Bear the conflict. Eventually, if you follow step 1 and step 2 you will feel uncomfortable. You will feel afraid or mad or so angry and depressed you want to blame something or someone or many people or conditions for your emotional pain.

You can get through this stage without understanding, relying on a devil may care act of desperation. But that often does not work. If you try to break the conflict in yourself through dangerous activities you are not trying to die, although you may. You are trying to stop the pain by taking extreme distracting action.

Prepare a stable base for when you inevitably lose your balance. You will regroup in a new and more solid way.

Now, you take on the task of working through the polarized tensions in yourself to evolve out of the status quo and into your more developed life.

You are not the first to make this journey. This journey has been happening since human beings stood on two legs and maybe earlier than that. After all, it was the life force that brought us up to stand.

People can find their stable base from which to take this journey in many ways.

Leonardo DaVinci found his base in nature, as do many who can see through life forms to the metaphors and actions of natural life forces. Ray Bradbury found his base in libraries, as do many who discover the people and perspectives from across time who wrote and filled the books that bring us worlds we never dreamed of on our own. We recognize them when we find them.

Your emotional waves are rolling in, but what is the shore you seek? If your life looks good, great or enviable to others, who can you trust with your vulnerabilities and secrets?

You don’t want to take medication. You don’t want to be told what to do. You don’t want to isolate or use food, drugs or alcohol to soothe yourself. Yet, you know your spirit cries out for something. You need help and hope help exists.

Living with an eating disorder or the remnants of an old eating disorder is living a lonely life. You can’t be your true self with anyone in order to create a deep and rich relationship. You don’t even know who you. You feel inadequate. You often feel you are an imposter. You are certain you must please others or take care of them in order to be okay yourself.

What is in you that supports your true self and allows you to be free? Even asking this question can be a revolution in your thinking.

This profile of Joanna Poppink was published as part of Revlon’s “Love is On” 2016 Million Dollar Challenge, which highlighted inspiring change makers around the world and raised money for select charities. written by Jonah Weiss

You can describe Joanna Poppink in different ways — therapist, author, naturalist, essayist — but they’re all aspects of the same holistic project of her life’s work: helping women understand and overcome eating disorders.

              Make the call to honor and save your life.

Will you keep waiting for tomorrow to begin your recovery? Tomorrow never comes.

Procrastination is a powerful part of living with an eating disorder. You postpone taking recovery action. When you put positive activities off you are saying that you'll create a new life for yourself in the future. You plan in your mind, as if you can have two lives, this one and the one you'll create when you finish procrastinating.