One Hot Mess!

So I have one hot mess!  My family is highly disordered.  I am quite disordered as they say.  I have an eating disorder after all.  And do you know what the definition of Disordered is?  Let me tell you.  

1 obsolete ( which by the way means : no longer in use or no longer useful <an obsolete word> b : of a kind or style no longer current)                    a : morally reprehensible (bringing or deserving severe rebuke or censure; “a criminal waste of talent”; “a deplorable act of violence”;)                      b : unruly (not readily ruled, disciplined, or managed)
2 a : marked by disorder <a disordered room> b : not functioning in a normal orderly healthy way <a disordered mind>

Function: transitive verb

Date: 15th century

1 : to disturb the order of
2 : to disturb the regular or normal functions of

Not looking so good for the disordered.  Now imagine a family of 8 all disorder.  That my friends is a hot mess.  I am thinking we would make a great reality TV show…you would have to get to know the others to understand this.  But this blog is about me and as they come into play I am sure in time you will understand a small piece of them.  But we are all quite disordered probably from the same reasons we just act out differently according to our individual personalities.  Mind you I love my disordered siblings.  I really do.  My dad…not so much.  We recently duked it out over email.  Fun stuff.  Waiting for his ridiculous emails was torture and I must say ED my hideous eating disorder has been winning the battle ED vs Kara.  Oops i spilled the name.  Ill leave it I guess.  I tell more and more people and it seems like everyone knows.  I thought I was good at hiding it.  guess not.  I’m not terribly underweight you see.  Not that it matters.  Just saying.  I dont know about others, I haven’t talked to many but what I see on TV suggests that it’s about being 55 pounds.  For me it’s not that way.  It’s about maintaining a weight that is thin, somewhere between 105 and 110, it goes over but never above 115, I do not like that.  I haven’t been trying to hard with the affirmations.  I will start again tonight…and hopefully tomorrow morning.  It is hard.  It’s like you tell a few people and half well almost all seriously disappoint you and its like well what am I doing this for.  No one seems to care all that much either way.  Obviously this is ED my eating disorder talking.  But that is how it feels.  I need to visit my counselor.  Its getting to be too long..  Hopefully she can help me get on track.  I am reading books, but it seems as if I am detached, learning for some other reason..not for me.  Looks like I am going to have to dig into my deep hot mess of a I don’t know what.  Wish me luck!

America isn’t Fat…We Are Starving!

I am starving.  Seriously, starving.   Disordered Eating is just the result of my starvation.  How is that for a paradox!  And its all the time.  So often I feel like a nut job.  I probably sound like one too.  But then I pay attention to what is going on all around me and everyone is starving.  Everyone seems to be hungry.  Even the most stable of people.  And it’s just getting worse.  We now have Facebook, blogs, twitter, and iPhones, when email was bad enough!  Nothing tangible in the mail anymore, more people wanting to work from home, we order in, we have drive thru’s, Netflix, why will we ever leave the home?  We can just stay inside isolated from real communication that we are Hungry for!!!  It’s so dumb.  I am about to delete all social media accounts…they make you feel like you are apart of your friends lives…but its not the same. 

I got to thinking and it would appear that most everyone I know has some degree of disordered eating.  And the media is absurd!  Can we just talk about the Show Ugly Betty for crying out loud!  The show has some good morals…but come on!  Then of course there are the models that weigh, who knows, 90 pounds dripping wet?!  We are all aware of that…but what about the “Health” Magazines that show one body type, thin and toned.  It’s good to have a little muscle…but not everyone is going to be a size two. 

I don’t even know what normal is anymore.  In my disturbed mind there is either fat or thin.  No in-between.  And I find that way of thinking bleeding into the rest of my views on life in general.  It’s all black and white for me.  You are nice or mean.  Fun or boring.  Pretty or ugly.  Rich or poor.  There is no average, middle ground or grey areas.  Is it like that for everyone.  If you are really honest with yourself?  I would like to say that I think there is a middle area…but if I am really honest I would have to say I don’t see it…I do not see grey.  (heres where I hope counseling can save me yet again!)

