On Navigating a Slight Eating Disorder Relapse

Lunar New Year is tomorrow. In the class where I teach, we made paper dragons to scare away bad luck, and at home, I'm sweeping the kitchen and hanging some red lanterns in honor of my own Chinese heritage and my hope that the coming year will call in the sturdiness, resilience, and courage of the Ox. My grandmother was a Rat, and given how incredibly challenging last year was, I attribute any of the good that came during it (such as the election, etc.) to her and the communion of spirit guides of which she is now a member. I was raised with a very eclectic spirituality that blends Taoist oneness with the statues of the Virgin Mary tucked away into Irish grottoes and nature worship, and throughout my recovery, I've been fighting to reconnect with the part of myself that believes in Chang'e and Mary Magdalene. (This is the same part that also loves making toast to enjoy while writing and reading--a part I've tried to crush beneath aggressive "should's" and "have to's".) But I'm not always as brave as I'd like to be, and after naively thinking I was fully recovered this summer, I incidentally slipped back into anorexic thinking patterns a few months ago after some stressful triggers I didn't expect would affect me. Like seeing someone from high school at the store. Backsliding wasn't intentional. It just happened, and while I look and feel 1000% better than I did two years ago, my brain and body still have some healing to do. 

Okay. Maybe a lot of healing. Even if you're far along in recovery, an eating disorder/anxiety disorder can make you go from feeling on top of the world one moment to feeling angry at yourself and very sad the next. I have tremendous gratitude for all the love in my life, but in the moments that the bully voice is yelling at me, I can't help but to miss childhood and the way it felt to be entirely free of any compulsions to control what I eat or how I move.  Something that's helped me is remembering who I used to look up to--Amélie Poulain, Violet Baudelaire, and Padmé Amidala. These are characters who lead out of love rather than out of fear.  

Somewhere along the way, though, my connection to my heart broke under the weight of anxiety and pressures to abandon my spirituality in favor of competitive Western individualism.

In other words, I stopped believing in faeries. 

And now that I have the perspective (thank you, nutrition!) to at least admit I'm struggling, I have the hope of getting better--for real this time. This summer let me know that it's possible, even if I'm still a bit of an addict. Thinking of an eating disorder as an addiction can be helpful because, like other addictions, eating disorders lead to compulsive behaviors and alter the reward centers in our brains. Exercise can become a compulsion that initially leaves us feeling "high," but over time, that high goes away, and all that's left is someone so desperate to feel "numb" or "safe" that they're willing to sacrifice everything just for a few more minutes on the treadmill. Same with unhealthy fasting. It's not an answer to anything--just a temporary high that comes with long-term consequences.

I'm writing this to let you know that relapses are okay and that you still have permission to heal. If you've relapsed--even if just slightly--you still deserve to do the work to get better. You have permission to have the life you want to have. You can learn to believe in faeries again, and as we all know from Peter Pan, that's all it takes to bring them back to life.

<3 Frances

Images are not mine.