Being an Athlete Taking Responsibility for your Eating Disorder

It's been about a year since I've posted about the complicated reality of being an athlete who also has an eating disorder. 

I wrote the post after finding out the Boston Marathon was canceled last year and no one had a choice at that point, there was no marathon running for anybody. Some people chose to still run the distance, others chose to run it virtually in the fall (at which point I was injured by) but it was canceled regardless. 

Since then, I've written in posts about how I broke my foot last June. The virtual marathon wasn't even an option for me. In fact, running at all hadn't been an option until December, but I've only really been able to pick it up starting last month since my healing process has been SO SLOW. Running went from an immovable part of my daily schedule for years, to something I didn't do at all for many months.  

It's been amazing to, for the first time since middle school, experience life without running year round, with no more than a 1-2 week break after a race. I have never gone this long without consistent exercise. 

It didn't destroy me the way that I thought it would. Honestly, it was freeing. I had no choice, I was injured. My doctors told me that I couldn't and if I did, it would only get worse and be very painful. It impacted my mental health, but it felt freeing to not have a choice. 

I was waiting for the day that I could prove I could eat without running and could live in recovery without running. Here was my opportunity for more than half a year that I had to prove that I could. I certainly didn't relapse, or come near relapse - and this is a huge improvement for me. 

However, I certainly have a ways to go before I reach recovery. I still have rules in my head about how much I can eat and when. I still have "fear foods”. I still haven't let go of my eating disorder. I haven't surrendered it. Everything isn't so black and white. I still feel like I'm living in a state of "half-recovered," and some days I am more motivated than others. 

Sometimes I get so excited about pursuing recovery fully, and then I start to try the next right, hard thing, and it sets off the voices in my head. It's harder than I thought it would be. 

I was on a beautiful track a month and a half ago, on a straight shot to recovery, until I found myself in a situation that triggered my trauma and I suddenly lost all interest in food again. My body was keeping the score from the past and was reacting to something that wasn't exactly happening, but it was remembering the last time and preparing itself to be protected the same way I used to protect myself. 

I 98% of the time experience this resting feeling of intense anxiety, paranoia, fear, guilt, shame, and depression. It sits in a pit in my stomach, a tightness in my chest and throat. I don't know how to make it go away. Do you ever get that? I have been learning skills that I practice to keep it minimal and sometimes alleviate it briefly. But briefly is about the extent that I've mastered this skill.

If we're being honest though, don't we always want to go back to how we usually make those awful sick feelings go away? Even people who don't experience mental illness have had coping mechanisms at some point in their history that did not serve them. Unless you're like, Jesus. If you are please come talk to me because I need your help. 

Mine is, drum roll please……….. my exercise addiction! Turns out, it isn't gone. Can you believe that?! I can believe it. Even with all of this time I've had off, I didn't spend that time really finding new things that can fill what exercise has filled for me. 

It's alarming, as soon as I experience something uncomfortable in a relationship that makes me think:

"I've ruined it everything is over because of who I am as a person,"

 immediately my thought is:

"I've gotta run and then do this core exercise and do this and that and once I'm in the shape I want to be in that's all I'll be thinking about anymore I won't have time for anything else and I'll be okay."

Luckily I have accountability from people who don't want me over exercising, but that's still the temptation, especially when it feels like those are the relationships that are being threatened or are tense.

So here's something I don't want to admit but I am going to. I had an entry to this year's Boston Marathon, and my doctors gave me strong recommendations to not run it. I knew they would say that, but I wasn't happy. I have months ahead of me to prove myself in eating disorder recovery and to build my athleticism back up to where it needs to be. 

At what cost? I guess it would feed my exercise addiction, but I could turn it around. I wouldn't have time to prove I could eat without running because I'll be eating just to prove that I can run. So do I live like this my whole life? Waiting for a race to be able to feed my body? 

My bone health is pretty bad, I don't want early onset osteoporosis, which I have had friends get in their 20's from eating disorder complications. My physician assistant  thought that these cons outweigh the pros, but not to me. I disagree. She isn't inside of me. This isn't her life. 

To me the marathon is more than that. There was one place I used to go in my life that I felt safe, that people believed I belonged, that I believed I belonged. It was like home, I thrived there, and it was what I looked forward to more than anything else. If nothing and nowhere else, I belonged there. Then there was a time that I wasn't allowed to go back. My heart was crushed, I didn't know what that meant about me or how to power through it. 

The marathon, while significantly less important to me, became a safe place. I was good at something. People believed I belonged and thrived in that environment, I was good at it, it quiets the voices down  and makes me feel pride for myself, and Boston is my home. I've watched it every year, in high school I ran part of it with a friend the year of the bombing, and I've run it every year since I was 19. There is a restaurant in Brookline called "Sunset Cantina," I get nachos there after every Boston Marathon. 

The last time I went the owner said "see you next year," and I melted. Someone remembered me and expected me and I belonged. 

