Time to get happy again...

First of all I realise my blog lately has basically become about me coping with life at the moment... It won't stay like this. But then I guess that's what I'm about. I write as a release and then I share it on here in the chance that something I say relates to other people and helps them in some way.

As this is a recovery blog about every up and down it would be wrong of me to lie to you about where I am right now. If I did, I would be accepting that I'm ashamed and none of us should feel ashamed of being in recovery!

The last couple of days have been difficult for me. They could've been worse I guess but that fear of eating has just jumped out of nowhere. I went to get lunch during work yesterday, paced up and down over and over in front of the food and I ended up leaving with a diet coke. Something in me just wouldn't let me buy food even though I was hungry and I wanted it. I was scared of the feelings I'd experience after even though I haven't felt those guilty, punishing feelings in over a year!

Despite this I believe it is just a small trip up along my path. I won't relapse... I've come too far and won't let myself now. I have faith in myself and my strength to stay healthy. So what am I going to do?

I finally spoke to Matt the other day. He said he's not been thinking too much and has been staying in the moment, focusing on the present. That is something I've never been good at! But I think it's a skill I should work on. If I can stay in the present, a lot of those uncomfortable feelings that I want to deal with through food won't be there and I won't be worrying so much about how I'm going to feel. I need to remember to take it day at a time.

Before Matt came along I had spent a lot of that year focusing on myself and growing into a happier person. I was constantly reading books/using affirmations etc to change how I felt about the world and myself. When Matt entered my life I guess I stopped a bit because I was so happy I didn't feel the need to change anything I felt. The problem is, developing your happiness through affirmations, positive thinking, gratitude etc is a way of life, not a crash course. After basically a year away from that way of behaving I have now realised it is something I need to continue in order to feel good about myself. I'm going to go back to focusing on loving myself and believing that everything happens for a reason and will be ok.
I'll use affirmations, read books, be nicer to myself, be more grateful, see the positives and act as if life couldn't be better. Doing that before gave me a life that actually couldn't be better as I was so happy. If I want that again then all I have to do is return to focusing on these things and making my mind a much happier place to live.

Love Jasmin

A moment of fear....

I’m scared. Anorexia makes everything go away. It allows me to block everything else in life out and it allows me to pretend that all that matters is me and my anorexia world. When things feel like they are falling around you how do you not give in to that world. How do you not say... ok, take it all away.
Right now, that’s all I want to do. I know i’ll feel better. The one person I love... doesn’t love me... The one thing I’ve focused on for I don’t know how many years, dance... I don’t think I want to do any more... The things that excited me... don’t anymore... Not long left with my psychologist and the NHS is done with me... Not eating could make none of that matter.
But that’s not what I want. I don’t want to relapse. I don’t want to become that person again. I’m so much more than that person. I can be whoever I want to be, be whatever I choose to be, so why choose a girl with anorexia? Because that’s all I’ll be. Anorexia and girl who achieved all her dreams don’t go together. It’s one or the other.
I’ve been at the bottom of a hole where I thought I’d rather die than face anymore from life because I wasn’t good enough for anyone... but I grew stronger than that. I’ve beaten myself over and over again because I thought I was worthless... but I grew stronger than that. I’ve punished myself with more self hate than I’d feel towards anyone... but I grew stronger than that. I’ll grow stronger than this too. I am NOT letting what life has to throw at me pull me down anymore. It's a test.... how much pain can I put her through until she cracks and relapses again... well not this time! I will stay strong, keep fighting and take on whatever life wants to throw at me! I might not know how, but I've not known before and got through it anyway. I'll do it again.

A roller coaster of emotions...

Recently my boyfriend broke up with me. As horrible as the past 6 weeks have been, being the person I am I like to see each difficult situation as an opportunity to grow and learn something. This experience has definitely been a learning curve!

I want to share my experience with you because although its a very specific situation I think my coping techniques could be applied to many situations.

