TranscendBulimia.com

How would you describe having an eating disorder? For me, it felt like being in a big, dark hole that I could not get out of. In this post, I will tell you about how it felt for me to be in this dark place — and I have also created an exercise with actions that you can take in your own life, which I will post tomorrow. I hope that this will be a practical and useful tool!

Bulimia was like looking up from a deep, dark hole — the light at the top was so far up that I could barely see it. I often felt depressed and despondent, like a failure. In fact, whenever it got dark at night, I’d feel even worse. In the winter, I was convinced I had seasonal affective disorder (SAD) because I felt so low and depressed. I would read self help books and study the power of positive thinking — sometimes they’d help. But I always found myself in the big, dark hole again. I felt powerless and helpless to get out, no matter what I tried. I would sometimes take two steps forward, only to take two or even three steps back. I am going to document my journey as best I can, so that you can see what steps I took to climb out of the hole. I hope this description helps and is clear.

The College Years, Falling Into The Hole

In college, I lived in the dorms for freshman & sophmore years. I was living in a tiny room, shared with a roommate who I liked at first. We were the best of friends and did everything together. I was very shy in the beginning of my freshman year. I had a habit of feeling like everyone else was better and smarter than me — I devalued myself and put everyone else above me. I did this with my roommate as well. I’m not sure exactly what triggered my first bulimic episode — but I think it was a combination of pressure to fit in, a new (and very judgmental) boyfriend and the campus meal plan. By second semester, my roommate and I were no longer getting along. She practically stopped talking to me and she’d never tell me why. I felt like it was all my fault, that I must be a bad person who did something wrong — although I could not figure out what it was and she refused my attempts to talk it out. So every day, I had to share this tiny room with someone who seemed to hate me — and feel like a terrible person (I did this to myself through my perspective on the subject — I later found out that she was angry at me for having a boyfriend and meeting new friends, so that she was not the center of my world anymore).

Here’s what I lost in my freshman year of college:

• My confidence
• My own space — this is of the utmost importance to me. I had my own room growing up and spent a lot of time reading and on my own. I had a lot of friends, but really relished my alone time. I could often be found at home in my room, with the door shut, reading or doing quiet activities. Living in a tiny room with another person was terrible for me. I lost my alone time where I could recharge & be truly myself.
• My ability to make & eat healthy foods – I started to get into health foods in high school and enjoyed cooking my own meals. My parents weren’t home much when I was in high school, so I was on my own for eating. I didn’t really understand nutrition, but I was learning and making my own choices. I still thought health was low fat and low calorie at the time — and without access to what I thought were "healthy foods," I really believed I was "stuck" eating food that I had no control over. Most likely, campus food plans are on the less healthy side — they typically don’t have organic foods and you never know what they put in them. My digestion got worse than ever in college.
• Bathroom privacy – I hated using public bathrooms and was always constipated in high school. This caused a lot of bathroom anxiety for me in college. It certainly didn’t help my constipation and my digestion got worse. It wasn’t that I was looking for privacy to purge — I just wanted to feel like I could go to the bathroom in my own private space. It’s a girl thing. My husband tells me that guys are fine spending an hour on the toilet & reading a magazine from cover to cover, while making lots of noise. I would have been horrified to do this — too bad we women aren’t taught to just do what we have to do, instead of being "ladylike" about it.
• MySELF – I constantly tried to make myself into someone who would be liked by others, including my roommate who seemed to hate me. I kept thinking that if I was nice and everyone liked me, things would be okay. I really wanted approval from people and I really wanted to fit in.

The only time I successfully stopped purging was between sophomore & junior year — I stopped for a year. I think the things that helped me were having a boyfriend who was my best friend & having my own room in an apartment with roommates. My boyfriend was supportive of me and loved me for me, rather than how I looked. He was the first boyfriend I had in college who felt like a true friend who I could tell anything to. I was not able to stop bingeing and eventually, had a relapse again.

Married Years Had Their Own Challenges

A year after graduating from college, I got married. I felt like I had to be perfect for my husband and to fit into the new place where we lived. This made things worse for me when it came to bingeing & purging. Again, like my freshman year in college, I was new to a situation and wanted approval from everyone, including my husband. Instead of being who I really was, I was overly concerned with what others thought of me. I was very depressed for the first year and a half of our marriage until we moved to another state.