Sorry to ramble…but these are my thoughts tonight!

DIE ED

Serena Williams lashes out…and I do too!

So we all have heard about Serena Williams and her lashing out at the referee and the disqualification.  She got angry I would too…all that pressure in a game and then someone makes call that she feels is unjustified..and all the pressure!  I feel like that all the time…I may not have a US open title that I am up against but it feels just as important at the time to me no matter how trivial.  So I am now taking the plunge, facing my emotions and not hiding behind an eating disorder, and Oh my god!  I feel like I am going to explode!!  Years of hiding from feeling things and I feel like a thirteen year old just got my period i can’t take it anymore!!  I don’t know what to do.  It’s absolutely nuts!  I feel like I need anger management.  Really anger is a way to express some other emotion that is difficult to face or feel so we often turn to anger, and things are just not going well for me.  Ok, So about 30 minutes ago I  hurled a glass across the kitchen which shattered into a thousand pieces…why, well I was mad of course!   But not really mad, I felt like some person relationship things were out of my control and that scares me, and makes me feel so vulnerable and I hate that feeling.  I mean I really hate to feel like that.  So I flipped out and my eating disorder, ED, do you know what he told me.  I said just go back to disordered eating, feeling like this is sooo not worth it.  Yes, he said that and I heard him loud and clear.  So, not immediately mind you, but now as I am writing this out there to the world I am tell him, my eating disorder, Mr. Ed to go and F#@* himself because while this is so very hard and I do feel like a maniac, it will be worth it in the end.  i will learn to manage my feelings and deal with them appropriately.  So that I don’t bottle things in for ten years and get extremely out of practice of just coping with everyday stuff.  So ED you lose this round buddy.  I am not turning back.

My Internal Conflict and How My Eating Disorder Plays a Part.

So, I went to see another counselor today.  She was amazing .  I learned some things today.  This is me.  I care a lot about what other people think.  I desperately seek approval of others.  I want them to think I am pretty and smart, and funny, and a good person.  I also think that I need their approval to be loved.  Here lies the conflict and here lies my eating disorder who tired to save the day albeit rather ineffectively.  You see…its impossible to have everyone’s approval because everyone has different opinions. 

 I also think that, if a person only loves you if they approve of you…that they are ultimately a bad person to have in your life.  This also causes some major conflict for me.  You see my parents do not approve of my lifestyle.  At all.  This is not something I dreamed up.  They are LDS, Mormon.  If you know anything about this religion you know that it is more of a lifestyle.  I am not Mormon.  I do not go to church, I am not married (28 years old, going on 29 is basically old hag for the mormons who marry very young.)  I drink tea and coffee and sometimes a glass of wine (which I did drink more in the past…which actually fits in as just another coping mechanism, or approval seeking from peers) and so therefore they do not approve.  They think that I live a life of Sin.  I think deep in their hearts they wish that I was like some of their other mormon friends kids that did all the things that good little mormon girls and boys are supposed to do.   They also believe that I turned the rest of my siblings away from the church through my example.  This they told me a couple years ago.  This of course is not true..while I am a sales woman of sorts…I didn’t brainwash them.  Maybe did a little marketing…but they already had a want need or desire to not be mormon I just showed them a way to get that done.   Can you see why an Eating disorder is a good distraction from all these bad feelings and opinions about me?  It’s like ok…they aren’t ever going to approve, so who can I get to approve of me.  How about boys..then like skinny thin anorexic looking girls.  Ok I can do that…I’ll be anorexic…wait my body tells me to eat!  Ok how about Bulimia..perfect..except not really.  If was fake, cheating, disgusting, gross, taboo.  More negative feelings

