Who's to Blame?

"It's not my fault."

I am sitting on the couch in front of therapist #2. He just asked me why I chose to give into the behaviors of my eating disorder. I tell him it wasn't my choice. Instead, I list off people who influence my decision, chemicals in my brain that make me react, circumstances that warrant erratic behavior, and the food that taunts me day and night.

"It's their fault," I say as I glance out the window into the parking lot below. "They made me do it."

His eyebrows rise and anger burns instantly in my chest. "What does he know, anyway? He's just a therapist; he knows nothing about the reality of an eating disorder." I let my thoughts carry me away from the situation at hand and encamp on the reasons I am sitting here in this office. So many reasons, and so much ammunition to fire out blame.

He infuriates me more by staying silent. I stare at him until I can take the silence no longer.

"What do you want me to say? It's the truth."

More staring and eyebrow raising. I swear- this man will send me to the crazy house.

"Fine. You want me to talk? I'll talk. I know you want me to say that this is my fault. I know you want me to sit here and tell you how horrible a person I am. Well guess what? I know I'm a horrible person. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be sitting here. I know I have issues, and I know you assume that I am the only one to blame. So listen to me say this and be sure to write it down on that yellow pad of yours: It's. My. Fault."

I slump back in my chair and wait for his response. Five minutes later he shifts his weight in his chair and says, " You don't believe that."

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Blame plays an important role in the recovery process. At the beginning of the eating disorder, anyone and anything is to blame. I blamed the people in my life for my problems. I listed circumstance after circumstance of traumatic events. I even studied my personality and used it as the basis to cast blame. Nothing was my fault. I assumed no responsibility for my actions, and my eating disorder, as a result, spiraled quickly out of control.

With that loss of control came the realization that I did have some control. I did not have control over the events or people in my life, but I was in control of the way I acted in response to those people and events. I was the one who made the choice to lean on destructive behaviors instead of dealing with the circumstance constructively.

I was to blame, at least in part.

Eating disorders are complex problems that are formed in response to many factors. The media is not solely to blame for the idealization of thinness. Family is not the sole factor in developing an eating disorder. Traumatic events play a part, but so does the personality of each individual. There is not one reason I developed an eating disorder, and there is not one single reason you developed one either. Life brought in a variety of factors; I just chose to focus on those factors instead of my personal responsibility to get better.

Jenni Schaefer has a short video that speaks powerfully into this topic. We cannot place the blame on a certain individual or thing in our lives. We have to acknowledge that this is a complex issue, and-more importantly- take our role in getting out of the mess.

You decide today if anyone and anything is to blame.

Blinders

Five months ago I packed up life as I knew it and moved across the country in pursuit of the work God was doing in my life. Confident of the victory I had sustained, I gave my eating disorder no second thought.

“I’m free,” I told myself. “There’s no need to worry about that anymore.” So I made the journey unprepared, unarmed, and blind to the trials about to come my way. The moment I convinced myself that I was invincible was the moment I positioned myself back into the prison of my own creation.

Finding myself with way too much time and too many emotions, I fell back into the familiar patterns of bulimia. The adventure I had so passionately followed God on suddenly became a nightmare of my own creation. Addiction became real in my life once again, and I could not figure out how to break the cycle that made its daily rounds. Everyday I promised myself that I would not give in, and everyday I found myself breaking that promise. It was a vicious and disappointing cycle for someone who had already “found freedom”.

During this time, I gave up on God. I was angry that He would let me fall back. I was disappointed that He hadn’t warned me of the temptation to come. I had no desire left for Him, and I didn’t believe in His freedom. If He truly freed me, I often asked myself, then why was I struggling again? Either God was not who He said He was, or I was the problem that started the sinking ship.

I couldn’t bear to think I was the one to blame, so I blamed God.