For the first 2 weeks I was....GREAT... ok bit of an exaggeration but I was ok. I knew I was likely to be upset, feel alone and beat myself up for it because I'd feel it was my fault and I must be a bad person. So first of all I acknowledged that. Then I decided to find a way of coping with that. I was nice to myself! I booked myself in for a deep tissue massage and treated myself. I let myself relax and be kind to myself instead of punishing myself with self hate.
My next technique was to surround myself by supportive people. I thought this would be hard but it was surprisingly easy... people wanted to be there for me! They wanted to spend time with me and take me out and make me feel better. This resulted in a very busy two weeks... it was great because it completely distracted me and made me feel cared about. I was surprised at how good I felt considering the situation. It also helped because a lot of these social situations involved food which made it a lot easier to eat. I didn't find that I suddenly wanted to lose weight and stop eating but naturally my appetite disappeared a lot. Situations where I kind of had to eat helped this.

After the first couple of weeks I think the whole thing hit me. I felt numb. I didn't know what to think or feel about the situation. I could feel myself secluding myself slightly more. This was a hard phase to deal with. I didn't know how I felt so I didn't know how to cope with it.

Luckily I quickly went from this phase to being very upset. I seemed fine and everyone thought I was doing such a great job of coping but I felt miserable. I just wanted to cry but I didn't want other people to know how I felt. I just wanted him to come home and started to wish time away. I started to lose enthusiasm for everything I enjoy. To deal with this I started reading a lot more. When I read I can completely escape to another world. My mind was taken away from the situation and the feelings went with it.

Next.. I got angry. I could understand why Matt had broken up with me but I had tried to contact him because he said he still wanted to be friends and he wasn't replying... this hurt the most... and still does as I still haven't had a reply! I didn't like being angry because I knew he had good intentions but then I realised I had every right to be angry and that was ok. I was able to put myself first and admit I'm worth more than this! I sent him a message telling him this and I've felt a lot better since then. Ive been going on a lot of dates which I think has been good for me (especially as it's always nice to have someone spoil you!)

Since we broke up I've constantly assessed how I feel and thought about how I could deal with those feelings instead of using food. It hasn't been easy but I'm still healthy and eating so it's worked!
Throughout the whole thing I've used my usual coping technique... writing. Such a good release!

I've kept myself surrounded by positive and supportive people and I finally feel like I'm getting to a good place. A place where at least for now I just want to be 21 and have a lot of fun... which is exactly what I'm doing!

So that's how I coped... hope it's useful in one way or another...

Love Jasmin

Perfectionism and Failure...

Hello hello hello wonderful people,

I realise in the past year I have been extremely bad at writing on here! So I apologise for that. It's been a busy year but I promise to do better from now on!

This post is about perfectionism and failure. I have to admit I am a perfectionist myself and always thought that had a lot to do with my eating disorder. I still think it does but then recently I became aware of another role my eating disorder had... it allowed me to fail. Let me explain...

Being a perfectionist is tiring! You constantly feel the need to be perfect, and seeing as perfect doesn't exist, you are continuously working towards an impossible goal. Your eating disorder fits in with this need to be perfect. But it also has the ability to destroy everything else in your life, making it harder to reach your goal of perfection.

I realised that when I felt I was failing in an area of my life I would struggle with my eating disorder more. First of all it allowed me to feel like at least I was achieving something... but it also gave me an excuse for why I was failing at other things. Being a perfectionist I was ashamed of feeling like a failure, whether it was at school, in my dance classes, in my friendships. But my eating disorder took away the bad feelings because I was able to blame it when I didn't meet my expectations. If I got a bad grade then it was my eating disorder's fault not mine. If I fell out with friends it was because my eating disorder was making me a bad person, not because I, myself was a bad person.

I was tired of trying to be perfect in every area of my life. It wasn't possible. But I couldn't admit to that so instead I found a reason to fail. I was so obsessed with my eating disorder I stopped caring about other areas from my life... it gave me a break.

I haven't realised this until recently. But if I had realised it sooner I would beg myself to see the irrationality in this thinking!
Yes the eating disorder does all of that but there are easier options!

