Reuniting Mental and Physical Health | Recovery and Letting Go
October is such a cathartic month.
I feel as though I am shedding my skin and becoming a new and vulnerable person, learning both how to be as I expose myself, but also finding out how to protect myself in my vulnerability. It’s a very strange time of holding on and letting go, which is how I thought of inspiration for this blog post.
When it comes to anorexia, or any mental illness for that matter, your mental and physical health become detached. As your mental health becomes corrupted by the illness and the terrible thoughts it feeds you, so your body tries to keep you strong enough to carry on. That is why your tummy still rumbles and you still feel hunger when you starve yourself in an eating disorder: Your mind may be plaguing you that something terrible will happen to you if you eat, but your body still asks you to eat. The two are out of sync, and the main aim in recovery is to get them to work back together again.
My mental health is slow to catch up with my physical health because something inside me may still be holding on to Ana. Something in me is scared of letting her go. You may ask why I struggle to say goodbye to the entity that was starving me to death: You have to remember that she was there for me when I had no one else to turn to. She listened to my cries and reassured me that everything would be okay. She parented me, set rules for me, and gave me a sense of control and routine when all I wanted to do was fall apart.
Yes, she was caring. She cared a lot.
But not for me. No, not at all.
All those rules, routine, and starvation days were not for my benefit.
They were for hers.
I like to think of it that she feeds off of living souls. She consumes energy and treats people as disposable to her. There is no light inside her. Ana is only darkness and evil. She is not healthy for me and will not stop until she has taken everything from me. She never has or will care about me, and I am neither obliged nor expected to entertain her just because she cries outside my door every morning and night.
People tell me I have a strong mind and will, but I often don’t know how true that is. I do find myself letting Ana back in sometimes. I talk to her. I listen to her. I let her sleep in my bed and sit at my table. She haunts me everyday. She lingers in the corners I forget to close off. She leaves me reminders of her in my bedroom. And all I want is for her to stop, however scary it is to think of losing her. That’s where the conflict between my physical body and psychological mind comes in. They are in two different worlds. I always need to work to reunite them.
At other times, it’s easier for me to reject her, to slam the door in her face. In some of my recovery days I find it easier to listen to hunger cues and my authentic kind voice. She tries to call me back to her, but my physical body rejects her. Those are the moments when I feel so immensely empowered in recovery: When I can listen to myself and be brave enough to ignore her. In these moments, my mind and body are in sync, working together to save me. Without sounding like a total dork, how beautiful is that?
Nothing can replace that feeling of obliterating your self-deprecating thoughts that render you immobile and terrified for your life. That is the power of the union between the mind and the body. The psychical self and the physical self working together produce a power strong enough to keep us brave and empowered enough to destroy anything standing in the way of our progress and journeys to success.
I suppose it is the same as in life the way we abandon different phases and move on to new ones. I found it very difficult to say goodbye to primary school and move forward into high school. I’ve also found it difficult to let go of people, even if they were toxic to me and my growth. I’ve always believed in second chances and have ended up being hurt more. That’s another instance of where my psychological self and physical self were in conflict: My body knew that I could not stand to be around such energy, but my mind wanted me to stay with them. Any situation in my life where I’ve had to navigate the paths between holding on and letting go. I don’t know how much better I’m getting at it, but everyday I am trying harder to put my mind and body back in conversation with each other. Whether that means writing down what I’m feeling and then interrogating how to solve the incongruous and troublesome feelings, or speaking to someone I know to balance out my biases thinking.
Whether it be for your mental health or for the sanctity of your future, the union between your physical self and psychological self needs to be strong and genuine. I am working on this connection everyday in recovery. I believe it is the only way to defeat Ana.
My mental health is slow to catch up with my physical health because something inside me may still be holding on to Ana. Something in me is scared of letting her go. You may ask why I struggle to say goodbye to the entity that was starving me to death: You have to remember that she was there for me when I had no one else to turn to. She listened to my cries and reassured me that everything would be okay. She parented me, set rules for me, and gave me a sense of control and routine when all I wanted to do was fall apart.
Yes, she was caring. She cared a lot.
But not for me. No, not at all.
All those rules, routine, and starvation days were not for my benefit.
They were for hers.
I like to think of it that she feeds off of living souls. She consumes energy and treats people as disposable to her. There is no light inside her. Ana is only darkness and evil. She is not healthy for me and will not stop until she has taken everything from me. She never has or will care about me, and I am neither obliged nor expected to entertain her just because she cries outside my door every morning and night.
People tell me I have a strong mind and will, but I often don’t know how true that is. I do find myself letting Ana back in sometimes. I talk to her. I listen to her. I let her sleep in my bed and sit at my table. She haunts me everyday. She lingers in the corners I forget to close off. She leaves me reminders of her in my bedroom. And all I want is for her to stop, however scary it is to think of losing her. That’s where the conflict between my physical body and psychological mind comes in. They are in two different worlds. I always need to work to reunite them.
At other times, it’s easier for me to reject her, to slam the door in her face. In some of my recovery days I find it easier to listen to hunger cues and my authentic kind voice. She tries to call me back to her, but my physical body rejects her. Those are the moments when I feel so immensely empowered in recovery: When I can listen to myself and be brave enough to ignore her. In these moments, my mind and body are in sync, working together to save me. Without sounding like a total dork, how beautiful is that?
Nothing can replace that feeling of obliterating your self-deprecating thoughts that render you immobile and terrified for your life. That is the power of the union between the mind and the body. The psychical self and the physical self working together produce a power strong enough to keep us brave and empowered enough to destroy anything standing in the way of our progress and journeys to success.
I suppose it is the same as in life the way we abandon different phases and move on to new ones. I found it very difficult to say goodbye to primary school and move forward into high school. I’ve also found it difficult to let go of people, even if they were toxic to me and my growth. I’ve always believed in second chances and have ended up being hurt more. That’s another instance of where my psychological self and physical self were in conflict: My body knew that I could not stand to be around such energy, but my mind wanted me to stay with them. Any situation in my life where I’ve had to navigate the paths between holding on and letting go. I don’t know how much better I’m getting at it, but everyday I am trying harder to put my mind and body back in conversation with each other. Whether that means writing down what I’m feeling and then interrogating how to solve the incongruous and troublesome feelings, or speaking to someone I know to balance out my biases thinking.
Whether it be for your mental health or for the sanctity of your future, the union between your physical self and psychological self needs to be strong and genuine. I am working on this connection everyday in recovery. I believe it is the only way to defeat Ana.