It was quite ironic really- this place I found myself. I was working for a church and telling people about God, yet my own faith was in shambles. I was so desperate to keep silent about my struggles that I lived in constant terror that someone would find out. Fear latched onto everything I did, and I hid behind the cloak of aloofness instead of living authentically. I felt like a lie because I was living a lie. I felt like a failure because I was missing the standards I had set in my own life. I felt defeated because I had let the sin in my life walk through my front door and take me captive.

In a word, I felt hopeless.

It’s an odd place to be, this state of hopelessness. It’s a state bordering on the brink of despair and denial. Despair of what I’ve made of my life, and denial that life will ever get better. It’s a state that literally leaves you without hope, hence the name. It’s a state shunned by common day Christianity, for the Bible says that Christ is our hope and if Christ isn’t your hope, then you do not know Christ.

I was in despair over my loss of hope not just because my life felt so out-of-control, but also because I felt as if my identity in Christ had been a lie. “If I can get to this point of hopelessness,” I would ask myself. “Then was I even a Christian in the first place?”

This question pestered my thoughts day-in and day-out. It tormented me. Christ had been my everything before utter chaos moved back into my life. How could THAT have been a lie?

It took a call from one of my friends to open my eyes to the reality of my own life. This particular friend is what one would call “guy crazy”. As in, I can never keep track of her crushes because they change according to mood, location, and day of the week. She started talking about a guy who was perfect for her; he had everything she’s been looking for except one thing: he already had a girlfriend. She sighed in defeat, admitting that nothing would ever happen. That’s the last I heard from her.

Then, a week later, she called me again. “I’ve done something stupid”, she told me as soon as I picked up the phone. I knew what she was about to say, but I continued listening anyway. She proceeded to tell me how this guy (who still has a girlfriend) told her she was unlike any girl he had ever known. He said he could talk to her in a way he couldn’t talk to anyone else. He promised to break up with his girlfriend when the time was right.

So she slept with him… and called me crying when she hadn’t heard from him for a week.

As I hung up the phone, I wondered how someone so smart could be so blind when it came to guys. She didn’t see that by still being with his girlfriend, he wasn’t expressing the truth. She didn’t see how double-sided he was; all she saw was what she wanted to see.

My talk with my friend made me think about my own life. How many times do I put on the blinders in my own life? How many times do I see a situation for what it is, but instead of turning away and dealing with reality, I put on the blinders to block out what I do not wish to see?

What I found was this: I like to live with the blinds pulled down. When I moved to Fort Collins, I put on the blinders. Instead of acknowledging the temptations and dealing with them, I pretended they weren’t there. Instead of facing the mess I had made, I pretended that everything was fine. Instead of trusting that God was still there, I put on the blinders and missed every appearance He made in my life. I was blind to the person I had become and the life I was living.

It took me taking off those blinders to finally find my way back to freedom. I had to roll up the shades in order to see that God was still active in my life. When the blinders came off, the hopelessness subsided. The sun was allowed to shine once again.

What area in your life do you seem to pull the blinders over most often? If you are anything like me, you pull them down over many areas. I challenge you to pull those shades up one by one and look at life as it really is. You will find more often than not that it’s not the situation that is hopeless, but the perception in which you’ve been looking at it.

And when you can look at a situation for what it really is, you can start to move forward in a positive direction.

The Lie of Thin

Walking down the street

All the beautiful people I meet

Perfect, toned, and sleek

With the devil beneath their feet.

Believe it or not, there was a time when I thought I was beautiful. Long ago before the lie ever set in, I could look in the mirror and not be ashamed of what I saw. My reflection was simply my reflection. I had brown hair and big brown eyes. My best friend had blonde hair and blue eyes, and that was just the way it was. I never even thought things could-or should- be different.

Until the lie swept into my life, leaving traces of itself everywhere I looked.