So whats a girl to do?  Does she discontinue the relationship?    I hated, or felt like I hated my parents for most of my childhood.  They were young, and certainly there was not the education that there is today.  I am not sure I would have done a better job myself.  But even though I know that, it still doesn’t take the pain away. (hopefully therapy will   When I was little I felt like loved was removed when I made a mistake.  We would get in trouble for really dumb stuff, and I was grounded all the time.  I felt inside that I was a good little girl.  I even wrote in a journal how hard I was trying…but that it was never good enough and that no one understood.  I was so little.  So desperately wanted them to see who I thought I was.  But I think they were young and clueless and didn’t know how to show their love…because I was a child and who doesn’t really love a child?  It doesn’t make sense to me logically.  However I still feel the same…I am not a child anymore, so I don’t feel that as an adult I warrant that  unconditional love a child does.  It was conditional as a child and it feels conditional now.  They say they love me…but I have a really hard time believing that by some of their actions.  Now maybe its real, maybe it’s because of unresolved issues, but when i asked for help with paying for therapy they declined.  When i asked for them to get a book, they said sure…but still no book, no effort.  I know that this is ultimately my responsibility.  But do you see what I am doing here.  To me if they don’t do something….it means they don’t really care.  If they aren’t actively supporting me with the healing of my eating disorder they must not care because everything is conditional in my mind.  I don’t know if this is wrong or right or what.  I feel like if I had a child there would be nothing that could stand in my way of helping my daughter feel loved and feel like she was of great value no matter what.  Telling my parents was so difficult…..because to me it was like saying hey…i am a huge failure!  And then asking them for help…which I never do, I want to do things all by myself, and then I get nothing.  It makes me feel angry so angry, but anger is easy to show so it often covers up some other emotion, and I think that emotion is rejection and sadness and dissapointment. 

 Money things are a big deal in this family too.  My dad is frugal, really frugal.  He makes a lot of money and he is a wonderful business man.  But his family is not a business.  And we cost money that he feels doesn’t net a return.  Our happiness is not worth a buck…maybe I am exaggerating here a little, but he doesn’t like to spend money on us.  We get presents for christmas and stuff.  But I think that it pains him a little.  I don’t think he really enjoys giving us gifts.  More as something he feels he ought to do. 

 Mind you my dad makes a lot of money.  So when I went to school he would pay only if I went to BYU.  I hated BYU, he wouldn’t pay for me to come home.  He wouldn’t pay for any other school.  So I left, hitchhiked from Utah to KY and paid for my own.  I told them I was hitchhiking with two random boys and all they wanted was to make sure I brought them the curtains and bedding that they purchased…or I would need to pay them.  Hmmm did I feel like my life was more valuable then bedding from Target?  No.  I felt like an unloveable person.   I have asked to borrow money before…nope…I needed to figure it out on my own.   I felt like he valued his money more than me.  This is a painful way to feel…at some point I think I felt so bad that I just wanted to be numb.  So I developed an eating disorder.  It’s not like I blame them…its just that this is how I felt and feel.  And I really don’t think that I could do better, which makes me hate myself.  I am just as bad possibly, if not worse.  I am the person that I hate. 

So I numbed myself.  I rarely cried and drank a lot those next few years.  I would go home on Holidays to see my siblings…I truly love them and most of the time I feel like they have unconditional love.  I know in my heart that they do…but sometimes since I have ended up hating myself so much I wonder why.  I wonder why would anyone like me at all.  It’s crazy because I am pretty well educated and logically I know that I have some good qualities.  But I make mistakes sometimes…and I can do some pretty terrible things, or say mean things and I wonder why they would love a person that is so fallible.  This I wonder with everyone.  I wish that I could be this perfect person that could do things for people.  I feel like I need to do things for people and I don’t always want to do them…so then I think I am a terrible selfish person…just like my parents that I dislike so much..so therefore I don’t like myself.  It’s a terrible cycle.  Really terrible. 

So I have an assignment.  Get pictures of me as a small girl and love that little girl.  So thats what I am going to try to do.  I will let you know how it goes.  I will love that little girl and hopefully find love for the girl who I am today.  And hopefully when I love myself unconditionally, not if I am thin, not if I am doing things for others, or achieving things or for any other reason than for who i am not matter what, hopefully my eating disorder will go away.  For I won’t need him, because he is all about conditional love. 

Death to ED!!