I had a basic distrust of men that I hardly wanted to admit, even to myself. Since I also felt unloveable in general, I tended to feel like I had to do things for people and be the perfect person in order to be loved. At some level, I felt like men would have an affairs if their wives "let themselves go." So the pressure to binge and purge increased in marriage as I tried to be the perfect wife with the perfect body. Interestingly, I also became very irritable and moody.

Now, to put things in perspective, any marriage counselor or article on affairs will tell you that affairs happen because of complex emotional issues in a relationship, rather than physical appearance. And yet, I put all this pressure on myself to be perfect — when that only created an unhappiness and emptiness in me. I could never get comfortable with myself or in my marriage with that pressure. It’s probably what all people pleasers go through — thinking we must be able to fix everything by being the perfect person to everyone.

I worried all those years for nothing because my husband and I are still happily married. He now knows about my eating disorder (more on that later) and feels like he loves me more than ever. I am starting to trust that people could actually love me just for ME. And what’s more, if I love me, then I have the confidence to know that no matter what happens in life or my relationship, I can get back up and deal with it. I’ll be okay – that is a sense of security I never had when I hinged it to things and people – or things that can come & go. Nothing is permanent in life, I know that now. The only security I can have is trusting that I am going to be okay, regardless of what happens.

What I Learned Between College & My Married Years:

• Seeking approval from others at the expense of myself – again, I put everyone above me and felt very small & insignificant myself. When I put my feelings of happiness or sadness in the hands of others, I am doomed to feel uneasy. A sense of security comes from inner trust, confidence and happiness — no one can take that away from you. In addition, people are experiencing many levels of their own anxiety, pain, fear & depression. Eckhart Tolle (author of The Power of Now & A New Earth) says that everyone has a constant low level of fear. Given that this is the case, someone may snap at me, look at me funny or be mean — just because they are having a bad day, not because of anything I did. If I hinge my happiness to people liking or being nice to me, I run the risk of being unhappy a lot because I take every reaction personally.

• Taking care of others before myself – I tended to take care of my husband’s needs and ignore my own, which set up a habit in our marriage of his needs being met and mine not as much. This took some work to undo the pattern — we are only just beginning to undo it now. My husband is a good & loving person and I understand that most men are not taught to be caretakers. With some feedback, this is slowly changing so that my needs can be met.

• Feeling unloveable – I truly bought into the fact that I was unloveable. I went through my life feeling like I had to work really hard to earn my place in the world — as a friend, a daughter, a spouse, etc. I looked through life from the lenses of someone who felt unworthy of everyone around her. Once I became aware of this — and caught myself in negative thought patterns coming from this feeling, I was able to stop them. I started to look at what I loved about myself. I started to say positive, loving affirmations so that I could counteract the negative thoughts that popped into my head. I started to get to know myself better. All of these things helped me learn to love myself. I still work on this every day.

The Corporate Years

The next 12 years of my life were spent climbing the corporate ladder. I was very successful and I felt that the key to my success was playing the "corporate role." I watched how the most successful people acted, looked and dressed and molded myself to that template. Everything I did and said was “professional.” I completely lost touch with who I really was.

I was brazenly confident in my job and yet I felt like a child outside of work. I was shy and almost afraid of strangers (although you wouldn’t know it because I hid it pretty well). I sometimes felt like I didn’t want to go out of my house and even was afraid to answer the phone. I still had an active social life with friends, but most were work friends, so I could hide behind my corporate role.

I changed jobs and companies so often,that I never got to feel comfortable doing anything. I always felt pressured. I worked too many hours and didn’t get enough sleep. I overscheduled myself with work, chores and social activities – leaving no time to rest and recharge.

What I Learned From My Corporate Years:

• Role playing – cost me the ability to really know who I am. I was so afraid to interact with people without my corporate mask that I’d hide in fear. When I left my corporate job, I felt lost and confused. I had to meet myself all over again – find out what I really liked to do and what I really wanted. Since I was working on my own, I reconstructed my life absent the opinions of others, which was good for me. I started to feel better because who I really am is something that can’t be hinged on what others think of me. It’s actually what I think of me. This allows me to be more stable in my feelings because I take people’s behaviors less personally. It takes constant awareness to do this, so I don’t slip back into old negative thoughts, but I find the more I practice awareness and positive self-talk, the easier and more natural it is.

