I'm beginning to think that if I get through this series of 300 we might have a eating disorder relapse check in place.  When you feel you are relapsing you get frightened that you are going back to the months or years of eating disorder misery. You worry or panic over your behavior.  You don't know how to stop and you look for something or someone to hang on to.  But while you are looking, you are bingeing or starving or throwing up.

What's happening is

The word perfection is a destructive fantasy in the mind set of a person with an eating disorder. We need to keep returning to Gracian #1 maxim that explores the human meaning of the word. A person caught in the rigid mind set of an eating disorder seeks perfection as  way of escaping her real and imagined flaws. If she is perfect she is beyond criticism and therefore, safe.

But in the Gracian meaning our friend Baltasar is talking about working toward perfection by tending daily to all aspets of your humanity. Personally and professionally he suggests

Deciphering the meaning behind these maxims is quite a challenge.  We have to remember he wrote them and they were translated before the dangers of codependency were articulated and the term was used.  Gracian is NOT talking about enabling someone through infantilizing or self sacrifice - issues that come up in relationships when an eating disorder is present.

The points he brings up in his commentary are critical learning for people in eating disorder recovery.  Fear of abandonment that stimulates people pleasing to the point of