ENDING Distorted or Bad Thoughts

Distorted thoughts can sometimes be harder to eliminate than actual behaviors. This week, I answer the question "How do you let go of them when you are already behavior free, at a healthy weight but your negative thoughts and fears are still in your mind?" In this video, I detail a 3 step process for ending distorted or negative thoughts. 

Stopping Negative Thoughts

This week, I discuss some interesting tools and answer a question.

The Age Old Question

People have been asking me lately: "Are the thoughts really gone?" And the answer is: "Yes!" But what does a one-word answer really do for someone who wants to know the details of the essence of it all? So today, I'm going to direct you to a post of mine from one year ago. If you've read it before, read it again. Understand my main point: being "recovered" isn't about always being happy 100% of the time—it's about knowing what to do when you're not.

The old post, called Are the Thoughts Really Gone? can be found here.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Share your strengths, not your weaknesses. Really ponder that statement for a moment. Honestly, it's a pretty difficult statement to put into practice. We all inevitably show our weaknesses on a daily basis. We are not always giving the best of ourselves. We are raw and we are flawed.

But--if your strengths outshine and outweigh your weaknesses...well, that's something. Quality, my friends, not quantity.

And so...are your strengths outshining and outweighing your weaknesses? Are you actively trying to achieve that?

Then well done!

A Common Bond

A friend recently informed me she had been reading this blog and that it really struck a chord with her. She hadn’t known about it and stumbled upon it randomly. She told me she read it avidly, every single post. She worried it was a violation of privacy, but I assured her it was a public site for a reason and I had no intention of hiding my battle with anorexia or my recovery from it.

I was extremely touched by her letter to me and very glad my blog had meant something to her, though she did not suffer from an eating disorder herself. She told me she had had some issues with food and body as well, and mentioned that she’d like to share her experiences with me. I can’t wait to have lunch with her and really talk.

It’s not that this friend didn’t know I had an eating disorder. She most certainly did. She just didn’t know I was writing about it, and then was unsure if I wanted her to find out that I was. Truth is, I want it out there. I feel it’s important. And a lot of people read it. And that’s okay with me. I have no problem talking to people about my past because it is a part of me and I have come a long way.

The topic of my eating disorder does not upset me. I examine my place in recovery every day in some form or another and I’m not afraid to talk about it, especially with people who want to understand. Really, a woman’s relationship with food is a more common thread between us all than we might realize. There are lots of different ways people use food, lots of different ways they cope, and lots of different ways they get healthy. I think it’s important to notice this.

My friend told me that she had her own journey to discover who she is and who she is with food. I like that she told me that. I feel closer to her just knowing she can relate to this blog. My friend also mentioned that she was worried about eating in front of me or about openly displaying her own habits she uses to keep herself healthy. As I told her, people don’t have to worry about eating in front of me or about the habits they use to keep themselves healthy. I have learned to not be triggered by these things. I will always be aware of eating disordered issues, but I can truthfully say that I consider myself recovered and I’m okay now. I would not have started this blog in the first place if I didn’t think I was strong enough to be someone who could help others. I’m great now! Happy, healthy, and very recovery-oriented. It doesn’t rule my life in the least, so to anyone who ever worried—I would say please don’t feel self-conscious about eating with me.

There was a time when I would have been uncomfortable to even go out to eat with any of my friends. That was a couple years ago now. For the last almost two years I’ve been actively recovering, gaining weight, staying healthy and fit at the same time, and working on learning about myself and my eating disorder. I’ve helped myself mentally. I’ve learned to live in the world at last.

In the letter my friend wrote me, she asked about my experience being mistreated by girls in middle school. And she had questions about the impact of my eating disorder on our own friendship. I tried to answer her as best I could. It’s often hard to come up with definitive answers in respect to eating disorders. At least that’s been my experience.

She was familiar with my middle school "mean girls" scenario. It messed me up for years even though I didn’t outwardly dwell on it much. I know she remembers. I didn’t realize how eating disordered this incident made me until later. It was definitely a weird kind of coping mechanism. The friend I’m speaking of was a great friend to me during that time and thankfully helped me cope in healthy ways along with my unhealthy ones.

I tried to get across to my friend that in the future, I’d be honored to be the listener if she wants to talk to me about her relationship with food. I think we can both understand each other well.

“I want to learn more than I already thought I knew,” she wrote to me. “ It's important as a woman and a future teacher, and as your friend.”

