There's one key truth about eating disorder recovery that's universal to all and that is that it's fecking hard, likely the hardest thing you will do in your life, and it takes time, often months or years. Ok, I appreciate that's two truths...
When you are putting yourself through any process in life that's not only taking time to give meaningful results but is also creating more pain, distress and agitation along the way, it's very easy to want to quit. Motivaton can be strong at the beginning, or at least relatively so, but after a few weeks of going at it and realising that you are still barely off the starting line, despite feeling you have given all you have got, it can be disheartening and your motivation can quickly subside.
And what happens if your motivation subsides too far?
The effort that you feel capable of putting into the process also dwindles and so too does your progress so that you either begin to tread water or slide back.
Plus, I know many of my readers are adults with busy lives... Busy lives that the eating disorder loves to keep you occupied with so you are distracted and compulsively engaged in busy-ness, leaving you less focus for eating more, resting, gaining weight and rewiring. Those busy lives can easily take over again because the process is long and reaching the end takes time. When the busy-ness takes over, it can be all too easy to forget why you are trying to do the 'recovery thing', what it was all for and convince yourself that you are just fine as things are.
Plus, when you have made a bit of early progress against the eating disorder, people in your life will likely begin to think that you are all great now which will reinforce your own powerful thoughts that you don't need to push yourself further.
But what happens if you don't push yourself to the bitter end?
Well, I'm sure that many of you have experience of this. You live a quasi / half life of misery for more years or you slowly find that things slide back into stronger eating disorder habits and rituals, taking you back to a life of cold misery.
Therefore, it's key that when you are going through the process of overcoming an eating disorder, you do what you can to maintain focus on why you are doing this, what it's all for, why you are putting yourself through a process that's hard and distressing when you can just about function ok in life as you are.
Maintaining motivation in eating disorder recovery is critical.
I've written in earlier blog posts about needing a 'why' for recovery and having that why to come back to—reasons that hold intrinsic value are so important to help you stay motivated and keep going.
In my own process, one tool I used regularly to keep reminding myself that yes, I was still a bit screwed up with the eating disorder and yes, I did need and want to keep going with recovery, was to write out the things I wanted to move away from in my life and what I wanted to move towards.
The things I wanted to move away from would be all the ways the eating disorder disabled me or kept me captive as a prisoner at that time, while the things I wanted to move towards were things that were meaningful to me that I wanted my life to include in my future.
I would generally write these lists out by hand, getting absorbed in the exercise and brain dump through. I would journal it or just scribble it down. I didn't do it to show anyone (although you can) but it really helped me to reconnect with what I was going through and why I did want to keep going. It helped me to remember why I was ok with gaining a bit more weight, why I would push myself to eat that pasta meal with garlic bread and not have something 'safer' or why I wasn't going to go for yet another darned walk.
Overall, I found repeating this exercise regularly, making the time to do it when my brain wanted to keep frantically busy in other ways, was a really powerful tool to use to reconnect with my motivation, inner values and true self. It helped protect against life taking over and losing my connection to the process I had embarked on.
Below is an example of the lists I wrote out when undertaking this exercise during the process to beat the eating disorder. I found these when I was going through some old journals recently. This is not something I have shown anyone before but it's to give you an idea of what you might include on your own list, if you try out this little motivation tool. It's important to remember though that the things that are meaningnful to you and that you would include on your list will be unique to you, so what I included on my list won't necessarily resonate with your situation, while there will be things that you include that I wouldn't have featured. We are all different...
This is what I included on one occasion of using this motivational tool:
Remember....
Remember the miserable hunger when you are not 'allowed' to eat yet or to eat more;
Remember the keeping busy to block the desire to eat;
Remember the low sugar faintness and pushing through it, praying to get through;
Remember the lack of emotions, not experiencing ups or downs;
Remember the narrow vision and that sole focus on securing and protecting those valuable eating times, even though the foods at those times were so restrictive;
Remember the irritability and overwhelm;
Remember the obsessiveness over anything else in your life so as not to have to address reality or feel;
Remember the running away but never being able to outrun yourself;
Remember the years or loneliness, isolation and being so alone;
Remember the bone cold;
Remember the being a prisoner within your own mind;
Remember the inner turmoil, sadness and frustration;
Remember the feelings of being unsafe and frightened;
Remember truly believing that it really wasn't all that bad.
So keep going and...
Move towards fatness, fabulousness and becoming flamazing!
Move towards laid back, fun, happy me (as I was before);
Move towards love and connection, towards people;
Move towards food, food, food forever;
Move towards no scales, numbers, calculations or rules;
Move towards not giving a feck and freedom;
Move towards being able to be me and not running away or getting obsessive and frantic to avoid feeling or facing reality;
Move towards emotions and feeling life's ups and downs;
Move towards saying, "I need help";
Move towards embracing what I can be when well fed, rested and capable of fun, laughter, emotions and of letting people in;
Move towards being warm, belly rolls, cellulite, good skin and a sparkle and life in my eyes, feeling more alive;
Move towards food-loving me - she was so happy before;
Move towards being silly!
Move towards opportunities;
Move towards open and optimistic curiosity about what life could be from now...
The above is just one example of the lists I wrote on one occasion of using this simple motivation tool in the long and hard eating disorder bashing process. Some items might resonate with you, some might not, maybe none of it does. But if you are reading this blog post then there's a reason for that (people already fulfilled in life don't tend to read my posts!) and so I don't doubt that if you try this motivational tool, you will find yourself coming up with all kinds of things that matter to you for what you no longer want in your life and what you do want. Those scribblings will be your reasons to keep going in recovery. Those scribblings are your deepest motivational factors for why you will keep going.
Give it a go and just see if it helps... if it doesn't, have you lost anything other than 10 minutes of your day? We all know that an eating disorder will take a lot more than that from your day and in much more miserable ways!
My final word then is that if you do have a go at this motivational tool, food debris on the page from the good things you are munching on while scribbling your lists is definitely essential.