Hi! It was my birthday last Tuesday, so I’m asking for a gift that is free and easy. If you’ve enjoyed any of these newsletters, consider sharing with a friend, your coworker, maybe a Hinge date. If you’re not enjoying these newsletters, don’t give up on me—tell me what I can do better.
I’ve been trying to recover from an eating disorder for over a year now, and I have this frequent thought that I should be more recovered than I am. I’ve made a lot of progress, but I can’t seem to go all in.
I thought I was going all in on recovery when I willingly went to treatment. I thought I was all in when I weight restored, quit running, started eating meat, donated all the clothes that would never fit me again, and got my period back. I’ve made so many behavioral changes that I didn’t want to make; the work is hard, and I am doing it, but I sure as hell feel sorry for myself.
There’s a certain amount of recovery that feels like being punished. Even though all my providers have my best interests in mind and even though my rational self wants to take their advice, so much gets taken away in the name of getting better. And because of those sacrifices, I often view recovery as a destination: I’m doing all these things I hate doing right now in order to get to this place that is shiny and happy and it’s called Being Recovered. That’s where and when my life will start.
The reality is that recovery is not the destination, but the work itself.
As someone whose identity is still inextricably tied to being a runner, I see an obvious parallel between recovery and running. When I’m training for a specific race, there’s a clear end goal: something I want to accomplish. But a race result is such a small snapshot. It rarely represents the hoped-for goal, and even if it does, even if I perform better than I dreamed, a single result cannot convey what it took to get there.
For this reason, I’ve never loved racing. To me, running is about the labor itself. Committing to the process. Getting out the door when I don’t want to, and then remembering why I do it anyway. Throwing effort at something that may never materialize. Doing the work because I believe in the work.
I told this to my therapist when she asked about my running philosophy. And then she drew a parallel between two theoretical runners who follow the exact same training plan with hopes of running the same race, but with different mindsets.
When it’s pouring from the heavens and the first runner goes out the door, she thinks: “Yeah it sucks to be out here, but this is kinda badass.” She’s proud of herself; she believes in the process despite (or rather especially because of) the bad weather. The second runner departs from her apartment in the same downpour, but can’t stand the session even though she wants to run fast in her race months down the line. She’s thinking, “I hate every step of this miserable run. I want to be anywhere but here.” Each one finishes the run with radically different experiences.
I usually don’t resonate with thought experiments like this, but for once I found it helpful. I have no trouble approaching running from the first angle—embracing the work itself, living for the process—but it’s so hard for me to adopt this perspective with respect to recovery. I’m stuck in the second mindset. I’m thinking, “Everything about this sucks, and I’m going to keep going, but I’m going to be unhappy about it.”
Sometimes I still operate under the illusion that behavioral changes alone will make me whole. Make me well. Fix me. Behavior is part of it, for sure—out of mental illnesses, anorexia has the highest mortality rate, often due to associated physical health complications like heart problems, sometimes suicide, so of course behavioral changes matter—but an eating disorder is a mental illness, and what I really need at this moment is the belief that this work is worth doing. That’s what keeps someone from relapsing. And that’s the piece I’m missing: a mindset shift.
My therapist and I talk a fair amount about how far to go in recovery. Sometimes I feel “recovered enough.” I’m medically stable. I take in enough food to make sure my brain is never dipping into a dangerous caloric deficit. I meet with my practitioners every week, usually over zoom, but sometimes in person. “No one is making you do this. You don’t have to be here,” my therapist reminds me when I complain and say I’m ready to be done with this part of my life.
But then she continues, “Most people never fully recover. Most people stop where you are. Full recovery is very elite.” It’s something I want, but it’s so intangible that it’s hard to know what it even is. And harder still to go all in when I don’t know what’s on the other side.
But last Thursday she said, “You’re already running in the rain, Kate.”
I’m doing all the work anyway. So now I’m trying a little experiment of perspective shift. I say things to myself like:
“Wow it’s so fucking badass that I am eating this turkey sandwich and chips right now.”
“I am a recovery queen for not going on a run today even though I really want to.”
“Hell yeah I’m going to eat this whole goddamn banana. Watch me.”
“What a seriously baller move to prioritize my mental health above everything else.”
I feel fully ridiculous reciting these dorky little affirmations I’ve devised. And there’s no external validation of the actions they represent; there’s no glory in eating the banana—there’s rarely glory (or even acknowledgement) in recovering from any mental illness—and that’s precisely why it’s so important to eat the goddamn banana and believe in eating it. Because if there’s any other reward besides the internal knowledge that I am investing in a better life for myself, then I’m not convinced I’m recovering for the right reasons, or recovering at all.
After all, I’m already in the rain.
I’ll be back with one more newsletter in two weeks for the end of 2021. In the meantime, you can always check out older posts (The Emotions Wheel and Shattered were my faves of the year).