You are holding my hand as we sit inches from each other. Today, I can feel your hand. You are trying to get me to breath, deep belly breaths, and I pause the exhale multiple times before I let out all the air. Each pause is my automatic reaction to cut off the rush of…
Teens
This has been pretty much my process since high school — except the therapist part has only been the last couple years. Graduate school has made it so things are due weekly and I haven’t experienced an academic or professional work load since 2014. I have constant anxiety because even for little, easy things, if…
Competitor
I minimize my prep and collegiate athletic experience because I wasn't the best. But I worked incredibly hard to get to where I did, even if it was barely anything. Throughout the recovery process and tearing apart my identity I actually thought for a while the eating disorder part of me ran the show for…
How to Find Me
When I try to find compassion, I am met with incredible resistance. To be clear, I meet myself with frustrating resistance. Anger-filled push-back. Is this the eating disorder? How quickly I became one with it, if it is. And how quickly I lost the ability to discern for myself, if it is. I have to…
Holding
https://youtu.be/b-JF74gDc6g Hold her tonightOh, God, would you hold her tonight?'Cause I'm not there to stay closeKeep watch, tell her she's not aloneHold her tonight This is the song that played as I drove home in the rain after a particularly grueling day. Hold her, protect her, let her know she’s loved. The little parts of…
Jan 22, 2021, 10:12pm
Sometimes I think, “I’m going to push her until she breaks,” and it will prove that I destroy things I touch in a terrible, terrible way, and I will have to stop living because I broke something so incredibly special. And sometimes, I think that means the end. My story ends here: I am too…
True Things
I can both (severely) struggle with my parents past and current behavior and have compassionate understanding and love for them along with a desire for a different future relationship with them at the same time. Sometimes opposing emotions really throw me for a loop. Yesterday my dietitian and I were talking through possibilities for why…
Gratitude Practice
Image credit: IG @gc_doodles I hope you know your kindness takes the pain away, even if briefly, and that it never goes unnoticed. Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by support, I lose my words. I hope you feel seen and heard and comforted, in the way you do for me. I have survived because of…
I Wanted Support Like This
https://youtu.be/UEysOExcwrE I’ve watched the above video a dozen times over 8 years. I think because it used to help me validate myself before I had the support I do now. It also gave me hope that I could one day find a therapist that would care this much. I was just laying in bed, unable…
Let it all exist
What if I let the panic exist. Welcome it, even. What if I stop fighting it and worrying when it will return and if I will have support in those moments? Deep breath. Keep breathing. It’s just the part of me that is so scared, is 10-12 years old. And 10-year-olds need help. They are…
