I am seeing a lot of memes etc on social media pointing out to the rest of the world that this pandemic is particularly difficult for people with eating disorders. This post isn’t doing to be like that. I just don’t believe that sort messaging effectively helps anyone. Maybe I am wrong there. Maybe the sympathy inspires people in recovery to work harder? I’m just not personally wired that way. And more importantly, I think people in recovery are stronger than this sort of rhetoric paints them to be. Sure, the pandemic is difficult for everyone. What is really is not, is an excuse.
The bigger thing that concerns me about all this “poor people in recovery, aren’t they suffering” posting, is that I know how eating disorder brains can work. I know that when I had anorexia, had I seen such messaging, and had I not actually struggling that much with the changes in the world due to COVID-19, I would begin to wonder why I wasn’t struggling as much as apparently I should be. I would begin to think if I wasn’t struggling awfully then maybe I wasn’t sick enough in the beginning. I would think I needed to restrict more and exercise more as I obviously wasn’t finding this as difficult as other people with eating disorders were. Eating disorders can twist any message, for sure. I think the best overall message for people in recovery is: “You can do this. You have to do this. Get on with it.”
For some people in recovery during these COVID-19 times things are, indeed, worse. You may be trying to recover with a stay-at-home order which leaves you locked in with an abusive partner. You may have lost your job, and be feeling financially insecure. You may live on your own, and be stuck inside with only the internet. You may experience spikes in anxiety and depression if that is something that you also suffer with. For anyone in these circumstances, my message is still that you can and you will do this. You can recover. Because if there is one thing that all people with eating disorders have in common it is that we are utterly badass stubborn and infuriatingly strong willed people.
For the many of you reading this, COVID-19 is not actually making your recovery attempt more difficult. The panic buying in many grocery stores has not left you without food. It is not true that you don’t have as much to eat. The increase in general anxiety has not led to your appetite dropping. The stay-at-home order hasn’t meant anything other than it is easier for you to rest, actually. You’re okay, and this is absolutely not a bad thing for your recovery. Unless you choose for it to be.
Allowing COVID-19 to cause a backstep in recovery is a choice. Ouch, I know. I’m mean. I’m also honest. It isn’t like you don’t know deep down that thought telling you to hoard and restrict food more than usual in case the world runs out of Maltesers is a disordered thought making a grab at you. You do know that. I know you know it. You know you know it. So let’s not mess around pretending you are completely ignorant as to how this dynamic works.
Knowing that you know your eating disorder is making a play, here comes the choice part. Do you:
a) Restrict Malteasers.
b) Restrict Malteasers and buy and hoard food
c) Ignore that thought and carry on eating Malteasers
Now, don’t tell me you don’t know what the recovery-orientated answer is here. You do.
It was never that you didn’t know the answer. Knowledge isn’t the issue here; fear is. It is that the answer might lead to weight gain, and you are afraid of weight gain. It is never that you don’t know what to do, and always that you are afraid of weight gain. Ninety-nine percent of my dilemmas when I had an eating disorder were due feeling threatened by weight gain. Fear can have a blinding effect but you don’t even need to be seeing clearly to know that you are restricting. You always know. And if you are in recovery, you cannot be restricting.
The problem you have to solve if you are in recovery during COVID-19 is the same as the problem you had to solve when you were in recovery before this pandemic. And the question is how to always do the recovery-orientated thing, despite your fear. How to not allow your fear to hijack your recovery. Overcoming fear is always at the core of recovery. That was the case before Coronavirus, during Coronavirus, and will be the case after Coronavirus. Recovery is about facing the challenge of eating and resting and embracing your unsuppressed bodyweight while your brain is throwing the feelings of fear, shame, guilt, disgust, and anxiety at you.
Your brain is afraid of what you have to do. Because it is afraid, it will use anything it can to convince you that now is not the time to challenge the thing you are afraid of challenging. If it is not COVID-19, it will be something else. I can already tell you that when the restrictions are fully lifted and gyms are reopened and everyone is on social media shouting about all the lockdown weight they have to shift, that your brain will try and use that as a “trigger.” I know it is going to happen. You know it is going to happen. So prepare mentally and make the decision now that you are not going to allow the post-lockdown madness to affect your recovery. In the same way you are not going to allow the lockdown madness to affect your recovery now.
If you have decided to recover, you will find a way regardless of the shit 2020 throws at you. Coronavirus, locusts, murder hornets, Trump getting re-elected, aliens … whatever … you will recover. I’m not going to tell you that it is okay if you try less hard because we have experiencing a global nightmare right now. I’m going to tell you that you are strong and you can handle this. Because you can.
A-m-e-n.
I’d like to scream these words into everyone’s ears. It makes me SICK when someone is told “aww poor thing, your ED is just too strong isn’t it?”. In IP I always told people that this does nothing but disempower the person who hears it. Like “ok, if it’s too hard for you to stop fidgeting today just try again tomorrow”. Bollocks. They totally could’ve stopped at any time, but of course that statement was the perfect excuse to continue acting like a walking eating disorder.
Pity makes giving in to any struggles that you stumble upon self evident.
Sympathy and pity are two very different things.
Just like you said: reminding people that they can and HAVE to make pro recovery choices for themselves is the most sympathetic thing one can do!
