QUESTION: I read about your recovery after coming across it on Andrea Roe's website. I was in awe and inspired. You are an incredibly courageous woman to fight these illnesses and recover. I am a 27-year-old woman, and I am losing the will to live. I desperately want to be well, but have been so sucked in by bulimia, anxiety and depression. I have realized that it has to come from me, that no one else can change me. I need to do the changing. But I don't have the strength. I am so low and the anxiety is so intense when I am not binging. I am no longer leaving the house. Is there anything you can suggest? Although I have suicidal thoughts, my desire to be well is stronger than those thoughts. I don't want to give up on life but I don't think I have what it takes to live.

ANSWER: Okay, first things first. It is obvious to me from reading your letter that you DO think you have what it takes to live! If you didn’t think you had it in you, you wouldn’t still be reaching out for help!

Which simply proves my assertion that you do have the strength to keep fighting. Understand this - your strength comes from the strength of your desire. The more you want something, the more that desire will drive you towards the very thing you are wanting so badly. The key here is to want to be well MORE than you want to engage in your eating disordered behaviors. This is what I call a ‘key to life’. My music was a ‘key to life’ for me – it represented the loss my eating disorder had inflicted on me, and I was determined to get it back. When my anorexia injured my health to the point where I could no longer play, write and sing music, I got MAD. I got busy getting EVEN with my eating disorder by taking my life back! It is a very adult choice – to consciously realize that you must choose EITHER … OR. You cannot have BOTH. You may need to grieve – deeply – for what you will necessarily lose in leaving your eating disorder behind, before you can feel truly free or ready to let it go in favor of something you have decided is better and more desirable for you. If you need to grieve the loss, then do so. Do not hold back, because your unexpressed grief will hold you back until you let it out, and let it go.

Now, not knowing much about your medical situation, especially in regards to the depression and anxiety you mention, I do strongly encourage you to involve your medical team to determine whether you might need medication to help you control the effects of both. It may be possible that the eating disordered behaviors have caused nutritional, hormonal and emotional imbalances that are keeping you from being able to fully engage in recovery. If this is the case, the deck is stacked against you right now – from the inside out. I encourage you to seek help if you need it.

Next, it is time to leave the house. Immediately. Starting now – the moment you finish reading my letter! I have never wavered from my belief that Relationships Replace Eating Disorders. Period, the End. Loneliness and isolation are the true killers in the battle against eating disorders. You simply MUST have contact – daily – with other human beings, if you want to survive and overcome your eating disorder. You need relationships with human beings to replace your relationship with your eating disorder. I know of absolutely no one who has recovered from an eating disorder in isolation. Not a single one of us is that strong. Get yourself out of the house and into relationships with others – strong others who can inject a voice of reason, hope and courage into the darkness in your mind. Lean on their strength as you build up your own.

Next, you must train yourself to take the considerable effort, discipline and dedication you have poured into your eating disorder and turn it towards RECOVERING from your eating disorder. You are suffering from a severe case of what I call ‘misdirected potential’ right now. We all go through it on our way to recovery. When you take all that effort and discipline you have been exerting to maintain your disordered eating lifestyle and turn it towards getting BETTER, you will discover that you have the exact combination of intelligence, aptitude and perseverance to recover from your eating disorder. You CAN replace the binging with other relationships and activities. You CAN transform the anxiety and depression into more meaningful emotional expression. Will it be easy? Absolutely not. But it will not be any harder than the daily torture of enduring life with an eating disorder. This much I can promise you.

You may feel low and weak right now. You are probably exhausted – in every way that a human being can be. But you are NOT too low, too weak, too exhausted, to FIGHT. So get up, get out of the house, call your doctor and explain what is going on, ask for help. Go talk to another person – several persons. Join a community group. Volunteer. Find one nice thing you can do for yourself every day. Then find one nice thing you can do for someone you know – or someone you don’t know – as well. Challenge yourself to wake up each day and think one nice thought about yourself – BEFORE you allow your mind to think anything else. Then challenge yourself to think one nice thought about yourself at the start of every HOUR. Before binging, ask yourself WHY you want to binge. What are you stuffing down? What are you covering up? What are you filling up? What are you running from? What are you running to? Decode your urges to practice your disordered eating behaviors, and then challenge your intelligent, active mind to think of OTHER WAYS to fill those needs, voids, or unfulfilled desires.

If you want it badly enough, you too can experience sustained recovery – in time, and with daily, sustained self-effort. I have absolutely no doubt of this. Feel free to write again and share how you are doing.

Warmly,

Shannon

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