Having Fun

I think its important to have fun.  To really let go…and try to get to that place where you could laugh like a kid again.  Its been so long since I have been able to have fun like that.  I played tennis with my 7-year-old sister last night and I tried really hard to mentally get to that place and to be fully in the game and no where else.  It was  a huge success!  I thinks games are essential.  But its important to be in the game…to live in that moment.  I struggle with living in the moment…I think a lot of people do.  I find it extremely hard.  I am always thinking about the next step..or something I need to do..or of things that are frivilous…like I wonder how many calories I am burning while I play this game (those types of thoughts try to push their way into my mind.  I had to make a deliberate effort to push them away.  I sometimes feel that so many things are out of my control and this is very frustrating for me.  I am a little bit of a control freak which may be a part of the eating disorder puzzle.  You read about eating disorders and that seems to be one of the Universal reasons why girls develop and eating disorder.  They can control their appearance and their weight.  What i am trying to do now is control my thoughts…to purposefully ignore, to take control of my negative thoughts and put them out of my mind.  To control them to be good thoughts only.  It may not be the best way…I might want to consider why I have the need to control…its probably based from some fear I have.  But until I get to that point I think that controlling the thoughts to be good…and not letting my eating disorder be in control is better.  And having fun…well…its FUN!!!  Yeah!  That game with Lilly was a major breakthrough!  (See I am celebrating the small successes!)

Going Back TO Day One of the Eating Disorder.

Even when I was small, just a kid, or an early teen…I didn’t think I was of any value.  It wasn’t that I thought I was ugly, I just didn’t think that people liked me, therefore or maybe because I didn’t like myself.  It slowly transferred to a physical thing later.  Combine those feelings with the media, some family issues, other kids, etc slowly my self esteem dwindled.  The only thing I thought could be done was to try to be as pretty as possible.  And society says thats thin. 

My eating disorder was both bulimia and anorexia.  ultimately I don’t want to be ugly but that is not what my eating disorder is about.  It’s about coping with fears,  a conflict in my mind with the person I am and the person that I want to be.  It’s about seeking approval and love, its about taking control, its about anxiety and sometime now boredom which I think is anxiety.  I feel things all the time and I don’t know how to manage those feelings.  So I had my eating disorder as a way of distraction.  Eating disorders can take up a lot of time!  They consume your every thought so that there is no time to think about anything else. 

I’m scared to feel.  I here the world vulnerable and I shudder.  It seems like a horrible attribute.  Raw comes to mind.  Raw flesh.  But thats so wrong!  It’s a wonderful thing to be vulnerable. Thats how lasting and exciting relationships come about.  I’ve spent so much time being scared of hurt that I have hurt myself in the long run tremendously instead.

There is an emotional hunger that I need to feed.  It will take some time to learn what that need is and how to nurture it.  Some believe you never recover  from an eating disorder like and alcoholic or drug addict.  I do not believe this to be the case.  I think once you are able to recognize your emotional needs and hunger, and manage your feelings and fears…I think your eating disorder will no longer be needed.  It’s like once you learn how to take the training wheels of a bike…you don’t need them anymore and you don’t want them anymore.  They served their purpose, a crutch when you didn’t have the skills to ride without them. 

I don’t know about you…but I’m ready to remove my eating disorder from my life.  I can’t do everything I want to do in life with them on.  Now I just need to learn to ride without them.  That’s my goal.  My new challenge.

DIEED!

Acceptance of my disordered eating behavior.

I am reading  ”Eating Under The Light Of  The Moon” by Anita Johnston.  This is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it.  It a book about all kinds of disordered eating..not just anorexia and bulimia..but about and eating that isn’t healthy in spirit and in flesh.  I learned today that my eating disorder was a way to cope.  A way to deal with this huge world that wasn’t making sense to me.  I was born intense and sensitive.according to my mother and I believe it!   The day before my eating disorder began I was not fat.  I was healthy looking, just right for my age and height.  i exercised a little, not to be skinny, I just liked being athletic.  I didn’t even think I was fat or that I needed to lose weight…in fact I made fun of those who obsessed about their weight.  However I went out the night before and got drunk…and may have done some typical stupid things that 20 years olds do..I didn’t remember much of the night and the next day I was very paranoid.  Drinking and I do not mix.  It’s a depressant by the way!  And so the following day I felt terrible about myself…I thought what an idiot.  I remember looking in the mirror and out of no where I thought…maybe I need to do what all the other girls do (you see at the time half my friends where anorexic or throwing up their food)  So I thought why not try it see what happens.  Well I did, I tried bulimia and if you know anything about people who are naturally intense they don’t just dabble here and there…they go for things with a vengeance!  And thats what I did.  I was feeling badly about myself and i thought maybe if I were skinnier I would feel better about myself.  The problem is you do at first…boys start noticing you more, people compliment you more or maybe because you are trying so hard and looking for people to notice you hear it more.  I don’t know, but nine years later I have developed a horrible and damaging self image, with equally bad habits to boot! 

