Learn don't punish

So the past two nights I have been hurt by people around me lately and my immediate reaction was self-loathing and to restrict. I was thinking I would just stay away from blogging and wait till I was in a better place...but how is that any representation of what true recovery is? I should share my struggles instead of trying to hide them...so here I am....typing from the heart.

Basically the pain both times came from some interactions from my parents. I invited my dad to a date night and got apathy, not the excitement I wanted. Then tonight, I pushed away from a hug from my mom due to some anxiety I was having preparing a snack and got berated and yelled at. Both cases made me not feel bad about my parents, but to turn all emotions inward.

How could I be such a sorry excuse for a daughter? What had I done wrong? Why was I such a screw-up? If I was my parents I would hate me too. Look at how much I had done wrong. All of this led to overwhelming disgust, the immediate solution seeming to be to restrict or overexercise.

Luckily for me overexercising is prevented from spinal spasms I am having due to the lovely medical consequences of anorexia. The restricting urge I am fighting through but still struggling with the guilt, but here is how I see it. How will restricting help? It will just feed into my guilt and will lead to consequences for my body. In the end it will just hurt me.

Now part of me says that's what I deserve...to be punished. I have obviously screwed up and thus need to be punished. But this extreme guilt I put on myself...that's punishment enough. And I apologized to my mom and honestly know I haven't done anything I need to apologize for with my dad. My mom didn't accept my apology and instead responded with more anger....but I tried to undo what I did.

I don't think either of my parents would want me to restrict....so how would that fix this situation. It would make me feel like crap (which again I feel I deserve) but also would further injure the relationships with my parents. You see...tomorrow I would just be more anxious about eating making my interactions with my parents possibly explosive again...causing the pain to occur yet again.

Add into this that I can't turn to my ED every time I do something wrong. I am only human. I will make mistakes in life, but I need to learn from them...not punish myself from them. You put a child in timeout not to punish them for behavior, but to teach them it is wrong. I know I have done something wrong with my mom and will learn to react differently next time. But for right now I can't change what I did, just what I do next. And the next thing I need to do is to go have a snack.

So next time someone hurts you, don't hurt yourself. If there is something you have done...aceept responsibility, apologize, and learn from it...but don't punish yourself by using ED or any other behaviors. That won't help either parties and will only cause more room for injury.

Plus...I think part of the reasons we attack ourselves is because we care so much about others we don't want to think bad about them. If I think about it I am mad at my mom and dad for how they acted and am hurt, but instead of letting myself voice and feel those emotions I jump to self-hate and my ED. But tonight...I am going to try and let myself feel hurt...and even if I am not there yet...I AM going to let myself go eat my snacks. I have learned from my actions...now it's time to heal and move forward. To forgive myself, feel the pain, and forge on.