Yesterday was a really big day in the steps of living with my trauma, recovering from my eating disorder, and just getting stronger.
Some of you know about my trauma and some of you don't. I’m not going to get into it but I have had a lot of trauma with guys in the past. I try hard to not let it dictate my life. I have worked really hard at challenging that trauma and trying to live life to the fullest.
One of the hardest things is the idea of being in a room with a non-family member male and the door being closed and it just being the two of us. That scares the crap out of me. That is a super easy way to send me into a panic attack or just a lot of anxiety. The idea of it just being me with a guy in a room kinda stresses me out. I know some of you know that I had a fiancé. This was the same with him sometimes. Somedays I did really well with my trauma, and sometimes I had so much anxiety being around him.
My bosses at work changed. I had one boss but they split that position so a different person is now my boss. When I first found this out, I was really stressed especially because I didn’t know if it was going to be a guy and if I would feel safe to even talk to him or if I would have extreme anxiety around him. The person who moved up was my team lead.
This team lead was a male and I have grown to be able to talk to him and not be so anxious when trying to talk to him. I am able to have normal conversations and not feel like I am not going to panic or shake.
I had to go in yesterday to talk to them about me coming back from my leave. I was going to talk to my original boss but she was meeting with the store director so she told the new ETL to get with me. I was able to sit in his office with him, with the door closed, for like 5 minutes just talking. I did not feel an ounce of anxiety. I felt calm during it. I didn’t feel in danger. My brain wasn't screaming at me telling me I wasn’t safe.
To some of you that may sound silly. To a lot of people doing things like this is not a problem. For someone like me who has a lot of complex trauma, these silly everyday things can feel impossible. This is something huge for me to celebrate. You may not understand and I may not be able to explain it to you, but this was huge and I am so proud of myself and how far I have come.
Another thing I did yesterday was going to the gym after a month because my tics were bad. I have a love-hate relationship with the gym and working out. I love the way it makes me feel, I absolutely despise the sweat and being hot from it. I was gonna take it easy being back for the first time in a month. So usually when I run on the treadmill, I will do 1 minutes of walking and a minute to a minute and a half of running. I usually cannot run for more than 2 minutes without “dying”.
Yesterday I started out planning on doing that. I walked for the first minute to warm up.I got to the second minute and started running. I made it the first minute and decided I’d go for another one or until I needed to go back to walking. I made it 10 minutes of running. I hit the mile that I always go for and stopped. I did a mile in 11 minutes. This is crazy. I feel like my body is getting stronger the more I go to the gym and I love going and want to go more. Going to the gym makes me feel empowered and strong. I do not go to lose weight. I do not go to say I did it. I do not go because society makes it seem like all 20 year old females should be going to the gym. I go because it makes me feel good. I go because I want to. I go to help improve my health. I go to feel strong.
I think it is important, especially when in recovery of something like an eating disorder, to know your why in doing something like working out and knowing how to do it in a healthy and non excessive way. Yesterday is an example of this. I ran a mile. That's what I usually do. It is what I have done for a while now. But this time I genuinely ran 90% of that mile. I did push my body a little bit but I also know when to stop. I will not allow myself to push myself past what I can handle. Did I sorta want to see how far I could go, yes. Was I starting to be in pain and knew that if I kept running it would get worse, yes. Did I know not to push my body, yes. This is important.
When I was unwell, I probably would've kept going. I probably would’ve kept going until my body made me stop. I would’ve pushed my body past what it could handle which can cause damage in the long run.
I didn’t run because I was punishing myself. I ran because it’s what I wanted to do. I ran because I love the way it makes my body feel when I’m done and that I feel accomplished when I hit a mile. I feel accomplished when I finish a few seconds faster than the time before.
I did another thing yesterday that was huge in my eating disorder recovery. I actually made dinner yesterday (meaning something besides chicken nuggets and fries or something similar). I made chicken and rice. If you knew me when I was younger and talked about food, you would know that this was my favorite meal ever. I loved it and loved when we would have it for dinner. It’s one meal I would always ask for. Now I am one person and I made a whole box of rice because that's what I had. (I don’t like it reheated to don’t come at me). I made my chicken in the air fryer and rice on the stove.
Whenever I would eat this at my dad’s house, I would eat 2 pieces of chicken and a small thing of rice. Sometimes I would get another small helping of rice depending on how hungry my dad was. I always prioritized him eating and getting all he wanted before me.
Before my eating disorder, I had no problems eating however much rice or food in general I wanted. Once I developed my eating disorder, I never ate till I was full. I would eat small portions and still be hungry afterwards because I didn’t want to gain weight. This is one thing I still struggle with. When I go out to eat, I will eat until I am full. But when I make food at my apartment or I’m at someone else's, I struggle to eat until I am full. I am not really sure why I struggle with this still. I am working on it.
Anyway, back to last night. I made the chicken and I made the rice. I got the amount that I am used to eating and was still hungry. So I got more. And after that? I got even more because I wasn’t full. This is huge. I struggle a lot to eat until I am full and I did that last night for the first time somewhere other than a restaurant in a very long time. This is another thing that may seem small to someone but this is a huge victory.
This week I noticed I was still slightly living with some of the “rules” my eating disorder made up. I love chips. I love having things to snack on in between meals and purposely try to not make it turn into a whole meal. But with my eating disorder, the idea of having chips was awful. I would not allow myself to buy chips to eat because chips aren’t healthy and can cause weight gain. I had pretzels in my apartment and that’s only because I eat them with peanut butter and that is in a small way healthy with the grains and oils from peanut butter.
When I realized that I was shocked it took me months to realize I was doing it but it also made me kinda sad because I wasn’t fully choosing recovery. I was still letting my eating disorder have some say in my life. I went to the store, not to just buy chips but for other things, and decided it was okay for me to buy chips. It was okay to have something that isn’t deemed healthy. There is nothing wrong with having snack food. There is nothing wrong with enjoying food that isn't deemed healthy.
This is another victory. This was me recognizing that I wasn’t doing something healthy, taking a step back, examining and finding the cause, and finding a solution. This wasn’t about shaming myself for still doing things from my eating disorder. This was about learning, seeing, and changing behaviors.
There is no point in shaming yourself for things like that. That literally can just make the situation worse. This can be a stumbling block that causes you to fall back completely into that habit if you feel like you need to “punish” yourself for that behavior. It’s better to identify it, figure out why you are still engaging in it, and try and change your behaviors. There is no place for shame.
Yesterday was a big day for me in terms of recovery and learning how to change my brain with my trauma. I didn’t know if I was going to share this, but it could always help someone to see that they are not alone and that growing is possible.
Growth is possible. It may take a while, but it is possible. My journey is going to look different than your journey. I’ve been in full blown recovery from my ED since the beginning of last November. That was 9ish months ago. It took me that long to see that I was still engaging in behaviors and that’s okay because I eventually was able to identify it and am working on changing that behavior.
Growth is going to look different for each person. My growth is going to look a lot different than yours even if we deal with the same things because we are different people.
Hold onto hope and stay strong.
Madison Rae <3
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