Disconnected

I will eventually feel better, right?

Today begins my fourth week at the River Centre Clinic in Sylvania, Ohio. I am trying to learn and grow. I am trying to overcome my desire to dive back into my safety net of anorexia nervosa. I am confronting my demons and anxieties.

BUT IF I HAVE TO EAT ONE MORE BITE OF FOOD I AM GOING TO SCREAM!!!

I feel full all the time and I hate the feeling. My stomach hurts constantly and I am often nauseous. The amount of calories I eat in one day sustained me for more than four days during my most severe restrictive periods. I am eating mechanically; the concept of enjoying food is completely foreign to me. Frankly, I can't wait until bedtime when I don't have to eat anymore.

This worries me. I am still in the weight restoration phase, in which I am trying to reach what both the clinic and my doctor agree is a minimum healthy weight for me. Most likely I will not reach that weight before I return home and thus, I will have to continue to eat that many calories until I do. I also have learned from past experience that as a severe restrictor anorexic, I will most likely have to maintain a higher-than-average caloric intake in order to stay at a healthy weight.

I also hate the inflexibility of meal planning. It causes me a lot of anxiety on the weekends when I bring my meal plans home and have to make substitutions for one reason or another (mainly because our small town's grocery stores lack some of the foods on my weekend meal plan.) It also makes me feel weird to have to take my own food to social functions, like brunch at my brother's last week or lunch at church today.

It makes me feel disconnected from what's going on around me.

That is a real problem. I live in Sylvania during the week and at home during the weekends, and I often feel lost between the two places. One morning last week, I woke up and instinctively reached out for David. I was half asleep and started to panic as my hands couldn't find him. Then I realized I wasn't at home.

It really was the start of a very disconcerting week. Everyone there has their own issues, and sometimes it is harder to deal with some issues than others. I often wished I was a turtle, able to withdraw into a protective shell. I am trying to absorb such things as distress tolerance and mindfullness, or being in the moment.

But sometimes my emotions start spiraling out of control and it becomes hard to calm myself down. My anxiety can reach such a high peak I feel either like I am going to die or I want to die. The only other outcome I can envision in these moments is me literally exploding.

I have decided I need to change some things about myself in order to both recover and live (as oppose to just existing.)

I cannot let people push my buttons. The week also started with an anonymous comment that said in effect that I was not that thin and I am an Ana wannabe (I deleted it, as I will delete all comments that I deem are triggering to either myself or people who read my blog.)

But I allowed that comment to stay in my head and the eating disorder part of my brain had a field day with that, constantly whispering that this person was right and what I really needed to do was go home and lose more weight.

So I veer between feeling disconnected from my body (am I too thin? or do I need to lose weight? who is right? why can't I see the reality of my physical being?) and trying to trust those who tell me I need to remain in treatment and that I have not yet reach a healthy weight.

Trust. Who can I trust when I can't trust my own eyes nor my own thoughts at times?

It's a very confusing time.

Shunned from an online recovery community

The technique is effective and stunning. It is akin to shunning, which has been used by various religious sects and cults throughout the centuries to keep people in line — a member does something wrong and she is immediately cut off from the community. No contact. Access denied. The person is not worthy to be part of the community until she repents of her sin and delivers a mea culpa, promising to sin no more.

Last night, I went to my page at MentorCONNECT and saw a large, white square stating that I was banned from the community for two weeks. I started to cry, thinking what have I done?

I soon received my answer via e-mail. Apparently I had written a blog post which was considered "triggering" to some other members who reported it. This was not the first time I had written a blog post which was reported as triggering. (I will talk specifically about triggering a little later.)

I joined this community with the highest of hopes. The basic idea behind MC is to connect someone with an eating disorder with someone who is recovered with an eating disorder, the idea being "relationships replace eating disorders." The community also contains a variety of pro-recovery groups, such as recovery music,  how to deal with having an eating disorder while in college and others.

I started this blog, Leaving ED, initially to write through my feelings as I struggled with recovery from anorexia. I was surprised when people started reading my blog and following it via Facebook and Google. I felt gratified people felt my words worthy of reading, and the support given by my readers through the past years have often sustained me through some very dark times. I thank you and hope you continue reading, just as I have read many of your blogs and have been moved and enlightened by your struggles, hopes and honesty as you move through this journey of life.

MC also has a place to post blogs. I liked that idea; I enjoy writing and feel I have many things to say and sometimes do it well. I read through a few blog posts to get a feel for what other people were posting, and while I admit I did forget one rule with one of my MC blog posts (I mentioned weight, which is strictly verboten), I tried very hard to not write things that could be considered triggering.