• Friends – since my life was all about work, I picked friends from my workplace. I never knew how to be a real person or friend because I was hiding behind my corporate role. I didn’t know what my true values were, so I didn’t look for friends with the same values. While I had very nice people in my life, I felt like something was missing. This is because I didn’t have friends who I felt were on the same path as I was due to my inner values. Sometimes, I’d find myself engaged in conversations about things that didn’t even matter to me and it felt empty. When I left my corporate job, I moved away and was at a distance from my friends. This actually helped me figure out who I really was and what my values were. At the same time, I was working hard on recovery, so the things I was focused on were opening up my heart and spirit. I wanted to surround myself with people who could identify with where I was and started to look for friends who could do this.

  I also noticed that I may have to let some of my old friends go. Sometimes, when you change, your desire to spend time with certain people changes. Either they notice a difference in you that makes them uncomfortable (where’s the “old you?”) or you notice that you are no longer fulfilled spending time with them. This is normal – although it feels difficult. I questioned myself a lot about this and while I felt sad to let some friends go, I had to start valuing myself higher if I wanted to recover.

• Doing work that I didn’t like – At one point, I started to question “what are we doing this for?” My work no longer felt fulfilling or even important. I started to wonder how making widgets was contributing to the world. It felt like a bunch of made up nonsense. I also felt that many decisions that were made at the expense of people were out of alignment with my values. The idea that you have to give up your life for the company was constantly perpetuated where I worked. People felt guilty about spending time with their families or having a personal life. I could no longer watch or be a part of a culture that valued out of balance lives. My life was so out of balance that I started to take it back. I started to leave work earlier and stopped taking work home on weekends. I learned how to get things done by working smart – but all the while, I was planning my exit from corporate.

  I learned that what I really wanted was to either have my own business or a family business. I wanted to wear comfortable clothes – jeans, shorts, whatever I felt like wearing. I didn’t want to feel the pressure of being “professional.” I wanted to be more creative and less boxed in by what others wanted. It wasn’t easy to bridge the gap between where I was in my corporate life to having confidence in my own business, but just by doing it, I started to feel better. Now I love being on my own. I wouldn’t go back to my job for all the money in the world. I realize that my mind bought into all kinds of crazy beliefs that did not contribute to my recovery at all. No wonder I relapsed so many times when I was in my corporate job.

Climbing Out of The Hole

Over the past year, I started to get serious about my recovery. When I left my job I felt completely lost and had no life raft. The bulimia came back more severely than it had ever been. It was like bulimia was my safety blanket and since everything in my life was changing, I needed it to keep me steady. I felt terrible – I thought leaving my job would finally solve my issues, but they seemed worse.

Transition

Now I know I was going through a transition. When you start to make major changes in your life, all of the old structures you set up to support you come tumbling down. I looked at my life and saw nothing I was confident about. Everything was new and I was afraid. I still had my old mindset, my old roles and my old habits. I had nothing to cling to anymore. Eckhart Tolle, in his book, A New Earth, says that it is our minds — or our ego — that grasps at things to cling to in order to create an identity (like my corporate role would prove I was somebody). When we buy into these things, we build our house on quicksand. We are only free when we decide to ignore the grasping ego (our mind-created fearful and negative thoughts) and get to the truth of who we are.

"The ego always wants something from other people or situations. There is always a hidden agenda, always a sense of ‘not enough yet,’ of insufficiency and lack that needs to be filled. It uses people and situations to get what it wants and even when it succeeds, it is never satisfied for long. Often it is thwarted in its aims, and for the most part the gap between ‘I want’ and ‘what is’ becomes a constant source of upset and anguish. The famous and now classic pop song, "(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction," is the song of the ego. The underlying emotion that governs all the activity of the ego is fear. The fear of being nobody, the fear of nonexistence, the fear of death….Only the truth of who you are, if reached, will set you free. " (page 80)

This was my big challenge over the past year — to stop buying into my hateful self and start realizing my true essence. But HOW?????? It felt so hard. Then I got a coach to help me.

Coaching

I worked with two coaches over this past year. One of them worked with me on how to remove negative thinking from my life. The other worked with me on building up a sense of who I really am. I also visited my medical intuitive 2 more times to see if she could help me cure bulimia – even if I could just get another clean 1.5 years it would be worth it. None of this seemed to work. I kept relapsing after a month or two of recovery.

The coach who was working on teaching me to remove negativity told me this: “When you are in a dark place, focus on bringing the light into your life.” She gave me several meditations to do, which helped me feel better, but did not cure me. I kept asking her, “Is there some switch I can flip to get out of the dark?” I could find nothing to get out of the hole. She also taught me to use the power of my mind to create what I wanted in my life. Basically, if you identify & fully believe in something positive, you can create it. This worked for me for periods of time, until I fell back into the big, dark hole.

