** And then...in line with what Albom says about moving on, in order
to continue transforming and evolving (in general and through ED recovery), one
must continue to do the new unfamiliar thing instead of the old stagnating and
life-blocking thing. My cousin reminded me of this very important truth earlier
this week. For instance, you might remind yourself that you deserve to live
free of roles and engagements that in induce fear and shame; you deserve to
live free of roles that do not serve you in self-compassionate living. Do your
aspirations and daily-doings involve patience? Keep them. Do they encourage you to self-validate? Keep them. Try to work on working through and letting go of the other stuff. This is what I have been telling myself today. It's much, much, much easier said than done. But, I believe it works. I believe in me, and I believe in you.
I was just working on a blog post about how people with eating disorders often employ an external focus in order to block out internal distress. Once eating disorder behaviors are not overwhelming a person's every day life, the underlying stuff (such as the external focus) still exists, and it continues to needs attention. I have felt anxious since this morning about an internal polarization surrounding doing and not doing. I have parts who want to do-do-do in order to compensate and feel relevant, and I have other parts who are terrified that if I do-do-do, then I'm just going to miss our on being a human-being and will live my life as another human-doing. Since this morning, I have felt resistant to bring my focus inside. But, aware that I need to re-adjust internally, I came to Starbucks to journal....and then somehow, I found myself caught up in writing a blog about emotional avoidance. Yes, writing a blog post about emotional avoidance instead of facing my emotions. Sometimes I just feel like laughing at myself. Anyway, I might post my post tomorrow. But for right now, I need to attend to my distress. I'm glad that I noticed it, for so long it is was easy to obliterate my awareness of tears bubbling below the surface, a desire to neglect my feelings or act out against myself. To follow the larger culture and punish myself back into a doing-paradigm. Today, this is not going to happen, not even by blogging. You see, even things that are essentially therapeutic can become an act of avoidance. As a rule of thumb, if a doing is not continually done with kindness, patience, self-compassion, and honest reflection, then it is a good idea to question whether the doing is therapeutic. Not that every action must be therapeutic, but when that's what you're going for, I think you might know what i mean...
And on a semi-related note, I love this quote by Sappho...