As I said to her, I think that’s wonderful. I feel that way too. It’s definitely a continuing goal of mine. And I so appreciate her saying it to me. It means so much and I’ve thought about that statement a lot since she wrote it to me a few weeks ago.

So, in closing, to my friend, I’d like to say: Thank you.

Here’s to honesty and sisterhood.

You Are A Beautiful Flower

Sounds like bullshit, I know...but hear me out.

Today I was looking at a flower and thinking. I was thinking about the flower in reference to self-destructive behavior and/or thought.

Think of yourself as a flower. And every time you think or say something bad about yourself--or do something bad or negative to yourself--you are ripping a petal off. If you do it enough, pretty soon you'll have no petals left...and you'll be just a stem with nothing left...or worse yet, you will die.

I know that I want to be a beautiful flower, not a dying stem. What about you?




(c) Art by Arielle Lee Becker

The Desire to Be Thin is Weighing Heavily Upon Us

I guess it's even come to this now: '"Diabulimics' shun insulin to get thin"

It's terrible--this desire to be thin; I always thought it was possible that things would become this bad, but it still makes me sad to read this article.

What are your thoughts about it?

Arielle

Extra Light.

Extra light in the room, pressure inside me. I think I need to break. Or is it ‘break out’? Hide and seek with my feelings has become a redundant game and I can’t think of new rules anymore. Sometimes sleepy-eyed thoughts find their way into my head like young children that need to be nurtured. Rhythmic chants and piles of dreams fill me with a feeling I find difficult—and difficult to explain. Senses fail, but one. Sight remains to streak my mind with visions needing words and sounds and smells and touch and taste. Tempting trances overtake me; beauty longs to hold my hand. Tricks pretend and dreams unfold—reality escapes me. Where have I gone? A thousand tiny lights shine on me and inside me, and pretty soon I’m floating in a luminous sky. Overcome and overpowered, I stretch and reach and suddenly shoot forth, my fingertips sending me away away away—and further…until I skid to a stop in front of me…and leap inside.

(c) Arielle Lee Becker 2004

Please send me something for Tell Your Tale Tuesday. I've been getting so many nice emails for Tell Your Tale Tuesdays, but none yet for this week's! And tomorrow is Tuesday! Have a great week everyone.

Arielle

"What do I need?"

Sometimes in life, we need a few moments just to breathe and forget about all that is surrounding us. We need to relieve ourselves of the pain and the discomfort and the bad feelings. Sometimes we need to close our eyes and drift into our own minds. We need to stop worrying about everything out there that is bringing us down, making us anxious, filling up our space. Sometimes we need to ask ourselves what we need. It's an important question. One that shouldn't be overlooked.

So ask yourself, right now, "What do I need?"

Close your eyes, breathe deeply. Wait. Breathe again. Feel the air. Feel yourself. And ask yourself. "What do I need?"

Then help yourself give it to you.

Arielle

Possible

I hope you all enjoyed the first ever Tell Your Tale Tuesday yesterday. I know I did. I found it very empowering and inspiring in such a simple way--which is so wonderful.

Here is something I wrote yesterday. I feel very strongly about it so I thought I'd share it with you. Just consider it a...mantra, of sorts. A declaration. A personal proclamation to take to heart.

Recovery is possible.
It's not a guarantee. It's a possibility. It's not simple. It is difficult and sometimes seems impossible. It's not a one-step process. It's a multi-step process complete with twists and turns and bending roads...and roads you didn't even know were there. It's not the same for everyone. It's not always a happy process. It's not always a sad process. It IS empowering. It's not about pleasing other people. It is not about them. It's about YOU. It's not about perfection. It IS about emotion. It IS about honesty. It IS about self-discovery and self-affirmation. It's not about what you don't have. It's about using what you've got. It's not about hiding. It's about finding and displaying. It's not a quick-fix. It's a lifelong plan set into motion by truth and nurturing and self-love. It's not about external factors or environment. It IS about what's within. It is not crazy. It IS real.
Recovery is possible.

When I first read this over last night, I really felt every word. When I re-read it over again this morning I felt every word even more. I think re-reading this "mantra" is a good way to keep things in perspective.

Maybe I should post this permanently on the site somewhere...

Have a great Halloween, everyone. You are all constantly in my thoughts.

