Imagine

Six times a day someone makes you interact with your biggest fear, your phobia: 

Six times every day, every week, every month.

I don’t like being under the ground when I think of the words above, I can feel the tension, I imagine it coming, over and over again, every day. I wake and I know ‘here it comes again’. 

London Underground six times a day – NO thank you! 

And I don’t have to because it’s not a matter of my life, or my death.

If you’re finding it hard to understand the tension on the face of the loved one in front of you who, to you, simply needs to eat, think of the above. 

What would you rather avoid six times a day or once a day because it scares you or you hate it? Rats? Wasps? Heights? 

Sit with a plate of moving rats.

Sit with a plate of buzzing wasps.

Stand on the tallest bridge.

Don’t turn away, don’t say you can’t, don’t avoid it.  

And do it six times each day, seven days a week, month after month. 

That is the route to recovery from an eating disorder, facing your fear over and over.

With your kindness, your boundaries, your loving support it is possible to one day be at that same table without fear and dread.

I’m not so sure I’ll ever be cool being underground, but I am ok with food because I took the journey at the dinner table, the journey gave me my freedom from seeing food as my enemy as my biggest fear. Food and my body are in alignment again as they were before an eating disorder. 

If I did have to go underground every day, I’d love to have a calming encouraging person alongside me, helping and supporting me to keep going.

By keeping going, recovery is possible. 

Little by little, the fear, and the voice of the disorder starts to shrink.

Little by little, your loved one starts to re-emerge, you see each other again.

Little by little, they do things again, see people again, laugh again.

Little by little, they cry less, shout less.

Little by little – with your help, this disorder starts to deflate.

And one day they may thank you, but for now, please sit with them for they are scared.