The Hard

When I was in treatment, so much time was devoted to the “why” of my eating disorder. The idea was that if you could figure out the “why”, if you could identify those core beliefs and fears driving your eating disorder and identify the needs that your behaviors were meeting, then the resistance to eating and the urges to binge and purge and exercise would somehow melt away. Recovery would be so much easier!

There were so many problems with this idea. First, there was no way to know how long it might take to get to the why and while we were waiting, I was still dying from my eating disorder. My eating disorder loved every second that wasn’t spent challenging it. Second, for many sufferers, these “whys” are more symptoms of the disorder than causal or pre-existing issues. Third, a starved brain is incapable of doing deep therapeutic work. Fourth, the blame for not getting to the why usually landed squarely on the sufferer. I was not willing to work hard enough in therapy, to dig deep enough, to confront the real issues. And of course, my eating disorder used this criticism to further its argument that I was a piece of crap who deserved to suffer.

And of course, having spent years on this futile quest for the why in the hopes of making the road to recovery smoother and gentler, I had to go straight through the hard anyway. What a gift it would have been, had my treatment providers focused instead on helping me learn to tolerate the hard, on giving me the tools to bushwack through that jungle instead of standing in place waiting for a clear path to appear. If they had focused on demonstrating their confidence (real or faked) in my ability to handle the hard until I could have that confidence in myself. If they had told me that it’s hard because it’s hard, not because I was doing it wrong.

To sufferers (the thing I needed to hear that perhaps you do too): It’s hard because it’s hard. Not because you’re weak. Not because you’re unwilling to “dig deep into the real issues”. I have confidence that you can tolerate the hard and someday you will have that confidence in yourself as well. The only way to make it easier is to do it now while it’s hard. The only way out is through. There is no shortcut. There is no magic key at the bottom of the therapeutic well that allows you to unlock the recovery door. Anyone who tells you otherwise is peddling snake oil. You don’t get to skip the hard.