Arielle

Fight the Good Fight

I wrote this about 2 years ago. It's what I call "stream of consciousness" prose poetry. I write a lot of it and it just flows. It seemed a fitting thing to post today and here's why:

I had lunch at a large Mexican restaurant today with co-workers. When I went to the Ladies' Room, I decided to leave a note in one of the bathroom stalls that read, "Beauty is not a state of body. It's a state of mind. Love your body," with webiteback.com's web address at the bottom. I keep a little package of post-it notes in my handbag in case I am ever out somewhere I'd like to leave a positive note for someone else to find. There was a party of 60 (yes, 60) teenagers in the restaurant and as I was leaving the Ladies' Room a whole mob of teenage girls went in. I know one of them (or several of them) found my note and it made me happy. Everyone--eating disordered or not--needs a little positive reinforcement every now and then.

But anyway, here's Fight the Good Fight.

Fight the good fight, know the wrong right, fill the void and see the light. Here I go, again and new, fresh, awake, alive and true. Passing by the life I know and focusing on where to go, for I will follow where I’m needed—paths are taken, prayers are heeded. Brain’s mad switch is flicked off…on…I’m not here but I’m not gone... jittery and full of life, I need to live before I die. I need to find the reasons why and cry and sigh and say I tried. Dipped inside a vat of pain, I know I gain when I remain a seer of the songs of old and preacher of the words I hold. Along the sky I write my voice, in ink of breath…a thought, a choice. And still I’m waiting...day’s sad end has seen me weep but still I bend. My words I send to you and yours, alone I smile as my heart soars. I know it pours. Water? Blood? My soul? My life? It pours, now cut through like a knife. And still I say, away away, fight the good fight, know the wrong right, fill the void and see the light. Flickers of the sky’s dark space—it really makes you know your place—and will erase the pain you felt when all those others cruelly dealt their blows to you and all your soul, just breaking you, and you were whole, but pieces looked about to fall and so we’ll catch them, one and all. The sky knows best, it does not rest, and I protest…never. Fight the good fight, know the wrong right, fill the void and see the light.

(c) Arielle Lee Becker 2005

***

I hope you are all having a good week (and if you're not, I hope it gets better), and don't forget about Tell Your Tale Tuesdays.

Arielle

Validation

Earlier this week, I responded to a post at Survivors' Club. It got me thinking.

The post was about validation, needing it, and how to cope. Many people with eating disorders seek validation from others. It's as though their own opinions aren't valid enough. We seek to be what we think will bring us praise from others. Many of us do great things, think "hey I did a pretty good job," then automatically think our own thoughts of validation are not good enough. Accomplishing things can be tough when you constantly look for validation from others. Remember this: It matters most what YOU think and how YOU feel.

But in any case, I came up with a pretty decent way of coping. It's at least worth a shot; it may not work for everyone, but it's certainly a new spin on positive reinforcement. I work through this issue of seeking validation often, and I've discovered something that is helpful. No matter how well I think I have done at something, no matter how much I think I have accomplished, or no matter how much I know that my accomplishment is a good one, I continually seek validation from others. I'm a people-pleaser. I want to be the best. I'm a perfectionist. I know a lot of us are.

So here it is. My little thought that's turned into more...

I know it might sound completely strange, but try to think of yourself as multiple people for a few minutes each day or when you have accomplished something and are seeking validation. Write down your "selves" if it helps. (You will see them more clearly and won't forget anyone!) For example, I would have these:

Me the Writer
Me the Woman
Me the Caseworker
Me the Fiancee
Me the Daughter
Me the Sister
Me the Friend
Me the Artist
Etc.

Figure out all the things you are--and just make them separate selves for a moment. See them all in their own light. Let them separate and become more than one entity. Then see how each of them would react to your current achievement or accomplishment. What would Me the Writer think? What would Me the Daughter think? Etc. It will be (and feel) like validation from others, but really it will be validation from yourself. And trust me, YOU are the essence of any of your own accomplishments, so it's only natural and proper that your own opinion matter most.

This trick is different than just thinking, "Well, I think I did okay/pretty good," since we all know the "I" doesn't always seem like enough validation. So, by making the "I" multiple people, you can feel better in certain cases. At the very least, it seems like a good exercise to practice now and then...and by doing so you will start to feel more and more appreciative and accepting of your own thoughts and opinions. Self-validation, my friends! Easier said than done, I know...

So, try it. You never know what a good start it might be.

Best of luck as always!

Arielle