This is excellent advice from you as per usual. Infantilising someone with an ED only serves to underestimate them and reinforces the belief that they’re powerless to help themselves. I’m also bloody tired of seeing people speak about ‘control’ being the reason an ED develops. The current blog piece I’m working on delves into that fallacy. I’m also set to lead a recovery support group chat where we’ll be discussing the illness from an evolutionary perspective. It’s going to take a while to deprogram the recovery community at large. I flinch every time someone mentions the word ‘control.’ Gag.
❤️ Jessica
So well said Jessica!
Thank you. Honestly, I wasted so many years in the ‘sick girl role’. It was just so boring after almost 14 years and I wanted so much more from life than that!
Me too. Everything changed when I was told by fabulous people like Tabitha that I could (and should) in every waking moment choose recovery. That it was my duty but also my superpower.
I’d be thrilled to help turning the current system upside down. Most treatment providers still fail so hard to understand neural rewiring.
May I ask if your support group is already set up ?
My ED does have associated with it a powerful need for ‘control’. Why do you say it’s bull crap?
Let me ask you, have you ever been able to address this supposed need for ‘control’ within a therapeutic environment? It’s just another smokescreen for your illness to hide behind in order to sabotage your recovery efforts. When we engage in certain eating disordered behaviours, our brain rewards us. As I understand it, this what is often mistaken for that feeling of ‘control’. When we go against that ingrained reward mechanism, our brains associate this with intense fear. How do you think the association with control relates to your experience? The decision to diet may relate to this, but it’s the caloric deficit we enter into that perpetuates our eating disorder. If someone hadn’t suggested the control ideology to you, do you think that it would resonate? Humans can be highly malleable when they’re starved; that’s why they would cut off the food supplies of an entire population during the war. It’s a powerful weapon. We’ve all been duped by this theory at some stage by some well-meaning professional. Understanding what this illness was really about led to a complete turn around in my recovery efforts.
So interesting!! And yes it is a smokescreen and another excuse to delay recovery. Someone tells you you like to feel in control and thus an ED gives you this feeling. And to recover would mean you were out of control. Nope. You’d just have a life!
get ur ed back u need it look at ur profile pic…gross
PS do you have a blog? Would be interested to follow!
I do.
http://jessicastunden.com
It’s on WordPress so you should be able to locate it through my profile instead of relying on a link.
Totally agree. I’ve actually come along way. Removing all outer concerns about work has allowed me time to take a long hard look at where I am and how I want to keep moving forward. It’s basically been a much needed holiday I should have taken years ago to sort myself out!!
Ditto. I attempted this ‘time out’ so many times, even though my finances wouldn’t permit me to do so. Usually I’d start freaking out after a couple of weeks and force myself back into the workplace. Now that the choice has been taken from me and I’m receiving extra financial support, it’s kind of a no-brainer for me to take this time. I’m so much stronger in my recovery because of it.
Yep! Me too. A few years back I took a month off but like you always in the back of my mind was that I shouldn’t be taking time off and that I should be able to work AND recover. Euh, also the lack of support and ill informed doctors didn’t help….but….regret and anger ain’t going to get me anywhere so…onwards and upwards!
As a clinician I started to shudder when all the “oh no, EDs and Corona…how awful, those poor things…”It felt like another way to sell something to people with EDs. Now you need even more therapy, or our virtual program, or…something we can sell you. I also do not see all the traits of those with an ED as negative. Many strong and smart people are whom I have met. I also can’t stand the “need for control” talk. When you get to know people you see that they have no more issues with or need for control than anyone else. That is a vapid once popular but still with us myth from therapy. Very simplistic to say “they have lives that are out of control, so they need to control something” Yuck!
Wonderful post…I wish everyone with an ED would read it- and everyone who works with people with ED!!!! For example, my therapist often said things to me like “You are in a stressfull situation, I perfectly understand if you do not gain weight by now…” That was so harmfull! In my ears, it was like “You are not allowed to make progress now…Noone in a stressfull situtation would gain weight, you are expected to loose weight”…I would have loved to hear Thabitas message back then!
For me, quitting professional help and recover alone only with Thabitas blog/video was key to my recovery. And what you, Thabita, are saying about Covid is true for whatever situtation. Please, all professional helpcare-providers, read this blog. The message for your clients should be: “GO, DO IT, Do it NOW. No matter what happens. Even if your sister has cancer, if your mother dies, if you have an exam, if you loose your job…It is all sad, but it is no reason for stopping recovery. It is no reason to stop your permission to eat.”
I love this post so so much. I remember at the start of lockdown, people were being very sympathetic towards me and constantly worrying about me because of my ED. Weirdly, I felt like my recovery was actually going really well and I’ve improved a hell of a lot during lockdown! It was really confusing for me because I didn’t feel ‘vulnerable’ and ‘at-risk’ like people were implying I was, I felt more focused and motivated.
Question; Would your book about neural rewiring apply to someone with the opposite of a ‘restrictive’ eating disorder?
I am considering buying it if it would give me insights on how to rewire.
WTF??? Why are you so insensitive??? Yes, 2020 was a hard year, and if Trump had been reelected, I would have preferred to die. 2021 was actually worse, and 2022 has so far been the worst. I really hate this attitude of you will recover no matter what. Why would I even have the motivation to recover when the world is going to shit???