Aim to accept life as it is. Life is not perfect and never will be. We cannot succeed all of the time at everything we do and that's ok. Instead of making excuses, embrace your imperfections, they make you individual, they make you human. Learn to break away from your perfectionism, set yourself goals to help you do this. For example, when I wrote notes in class they would always be pretty messy because I was writing quickly. I couldn't stand to see messy notes so I would then waste time re-writing them all so that they were neat. It was something I didn't need to do. So I set myself the goal of not doing that anymore. It was just a small thing but things like that reinforce to your brain that we don't have to be perfect!
The more you can accept yourself, imperfections and all, the less need you will have to find excuses to fail. You will have less need for your eating disorder.

Love you all.... happy EDAW!
Jasmin xxxx

Hey Everyone!

Sorry it's been so long since I've been on here. Just to remind everyone... Eating Disorder Awareness Week starts tomorrow!

Love Jasmin

I've binged....now what?!

Someone recently explained to me that she had been through a few days of eating a lot and didn't know what to do next. Of course she wanted to restrict to make up for it but she also wants to recover.

This is a situation I faced many, many times. When you're trying to learn how to eat more again it is very easy to feel unbalanced at first or doubt yourself. Sometime you may not even be overeating but you feel like you are. On the other hand it is very easy to overeat. The binge part of your brain might be tempted to give in or you might find yourself experiencing days where your calorie intake is a lot higher than you would like which can be overwhelming.

I'll admit to begin with all I wanted to do was to restrict to make up for it. It avoided me purging but allowed me still to have some control so it seemed like a great idea but it isn't....at all! By doing that you're just asking for your eating disorder to continue!!
Here's why it's a bad idea:

- When you restrict your body goes into starvation mode and slows the metabolism down....this makes your body a lot more likely to store what you've eaten over the past few days.
- When you restrict your body tries to protect you. It thinks you are starving so it causes the urge to binge. So you will be more likely to binge again and once again you will want to restrict, then binge, then restrict, then binge, you get the idea.
- You will feel depressed, energy less and miserable.
- You are preventing yourself from getting better.

The best thing to do would be to continue as if it hadn't happened. WHAT?! I hear you say...that's impossible? That's what I thought and you have to take lots of small steps to get to that point but you can get there. If you go back to eating a regular amount of calories your body will use what you have eaten over the past few days as it doesn't need it all and fairly fast as your metabolism will have been given a boost from eating more.
At first you may want to just try to eat regularly even if its just small amounts. Then next time you can see if you can try to eat a bit more following a binge. If I have a weekend that involves quite a bit of eating now I usually continue to eat as often as I usually would but for a few days after I'll go for slightly healthier options. I think that's a healthy way of dealing with it. I don't restrict and I don't obsess over it. I can also safely say that since using that technique my weight has stayed a lot more stable compared to when I binged...restricted...binged...restricted which often caused my weight to go up.

Hope that's helpful.
Love Jasmin

Food Phobias!

I recently got asked a question on how to overcome the fear of 'bad' foods. I remember the endless arguments with my therapists when they told me I just had to do things and I felt like they didn't understand because it was a phobia and I just couldn't. I feel hypocritical saying it but after years of learning to face 'bad' foods the best thing you can do....is just eat it. I know that's not what you want to hear and you might be thinking...but I CAN'T. But truthfully and I'm sure deep down you know this, the only thing stopping you is your fear. Here is a few tips to help you break your phobia.....

- Start with slightly scary foods and gradually move on to scarier foods
- Take it slowly, start off with just a bite of certain foods every now and then
- Remember: 'THERE ARE NO GOOD AND BAD FOODS, ONLY GOOD AND BAD DIETS'
- Ask yourself what makes that food bad and why your scared of it....is there 100% proof behind your thoughts?
- Set yourself small targets like trying one scary food a week
- Have a distraction planned for afterwards to take your mind off it
- Reward yourself for facing your fear
- Do research on the food to find positives about it

Honestly....facing scary foods is one of the hardest parts of recovery...Before eating certain foods I would feel scared, anxious, sick, worried and afterwards I would cry and cry and cry. But gradually I started to see that those foods weren't having the affect I always thought they would....they didn't suddenly make me gain weight and I very gradually started to overcome my phobia.

Remember it's not impossible, it just takes a lot of strength, courage and desire to recover. If I can do it, so can you.
If anyone ever wants to ask me a question or needs some support feel free to email me at jas_1211@hotmail.com

xxx