November Through December

by Lindsey 0 Comments

November unraveled me. Slowly, like thread falling from fabric, before I knew it, I was in a place where I found my own self unfamiliar. I signed up for a Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TSY) training- meaning I would be equipped to teach TSY to others- but it also meant I had to look at some things I had long ago tucked away. You know, those things that are probably a “big deal” but you relive the events over in your head enough to reduce them to a simple, almost meaningless event that might have happened to someone else, but certainly not to you.

Then the nightmares started, and the anxiety that made me chew the insides of my mouth raw. I woke my husband up at 2am the night after the first training. “Why did you let me do this?” I demanded. “Why? This shit is hard. I’m reading hundreds of pages about how our bodies hang on to all the stuff we go through, and I see myself in those pages, and I realize that its true- the body remembers. And the body always wins.”

I’ve been a Pediatric or Neonatal Intensive Care Unit nurse for 9 years. I’m human- I’ve been through some tough stuff- we all have. Family issues, lost friendships, death, bad relationships, you name it. I’ve had an eating disorder for more of my life than I have not. Like how it sounds or not, we are all trauma survivors in some sense.
November reminded me of this. My body spoke to me in ways I could not ignore. I am a person who feels very deeply. I care for others with my whole heart. As much as I hate to admit to being emotional, I am. I am still learning that this is a gift and not a flaw like I’ve told myself and been told for so long. It’s the way God made me. I’m not made wrong, even though much of the time I resent that way I am. It can make living life HARD, because in the same way a person can be giddy and beside themselves with joy, I can be wracked and stunted by sorrow. Emotion that settles into my bones and fills all the spaces I didn’t know were empty. I am the same way with love. The beauty of it touches my soul and makes the entire world feel brighter. I have finally learned, that I cannot choose to feel one spectrum of emotions over the other. In attempting to numb pain, I will inevitably numb joy as well.

November unraveled me, and December has left me undone. I am owning my role in it and beginning to pick up the pieces. Some of them are painful, like the relentless migraines I’ve developed and the depression that has snuck in. Some of the pieces are healing, like the person from my past I reconnected with and spoke my truth to. I am still discovering pieces, and I get to pick and chooses what I want to stay, and what I want to go. It’s my life, not anyone else’s, and I want a say in how I choose to process and heal and implement wounds from the past.
The body remembers. Our brains are wired a certain way to react and protect us when needed. We can’t control that. Our tissues and muscles and cells hold the memories. Be careful what you pack away in hopes that the unseen disappears. God made us so beautifully flawed- breakable, ignorant, and so just so HUMAN. The unraveling and undoing of things in our lives has a purpose. Hold on to that hope.

Be a Stand

by Lindsey 0 Comments

I was 12 when I figured out I could throw away my lunches at school so I didn’t have to eat. I was 14 when I figured out I could make myself throw up after eating so I didn’t feel like I had food in my stomach. I was 15 when I told my Bible Study leader what I was doing. Until I was 25, I never again told anyone about my disordered eating and exercise habits. Starving myself and getting “rid” of food by purging or exercising excessively was empowering- as long as I did that, I had some control of what I felt like in my body, and an effective coping mechanism. My Bible Study leader told me that what I was doing wasn’t good, and that she wanted me to call her every evening and tell her that I hadn’t been using those behaviors. I was 15 when I figured out that lying to her over the phone, and occasionally face to face, wasn’t hard.

Not too long ago, I got a friend request on Facebook from my former Bible Study leader. I absentmindedly accepted, and later that day messaged her on Facebook, simply saying “Hi S!” She wrote me back. “Hello sweet friend,” it read. “I think about you all the time. Hope you are doing well…God loves you and so do I!”

A thousand emotions flooded me. Ones from my 15 year old self who had confided in someone she trusted, unsure of what she was looking for. Ones from my 20 year old self, after being caught by a family member throwing up in a restaurant bathroom, wondering why she hadn’t stopped all those years ago when someone told her to. Ones from my 22 year old self as I stopped eating during the day to justify having drinks with friends later, but forget the memories. Ones from my 24 year old self as she ran on greenways for hours and pounded away at the gym, searching for something she would never find. Ones as a 26 year old in rehab, realizing that she had spent over half her life living to die. Ones from my 28 year old self when I wrote her a letter I knew I would never send, telling her I wish things would have been different. That I wish she would have told someone, instead of trusting a hurting, insecure teenage girl to stop going down the dark hole that had ahold of her. That I would have hated her at the time; but looking back now, I would have given anything to have started the recovery process sooner. And even now, as my 30 year old self sits here, part of me paralyzed with fear that I will spend the rest of my life with pieces of myself entrenched in my eating disorder.

They say that hindsight is 20/20. That it’s easy for me to sit here and write that I wish someone had “made” me get help. Whose to say I would have listened? Whose to say it would have made a difference? What would my family have done? And if I didn’t take the path I did, what would my life look like now? I married an amazing man and I love him more than I thought was possible to love someone. I have the best friends anyone could ask for. They are my family. I’m going to be a yoga teacher. I have a great relationship with my parents because of all that we’ve been through.

I say all this because I have a message for you. Maybe you are someone who is struggling- not necessarily with an eating disorder. Depression. Anxiety. Bullying. Suicidal thoughts. Hopelessness. Shame. An addiction. An invisible illness. Maybe you are a family member who knows someone, but is afraid to say something. Maybe you are a friend who is concerned. Maybe you are the actual sufferer.
My message to you is this…please don’t waste any more time.

