Tuesday, August 27, 2013

More Recovery = More Tears


One of the best things Ed does is he blocks out negative emotions. Feel stressed? Eat! Feel lonely? Go to your room so you can skip dinner and then you’ll at least feel good about losing weight.
Ed doesn’t make any sense.
I believe that the more recovered you are, the more emotions you feel. Especially if you recover from a restricting disorder. Starving yourself is a great way to feel absolutely nothing. For me the blocked emotions of bulimia are more like feeling something very intensely but immediately getting rid of it by engaging in behavior.
Each step you take towards controlling Ed means that there’s no way to get rid of emotions, so you have to feel them. This is great because positive emotions become more sharp and more enjoyable, but it also means letting in a flood of negative emotions.
I never used to cry. I never used to feel anything.
Lately I’ve been crying about everything. When I stopped restricting I felt like I was on an emotional rollercoaster ride, and not just because of fears about gaining weight. I cried about feeling close to my boyfriend and I cried when I was stressed.
These past few weeks have been hard, but I did much better behavior-wise than I expected. I cried every single day.
In the past if I’d felt as sad as I do I would try to block it out by eating. It wouldn’t really do much in the end but it would dull the pain.
Now I know exactly what I want to do, and that is to cry. Whenever I feel the urge coming, I just let the tears flow for as long as they need to. I guess it helps me feel better, even though I will cry later about the same thing. But despite feeling sad I’ve been able to enjoy hanging out with my friends and laugh with them.
And I have to say, crying feels so much better than eating. I feel free, if not wet from my tears.
So here is a challenge: if you feel sad about something, don’t push away the reasons for it. Think about them and embrace them in your mind, and let yourself cry and feel enraged and sad and everything. And then tell me if you were nicer to yourself afterwards. 

6 comments:

  1. I agree with this Emily
    I've been running from my feelings and emotions for years
    They scare the hell out of me

    Someone told me once that emotions are like waves
    The come think and fast and can be very intense
    But just like waves eventually the are carried back out to sea and they pass
    I have to remember that x

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ugh crying... it's gross. Just kidding :) I feel like I'm very uncomfortable with any that aren't "positive" like happy. I've cried at least four times in the last three days though. It's a necessary evil I suppose. <3

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hmm. I don't cry...even if it's an intense emotion where I probably should, the tears just aren't there.

    I sort of agree...restricting kind of makes this "I'm going to feel nothing" thing happen. With me, and food as a form of control, if I was TOO emotional, had too many things going on, didn't know where to put those feelings, I would not eat. Even as a child. (When people would argue at dinner, I would just stop eating. Yeah I was probably prone to this as a kid.) When it became a full blown ED, restricting, starving, refusing a necessity such as food, gave a sense of self control. If I couldn't control my surroundings or my emotions, I would control what I ate or didn't eat. Same with binging, but then I would want to feel EVERYTHING. It's this odd bipolar feeling-vs-action juxtaposition. I'm sure we could write some collaborative scholarly essay on this lol. I love you dear, at least someone finds release in tears. I just find weakness.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "I believe that the more recovered you are, the more emotions you feel. Especially if you recover from a restricting disorder. Starving yourself is a great way to feel absolutely nothing."
    there we go
    I think that's why I got depressed soon after the recovery to be honest. it's why when i'm having an exceptionally shitty day - just eating a little less than usual doesn't do it. I starve to validate guilt.
    aw honey.
    crying is horrid. but something about crying - it is also relieving. it is exceptionally relieving.
    I wish I can say that I was. I do cry. I cry all the time. that's my problem. I think it's just because it's depression-based, I couldn't but I am trying not medicate myself by not eating. like today I didn't want to eat at all today but then I got very hungry and I told myself "you can eat. nobody will think you don't care about them if you eat." I have this irrational fear during my depression that if I eat, it means that I don't care about someone. if I care about someone deeply, I shouldn't be able to eat because of them.
    quite irrational isn't it?

    -Sam Lupin

    ReplyDelete
  5. We all have coping mechanisms to deal with our emoitions, some people have healthy ones some do not. Feeling feelings can SUCK after being numb for so long. But you are right, sure you will feel pain or sorrow but there are so many other feelings to feel if we let ourselves. The trick is to remember that if you go numb you will miss out on all the others.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You're completely 100% right. The more I slip into anorexia, the more numb of emotions I become. The more 'recovered' I am, the more emotions I feel. It does make sense - when the body is starved, feeling emotions uses up much-needed energy that would be better used keeping us alive, so our feelings are numbed to keep us breathing.

    It's so great that you know what to do to help yourself now, and let yourself feel these things and let yourself laugh with friends and also to cry. I can't remember the last time I cried. I just can't seem to do it. I am at the stage still where I would rather not feel anything, so I admire you for being so brave.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting! I appreciate it :)