Doublethink

I got this term from the novel '1984' by George Orwell. There are many concepts in that book that I can relate to my eating disorder, but for now:

‘Doublethink means the power of holding two contradicting beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.’

I guess this is another way of expressing the paradoxical nature of my thoughts and experiences. This is what makes it frustrating and so hard to explain. Some of my doublethinks are/were:

• I genuinely believe I have not lost weight, even when I know my previously tight trousers are beginning to hang off me.
• I will trully believe I am fat whilst being proud of how thin I am.
• The reason I don't like gravy is because it tastes nice. Or it did taste nice, after 8 years you forget.
• I feel superior when others have to eat, and I can resist, but inferior because they have the freedom to eat and I do not.

Some of the paradoxes are:

1. I binge because I can’t stand being satiated.
2. I hate being told I am doing well. Doing well causes the voices to get worse, not better.
3. The more I achieve in recovery, the iller I get; the longer I go without bingeing, the worse it gets in the long-run.
4. A big plate of veg is scarier than a chocolate bar; the veg is larger in volume.
5. I fear food, yet I binge all the time. I binge because when I stop, the fear gets worse.
6. I developed an eating disorder as a result of trying to be healthy.

My fears of what is real, and what is not.

I am scared to quit bingeing because...

I am terrified that if I stop, I won't be able to stop stopping, and then I will die. I tell myself of course that's not going to happen, I'm overweight, it'd take me a long time to die of starvation. But then I think, well, I used to be underweight, and I thought it'd take me a long time to get objectively fat. It did take a long time, two years of more or less none stop bingeing, bar the odd fast. But the end of a long time allways comes, and suddenly when it does come, it didn't seem so long afterall.

It's like there are two trains going in opposite directions, but these trains don't stop at stations so you can get off or take a break. They just carry on, hurtling along the track until the track runs out and they crash. And once they have crashed it is unlikely you will survive. I survived the last time, but I have no idea how. I remember being trapped in the debris that they called Anorexia, and the clock was ticking, time was running out. I went mad and that's when I knew I was dying; the effects of starvation torture your mind into madness.

A lot of the time I think I want that other side of this illness back, but then I realise that it's only the first phase that I want back; the phase of speed and exhileration; the high I get from reducing my food and increasing my excercise. The feeling that I am invincible. Although deep down I know I can't have that without the inevitable crash.

I am not sure where I am now. It feels like I can't bear another day, but I allways do. I am not at the end, things could get a lot worse. I am not mordbidly obese and my health isn't yet in dramatic danger. My only way out is to jump and hope I land on the platform, but the odds of that happening aren't good because my heart isn't in it. My mind very much doesn't want to reach the platform, because then I may get better and eat normally and be a normal weight and... this is were my sense of reality comes in. I feel like I would be a fake if I did that and I would be trapped and banned from getting back on the train because nobody would believe that the eating disorder was still inside of me. The train is only for people who are loyal to the creature that lies within them.

I am even more scared that I myself wouldn't realise the eating disorder was inside me. I was initially afraid of treatment because I was convinced they would brainwash me into being a normal person, then I would be stuck in a world which isn't real. The ED tells me that my world, in my head, is the real world, and that falling into the trap of believing otherwise would be a psychological suicide. I liken it to in the film 'The Matrix', where Neo is given the option to take the blue pill and return to his old life, with all memory that it isn't real, erased; or to take the red pill and be shown the reality. The reality is that the robots have taken over and are controlling the matrix. The reality isn't nice. And yet, I feel like letting go of my eating disorder would be like swallowing the blue pill to go back to a dream world. I can't do it. I can't let go of what I believe is the truth.

'The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.' - Morpheus.