Awareness

I'm reading a book about awareness. I can see how my eating disorder keeps me unaware. It masks feelings and thoughts. The book talks about being aware of my feelings and thoughts and not letting them define who I am but acknowledging them and understanding them.

I have so many feelings that I try to hide because I think they're wrong or something. I feel sad sometimes and I've been taught that sadness is not an acceptable feeling. The truth is it is acceptable to feel sad. My judgement of feelings isn't mine at all. It is the people around me who have judged sadness or other feelings to be unacceptable and I have adopted their beliefs. I have to wake up and be aware of what I think and decipher what I think from what others think. I am not them and they are not me and that is okay.

The eating disorder is not me. It's simply a set of behaviors that I practice which are harmful to me. I am not an eating disorder. I am not depression. I get depressed at times, but it's not who I am. Depression is just a feeling that may prevail for a time but it will eventually pass. It will not pass if I give it the power to survive by identifying myself as depressed. If that makes any sense.

It's interesting to think about myself as something other than a set of labels. I have always thought of myself in relation to labels that I have given myself and labels that others have given me. I think that if I change the labels I'll be different. I'll be a better person and I'll be happy, but the truth is as long I as I allow labels to dictate my life I will be imprisoned and unhappy.

Food is not bad. It's just food. I've associated labels and feelings with food which are untrue. This doesn't mean that it's easy to overcome the labels and feelings. It doesn't mean that I'm suddenly going to be able to eat whatever I want without feeling sad or guilty or upset. I will feel these things, but if I acknowledge that these are just feelings and they aren't reality, maybe I can get a little closer to being free from the eating disorder thinking.

I want to stop using behaviors and I'm going to ask my mom to help me. I need someone to keep me accountable. At first I'm going to ask her to help me with blood sugars and then if that goes well I'll ask her if she would be able to handle more. All I know is that I can't dig myself out of this rut on my own.

Well, here's to now,

Laina