder, I am currently not under any exercise prohibition clause. As someone guilty of excessive exercise as part of my disease process, you might think that I would be taking this opportunity and abusing it as a way to purge calories. You would be wrong.
I’ve gone so long not being allowed to exercise that I’m embarrassed by the shape (or lack there of) that I’m in. I used to get up at 4:30 each and every morning and run for miles. At least 10km every day. Now I’m lucky if I can run one mile without being winded. Running now reminds me too much of how much I am NOT like I used to be.
In non-eating disordered talk, the above translates into, “I no longer weight 100 pounds and abuse my body by over exerting myself every day. I am following my treatment plan and am working on getting healthy.” But my eating disorder ears, I hear, “I weigh so much more now. My meal plan, and my binging/puring behaviors have made me fat and ugly. I am such a failure that I can’t even run anymore.”
I’m living out a cognitive distortion: either I can run forever or I can’t run at all. Part of my brain knows that doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t motivate me enough to re-frame the thought to something like, “I should get back to running by jogging a few miles a couple times a week.”
What is so incredibly frustrating is that I have the skills to know what is going on: I have recognized the pattern, I can identify it as “all or nothing/black or white thinking,” and I can re-frame the thought in a positive light. I have the CBT thing down pat. What I can’t do is to use that information to make a change in my life.
I’m stuck where I’m at exercise-wise, and I’m slipping backward in other areas. I’ve been isolating for this past week: only hanging out with Gabe, not going to class, not calling my friends, not going to visit B after work. I get overwhelmed just thinking about talking and interacting with people. I’m afraid of what they’ll think of me, that I’ll say or do the “wrong” thing, or that they will judge me in some way.
Ultimately, what I’m really scared of is that the people I depend on, and call my friends, may only be staying in my life because they feel sorry for me, “the depressed, eating-disordered girl.” That if I was healthy they wouldn’t “pretend” to be my friends anymore and that the only reason they stick around is because they pity me. So then I don’t call them because I feel like I’m being a bother or a burden and that they would rather not hear from me.
I also try really hard NOT to talk about my issues with my friends, because I want them to think of me as more than the “sick one.” I don’t want to be defined by my disease. I treat my illness with therapy and writing (including this blog), I don’t want to talk about it with friends because I’m afraid it will become how they define me, if they haven’t already done so. And I know I should give them more credit than that because they are amazing wonderful loving people, but I hate myself so much that I can’t help but think that they think the worst of me.
I can only see myself through my eyes and my eyes don’t like what they see.
