Start Again

I've decided to try and see today as a fresh start. I've been mentally beating myself up and berating myself over my slip back into purging the last couple of days. I'm going to (try and) stop doing that - both the purging and the beating myself up if I fail. When I saw my psychiatrist I had already gone a couple of days without purging and they said (and this is completely paraphrased, but how I understood it) that the early stages of trying to combat any kind of self-destructive behaviour would always be the part where you were most vulnerable to giving in to the destructive urges, and that I should be gentle with myself and get support if I need it.

Piling more self hate on top of what's already there is just making it harder to fight and I'm just going to try and ignore the slips and move forward. When I finally stopped self harm, it wasn't an overnight miracle, it took months of gradually harming less and less. Prehaps I'm naive, but I expected, wanted, this to be different. Flicking a switch that turns off the ED thoughts and the behaviours magically stop. So the "new" paradigm is that although it's not ok to slip, it's not the end of the world and doesn't mean I've stopped trying to fight this.

This morning when I woke up I felt really crap and partner wanted to eat fried eggs, toast and beans for breakfast!!! I knew that if I ate that I would find it very difficult to resist purging. But I'm also really really trying to eat as I know I need to try and gain back about 6lbs to be back at a minimum healthy weight. So I made breakfast for us both. And I didn't eat it all, but I did manage to eat 3 bites of bread with a bit of egg on it. I had to stop then, but I'm pleased that I managed to eat egg, fried egg at that, and bread. Both of which are not salad (which is all I really feel ok with eating without purging). We've agreed on something light for lunch so I'm hoping that will be easier and that I'll be able to eat more.