Imagine you had an angry demon inside of you who tortured you day and night with your greatest fears and you can start to imagine what an eating disorder feels like. Many people compare an eating disorder to an addiction, however, for most addictions the answer is pretty simple. If you're an alcoholic, don't drink. If you have a substance addiction, stay away from that substance. However, you can't tell someone with an eating disorder to stay away from the one thing that triggers us: food. At the same time though, food isn't the problem. The problem were the emotions that connected food and fear. Food was my enemy because it made me gain weight, and weight gain took away my identity, and losing my identity meant I wasn't special or unique, which meant nobody would be interested in spending time with me, which means I would be alone, which means my life would be pointless, which means I had no reason to live. Let me explain, my "I had no reason to live" was not a suicidal ideation or plan but rather an expression of the fear that my life would end up meaningless and I would have no purpose.
Treatment was difficult because we were being asked to become fully vulnerable, trust the process, and lean into emotions. What made it even more difficult was the strong voice of resistance to healing, to eating, to getting better. My eating disorder fought with every ounce of strength it could suck from the nutrients and calories I was feeding it. The only relief I had was my time spent in the Healing Garden and out in the beautiful Florida sunshine... until that was taken from me as well. A facet of restriction that many people may not know is that it causes your metabolism to basically die. Towards the end of the summer, even though I was eating next to nothing, I wasn't losing weight because my metabolism had become so conservative and my body was barely functional. Once food becomes reintroduced it must be introduced slowly and gradually because of "refeeding syndrome" where your body can go into shock and it can be life-threatening. After eating consistently for about a week, I began to lose weight again. I was shocked; how was this happening? I found out I had become hypermetabolic which is where your metabolism works overtime to compensate for the amount of time it was dead. Basically my body was consuming and expending the amount of energy doing day to day activities that an Olympic athlete would expend performing in their sport. Due to this, I was put on "movement restriction" and was required to stay in the community room from 8:30 am until 9:30 pm, leaving only for meals and groups. I thought my eating disorder had taken everything before but this was the final straw. I had been doing everything right (completing 100% of meals, participating in groups, processing my emotions) and yet the devil's reign continued.
These effects from my eight-year imprisonment were the first of the plagues I was destined to face. My eating disorder began to feel like the Hotel California where you could check out any time you liked but you could never really leave.
