The Truth about Truths: Embracing and Navigating Contradiction in and Beyond Recovery
Something I learned in therapy was that two things can be true at the same time. It can be that the way someone else views something may completely contradict the way you see it, but ultimately both views are true because both of you are experiencing it. This two truths concept also applies to thoughts and beliefs we host within ourselves.
A lot of the therapy I underwent for my eating disorder recovery focused on identifying and embracing these kinds of insistent contradictions.
For example, one truth I held steadfastly was, “I don’t want an eating disorder.” And another equally real truth I had was “I am scared to give up my eating disorder.”
The key to being able to navigate both truths is to embrace them both— NOT set them up in conflict to one another. The first step is as simple and as subtle as word choice when speaking or even thinking about them.
We tend to use “but” when comparing two things that seem to contradict one another:
“I don’t want an eating disorder BUT I am scared to give it up.”
However, something changes when you replace that “but” for “and”:
“I don’t want an eating disorder, AND I am afraid to give it up.”
The latter validates both perceptions but does NOT so planitively put one above the other.
“But” infers that the fear is stronger than the will to live without an ED. “And” allows the possibility to be afraid, but do it anyways.
There is a story about a warrior and his meeting with fear, taught by Pema Chodron. The ultimate revelation the young warrior comes away with from this meeting is that bravery is NOT the absence of fear; It is feeling the fear, BELIEVING it, with every cell in your body, and facing it anyways.
It is not: “I want to, BUT I am afraid.” It is: “I want to, AND I am afraid.”
Unlike the former, which almost immediately dismisses any action, the latter births the opportunity for both truths to coexist, and for the fear to be conquered.
I am not currently in therapy, and I’m not really “recovering” anymore, but I am still living in this place of navigating two truths.
A big one right now that I hold is: “I am so grateful to have made it this far in my recovery, AND I am sometimes nostalgic for the identity my eating disorder gave me.”
Another is: “I am proud of my body, and I love being healthy AND I often think I would be happier if I lost weight.”
Sometimes these truths are even more specific to a moment. Take this past week for example, when I took a spontaneous trip to a family cottage for some r&r by the lake. I was having repeating thoughts of “I really want to get a good sweat from a workout AND I want to relax and do nothing.”
And on a similar train: “I feel guilty and not hungry for dinner from eating so many appetizers on the dock AND I am still looking forward to eating more at dinner.”
It’s hard, honestly, navigating these two often equally compelling voices. Ultimately, the healthier one always drowns out the one I know instinctively is rooted in my ED neural pathways. That’s what makes it uncomfortable. Continuing to eat, and rest, and attempt to feel happy and at ease in my skin, and to NOT fixate on what I eat or how much I weigh, while simultaneously living with this feeling that I “should” be doing a lot of the things that I used to do (a lot of things that a lot of people without EDs do: opting for “healthier” options, watching what they eat, having a strict workout regime, etc.)
Sometimes, it feels like I’m driving backwards on the highway, trying to live up to the healthier truth.
Even though I am pretty good at this point at doing the right things for my mental and physical health, there are still moments when it seems like the wrong thing.
Restricting and exercise were always a quick fix for any larger stressor in my life.
Fighting with my family? Don’t eat dinner.
Feeling sad or lonely that I didn’t have plans on a friday night? Go for a run.
Realizing how lonely I am, feeling disconnected from all my friends? Try even harder to change my body, thinking if I looked the way I thought I “should” look, I would be more likable, more loveable, and regain those kinds of connections I had thwarted.
None of these quick fixes ever really fixed anything, obviously. They only led me further into my eating disorder and farther from the kind of connection and happiness I was seeking.
So I do realistically and rationally understand that attempting to change my body, or start actively controlling my food or exercise is NOT the answer to any of my concerns today. But (or and, as I should say), I still have fleeting thoughts that these behaviours will.