I first got an idea that my writing style and MC's incredibly unrealistic view of what should and shouldn't be written about (any mention of restricting or other eating disorder behaviors also is strictly forbidden) with "Acceptance???". I posted this in November 2009.

I wrote about my struggles to accept my body's additional weight and not feeling as if I conform to society's standards about what is beautiful, and it was a depressing post. But I do not feel it was anti-recovery. I was in recovery; I was moving forward and was finishing up my first semester of graduate school. But anyone with anorexia struggles with the weight gain, no matter how much she knows it is needed, and sometime accepting your new (and larger) body can be hard.)

I posted it on MC looking for words of support, just as I had written words of encouragement when I read about someone struggling restricting or bingeing or purging behaviors (I later found out that these posts also were swiftly removed and the writers either suspended, banned temporarily or forever.)

The next day I went to my MC page, looking for those words of hope. The white box, prominently featured in the middle of a colorless background, told me I had been suspended. Shunned. Cut off from the community.

I was stunned. The explanation was in my e-mail — my post had triggered some people and I could return in a week IF I could show I wouldn't do it again. I couldn't force myself to eat dinner that night, and I struggled with eating for several days afterward. I felt awful.

MC continued to send its daily and weekly mentoring moments via e-mail. These daily e-mails reminded me that I had failed, that I might have had actually hurt someone through my words, and were very triggering. Each one made me think I wasn't good enough, that I had failed at recovery and being part of a pro-recovery community. Each day, I felt worst and I wondered why I didn't just tell them to stop sending me the e-mails. My doctor advised me to leave MC because being suspended was hurting me so much. (He also felt the site and my increasing use of the Internet were taking the place of real-life human interactions.)

I didn't listen.

I returned to MC with much trepidation; I was afraid to post anything. I began to ask myself how helpful is an online recovery community if I was filled with fear every time I wrote anything, even if it was just I was having a bad day? I also received an e-mail from a former member who left after she tried to convince the administrators that a group for women 40 and older might be helpful (ironically, MC started such a group after this woman left.) She explained in-depth how uncomfortable she felt there and why she needed to leave for her continued recovery.

MC suggested running each blog post past one of their administrators before placing it on the site. I did that a few times, but I began to feel my writing was not completely honest. I was censoring myself because I was so afraid of again being suspended.

But I was suspended again after I wrote about being afraid of food in January 2010. It is almost impossible for me to describe how hurtful that was; the feeling of rejection was just one factor contributing to a downward spiral that I am still struggling with today.

Still, I wanted to be part of an online recovery community and I decided to try MC one last time. I began to relax a little when a few other members commented positively on my (censored) blog posts.

Then there was yesterday. A member posted on my MC page that my blog posts "inspired" her and gave her hope for recovery. Her comment inspired me to post "You are so much more than your body size." I was very moved by this statement by my doctor (it made me want to cry and it made me think) and wanted to share it. After posting this blog post, one woman on MC wrote she could relate to my struggles and had had this same conversation with her husband the night before.

That was the last comment I was allowed to read. I went back to the page about an hour later. The white box stated I was banned for two weeks. Shunned. The support community was not available to me. Because I had made a mistake. Because I am human.

I had had enough. Part of recovery includes eliminating toxic influences from your life and I didn't want spend the next two weeks crying and berating myself for being so stupid as to write a blog post that talked about the realities of recovery from eating disorders. I deleted my page (you are allowed to do that via the white box) and e-mailed MC, giving the group notice that I would not be returning.

I refuse to compromise my writing. Anorexia is a complex disease and recovery does not occur in a linear fashion, but instead moves in twists and turns and can manifest itself. Restricting and purging and cutting and many other behaviors do happen while recovering. We in the eating disorders community need to open the doors wide and be honest about the realities of recovery. We are either part of the problem or part of the solution, and I believe total honesty is part of the solution.

I also see my doctor's point about MC and other online recovery communities replacing real-life human connections. This experience has taught me that what I really need and crave are those connections, the everyday face-to-face experiences of talking with people, giving them hugs, the give-and-take of conversations which can include anything from talking about your struggles to the latest book you have read.

Besides, I already have an online recovery community right here. On Leaving ED, I can be as honest as I want and know that most people will not judge nor shun me. The support I receive here is phenomenal; I can't thank all of you enough who have read and posted supportive comments through the years. Your support has sustained me, your struggles have moved me, and your courage has inspired me.