I was introduced to the term “active recovery” in the fitness realm, in a cycling studio, actually, where I can be found approximately three times per decade. I even got my cycle certification, because I like learning, but it turns out I don’t love cycling, which I kind of knew going in, but that’s another story for another time.
“Active recovery” in cycle class is when you keep moving but at a much lower intensity or speed. You see it occur after a sprinter slows to a trot or a dancer stretches between combinations. It’s a dynamic alternative to stopping, and I just love that.
As someone in recovery from an eating disorder (and other human things), I really appreciate the phrase “active recovery,” because the healing and recovery is ongoing. It’s not like a cut, that heals once and is fine from there on out. It’s more like a soft tissue injury, that requires ongoing therapy treatments, exercises and stretching in order to maintain the healing. I encounter my eating disorder every day, even though I am no longer active with it. Unlike drugs or alcohol, this isn’t something I can fully extract from my life, I have to face it multiple times a day. Every meal is another potential for sabotage. This kind of healing isn’t a “cross the threshold and then you’re there” kind of thing, it’s more of a staircase that I continue to build and climb in order to escape this toxic sludge that’s trying to swallow me.
Too much?
See, it’s not enough that I started eating or that I started digesting my food, which were obviously important components, but the internal conversation had to shift too. There are so many layers to recovery, you peel one back only to discover four more. It’s fair to say I escaped the clutches of my eating disorders but then was trapped in the world disordered eating for a solid period of time. It’s so easy to slip back into disordered thinking. Recovery takes constant vigilance. Or it did at first and it still does, I cannot speak for the future, maybe one day there will be total freedom.
It feels like liberation, but with a clause, a parole of sorts. You escape the pit of the eating disorder, wander the halls of disordered eating, climb out of that, but carrying around this little monster in your brain who always whispers and sometimes shouts at you, trying to get you back to the pit.
My little brain monster, who feeds me lies and feeds off my doubts, she has not been vanquished. I still carry her with me and she is fed by everything I hear, everything around me, everything that I breathe in. I have to call it out to keep her quiet. Even now, years into my recovery, I can find myself back in the halls of disordered eating, like I’m walking around, just fine, and then POOF! Sunken back into the halls, they just pop up!
Disordered eating is so prevalent that I can participate in it, in front of people, and raise no flags. Because you can’t hear what it’s like in my head. Because we don’t know what it’s like in other people’s bodies.
I feel like every day I have to dig in a bit more and pull more out, extracting all the doubts and unhealthy expectations within me, the internalized disappointment and just say ENOUGH. Day after day after day. I have to tell myself that I AM enough, that I have HAD enough, and that I have wasted ENOUGH of my energy and life fighting this.
And yes, that little brain monster is still there. I face her every day and every time that I do I’m a little bit stronger. As I get stronger, she gets quieter. My recovery must be as relentless as she is, so I am actively in recovery because recovery IS ACTIVE.
Active recovery, y’all. It’s not just for cycle class.
Pretty Good Ugly 