Be a stand for the person you love; for yourself. We always, always think we have time. Do it now. Be brave now. Say it now. Help them help themselves. In the end, I promise you the only regret you will have is the time you let go by watching someone destroy themselves. An eating disorder has a function- a really good, effective one actually. Depression has a function. Anxiety has a function. An addiction has a function. And suicidal thoughts can become actions. But whatever function a mental illness has, will not serve someone long term. Eventually it will stop working. It will take and take without a person realizing what they have lost.

I hear a lot of people say that they wouldn’t trade their experience with a mental illness (specifically an eating disorder) because it’s made them who they are, and they are proud of that person. Honestly, I’m not there yet. I wish I could smile and say that I love the person I’ve fought to become. That I am grateful for what I’ve gone through because it has led me to where I am now.

But I can’t say that.
It’s shameful to admit.
Because you can’t live in the past. I know I am 100% responsible for the life I create. There is no one to point fingers at, to blame, to look to and say they could have changed me. But I can’t help but wonder what my life would have been like if at 15, someone would have stood up against the darkness that was swallowing me.

I am endlessly grateful for the people I have in my life now.
Everyday I am in awe of God’s plan.
I am so glad it is better than mine.
I don’t believe that the good things in life diminish the bad things. And the bad things don’t ruin the good things. That’s just life; we are just human, and we are broken; but at the same time broken is beautiful.
And it is human to wonder.
To second guess what my have been.
So give someone that gift. Or give it to yourself.
Love is not just words but actions.
Be a stand.
You don’t ever know what it could mean.

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For Anyone with an Eating Disorder and Anxiety

by Lindsey 0 Comments

I’ll admit it- I am an anxious person. Actually, I’ve come to realize that I am an extremely anxious person as of late because I no longer really use behaviors to cope. Restriction numbs. Over-exercise burns off adrenaline and quiets my mind. Orthorexic behaviors give me a sense of peace and control over my food and body. No longer using these behaviors to the extreme degree I am used to has honestly thrown me for a loop. I want to yell “NOT FAIR” at my treatment team and anyone who helped make me healthy. Like, GUYS, no one told me that eliminating behaviors consistently was going to make me feel like an actual crazy person. I don’t like to admit it- I’m a nurse, and we are terrible patients. I’ve always been independent to a fault and I feel weak needing medication. Not only that, but I am TERRIFIED of starting any new medication because of the experience I had with anti-anxiety and sleep meds in treatment.

If you haven’t ever struggled with anxiety, let me describe it to you. It’s laying awake until 3AM and having a headache for 24 hours straight after that. It’s a cramping stomach- that kind you get when you’re way past hungry- only hunger isn’t the problem. Constant anxiety is feeling like you drank just a little too much coffee, and your nervous system and brain are in overdrive. Anxiety is shockingly exhausting on the body. It’s sleeping because you’re so worn out from the constant hyper-alertness of your mind. Anxiety is napping all the time because of the tiredness, and to avoid feeling like you’re going to explode. Don’t confuse anxiety with worry! Worry is concern over actual events or potential events. Anxiety is all of the above for seemingly no reason.

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As I wrote in my last post, the urges to choose my eating disorder are strong. The thing is- I KNOW my eating disorder will work. I will feel better.

Temporarily.

Then what? As much as I don’t want to feel this constant unsettled feeling, I know my eating disorder can’t be a long term solution. It just can’t. I love my life and the people in it. Life is good; I don’t want to lose everything I care about.

Being healthy and nourished forces me to feel. Emotionally, mentally, and physically. My eating disorder took care of those things for me. I was a walking robot (well, with anxiety). Truth be told, I am ten times as anxious now as I was at my sickest. Recovery has a lot to do with choosing what is hard over choosing what is easy. Which honestly, sucks. I want a quick fix. I want an easy button.

But, I have to be patient. I have been through a lot in the past year personally, including the loss of three people I loved dearly. The brain doesn’t just forget that pain and trauma. We live in a world that teaches us “big girls don’t cry, suck it up, get back in the game, keep your head high, get your shit together, and don’t let them see you hurt.” We are HUMAN BEINGS- God created us to FEEL. Some of us feel things more deeply than others and I’ve learned that’s me. I HATE it. I like being the strong one. The tough kid. The one who doesn’t cry; who can shut off her feelings. Recovery has completely blown that safety next for me. I am trying so hard to be ok with it. I feel vulnerable. I feel stupid, I feel like a wimp, a sissy, you name it. Sharing my story about the journey I am on has helped me realize that hiding and walling myself off isn’t as great and helpful as my eating disordered mind made me think it was. I am an emotional person. I am learning to accept that. Next comes learning to deal with that. Baron Baptiste, the founder of Baptiste yoga says: “We hold the past in our bodies.” What a statement. What truth. For me, this statement is freeing. It means that I can heal and someday my anxiety won’t be so present. For now, that means TRULY sitting in the anxiety. “What’s the worst that will happen? Take it one step at a time,” my therapist says. So, I will be present in my feelings. I’ll stop trying to “stop” them. Everything eventually passes.

Friends, you are who you are. You are wonderfully made. Emotional, messy, chaotic- there is no shame in what makes you yourself. We all the the rest of our lives to either learn to accept ourselves and get along with ourselves; or fight ourselves. You choose.

Grumpy cat, talk to my mind!

Grumpy cat, talk to my mind!