Feeling Doubt in Eating Disorder Recovery.

Trigger Warning; This is a personal update containing conversations about suicidal thoughts, negative self-talk, weight gain etc.

Since my last super personal blog (‘So it goes‘) I have been feeling a little bit less suicidal and a little bit more hopeful. I’ve still woken up feeling sad and lonely on my darker days (which is down to 4 / 7) but I feel less like throwing myself off a bridge.

I opened up to my therapist last week about the frequent thoughts of suicide. It’s taken me a while to admit to myself that I’ve had these dark thoughts for the better part of 2 years and it’s taken me even longer to admit that to anyone else. I have my reasons for thinking like this and the thought process usually goes like this;

You couldn’t even do X Y Z right, why are you even trying?
You’re not good enough or smart enough for this job. X Y Z is so much better than you.
He doesn’t even love you, he’s just settling, why even bother? You’ll never find anyone else who will love you anyway.
Watching your family die is going to hurt. Why not end it now so you don’t have to feel that?
I have to get up and talk in front of everyone. What if I fuck up? What if they laugh? Just kill yourself so you don’t have to feel the embarrassment.
You’ve gone too far now. You’ve fucked it all up, wasted everyone’s time (even your own), just fucking do it!
I’m so tired. My bones ache. My headaches. My stomach aches. My chest aches. Everything aches. I can’t fix this. I want to die.
I wish I was never born.
I wish I could just hit the reset button.

And so the story goes.

I can’t tell you how often or how many varieties of these conversations I have had with myself over the years but it’s a lot. It was every day until recently, and I found it especially hard to drive by bridges without thinking ‘pull over, get out, climb up there and just do it’. On my darker days or after a very hard day at work I often cried driving up the motorway because the feeling was so strong. No less than 5 times I remember pulling into the Applegreen or onto the hard shoulder and just crying because my heart was beating so fast and I was shaking from anxiety.

I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to sound ‘crazy‘ or ‘attention seeking‘ and I am not just making this up now to add drama to my story. This literally was the train of thought every day, up and down the motorway, for about 2 years. I just didn’t talk about it because that made it real and if it was real, well then I was weak.

I still think I’m weak sometimes. Weak for seeking help, weak for getting this bad in the first place, weak for not being able to get out of bed sometimes, weak for being such a bad partner and daughter and friend and employee, weak for being everything that I am.

Despite my fears about being so raw with someone I barely know I managed to make progress last week in regards to establishing trust with my therapist, and I feel more likely to open up to her going forward. We’ve already discussed a world of stuff that I have never opened my God-damned mouth about before and already I feel like little leeches are being pulled off my skin with pliers.

‘Ah but Chloe, the title of this blog talks about cockroaches of doubt. Where does that feed into all this?’

Well, disembodied voice, those little bastards of doubt crawled out of the woodwork after my weigh in last week. Oh, the dreaded weigh-in where there has been a substantial gain in one’s weight. I knew it would come eventually I just didn’t expect it so soon, alas, here we are.

I gained X amount of weight (not mentioning but just know there was a gain) and although I said I was okay with it I wasn’t. I thought I was until I left the office and I started walking to my boyfriends workplace and all the while my head was screaming ‘YOU GAINED WHAT? You’re such a failure, they will all think you were never even sick at all and it was all a ploy, you’re going to get chunky and they will all comment on how much healthier you look when they really mean you look fatter now’ etc. The cockroach was sticking its little feet and feelers under the door and I almost let it back in.

Almost.

So what did I do? I kept walking until I got to Ryan’s workplace and I didn’t stop. If I did I would have popped into B&M and picked up a brand new, shiny scale. But I didn’t and that’s the important thing.

I had another weigh-in today and I had lost X amount but the usual feeling of ‘Yes, good girl’ didn’t really filter in. I didn’t expect it if I’m honest. I thought my intake was going well but it turns out I’m just not eating what I should be.

**It might come as a shock to you but in order to gain weight, I will need to eat 500 + calories a day more than what is needed for your daily requirements. Therefore as a 26-year-old woman, I need to eat 2,000 PLUS an additional 500 every day in order to gain a pound of weight. (I will go into this in more detail in later blogs, but this is an update right now so let’s get back to it).

So it’s back to the drawing board for this coming week.

My goals are as follows;

Add in milk alternative to my diet.
Aim for and stick to eating 6 times a day.
Repair my relationship with bread (I miss you, baby, come back!)
Plan ahead so that if I am out and don’t have time to grab something I always have a trusty bar or packet of nuts in my bag.
Be aware of body checking: This is a big one as it’s the anorexia’s way of substituting for a scale. I need to check myself before I wreck myself and stop the behaviors in their tracks.

The progress is there. It’s slow but it is definitely there both in body and soul. My weight may not be steadily going up but I am feeling better, my body doesn’t ache as much or feel cold, I’m not dizzy all the time, I am more motivated and hopeful that this will pass and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m still getting bloated and my stomach is still unreliable BUT I think that is a separate issue that needs investigation via other means.

Keeping this blog is also proving to be positive. It’s giving me something to do and, most importantly, an outlet. Writing is naturally cathartic and I could kick myself for ever giving it up in the first place.

If you take anything out of this post let it be this;

Recovery is a long road filled with potholes and smooth surfaces, but it’s a road you need to go down in order to get well and there is always a pub at the end waiting to welcome you in with open arms.