The only place in my life thus far I've seemed to truly belong is an inpatient eating disorder or mental hospital. No one anywhere else seems willing to admit they can relate to the behaviors and reactions I have outwardly and inwardly. But I am trying to build a life worth living outside of treatment. I'm trying to not need to be sick in order to exist. I'm trying to find things that create my life worth living, and for me, being an athlete is a huge, complicated and messy part of that. It wasn't as simple as doing what my doctors said. I don't want my doctors to control how I live my life worth living. Because the marathon is so deeply rooted in my pride and belonging. It's a part of me. 

My physician assistant told me that it doesn't mean I can't run it next year, they just can't recommend a fall marathon this year. So, they aren't trying to tell me that it's something I should never do again in my life. But with some of the hell I've gone through these last few years, I just want to keep this one thing that's mine. 

And how does this impact THEM? It doesn't. It's no sweat off their back if I do it, it's no sweat off their back if I don't. It's my life, it's my health, it's my happiness. It's my life worth living.

 But what will my life worth living look like if for some reason I can't recover in time? What if even if I do recover, I get injured. Or I get early onset osteoporosis down the road. If I get stuck in a cycle of only eating when I run. Does that still create my life worth living? Maybe I can have that life by the time the Boston Marathon comes along in the spring.

It's not about me just doing what other people tell me to do. Nothing is. No one can tell you to do anything. We are all responsible for our lives worth living that we build. We also are all set up in ways that can make it easier to build those lives. Some are more privileged than others with physical resources they have, whether or not they are minorities, the mental health and the way their brains are wired, and that's just not fair. At the same time, since we are the only ones whose lives are truly affected by the decisions we make about our health, we are the ones responsible to ourselves and our healing. People can come as close to forcing us to do the right thing as possible, and still we have the option not to do it. 

Here's the decision I made, that no one will know how hard it was for me to make. I decided to not run the Boston Marathon that is scheduled for the fall. It felt like an impossible decision; no matter what I chose I wouldn’t win. It’s breaking my heart.

The last 2 marathons I canceled because my doctors told me I couldn't do it. I outwardly was mad at them, because that's how mad the voices in my head were, and I had to show that. I had to push back at them. Something inside me was also begging them to force me not to do it. I couldn't handle another marathon at that point. I was drained, I couldn't keep living the way I was living, but I also couldn't stop. 

This time was different, I wanted this with everything inside of me, and I believe I am in a better place. 

I was afraid that I would just be making this decision because I was scared of what would happen in my doctor's appointments. I don't want to be controlled by other people's reactions. I knew that everyone would be mad, and it would be unpleasant for the duration of the training cycle, every single week that we interacted. I didn't want to make a big decision about something that feels like it is part of my life worth living based on making someone else upset, and being controlled by their upsetness. I was afraid that I made the decision based on how miserable that would be. And well, maybe it had an impact on my choice, maybe I value those relationships, and maybe I value not feeling miserable that often. 

Something deep inside me also knew that the amount that this could set back my life worth living, might not be worth it. 

Would I have made the same decision if they weren't a factor? Absolutely not. But since they are, I have another chance to take greater responsibility for my eating disorder, and how far I still have to go. 

A life worth living is not one controlled by the incessant need to exercise in order to feel okay. To quiet voices down. To believe you are doing something good. To feel worthy. It's just not. 

A life worth living is not one controlled by an incessant need to do ANYTHING to feel fulfilled. We have to find that within ourselves. We need to do this work. 

My therapist told me something about how my depression won't always be the way that it is, and I was frustrated with her because they always tell me that it's how my brain is wired and it's not something we can just change. I took it as her saying that it's my fault I am the way that I am. Then I read a chapter in "The Body Keeps the Score," explaining how even with the most intense traumas, our brains can be rewired so that our trauma/depression/anxiety doesn't IMPACT us at the same intensity that it currently does. 

I've been feeling so hopeless that healing is possible, and that I ever won't have this ever present gut wrenching feeling inside of me. It turns out it is possible. It also turns out that trying to fill it with other things, while those things will remain part of my life worth living, isn't going to make it go away. I have to be responsible to my current issues, and use appropriate methods to heal mentally and physically. 

"Traumatized people live with seemingly unbearable sensations: they feel heartbroken and suffer from intolerable sensations in the pit of their stomach or tightness in their chest. Yet avoiding feeling these sensations in our bodies increases our vulnerability to being overwhelmed by them."

The Body Keeps the Score, pg. 210

I'm learning that leaning into the treatment from my therapist is giving me, and actually giving her methods of mindfulness a shot that have actually proven to help rewire the brain, I might have a chance of not being controlled forever. 

It's not just the trauma. It's not just the running. It's not just the eating. It's the all of it. I need to holistically heal, and I can't by holding onto one part of it. Or being afraid to heal from one part of it.

Okay, now that I've said some smart things, please don't judge me when I trip over myself every 5 seconds. I just made one hard decision. Now I have to make that decision of not running the marathon worth it by committing myself to healing my relationship with food, and rewiring my brain from past trauma. Here's to taking responsibility for our problems and healing, even though we never deserved these things to happen to us in the first place. May we all find peace and happiness again.