Finding My Identity in Recovery

One of the biggest challenges I am facing in recovery is finding Myself again. I find this both daunting and exciting! When I reflect back I am completely amazed how my eating disorders completely destroyed who I was. I lost so much of myself and ed beat me down so badly I never thought I would ever be able to find myself again. My eating disorders became my identity and that is when you know you have lost control of everything. I gave up every single thing I was interested in or what made me who I am, I lost confidence, I lost my drive, I lost my ambition, I had no goals, no motivations, I had no beliefs, no opinions. All I cared about was starving and being alone so I could BP. I was a slave to my eating disorder, it was like a parasite that took completely over and sucked the life blood right out of me. I failed at recovery so many times because I did not know who I was anymore and quite frankly at that point I just didn't care. Without the eating disorder who am I? And this can be a very scary and unsettling thing and that is why I held on to my eating disorders for as long as I did.

Not only am I dealing with the challenges of eating and gaining weight, but the recovery process becomes even harder when trying to deal with all the feelings and emotions that resurface after being numbed out and suppressed for so long. I still struggle with overwhelming anger sometimes and it is so strong because it never went away. Un-dealt with feelings/emotions do not disappear but they just stay there lingering and getting stronger and stronger until you just cannot out run them anymore and are forced to face them. Also finding who you are again is also extremely difficult especially if you are a perfectionist and failure phobic as I am. Nothing is ever good enough in my world - although I am working hard to change this. I do believe the perfectionistic mentality is genetic and so cannot be changed but can be better managed. But who am I now? What are my likes? What are my interests? What are my dislikes? What do I want to achieve? What is going to challenge me? What am I going to stand up for? Who do I want to be? Who am I? Not having any identify has caused me tremendous amount of anxiety and panic! There is this huge empty void where my ed lived and still lives (although I am not acting on symptoms the thoughts are still there - but they do get alot quieter!!!!!!) and how am I going to fill it?

Again I feel this is a trial and error sort of thing and mistakes will be made along the way to finding yourself again. One of my biggest problems because of my overwhelming fear of failure is overdoing things and going big instead of taking the necessary baby steps. I lost so much confidence and doing things on my own can be very overwhelming!!!! I have battled with extreme loneliness as well as all the other things and I always said that loneliness would kill me way before anything else did. But in order to challenge this loneliness and build my confidence I am once again going out and doing things - researching new interests and actually getting the courage to go especially when I am on my own. Try anything yoga, cooking, knitting, book clubs, charity work, anything that you might be interested in. I did this yesterday and challenged myself with taking a class and putting myself out there and it was the most EMPOWERING thing ever! I was very proud of myself and I really felt on top of the world and strong. I was very nervous of course but I was able to challenge my fear and go out there and do something I have always wanted to do! And bit by bit I am trying to find myself again. It will take a long time I have no doubt, but anything worth something takes a long time.

My dog Hope and I will be participating in the NEDA walk this weekend and are both very excited!!!!

Always have HOPE and constantly strive for FREEDOM - it is sooo worth it. My thoughts and prayers are with you all
Take care of you!