The Basics

I am starting a new blog to discuss the final leg of my recovery from an eating disorder. Due to personal issues, I had to shut down my old blog. It seems to have happened at a convenient time with regards to my head space.

Previously, much of my blogging had revolved around my eyes opening to the things that were going wrong or how they were beginning to change. It was incredibly raw and delved deeply in my process as it happened. Although I have no reason to believe that these kinds of entries will not carry over, I do have reason to believe that they will be slightly less prevalent.

Why?


Primarily, I have reached a point where I am relatively capable of handling everyday stressors and processing them as necessary without needing to hash it out on here. My new challenge is going to be recognizing what to do differently when these stressors come up. Further, recognizing the deeper faults in the way that I approach my life and my relationships. This will require me to be delving rather deeply into issues that I have pigeonholed away for safe keeping.

Why?

I have been able to achieve a relatively high level of functioning over the course of the nearly 4 years since I left my residential inpatient facility. However, much of this has had to do with my ability to let go of painful things in my past in order to move forward. This has been incredibly beneficial for me and has enabled me to recognize my own strength. Yet, there are still situations which are not stressful in their own right but end up invoking an incredible amount of anxiety in me. Recently, I have come to recognize that this is due to the things that I have put out of my mind for many years.

Over the course of the next year or so, there are several topics which I feel will be necessary for me to confront and truly hash out for my continued peace of mind. They are as follows:
- My Mother
- My Prolonged Abuse of My Self
- My Ex Boyfriend(s)
- My Household
- My Body
- Sex

These may seem to be trivial subjects on the surface. However, I can recognize how unresolved issues from these areas in my life continue to surface. My ultimate goal in recovery is to be able to understand and let go of EVERYTHING that contributed to my developing and maintaining my eating disorder for as long as I did. This also applies to the those things which impacted my ability to recovery from my anxiety, depression, and insecurities which ensued after the behaviors of my eating disorder ceased.

I encourage anyone who is recovering from an eating disorder, drug addiction, anxiety, depression, and/or negative life experiences to contribute to comments and discussions. I want this blog to be an aid for others, not simply an outlet for my self. I also encourage treatment professionals to contribute.

There are going to be a lot of difficult topics discussed. This won't always be a happy go lucky kind of blog. My goal is to allow my confrontation of difficult topics to give others the strength to confront their own. It has taken me several years of dealing with the surface issues to recognize that I am strong enough and capable of handling them without fearing a relapse. I don't want to trivialize how much has happened prior to this point. Someone who is still dealing with symptoms or is early in their recovery should not try to undertake these kinds of topics within themselves. However, my hope is that they will recognize that these issues will not go on forever. Rather, that everything which has happened to you can be fully understood once you are in a healthy place. That painful events do not always have to be painful to you. That a day will come where you can look back on the things that you have done or that others have done to you or that have simply happen to you with compassion and understanding.


This is the first step onto the last path of my long journey towards becoming a recovered individual.