If I am honest with myself, I have lost a lot more time to my eating disorder than I admit to. I don’t like to do the math if I try to count up all the hours, or days, or months, heck yearsthat I lost to my disorder because all it does is put me back into the spin cycle of blaming myself.
But, it’s time I allow myself to grieve that time. Allowing myself to grieve, for me, means acknowledging that it has passed, acknowledging that regardless of the part I played in my disorder and my relapses, that time was significantly lost to my disorder and its behaviors. It means accepting that I can’t go back and change it.
Deep in the throes of my eating disorder, I lost almost every waking hour of the day to my disorder. Even when I wasn’t using explicit behaviors such as purging or over-exercising, my mind was racing with behavior thoughts and obsessions.
‘Am I really sure that I can trust the label? Was there really only x amount of calories in that?’ - a typical obsession after I ate just about anything.
‘Is that really me? I look disgusting’ - a typical thought that could send me into a spiral after seeing myself in a mirror or my own reflection in a window.
‘Well if so-and-so is going to order that then I have to order it’ - comparing food choices when eating out with anyone. Going through treatment? Times food comparisons like this one, by infinity.
‘Why did I eat that?’ - This is the nagging thought that would persist regardless of what I actually ate.
‘I have to make up for that somehow.’ - My eating disorder didn’t take kindly to breaking rules, I would have to make up for it with a behavior.
The thoughts raced. I would try and distract and push them away but they usually came back with a vengeance. No matter how many mindfulness techniques I tried, no matter how many times I pictured the thoughts as leaves floating down the river, they still came back around.
Even as I began recovery, the thoughts raced. I may have finally chosen to get better, but the thoughts were still there. I still had the exact same thoughts. I still lost time to my eating disorder.
As time when on, it became easier and easier to push the thoughts aside, but that doesn’t mean they stopped popping up. I just got better at ignoring them, at not acting on them, and letting my ‘healthy’ brain make decisions instead. I still may lose a few minutes to my eating disorder, but I’ve made it clear that I own my time, not my disorder.
So if you’re in the throes of an eating disorder, if you’re in recovery, in a relapse, no matter where you are on the timeline, remember that a thought is just a thought. You don’t have to act on it. Your brain may not be able to let it go, and you may lose time to your disorder, but that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. Learn to take back your time.
Learn to take back your time.