I’m writing this blog post right now to remind myself of this ultimate truth: two things can be totally contradictory and still coexist equally as truths. Feelings are real, and valid, but they do NOT need to dictate our actions. We can feel the fear, believe it, and face it anyways.
Hopefully this reminder might render itself useful for you too.
What are some conflicting or contrasting beliefs that you hold? How might replacing that “but” with “and” alter your perception of how to navigate them? Often the right path is the hardest one to take.
Don’t sell yourself short by opting for the road that feels easiest in the moment, but ultimately never gets you to the place you wanted to get to in the first place.
Embrace the “and.” Do the hard thing. And in the moments where you fall victim to the contradiction, have the self-compassion and grace to pick yourself back up and carry on, because life is too short to live in debt to your own regrets anyways.
Love and light,
Jae
Tis’ the Season (for being sick) — some musings about resting to return back to health
I feel like some kind of omniscient game is being played on me. Looking back on my bullet journal from last december, it turns out the very same day I came down with the covid last year, is the very same day —- December 13— that a whopper of a cold hit me this year.
For the past 3 days I’ve been coughing my lungs out, nursing a headache and a fever, and not able to do much other than sleep, eat, watch TV, and occassionally fiddle with my knitting.
Perhaps even more karmic, is that this cold hit me right after I was beginning to feel some of the inklings of my usual pre-holiday anxiety about being out of my routine, subject to more food and indugences, and less opportunities to exercise, and how that might wreak havoc on my body, and my mind. It was the fist weekend of several from now until post new years— of holiday parteis and events with family and friends, with all kinds of boozy drinks and full dessert platters and and rich hearty meals.
It was a fabulous weekend— the Friday I was at my partner’s work christmas party, where we stayed well past midnight before heading back to our hotel only to carry on the party at the bar, and then the room.
Waking up late the next day, we were just in time to pull ourselves together and make it out for my family’s big neighbourhood Chritsmas party that night, where there were even more food and drinks to be had.
Sunday, was our family’s celebration of St.Nicholas day, essentially a warm up to christmas with a table of plates being magically filled with all kinds of small treats and goodies over night. Its another lazy festive morning in pajamas, lovely and lots of fun, but once again, out of my usual food and movement routine and after a two previous days of festivities, it was starting to feel a little uncomfortable.
The nagging voice in my brain started to pipe up again. I was acutely aware of how many days- how may hours— it had been since I had gone for a long “enough” walk, done a quad draining bike ride to class, or had a training session for pole. I also found myself becoming more and more aware and anxious about my body, and how it was changing (if it was. Are my thighs closer to touching? Is my stomach bigger? My arms feel like they arer flabbier.
In reality, it had been 3 days— not long enough to make any drastic changes.
And when I did go back to doing 2 pole classes that following Monday, I felt as if my body was instantly back to the way I wanted it. Obviously, not because a coule pole classes have that kind of body sculpting power, but because I never really changed in the first place.
It was just my anorexic, compulsive brain kicking me in loud enough to believe it.
Yes, it felt good to move after that rather sedentary week. I felt like I could exhale, already planning and lookig forward to resuming my fairly active routine up until gouing head to head with christrmas.
But waking up on Tuesday with a bad chest cold and the chllls it became evident that wasnt quite the case. I had come down with the same virus that took out a number of people at a party we went to over the weekend.
I was laid up on the couch for three days. Too tired and full of phlegm to exercise or even pole— even if I wanted to.
The funny thing was, my anxiety didn’t skyrocket being sick and sedentary (again) like i expected it to. In the past, when I was severely disordered, ity would have been practically impossible for me to have layed on a couch for three days especially after a weekednd of food and festivities.
The only way I probably could ahve coped owuld have been by eating as little as I could possibly get away with, thinking my bdy relly didnt need it if I wasn’t being active. I remember sneaking in squats and jumping jacks and situps in my bedroom if I was sick for more than a single day, and even quietly lacing up my running shoes to sneak out for a run, despite a sore throat and chest cough.
