Have you ever thought or said, "What's the use? Nothing will get better. I ate two meals, and I can't stand myself. If it's this hard to eat two meals I can't imagine living a life where I eat three meals every day."

When you've starved or binged or purged yourself to numbness and when you are so nutrtionally deprived that your brain doesn't function properly you actually believe that your perception of the world is total, accurate and inviolate.  If your vision is grim then you believe that's the way it is and will be.

But take a look at this picture and the caption.  This is a newly discovered planet.  It's not new. It's new to our perceptions.  It may have existed longer than our own Earth.  Look at the beauty, mystery and majesty of the red star.  OMG. It's a red star shining on a planet.  Look at the shadow on the planet. That's the line of day and night.  What would we experience if we were on that planet at dusk, right on that shadow line?

Planets of the Gliese 581 System

This artist's conception shows the inner four planets of the Gliese 581 system and their host star, a red dwarf star only 20 light years away from Earth. The large planet in the foreground is the newly discovered GJ 581g, which has a 37-day orbit right in the middle of the star's habitable zone and is only three to four times the mass of Earth, with a diameter 1.2 to 1.4 times that of Earth.

Image Credit: Lynette Cook

Yes, this picture has everything to do with eating disorder recovery. To heal you must move beyond the rigid and limited thinking, feeling and behavior demanded by an eating disorder dominated life. Scare tactics don't work. You know you are rotting your teeth, weakening your bones and endangering your heart. But you can deny that kind of information or numb yourself to it by burrowing into your eating disorder.

Promises of a better life don't work.  Someone can tell you how talented or creative or intelligent you are and how you could do wonderful things with your life.  You don't believe it. You know you are smart. You know you have talents.  But you also know, with your eating disordered thinking, that there is no way you could rally your intelligence and talent to live other than how you are living now.  That thinking and that belief is you behind the rigid prison bars of your eating disorder.

But look at this picture. So much is going on in the world and in the universe than our imaginations can imagine. People exist who know and believe that there is more. They dedicate their lives to scanning the skies.  They hope they will find something.  They don't know what they might discover, but they keep looking because they know the universe is more vast that we can grasp with our human minds - even well fed and well nourished minds.

Take some inspiration from this photo. If lovely GJ 581g has been out there all this time, what wonder might be in you, out of reach right now, that could be discovered.

Right, you are not a planet. But you are the stuff of the universe. You are endless possibilities.

Source of control in anorexia

Carrie, on ED-Bites wrote an indignant response to an explanation of anorexia in the press.

Carrie said her own anorexia was based not on controlling weight or the external world but on controlling fear. I agree. Controlling everything a person possibly can control in an attempt to control what is uncontrollable I feel is at the root of most eating disorders. When that point is acknowledged the discussion goes away from food, fashion, weight, appearance, and even beauty and sexuality.

How Fear Relates to Control Issues

The discussion then becomes centered around the questions, Why are growing numbers of women at increasingly younger ages afraid? What are they afraid of? Why do they feel that their fears are justified and that they have no way of protecting themselves except through eating disorders?

Instead of denying yourself food or using food to binge and purge, what if you cherished food and grew it to eat, share and contribute to global healing? Could planting a tomato or zucchini really help save our lives and the world? Lots of people think so. I know my backyard orange tree provides a lot of joy, beauty and nourishment to my friends and family. And my home grown cucumbers last year were a miracle to behold and delicious to eat. Now I'm seriously asking myself, could my oranges and cucumbers and yours help heal or prevent an eating disorder?

If you have an eating disorder you live a life that is more dangerous than you know.  Your eating disorder behaviors are only part of the risks you experience every day.

You can feel safe but be in danger. You can feel afraid and be in danger. Your felt fear can help you recognize the source of danger and take action to make yourself more realistically safe.