That kind of verve will come after some progress in your recovery work. You begin at your beginning. I've often wondered where my beginning place was. I've had many that qualify.
When I was still immersed in my secret bulimic way of living I attended a small dinner party at the home of my close friends, Lars and Ingeborg. As I mentioned earlier, that night I met a recovering alcoholic psychiatrist I'll call Michael, who invited me to lead a guided imagery session, my specialty at the time, with his alcoholic patients.
I said I didn't know if I could because I didn't know anything about alcoholics. I didn't know yet that I had had a long relationship with an alcoholic, or that some aspects of my bulimia had a great deal in common with alcoholism.
Michael took me to my first AA meeting. I listened to one young man open his heart and with raw honesty describe his daily physical and emotional life as an alcoholic. I was stunned as, for the first time, I heard my secret life described in detail. My life was exactly like his except my issue was food, not alcohol.
I said nothing to Michael but ventured into Overeaters Anonymous where, another first for me, I met a woman who was bulimic and told me so. This was another staggering experience. I whispered to her that I was, too. She nodded and swept away, but I didn't feel rejected. I felt amazed that I wasn't the only one and that I could speak of it.
I started psychotherapy. My clinical supervisor, Hedda Bolgar, agreed to accept me as her patient. I moved through massive fear to tell her I was bulimic. I was prepared for her to reject me and also tell me I could no longer be a psychotherapist. But her face was kind as she welcomed me and we began our journey.
At a private dinner I confessed to Michael that I was bulimic and starting recovery. I expected to see revulsion on his face. Instead, he smiled and wept. He put his hands together in a silent prayer and said, “It's God's grace.” He said my new beginning reinforced his own recovery. I cried too.
A few days later I spent a long Sunday with Lars and Ingeborg, who had given the dinner party where I met Michael. Finally, at a table in a darkened restaurant, I mustered enough courage to tell them I was bulimic. Ingeborg looked blank and asked me what that was. I breathed deeply and described my secret life. She took my hands in hers and said, “We love you, Joanna. How sad for you.” Lars smiled a little smile and said, “Joanna, you are the most interesting person.”
Was this my starting point? I certainly thought so. But I had already chosen these people to be in my life. I created the opportunity for those events to happen long before I knew how they would turn out. In the film Field of Dreams, a voice says, “Build it, and they will come.” Buddhism says, “Create the right conditions.” Psychotherapy teaches, “Create a sturdy holding environment because we never know what will emerge during the course of treatment.”
Bringing this book into your life is part of creating the right conditions for your recovery. What else do you need?
Rather than decide intellectually at this point, take a look at where you are now and what you want. This creates the “right conditions” for your imagination, emotions, and thoughts to come together to make choices that serve you well in the here and now. Then, you can bring your energy to whatever task you decide to undertake.
This sounds vague because I'm not telling you what to choose. You choose. You are the only person who has accurate knowledge about your daily experiences and access to your own authentic visions for yourself. You can check in with your emotions, energy, and courage to start at your true beginning place. You are reading this book because somewhere inside of you, despite the grip of your eating disorder, you want to be free. Your challenge now is to honor and nurture that hopeful and healing spark of life calling from beneath the years and layers of your eating disorder.
Ask yourself: What is your eating disorder doing for you? Why is it necessary for that healing spark to work so hard to call out to you and be heard?
You may be using your eating disorder to keep yourself from knowing just how bad you believe life can get. You may be afraid to let people in your life know what you are going through and what you really want. So part of your eating disorder exists to keep the peace. It dulls you down so you are in a state of acceptance of the unacceptable. People close to you believe you accept your way of life. In fact, you are (or were) resigned to live with an eating disorder that prevents you from becoming aware of more possibilities. You have been blocking what you fear to know in order to maintain peace in your life.
You are reading this book because somewhere inside of you, despite the grip of your eating disorder, you want to be free.
It may be against the law of the land to disturb the peace, but it's not against the law to speak your truth and pursue your happiness. So here is where you begin. You need to know where you are standing before you can take your first step.
Vanessa, thirty-seven and recently divorced, sat alone at the kitchen table in her temporary rented house, in emotional pain and with no direction. She had two teenage sons and was suffering from bulimia and anorexia alternately. Vanessa, trembling and blinking through tears, tried to help herself by making a list. It was a list of her feelings, her actions, and what her life looked like. She tried to clear her mind of despair so she could look at herself from an objective point of view. She wanted to address each item as if it were a task to complete.
Here is a list of her entries. They may apply to you, too. Use it and elaborate on it to make the list fully your own. You are not alone. Others have been where you are and have moved through to recovery. Listen to the voice of your pain and the voice of the hopeful healing spark that guides you.
Vanessa began her list with one question, “What makes me miserable about being me?
1 Poor health (this includes effect on teeth, bones, and menses)
2 Shame
3 Loneliness
4 Outbreaks of rage
5 Losing track of time in chunks or small blips
6 Crying jags
7 Morning anxiety
8 Needing to lie to people
9 Shoplifting? Food, certainly. Other things—books, jewelry once, and napkins and spoons from restaurants
10 Bouts of despair
11 Being fat
12 Not being able to start building a better life
Your list can stand as a baseline for you that can remind you of your recovery progress.
Memory is quirky when you have an eating disorder. Some experiences fade because you don't give them attention. Some fade because you are in denial or too anxious to focus. And sometimes, for reasons we may never know, you gradually might slide back into acting out your eating disorder.
When this happens, and it happens to everyone, the list you are making now will still exist. Even if you destroy it, you could buy this book again and turn to this chapter. Your beginning place is solid. You can use what you create here as a starting point for recovery practices and as a safety net to catch you when you fall. More than that, you can use it as a friendly and familiar place to grab hold, get back on your path, learn and continue.
You may not appreciate yet how the items on your list relate to your eating disorder. You may think that your troubles of undereating or overeating and all the behaviors that go with it (like purging, hiding food, bingeing in secret, etc.) are the full extent of your eating disorder and that your task is to stop doing these things.
You might believe there's an upside to your eating disorder behaviors because sometimes you look forward to a binge or hours on the treadmill. Yet, when you see how your eating disorder is related to the behaviors and feelings on your list, any imagined benefits fall apart.
Look