Eating disorders offer a sense of identity.   You can be skinny, you can be disciplined and you can be in control.  You can be anorexic.  I recognise that this was the case for me, and I’ve spoken about this in previous blogs.  Except that you are none of these things (well aside from skinny perhaps).  Anorexia tricks you into believing you are that person when really, the illness is in the driving seat but gifts you these beliefs to hook you in.

I’ve worked incredibly hard throughout treatment to forge a new identify away from anorexia.  I’ve spoken of reconnecting with childhood hobbies; rediscovering my long-lost creative side.  I’ve dug up the love of nature and animals that I buried in in early adult life.  And I’ve discovered a new found spiritual side, welcoming Mama Cacao, Reiki and Shamanism into my life.

But then I went back to work.  I have realised in recent weeks, as indeed I suspected, that work too has provided me with a false sense of identity for the last twenty years.  Not just a job but a family to belong to and a person to be.  Reflecting on the nights I cried myself to sleep during training, with the gut feeling that it wasn’t for me, but persevered regardless, desperate not to fail.  Of course, more recently, I found a role that I do love.  Did love.  However, I am just a number.  There is no room for continued recovery in the workplace.  And I visibly look well so why would others think I need it?  Work load is off the scale; even worse than I went I took leave for treatment.  And I’ve been told there is no wiggle room.  The caseload has to go somewhere and there simply are not enough of us for me to not take my share of the excess.  The care is there from my leadership and for that I am very appreciative.  However, I have returned with a different mindset.  I can see through the repetitive statements in acknowledgement of how hard we are all working and how much it is appreciated.  Without an increase in staffing levels, the words are empty.  This time last year, I would have taken my laptop home and worked myself into the ground to stay afloat but I won’t do that now.  I can’t do that now.

I was determined when I returned to work to maintain the slices of my ‘pie chart of life’ in healthy proportions.  However, it feels as though the new techniques I have learned for maintaining my nervous system in a healthy balance, are not working so well.  As I stand outside with my cacao first thing in the morning, I am struggling to feel at one with nature.  I am struggling to allow Mama Cacao and Mother Earth to guide me to my day’s intention.  Not because my mind is particularly heavy with work but because subconsciously there is just an awareness that I can’t spend too long daydreaming or I won’t fit yoga in too before it’s time for shower and on with my day.

At the other end of the day, in my desperation to dedicate time to some knitting, some reading, and now some Reiki, these are becoming chores in the themselves and not generating the pleasure, or having the calming effect, that they were.

Of course, I realise that to an extent, that I need to get real.  I can’t live a life full only of leisure and pleasure.  However, I have identified two things.  Firstly, I need to align my work with the new identity that I (thought) I was forging for myself.  Secondly, I need to act fast before that sense of identity is lost.

I thought I had found my true authentic self.  Spiritual, creative, connected, at one with the universe.  Skip back three paragraphs.   Maybe it’s not working because I’m not that person.  I’m rubbish at it because it’s not instinctive after all.  And so my identity feels fragile once again.  All muddled up because my work head is poles apart from the home head I’m trying to grow.

Comparisons don’t help either (regardless of benign intent).  “Your sister learned about that”, “your sister has that book”, “your sister went to that free dance”, “you ought to go to that thing your sister is going to”.  I’m not my sister.  I’m me.  Two weeks after my weekend of receiving 4 Reiki attunements, learning the origins of my lineage, theory and practice, my mum went to a yoga day where she gave herself Reiki because the teacher was a Reiki master (I’m not sure it works like that).  I can’t help but feel it (unintentionally) pissed on my USP and I can’t even claim Reiki for myself either.

I’ve said before that the phrase, “my anorexia voice”, makes me squirm and cringe.  It is not another person living inside me.  It does perhaps serve as an effective analogy however for anorexic cognitions.  Anorexia has been telling me this week that she can help.  Reminding how it felt to have that sense identity that was all mine.  How much easier it would be to manage difficult thoughts by going for a run, or controlling food to put me in the driving seat of success and control. Anorexia remains in the shadows waiting to pounce.  Yesterday she told me go for a run and I would feel better.  I did what I was told and I’m not proud.  But I felt fucking amazing while she looked on smugly saying “I told you so”.   A moment of weakness that won’t get the better of me. 

Anorexia is so much more than wanting to be skinny. 

Recovery is not linear.