In eating disorder recovery, therapy, and grief, we often talk about “using your tools.” Using your (healthy) coping mechanisms is so helpful! Support groups, journaling, expressive arts therapy, utilizing a food plan, hydrating, sleep hygiene, meditation, medication, can all be such helpful tools in your eating disorder recovery and/or grief process! However, sometimes we think that using these tools means we will arrive somewhere, at a destination endpoint, with no more discomfort. That is a myth. Here are some myths about recovery and grief coping tools I’d like to clear up.
1) If you use your tools, you won’t have uncomfortable feelings.
Ummmm…No. If you use your tools, you are likely to have even more uncomfortable feelings. Because if you are using your tools, you are not stuffing or avoiding your feelings with food, disordered eating, or other maladaptive behaviors (overexercising, drinking, compulsive shopping, binge watching Netflix…so many choices). If you are using your tools, however, you WILL be able to travel through the feelings a bit more gracefully. Using your tools is like traveling through turbulence. You use your navigation panel and keep flying through. Not using your tools is saying “This is too hard. I give up.” And then letting the plane crash.
Using your tools allows anger to just be anger, sadness to just be sadness, fear to just be fear. You don’t let the feelings stop you from moving through your life. And you don’t let your overdeveloped (for many of us) critic tell you means things like:
“You’re an angry person. Angry women are __________s. (You know the word. It starts with a B. Reclaim it).”
“You’re a sad person. Sad people are depressed, not fun, and stay in bed eating junk food all day.”
Or
“Stop! Fear is scary!” (Well, duh. It’s fear!)
Instead, using your tools allows you to move with and through the feelings. Instead of F*ck Everything And Run, fear becomes Face Everything And Recover. (Or False Evidence Appearing Real). You may be asking what ARE these tools that help me move through the feelings? We’ll get there. But first let me address another myth.
2) You can just use one tool, and that will be enough.
Nope. Hammers are essential for home building. But if you don’t have any nails, they become useless. Similarly, if you are just using one of your tools in recovery, or in traveling with grief, you are likely to get stuck. If you are ONLY going to therapy, or a grief support group, or 12 step meetings, or eating according to your food plan, or doing yoga, or journaling, or making art, or meditating, or taking medication, then you will ONLY progress as far as that tool will help.
Important side note: As a psychologist, coach and expressive-arts-ing human, I am a fan of medication. I do NOT prescribe or manage medication as a psychologist. However, I mention being a fan because have seen adding antidepressant or antianxiety medication be a gamechanger for many of my clients who believed “if I just do enough yoga, I won’t ever binge, have panic attacks, or ruminate incessantly again.” There is such a stigma – still- around this tool! If you need glasses, you do not expect yourself to just be able to make yourself see better. You would get glasses. There wouldn’t be anything morally inferior about you as a human. You would simply get the right tool for you to be able to see.
BTW I’m not saying don’t do yoga. Yoga is amazing! Yoga can help with managing depression and anxiety as well! Use that tool as well as medication if you need it. Just don’t let your overdeveloped shame-brain tell you that you “shouldn’t” need medication. Or that you’re “bad” or “broken” or “inadequate” if you do. No. Just, no. Don’t listen to that voice.
So. Use all the tools! Use all the tools you have and try new ones! Experiment. Don’t do the “contempt prior to investigation” thing. TRY. Don’t give up if it feels hard. It’s supposed to feel challenging, at first, especially if it is a tool that is new for you.
Last, but not least, it IS ok to lean on different tools more heavily at different times on your grief or recovery journey. Don’t believe the myth that:
3) I will only need this tool for this period time and then I should be done with it.
In the beginning or more acute phases of your recovery or grief journey (or later on- that’s ok, too!), you may need to focus on HALT: don’t get too Hungry Angry Lonely or Tired. You may need to keep it simple and focus on getting 3 meals and 3 optional snacks in every day. That is enough. In early recovery, and early grief, that is challenging. Eat your breakfast. Eat lunch. Eat dinner. Hydrate. You may need to come back to this (or another) tool later in your recovery or grief journey. That doesn’t mean you’ve fallen backwards. And it doesn’t mean you’re not moving forward.
Twenty-five years ago, in the beginning of my eating disorder recovery, I had to focus on drinking water. And eating breakfast. I tended to skip breakfast and not drink water. I just wanted to pray my way through difficulty- without having to fill the water bottle. Guess what I struggled with in my early grief journey? Yep. Eating breakfast and hydrating. And guess what one of my intentions is for 2022? Drink water.
I know. It’s not sexy. I have rainbow and unicorn intentions as well. And I would usually prefer to use the glittery art supply tool more than the fill-your-water-bottle tool. I want all the sparkly miracles! I want them for you, too! You can have them! We can have them! We just have to make sure to include the nails and the screwdrivers as well as the hammer. Whatever tools come easy to you, celebrate that! Acknowledge you are using that tool! Go you! Yay you! Then add the one that you’d rather not have to make the effort to try. It will be more uncomfortable at first. Expect that. Make it fun if you can. You can do this.
Here’s my 2022 water bottle.
Please tell your critic this message from my Rainbow-Unicorn:
