“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
Pema Chödrön said that.
And the first time I heard it I felt like screaming!
“What don’t I bloodie know!?”
I’d tried a thousand times to recover to no avail.
Therapists, meal plans, OA, kinesiology, psyllium, psilocybin – nothing worked.
“What do I still need to learn damnit!!?”
As it turns out …. quite a lot actually 😳😳😳.
To finally break free of bulimia I had to learn to hear my tummy again (without overriding it with a whole pile of “shoulds” and “not alloweds”).
I had to learn to sit through horrific binge urges without acting on them.
I had to learn to shut off the thousands of headworms that cruised through my mind with wild abandon, and kept undermining my attempts at recovery.
I had to learn to give myself radical permission to eat what my body had just asked for, no matter what it was, or how scary it seemed.
I had to learn to learn from my mistakes, and tackle the challenge again without slipping into hopelessness and despair.
I had to learn to repeatedly reject the pressure to be thinner, taller, more feminine, more stylish and more beautiful, because – as it turns out – I was “worth it”, with or without make up and a tight ass.
I had to learn to become awesome at handling my anxiety and feeding it with deep nourishing breaths + action, instead of food.
I had to learn to really listen.
Not just to my hunger … but to my need for rest, exercise, a big hug, or some alone time.
Through lots of “learning” (ahem, mistakes and failures) I was finally able to trust and let go.
Learning all the things you need to, to truly recover, is no small feat.
And the problem was that at that time I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I had no-one to teach me.
Where are you on your recovery journey and what do you still need to learn?
Well, for starters, if you feel like screaming when you read Pema’s quote … then I can help.
I can teach you what I wish I’d been taught much sooner.
I’ve paid the school fees so that you don’t have to.
Helen
Helen Bennett 