It wasnt even because I wanted to. It’s because I needed to. The only thing that I was dreadinfg more than the cold air in my inflamed lungs in that moment was having to be lying down for another minute, my mind being attacked by pulsating anxiety and shame over “what I was letting happen” to my body .
Being sick this year in a way was like a breath of fresh air. For three days, I didnt sterp foot out of my house, or even my pajamas. Even after my fever broke and I was feeling a bit more energetic on the second day, I still prioritzed rest,, and enjoyed watching christmas movie after christmas movie, knititng and crafting and puzzling in the glow of the christmas tree lights. Yes, I still felt small tremors of guilt, for choosing this kind of routine even when I probably could have braved a walk around the block. But these were just ripples, not the tidal waves that used to overtake me.
I don’t know if the timing of this onslaught of sickness was pure;y coincidental, or if there was a greater universal intention behind it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the latter. The universe, or God, or consciousness, or however you might phrase it, has a way of granting you something you need, whether you want it or not. Of course I didnt need to be sick. But I needed something to break me out of the anxcious and destructive throught patterns that I was beginning to fall into again. I needed to be reminded by something with some force, that rest is sometimes neccessary, and breaking routines on occasion is more than okay.
I was also reminded of how far I’ve come, being able to actually allow myself that rest. To be able to hole up on a couch alll day with christmas movies and crafts was something I secretly craved, and yet could neverallow myself to do.
The few times I tries to enjoy a movie midafternoon, I couldnt hear the TV over the blaring voices in my head screaming at me to get up, go for a run, you have to burn some calories to deserve this.
This year, coccooned in a blanket watching Netflix at noon on a wednesday, all was quiet. And it was bliss.
Merry Almost Christmas,
Don’t forget to rest and enjoy it,
—Jae xoxo
The Post-Christmas Mind-Fuck (A Survival Guide to “New Year, New You” and other BS)
We all know it. You might be in it right now—that vacuum of time and space that exists between Christmas and New Years. That one week of the year where you don’t know what day it is, and don’t really care, when it gets to be late enough in the day that it feels counterproductive to change out of your pyjamas and christmas cookies remain a viable food group.
In all honesty, its this aftermath of Christmas that is my favourite time of the holidays. The shopping, cooking, cleaning, and wrapping have all been done, and (in none pandemic times) there are no more relatives to visit or guests to entertain.
There is literally nothing to do but revel in the wrappings of all the festivities that went down, enjoy some of the new toys or gadgets you received, and crack open that bottle of wine and box of chocolates that was under your tree.
And it’s important to enjoy this time— to truly enjoy it. Because as soon as New Years’ Eve hits, reality as we know it turns on its head. This, my friend, is the Post-Christmas Mind-Fuck
property of @cheezeburger.com
The Post- Christmas Mind-Fuck (Explained)
January First hits with the force of a a full champagne bottle, and in the blink of an eye, reality is turned on its head. Everything we have been told is right is now wrong, everything we are told to buy and eat and do we are told to avoid or undo. It is like being in a snow globe being shaken so violently that we can no longer recognize the scene within.
All the messages and ads and posts for the past month telling us to indulge, bake cookies, buy candy, eat, drink and be merry, and watch christmas movies huddled under blankets, are replaced overnight with messages about new year cleanses, detoxes, exercise regimes, and self-discipline.
Every Christmas baking recipe on Instagram is replaced with an ad for a detox tea, juice cleanse, or Keto diet trial. The influencers that were posting pictures of candy-cane rimmed eggnog and gingerbread donuts are now posting pictures of their new Gymshark clothing doing “damage control” at the gym for their “holiday guilt.”
It is enough to make you want to crawl beneath your new weighted blanket and not resurface until March. But then again that would be disregarding the revered commandment of “thou shall turn off Netflix and exercise away every ounce of chocolate consumed.”
And that is the mind-fuck.