When I started recovery I hated myself…and I work on it everyday.  But what I didn’t understand was that I need to accept ED (eating disorder)  Accept him for the purpose he served to help me cope.  My eating disorder was a poor choice for a coping mechanism…but the one I chose all the same.  Now I am older, wiser, eating disorders are unhealthy coping mechanisms and I need to find and choose other ways to cope.  But its important that I forgive myself and love myself and accept that I made a poor choice and move on.  It’s important not to beat yourself up anymore…not with your thinking and not with your eating disorder.  You have to forgive yourself!

I Have and Eating Disorder, his name is ED and I want him to DIE.

Hi World,

I have an eating disorder.  I would say both bulimia and anorexia, I call him ED.  About a week ago  I decided it was time for ED to die.  However…he doesn’t seem to want to go, and my actions would suggest that I would like to keep him around.  It sucks.  Him and I have been partners in crime for 10 years..inseparatable.  One might say the love of my life for the past ten years.  My eating disorder has been on my mind at all times for ten years!  It’s hard to wipe him completely from my memory.  Habits, horrible habits and ways of thinking have been engrained in my mind, I don’t know how to live without him.  It’s like that breakup that needs to happen…damaging from the beginning yet there was some sex appeal that blinded you at the time…ten years later you hate the guy/girl but you can’t seem to let go.  Your miserable with or without them.  Ed is a little like that.  But when an eating disorder, whether bulimia or anorexia grabs a hold of you, and if they can stay latched on for long, their grip is ten fold that of another person.  Because ED is really you, and you have to let a part of you go, and that to me right now seems impossible.  Did I mention I hate ED.  I do I really hate him. 

So, I decided to kill ed.  I told my family…and my boyfriend.  I called a counselor and I am attending a group.  The Group is ANAD.( the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, Inc. is a non-profit corporation that seeks to alleviate and prevent the problems of eating disorders.  It’s free! )  This blog will be about my journey.  This is the beginning to returning to a life without an eating disorder.  I have a mountain to climb, I’m at the bottom of this mountain I have never climbed before and I am terrified.  The ED in me says don’t do it, he doesn’t give an explanation, bastard!  The little girl in me (now 28 years old) says you have to, she doesn’t really give an explanation either.  I know the textbook answers to why eliminating my eating disorder from my life is essential…just like all the smokers in the world know the reasons why they should quit smoking.  I am hoping the little girl inside will be able to overpower the beast within me.  I hope she can push me up the mountain because right now ED is beating me down, it’s a challenge to move 6 inches. 

As I move through recovery those who are struggling with an eating disorder can move along with me.  We can climb the mountain together.  This blog will hopefully help out those who have a loved one suffering from either bulimia or anorexia, or even to gain preventative insight.  I will share all that I learn and all that I know…I will answer your emails, your questions, and I will be support to all that I can.  I don’t know why or how I got to be this person, eating disorder sufferer.  I know the textbook answers of some possible ideas.  I hope to soon get to the bottom of it!  And then help those with an eating disorder to do the same. 

Tip: celebrate the small successes.  Seems simple right…think about it…its harder than you think.  I tend to lean toward its never good enough, it could always be better, I could do more, kind of thinking.  So this is my challenge to you, all of you.  Lets try to celebrate our small successes.

Jane Doe…aspiring eating disorder assassin.