No One Can Get You Out – But They Can Help You Help Yourself

No one got me out of the hole I had dug for myself. Yes, I dug this hole. I bought into all the beliefs that limited me from becoming who I really am. I needed to get myself out. My coaches, medical intuitive & doctors were all guides. They shined some light for me – they showed me that I could build my own ladder out of the hole. I had to take the final steps to build the ladder and lift myself out.

How I Built My Own Ladder

I started to break down everything I was clinging to in my life. Once I broke down all the structures I had bought into, it was like I had the materials to build the ladder. With everthing I broke down, I was able to build another rung to the ladder, until I had enough to climb out. The action plan that I have created will allow you to look at these areas in your own life and see how you can build your own ladder.

• My identity in my job.
• My role with my husband.
• My perfectionism – I started to just blend in with everyone and stopped trying to be so damn special as a way to be loved.
• My belief system – I started to catch myself in negative thinking & say "delete" and replace it with positive affirmations.
• My focus – I started to focus on what I loved to do so that I could feel good every day.
• My self-care – I started to get what I needed to take care of the basics – enough sleep, gentle exercise, good nutrition, hobbies, relaxation, etc.
• My boundaries – I decided what I needed to feel peaceful and balanced. I made a list and ensured that I spoke up if my boundaries were crossed.
• My environment – I got rid of the clutter in my office & home. Clutter sucks your energy and I felt lighter after cleaning it all out.
• My security & fears – I dropped my fear and started to trust. This was very scary, but I realized I could either live in fear or I could sink into trust. Whatever happened was going to happen anyway, right? So what’s better — to fear the what ifs or just be at peace? I decided I wanted peace and I’d deal with whatever came up if and when it did. This was very freeing.

The Final Key — Fixing My Digestion

I took all of these steps to change my life. It wasn’t in just one year, but over the course of 4 years — with the last year being the most rocky. I really worked on the level of my mind, body & spirit — but one thing was not resolving — my biggest trigger — my digestion. I recently found a book that changed my life — The Body Ecology Diet, by Donna Gates (this is not a "diet", but a way of eating to heal your body).

I had tried everything with my eating to cure my digestive distress and constipation. I had visited an Enviornmental Doctor recently who found Candida (yeast) in my system. According to Donna Gates, who’s studied all types of nutritional systems, people with bulimia and alcoholism have an overgrowth of yeast in our systems, which impacts our livers. It makes us crave sugar and over eat. I had heard of this, but never really bought into it much.

After having another relapse and really feeling frustrated — like a dog chasing it’s tail, with nothing ever being enough — I finally decided to stop listening to everyone else and try my own way of eating. I made some choices about what I wanted to do and then picked up The Body Ecology Diet. She had some tips that actually were in line with what I wanted to do, so I tried it. It was like a miracle. My body still felt really full after eating, but I no longer had painful gas and nausea. I trusted my body through the bloating & constipation, which lasted the first week and then by day 8, I was feeling better than I had in about almost two decades.

Falling Into Place

I have to say that getting my body in alignment felt like the final piece fell into place. The rest of the stuff I had been working on with mind and spirit were much easier to follow with a body that was no longer in pain. Over the course of the first week using this new eating plan, I also felt the pains from bulimia subside (jaw, knee, neck, back and teeth pains). This is a recent development for me, so I’ll let you know how it goes. All I know, is that I feel better and stronger than I have in all of the years that I’ve been on this journey of recovery.

I am not suggesting that everyone run out and try the Body Ecology Diet — what I’m suggesting is to find your own normal for eating. If you have digestive issues and they are a trigger for you, consult with a doctor who understands how to heal the body from eating disorders. Specifically, someone who understands how the body heals with proper nutrition. Throughout my quest, I was glad that I did not take any pills for depression, since I have heard many bad stories about them. In my opinion, recovery involves a lot of work to clean up our lives and our bodies — most of which cannot be solved by pills. If you decide to go the route of drugs, please take a look at all areas of your life in addition — so that you can create a solid base of inner love & trust.

People who looked at this item also looked at…

• TRANSCEND – 9 Steps to Recovery (Part 2)
• TRANSCEND – 9 Steps to Recovery (Part 3)
• How This Life-Changing Book Can Help You Heal and Thrive
• How I Transcended Bulimia
• How to Deal with Physical & Emotional Pain in Eating Disorders Recovery – Part 2

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