Addicted to purging: how to heal.
The first time I purged was when I was 12. I was getting a colonic against my will, after being told I had parasites and toxins inside my body. That was also the first time I heard: "You are disgusting" — a belief system I held onto tightly for years afterward, which actually had its roots in an even more severe trauma from years earlier.
I started taking laxatives when I was 14, in the form of senna leaf tablets, and administering my own enemas every morning before class from when I was 15 to 22 years old.
I had a propensity to retain water, something I didn't know about myself until I was told that I looked edemic one day after school at 13, and these practices were how I protected myself from getting that feedback.
None of it really worked though, and because I was overweight for most of that period, no one ever showed concern. I got lots of support when I lost weight, and a lot of criticism when I gained it.
At 24 I restricted my diet to a smoothie for breakfast, soup for lunch, and a can of vienna sausages for dinner. I practiced Bikram yoga 6 days a week - and some days I did doubles.
When I was 25, I did my first fast, and went for 13 days. In that year, with the final push fasting offered, I lost 50lbs. I was lighter and smaller than I was my freshman year of high school.
I celebrated massively, but still had tons of shame around my body, covered in stretch marks and now, loose skin.
I continued a pattern of control to try to maintain that size for the following six years, somewhat unsuccessfully.
I also invested heavily in my health. I started regular acupuncture, chiro, and various modalities of bodywork.
I didn't realize at the time that what I was compulsively trying to purge or control was more than just food. I was backed up massively ENERGETICALLY and EMOTIONALLY. I had spent my life operating in the world as a machine without understanding that I was deeply empathic and had made an olympic sport of taking on other people's feelings and energy. I was strong and thought I was supposed to carry it all. I did it consciously, and I also did it unconsciously.
I hadn't even learned how to digest my own feelings.
In emotional intelligence terms this is called being "full" and if you get too full on undigested material, it inevitably starts to back up. Our natural instinct is to purge and then try to control our environment to prevent future influx. We do it physically, we do it energetically, we do it emotionally, and if we can't do it with those outlets, we do it with food.
I had an entire childhood of traumatic experiences, both repressed, and within my awareness, to digest. I had layers to peel off, which I began tackling through my yoga practice, in learning about boundaries, and distancing myself from dysfunctional relationships in my life. All before I was 30.
I started to develop a healthier relationship with my body in my early 30s, but that familiar "You are disgusting" thought stream would creep up every now and then and totally cripple me. And then it was back to the drawing board.
I had a teacher who once told me that everyone had addictions. I scoffed at her and immediately thought: "not me."
But it's true. We all do. If we're not addicted to substances, we might be addicted to control and purging or certainty, or on the most subtle level, we're addicted to thoughts, limiting beliefs, and certain types of reactive behavior, like justification and righteousness.
All of us.
All of it is fuel, and all of it is compensatory for a skillset almost no one was taught growing up: healthy digestion and metabolization of both our formative and seemingly insignificant life experiences.
Recovery means reconnecting to your essential self through the process of integration. Recovery means to recover and reclaim yourself through transmutation.