The power of forgiveness

Hate, anger and resentment are destructive, eating away at the heart and soul of the person who carries them. They are absolutely incompatible with your own peace, joy and relaxation. Forgiveness is not about another person who has transgressed against you; it is about you. Forgiveness is about doing whatever it takes to preserve the power to create your own emotional state. It is a gift to yourself and it frees you. You don't have to have the other person's cooperation, and they do not have to be sorry or admit the error of their ways. Do it for yourself.

Beeing a Garbage Can

You Are NOT A Garbage Can! Don't think that you are wasting your money if you don't finish all the food you paid for. The money is already spent. Cutting down on quantity is simpler than you think when you enjoy what you are eating.

If you satisfy your cravings - feel good!

To be sure that you really crave something, distract yourself from the craving. Try to do something else for exactly 10 minutes. Start a conversation, pick up a book, and review your "to do" list or exercise schedule. A craving will normally disappear shortly. It won’t haunt you – unless you let it. And if you are going to have triple chocolate cake, enjoy and savor the first few bites. Once you no longer get any additional pleasure out of it, you're done. It's that discipline that really separates slim woman from overweight woman or women with ED. The later are so wrecked with guilt regarding food that they tend to go from one extreme to the other.

Savor what you eat

If you CHOSE to eat, really enjoy what you eat. Eat with all of your senses, which will help you eat less because you're actually paying attention to your meal. Guilt about eating is what really has ruined food for a lot of women. Think about what you are eating, smelling and savoring every bite.

Tool °3 My defined product

I’ve just finished my list of my positive feutures – who I’am. This list is what I call “my defined product”. This concept comes from Dr Phil (who may have a silly TV-show but actually writes real good self-help literature).
The idea is to read this list I need to repeat them frequently with feeling. That way you will accentuate your positive traits. As you gradually starts to focus more on positive aspects your feelings about yourself will improve. This in turn will affect your mood, your actions and relationships. So when E.D or the Diet Rebel tells you how lousy they think that you are it’s easier to stand up to them.

The Diet Rebel

She is my so called best friend. Her voice is persisting and angry. She knows that my abusive husband E.D is not good for me. Therefore she wants me to disobey by doing exactly the opposite. She is herself a beautiful woman who has never had food-problems. Her lack of empathy and of knowledge leads her to advise me to eat and behave in ways that aren’t either respectful of my body signals nor self-loving or graceful.

E.D

I’ve been married to my eating disorder E.D for 13 years. E.D is persuaded that he knows what’s best for me and that he protects me from a ruff world. In reality he’s main purpose is to put me down and keep my self-esteem low in order for me to believe that he’s the only one who truly cares about me. His voice is authoritative and critical. Ed say’s that the only way that I can be satisfied with me life, be successful and be loved is by being thin and obey his rules.

Parents and selfesteem

It can't be easy to be a parent nowadays. As we over-analyse everything trying to find the reason behind our (strange) behavoirs the parents are severely judged and passes under the loop.

That said, there are apperently three things in our childhood that strongly effects our self-esteem. Good self-esteem is positively correlated to the below three factors:

- The parents set high standards by expecting politeness, help in the household and didn't let the children "do what you want".
- The Parents showed respect for their child by using democratic decision-making where the child taked part and is listened to.
- The parents showed love for their child not necessarily overtly but in terms of caring about "how things are going".

About loneliness...

I always thought that I was alone. One week ago it suddenly came to me that the reason that I feel alone is that I’m lying to everyone, including myself. Nobody really knows me. They don’t know about the shame, the feeling of failure and obsessions that’s the life for someone living with an Eating Disorder. The real issue here is also that I’m denying my problems to myself. I don’t want to do what I do but as I know nothing else, my obsessive thinking seems all normal to me.

I let E.D and the Diet Rebel dictate my life. Dictate is a really the right word. What about my own values, my own perception of life and my aspirations? I guess I need to find myself again. I thought that I knew myself really well but who am I?

