Beach Therapy

So I have to say, I'd been on the brink, teetering dangerously close to a relapse. The "Ed voice" and the "healthy voice" in my head were fighting all week long. I hadn't felt like that for more than a few moments, a day at most, in a very long time. Probably a good year. Anyway, to be completely honest, I was scared. I couldn't go back to it! But it felt like that was the only choice. All my standard coping skills seemed to be failing: reading (a great temporary escape, but not longlasting), sleeping (one of my favorite activities but I didn't have time for naps and had trouble falling asleep at night!), yoga (felt good during the class but as soon as I got back into the car and thought about my next meal...terror), arts and crafts (just didn't feel like I had the motivation). I'm back to going to therapy only once a week instead of twice, and going to yoga instead, so I didn't even have the consistency of twice-a-week therapy that helped me a lot (although if I really felt that it was necessary, I know my therapist would've gone for it). I had resorted to safety foods from my disordered days, and numbers were beginning to plague my life. I was behind on my charting at work, forgetting to check the weather before getting dressed and leaving the house, and letting my gas tank run on empty (ironic?). These things were slowly happening for about two weeks before the full-on "OMG this is it...I can feel the relapse coming over me."

I don't know what I would have done if things had gone differently, if my schedule was slightly different. I don't know if something else would've clicked, or if I would have spun out of control and still be spinning right now, but that's not important because that's not what happened.

What happened was the trip to the beach. I drove for two hours with my coworker and four of our clients (adults with severe and persistent mental illness), and another van with two coworkers and four clients followed us, down the shore to Point Pleasant Beach. Most of the clients wanted to stay on the boardwalk, smoke cigarettes, and eat. But two of them wanted to go onto the beach. My coworker and I took them down the boardwalk and onto the beach, where we set up our spot.

The second my toes hit the sand, I knew I would be okay. When I settled onto my towel, and breathed in the ocean air, I felt slightly more at ease. When my client, N, and I walked down and got our toes wet, it was as though the ocean washed away the "insanity" that had been circling my brain for the past week or so.

I got back to work extremely exhausted, maybe from four hours of driving on the Garden State Parkway, but maybe also from allowing my body to get rid of the negative and rebuild the positive, somehow. I'm not really sure how all that inner-self stuff works, but I believe it's gotta be at least somewhat real because I can feel it.

I went to yoga this evening and even the positions that were harder weren't a struggle. They were just a challenge. It reminded me the importance of challenges in our lives, and even the importance of reframing our struggles into challenges. Struggles bring us down. Challenges help us rise above. Any struggle can be a challenge. Likewise, any challenge can be a struggle if you let it, but you don't have to.

I'm still tired, and I'm hungry again and my "ED voice" still tells me that I can do without food even though I know I need it, but I'm signing off and heading up to the kitchen before going back to bed. It's quite difficult to sleep when you're hungry. I am remembering that now. It's quite difficult to function when your life is consumed by an eating disorder. That's one "challenge" I don't need. Recovery, fine. But to challenge myself to be successful and disordered at once, as so many people wish to do, I'm going to aim to not have to do that.

So that's my story. I can't wait to get my beach bum back to the ocean again.