I don’t have an exact date, time, or place. In fact, I can’t even tell you when it happened. All I know is that one day the little girl in the mirror was no longer fascinated with the girl on the other side. Beauty died somewhere between make-believe and real life. Reality stepped in, took her by the hand, and led her down an unpaved road. The journey started out wondrous and new, but pretty soon the woods became just a little too dark, the fog a little too thick, the breeze a little too cold.

The lie swept in with the wind, and my view of myself changed in an instant.

Instead of reflecting truth, the image in my mirror reflected what I thought of myself. Cold eyes replaced warm, friendly ones. Fear replaced the expression of security. The body I saw in the mirror reflected the feelings I held of myself on the inside.

My eating disorder developed on the wings of the lie. The moment I looked into the mirror and believed that I was no longer acceptable was the moment I opened the door to my eating disorder. Hearing the lie was not breaking point; believing the lie was.

You see, when we begin to believe the lie that we are not good enough, we search for ways to prove our worth. We think that by changing our bodies we will gain beauty and acceptance. We think that conforming to someone else's definition of beauty will prove the lie wrong.

Only the lie remains.

It whispers that thin is better than health, relationships, and all the values we used to hold dear. It pushes us toward extremes we would have never considered before. It infatuates us until we cannot help but to believe. And once we begin to believe, it knows it finally has you. Because you will fight for what you believe in.

I have no doubt that the devil is behind the lie. Having studied human beings since the beginning of creation, he figured out long ago that we are hooked once we believe the lie. Adam and Eve proved it in experiment one, and we continue to prove it today. Belief will change one's life, for better or for worse.

Jesus referred to the devil as "the father of lies" (John 8:44). He started lying in the beginning, and he continues on to this day. His passion is to divert our attention to his lies and reign us in with belief, for he knows that the moment we look in the mirror and say, "THAT'S my truth" is the moment we grab his hand and follow him.

The devil knows the power of the lie; we do not.

Every thought has the potential to build or destroy. Are you going to believe the truth? Or are you going to give up your life to the lie?

That's a decision you and I have to make everyday.

The Little Things

It's the little things in life.

It's the little things that seem to grate on my soul more than anything. It's the tiny things that seem to get blown way out of proportion. It's the minuscule details that threaten to ruin a perfectly good day. It's the little things in life that cause me to go overboard on the emotional ship.

This week has an overboard kind of week.

My plans were kicked to the wayside to make room for God's plans, and let's just say that I did not stand aside idly. In fact, standing is too neutral of a word. I might possibly have been seen jumping up and down in tantrum stance on the side of the road.

Just maybe.

And it would not have been a big deal if I moved on with my week... but I didn't. I let my disappointment fester. I let my anger seethe out tear by tear and allowed bitterness to camp on site. My life was a whirlwind of emotions and, rather than tame the sea in a healthy way, I chose to let the waves keep slamming the shores of my life. As I began to sink under the effects of so many emotions, I realized that not dealing with my emotions is just as bad as dealing with them in a negative manner.

Dealing with my emotions with food does not solve the problem screaming for attention; it just pushes the mute button. When I make the choice to use food to solve the anger in my life, I am not effectively dealing with the emotion. In fact, I am only building the volcano.

Wallowing in my emotions is no better. You see, when I sit in the pain, anger, disappointment, and sadness, I am doing just that: sitting. I don't attempt to sort through the situation. I don't try to move on.

I just sit.

Sit and sulk... and wait for the next catastrophe to occur. As the emotions pile higher and higher, my energy for life grows smaller and smaller. The little things that shouldn't be a big deal become a big deal, and I start to harbor resentment in my bones.

It's not a pretty picture, but it's one that needs to be painted.

At some point, we need to move on from not using eating disorder behaviors to actually dealing with the emotions. Yes- taking food out of the equation is great progress, but is it really effective if all you do is drown in the sea of emotions?

No.

There has to be a way to effectively deal with those emotions without food. There has to be a way to handle the disappointments and heartache in life without sinking. There is a way, and as this week goes on, I'm going to show you how to find it.