Eating Disorder = Loneliness

I found this advice on the net regarding developping sane relationships:

“If you are feeling discouraged about finding someone or feeling bad about yourself and if you have had close friends, relatives, or relationships in the past, remember that at least one other person liked you the way you are. You know you can develop another relationship at least as good as one of those. If you have grown since then, you will probably have a better relationship.”

Well what if nobody really knows you? What if you’ve been hiding, lying and denying your problems to your family and closest friends? How then can you know that you can be loved for who you are? If you can’t love yourself and accept your problem, how on earth would you dare admit them to others?

Breaking free from the vicious cycle of overthinking

WOMEN WHO THINK TOO MUCH - Susan Nolen-Hoeksema

In our fast-paced, overly self-analytical culture many women spend countless hours thinking about negative ideas, feelings, and experiences and relationships. Nolen-Hoeksema shows us what causes so many women to be overthinkers and provides concrete strategies that can be used to escape these negative thoughts, move to higher ground, and live more productively. The authour explaines that negative mood connects negative thoughts and memories, even when these thoughts and memories have nothing else to do with one another. This is why it is easier to think of negative things when you are in a bad mood than when you are in a good mood. She challenges the assumption—heralded by so many pop-psychology pundits of the last several decades—that constantly expressing and analyzing our emotions is a good thing.

Life without E.D

The concept of this book written by Jenni Schaefer is that a relationship with an eating disorder is like being a woman living in an abusive mariage. Like her you're life has been controlled by a mentally and physically abusive partner. Like her you're afraid of leaving you partner. Like her you hide your bruises and keeps the thruth from your family and friends. The only way to heal is to dear to live him behind - even though your relationship with him is all you've ever known.

I'm thinking about divorcing....

I have to understand that I'm fully responsable for my relationship with my Eating Disorder. I might have been blind before. If you like me you probably thought that you're eating disorder was a part of yourself- and not a separate entity. You might not have seen yourself as a victim of abuse but believing that you were making yourself suffering deliberatelty. The reality is that you've been suffering because of an physically and mentally abusive partner - your Eating disorder.

Now I know that my Eating disorder isn't who I am. Neither is it who I would like to be. Therefor I know that I shouldn't continue to live with him. He's got a bad influence on me and tearing me apart from the inside and the outside. I need to see myself as a fully competent and potent force in my relationship with my Eating disorder.

On my bedside table at the moment

I'm a big fan on ordering litterature and music on the net. Since I got conscience about that I do have a problem 3 years ago, I've been ordering a lot of litterature. Of course, depening on where I've been in the process of recovery - my needs and "disease state" changes. This is my bibel at the moment.

LIFE WITHOUT ED - Jenni Schaefer with Thom Rutledge

I'm taking my life back!

I’ve decided to live! I want to take my life back! I'm going to dry my tears and simplify my life. Well simplify sound much more fun than to say that I’m really frightened that if I don’t get out of my mental torture chamber I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve decided that I need to find myself as I don’t know how long I will cope with this existance (because I can’t really call this a life).

So here’s how I'll proceed ones I've found the motivation to act:

1 Create a support-team and keep daily contact
2 Accept and forgive myself for what I've done in the past
3 Get a clear picture of what I want for my future
4 Set up small process goals on the way
5 Reward myself on the way
6 Wear high heels more often

Ok I know that the 6^th statement seems quite irrelevant compared to the others but I’m not known to be a dead-serious young woman.(one of the reasons why I've been having a hard time to take my problems seriously)

Can I blame Barbie?

In today's society we never seem to satisfied with what we've got. So who's fault is it? Can I blame the society of consumption? Can I blame Barbie? Can I blame the unormally thin ideal for young women? Or is it my parents fault? Or my boyfriends? Well I don’t really know all I know is that the result is the same - I feel like shit.

My name is Saga

Saga = Scandinavian legend, or heroic or mythic tradition, among
the Norsemen and kindred people