The Whole New Me Syndrome

Look at me! It’s a whole new me! I’m better, smarter, faster, thinner, I can play guitar, surf, play the piano, I learned how to dance like Britney Spears, and man I loved Corona Quarantine!

I’m Going To Emerge From This Quarantine as a Whole New Me!!!

This quarantine has a special way of holding a mirror up to each of us. What is reflected back is what we need to work on. For me, it’s learning how to get more sleep and to be less hyperfunctional.

Your eating disorder brain has many ways of behaving that aren’t about eating at all. Even after we recover from all the food and body image stuff, we can see it in action. Excessive caretaking, overfunctioning and forgetting to tend to yourself is one of them. I was in that place when this crisis began. I went right into hyperfunctional mode. My husband finally pointed it out to me. “Can you please stop trying to save the world and get some rest, you are so tired…” Sometimes we need a reminder. We can’t always remember to do all the right things for our mental and physical health, especially not in this world where overworking is rewarded.

You hear yourself screaming, “you gotta get thinner! You gotta work out harder! You gotta eat clean!” Below all that noise is a quiet voice that whispers, “I’m just not good enough. “

There are so many other patterns that the eating disorder brain does. Below the surface deep underneath the chatter of your eating disorder is a soft whisper. Underneath “You gotta be thinner! You gotta work out harder! You gotta eat clean!”

Below all that noise is a quiet whisper… “i’m just not good enough.”

Because the pain of that voice is so unbearable, the job of the eating disorder behaviors are to drown it out. You starve yourself or try to fit into clothes that are two sizes too small for you. After that, you beat yourself up because they don’t fit. You do things for other people at the expense of yourself. You obsess on people who don’t give you the attention you need or deserve. You believe that you are not enough and so you date people who also believe that you are not enough. In that way, they validate that belief for you. The way the ED brain works, the underlying etiology of it is that obsessive fast moving brain. We couple the belief “I am not enough,” with a fast moving brain which results in eating disorder behaviors. We have become so used to these voices and behaviors that they barely seem weird to us. We are not aware that it’s poison that keeps infiltrating our system.

You don’t have to work so hard that you’re rejecting yourself.

You don’t have to be the best human being in the world.

You don’t have to emerge from quarantine “a whole new you…”

Instead consider the fact that space, rest and relaxation can allow that soft part inside of you to emerge. That soft part of you is the need that is buried underneath. It is underneath eating too little or eating too much. It is underneath working too much, taking care of everyone around you and sacrificing yourself for everyone else.

When you try to rest your brain and stop thinking and stop doing and just allow yourself to just be… the parts of you that need tending to will present themselves. Then, that softness inside of you, the part that KNOWS that YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH JUST THE WAY YOU ARE… It will let you relax, it will let you stop thinking, and it will give you some space to heal.

This is your birthright. Your body and your soul all want to heal. They just need space and the rest to do it.

All you have to do is step aside, get out of your own way, make room. Healing knows how to happen when it is given the space.

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