Everything that was being toted as festive and merry and of the “season” become demonized overnight , and implying that you, dear, sweet, ignorant mortal, now have the duty-- no, the privilege, to rectify your moral wrongdoings by fixing your body.
Perhaps you have not been directly told to “fix your body”, but instead to “shed weight,” “get back on track,” “cleanse your system” or “detox your gut.”
Regardless of how it is worded, the message that bombards us every January that the most productive thing you can do this New Year is to change your body.
As someone who once subscribed to this message not just on New Years but all year round, for many years, I am writing this post to call bull sh**, and to hold your hand through this mind fuck so that you can still eat your chocolate if thats what you want to do on January 1st without feeling like a less worthy being.
So here is a survival guide to help you through the next few weeks of diet culture propaganda headed your way..
The Christmas Mind-Fuck Survival Guide
Arm yourself with knowledge
“New Year New You” and the messages about diet and weight loss that accompany it exist so people can make money. “You are fine exactly as you are doesn’t exactly spur people to buy things. However “Change your body to be better” and “here are the training plans, workout gear, cookbooks, and other products that will help you do it” has a better chance of having people spending money.
Become Diet-Culture-Literate
Check out this post here for myths about food, exercise and metabolism. Understand that so much of the cleanses, detoxes, crash diets, and even lifestyle restrictive diets from Keto to paleo to vegan to whole30 don’t quite live up to their promises. While it is true that most of us eat more and move less around the holidays, and that can result in some weight gain, studies have found that to average in one pound of weight gain for an adult human. And that minimal amount is easily lost as the person returns to their normal routine after the holidays. Our bodies are wonderful, intelligent mechanisms that can maintain equilibrium and maintain a healthy set point weight with little to no intervention or micromanaging on our part. Silly human.
Walk Your Own Path (use a filter for what you say and what you hear from others)
This time of year, everyone and their mother has a comment to make about how much they’ve been eating or how little they have been exercising or how excited they are to get started on their new resolution to start the ____diet or ___exercise program in the new year.
If you typically feel yourself anxious or stressed by these comments of food or body by others, you have a few options:
Change the Conversation. Spend time with people who have more interesting things to talk about than their bodies. Politely ask those people if they wouldn’t mind changing the subject if they bring it up, or better yet, slyly make the subject change yourself.
Be the change. Set an anti-diet example by reaching for a second cookie as they start talking about their upcoming cleanse. If they give you any kind of shocked or harrowed expression, tell them that they are welcome to do them, and that you will do you. And you trust that your body can handle a little extra energy and rest without any conscious efforts from you to “detox” it afterwards. And then send them over to this post.
Smile and nod and stay in your lane. Listen without actually listening, because whatever someone else’s choices are for their one bodies will not affect yours. Just because your best friend is going Keto January 1st does not mean that all of the sudden your own body is going to start rejecting gluten. Follow your own path, and do what works for your own mental and physical health-- NOT just because you saw it on Instagram.
4) Enjoy the rest of the holidays (and your life) in peace. It is going to be back to real life before you know it. One day in the not-so-far-off future, you are going to be back at work (whether in person or in your living room), fully dressed, with a dog to walk or kids to get to school and dinners to make, with not so much as a lindt chocolate ball in sight, and you will be wishing you spent December 29th watching one more Christmas movie.
Life is going to keep going, so enjoy the slower rhythm while we have it. Move in ways that feel good, whether thats a walk around the block, a skate at the local rink, or tobogganing with your kids. Eat food thats feel good, whether thats leftover mashed potatoes or a big salad and a plate of cookies. Honour your hunger, respect your cravings.
5). Make some resolutions for the new year that have NOTHING to do with what you look like.
Thats what I’ll be doing as I sip on my latte and eat some leftover potica today.
potica!
Want to see what those are? Hang on for my next post!
Hope you are all staying positive and testing negative, and Happy NYE!!!
Jordan