Gut Feelings: part 1

Some days I am completely overcome with the amount of pain I’m still in physically. Recovery is not only a mind fuck but takes a huge toll on your body. I’m not just talking about the weight gain, believe me that’s hard enough, but those physical symptoms that last well after learning to feed yourself. For me one unsolved physical symptom in my stomach/gut. I don’t mean the shape of my stomach, I’m not looking for a flat, toned, ab covered stomach (let’s be realistic E.D.). I’m honestly looking for a soft, mushy, healthy, happy from the inside out- stomach/gut.

From my first day in treatment my stomach hated me and honestly the hatred was mutual. The first night I was doubled over in pain, unable to eat my meal plan (physically), and by the end of the week I had night sweats, had seen the treatment nurse twice, and was arguing with my clinician that treatment was just not right for me. I can loosely say that the first round of treatment didn’t go so well. I ended up being forcibly discharged because I wouldn’t comply with the meal plan and rules. This is where my eating disorder got extremely tricky- I wanted to recover, I thought I had been in treatment for a reason, but my body just wasn’t having it. Eating is the key first step to recovery and I couldn’t even get past that.

I decided to take a month off to work with a new primary care doctor and gastroenterologist doctor to hopefully figure out some answers to my stomach. After a lot of testing and different nutritional plans through my nutritionist I finally had some conclusions, and I had to face facts; my eating disorder had taken a toll on my stomach/gut and the prognosis was iffy. Who knew... would time make it better with proper eating, would I need pain medications for life, or would it only improve slightly. Armed with my gastroenterologist’s recommendations and a strict plan from my nutritionist, I agreed to try treatment again. We were all holding out hope that time, eating, and sticking to recovery could heal it. With a full month away from home in residential treatment, weekly hospital appointments, and then months in the partial hospitalization program my food intake was finally stable, but my stomach/gut still distrusted me.

Fast forward another year and a half, another residential stay in treatment, months of partial hospitalization, and numerous treatment protocols for my stomach/ gut. And my stomach still won’t accept the food easily. I am fully invested in recovery, but it’s often hard to continue when your physical body is refusing to heal. I want to believe It’s slowly getting better, but it has taken persistent nourishment, patience, kindness, and continues to make me very self aware of my body. In a different way than ever before.

I have re-learned to listen to my gut feelings as opposed to my eating disorder thoughts.

My eating disorder will no doubt be the voice in my head telling me not to feed myself, to skip meals, to give up on it all when I’m in tremendous stomach pain. But you know what? This eating disorder has been wrong before and I can tell the difference from the eating disorder thoughts and my healthy gut feelings. It may hurt, it may be uncomfortable, but my gut tells me to keep feeding myself, to push through the pain, so I can get healthier, stronger, and eventually make progress away from constant pain.

In retrospect, before recovery I had no opinions of my own, I craved advice, or at least validation that my ideas were at most ok. I’ve always been a rule follower, perfectionist, eager to please, people pleaser, but through years of treatment I’ve realized these beliefs do not serve me.

This whole time my gut instincts were off, I wasn’t feeding myself properly, my thoughts were irrational and my eating disorder was the culprit. My eating disorder took away any free thoughts I might have, took away my ability to validate myself, or stand up for what I felt, believed, and wanted.

I’m not saying my low self esteem and inability to make decisions is the reason I experience such awful stomach problems, but healing my gut from the years of physically abuse is similar to healing my thoughts from my own mental abuse.

As I continue to eat, continue to work on recovery, my stomach slowly (hopefully) heals, and to be honest my gut feelings are stronger than ever; I’ve started to re-trust my own thoughts. That’s recovery. Sometimes our body catches up before our mind, our mind catches up before our body, or a mess combination of the two fighting it out.