The Comfort Of Self Destruction...

The hardest part of recovery isn't always letting go of the eating disorder, it's letting go of the comfort it gsave you. I know that sounds wrong, after all eating disorders are tiring and isolating. They take your health, your happiness and your freedom. So why would anyone miss them? After a while, an eating disorder stops feeling like a disorder and starts feeling like a coping mechanism. Almost like a routine, a safety net and a way to escape emotions that feel too much to sit with.

When you've relied on something for long enough the thought of letting go can feel terrifying not because you want to stay sick but because you don't know who you are without it. That's part of recovery i wasn't prepared for, the grief that comes with letting go of something that was hurting you, whilst also feeling like it was helping you survive.

I think this is why recovery can feel so confusing, part of you wants to get better but another part of you is terrified. If you let go of the eating disorder, what happens when you're stressed? What happens when you're overwhelmed? What happens when life feels too much? For years the eating disorder had an answer for everything a way to numb and cope. Recovery asks you to do something incredibly difficult, feel it... the anxiety, sadness, fear and the emotions you've spent so long trying to escape. This can feel unbearable at first because when you've used self destruction as a coping mechanism for long enough, healing can feel unfamiliar and this can feel unsafe. That's why so many people mistake discomfort for danger in recovery, the eating disorder feels familiar while recovery doesn't.

What i didn't realise at the time was that recovery wasn't asking me to lose my safety net, it was asking me to build a new one because the truth is, the eating disorder was never actually keeping me safe. It was stopping me from learning healthier ways to cope, healthier ways to process emotions and healthier ways to get through bad days. For so long, i thought i couldn't survive without it but slowly recovery showed me that i could. One day at a time, one urge resisted, one difficult emotion sat with and one meal kept down. Little by little something started to happen, the thing i thought i couldn't live without began to have less power over me. I was learning that i could handle difficult things without hurting myself. Every time i did, i became a little stronger than the eating disorder that told me i couldn't.

Looking back now, i can see something i couldn't see at the time, the eating disorder never made me feel safe. It made me feel dependent, there's a difference. Safety gives you freedom, depedence takes it away. Safety helps you live your life, depedence makes your life smaller and my world did become very small. Every decision was influenced by my eating disorder. I didn't trust myself to get through bad days without turning back to the thing that was hurting me because it convinced me that i needed it, that i couldn't cope without it.

Recovery slowly teaches you something different, you were always capable and you were stronger than the eating disorder wanted you to believe. You just never had the chance to prove it to yourself.

So if you're in that place right now, holding onto an eating disorder because part of you still believes you need it, i want you to know you're not weak. You're scared and there is a difference. Letting go of something that has been part of your life for so long is scary. Especially when it's convinced you that it's the only thing keeping you together.

One day you'll look back amd see the thing you thought was helping you cope was stopping you from healing. The thing you thought was your safety net was the very thing stopping you from finding the real safety because real safety isn't found in self destruction. It's found in knowing you can survive bad days without hurting yourself, it's found in trusting yourself, it's found in freedom and whilst letting go may feel like losing something at first, recovery has a way of giving you back far more than it takes.

One day you'll wake up and see you no longer need the thing you once believed you couldn't live without and that's a kind of freedom that's impossible to put into words.

With Love, Niomi 🤎