Any kind of media or literature has to tread that thin line of being honest and informative without being triggering — and really, I don’t know if there’s actually even a line. What’s helpful for one person is triggering for another. Take Marya’s “Wasted” for example. When I first read that book i wanted to highlight 50% of it. It felt like she had put my jumbled thoughts into cohesive sentences that I could completely identify with. With that said, I definitely tried eating carrots with mustard at one point. Yuck. (if you haven’t read the book, just ignore that reference.)

In my own treatment experience, professionals have been all over the spectrum when it came down to whether or not reading ED books were disordered. One therapist thought reading them was a kind of glorification of the disorder itself. Another felt they are just another manifestation of the food/weight obsession. Another therapist gave me a list of ED books to read. A nurse practitioner once gave me a copy of the Eating Disorder Sourcebook. I’ll save you the trouble of reading it — unless you’re looking for a long extension of the DSM criteria, you can skip it. I can think of several non-disordered reasons to read ED novels:

1. It’s validating to hear your concerns / issues articulated by someone else.
2. Seeing how others overcame their struggles can offer hope.
3. Some stories are depressing enough to make you think “wow, I so don’t want to do that.”
4. For information (not all info fuels your ED).
5. You’re in High School and Wasted is on your summer reading list (I noticed that on a required reading list for a nearby school last summer).

So, disordered or not? I guess it depends on where you are in your disorder and recovery. Generally my philosophy is if you want to read an ED book, go for it. Read a dozen. You probably won’t want to read many more than that, because they get boring — Well, unless you branch out into books on psychotherapy or CBT or PTSD or whatnot. With many ED biographical / autobiographical novels, you’re going to see the same pattern: person develops ED, person receives treatment for ED, person continues relapse/recovery cycle, and person may/may not recover. However, I do 100% support reading psych journal articles (totally different!)… but I’ll save that post for another day.

Therese refers to the tips/tricks she picked up in therapy as “emotional CliffsNotes.” Ever since reading the book, I’ve thought about what I would put in my own emotional CliffsNotes. I have a friend who would probably say I’m just looking for an excuse to make yet another list — which may be partially true — but hey, if I can make a blog post out of it too….

Anyway, a couple of months ago I ran across an awesome article over at Stepcase Lifehack, called “Can You Transform Without Getting Uncomfortable?” Craig’s main point was this:

Hypothesis: There is a positive correlation between how uncomfortable an individual is prepared to get and their likelihood of success – irrespective of the field of endeavor.

This idea reminds me of something my therapist told me once: that anxiety is a good thing. I thought she was nuts (or just wrong) at the time, since I was devoting so much time to controlling/minimizing anxiety. She explained though, that when you’re feeling anxiety, that’s when you’re making progress. The mental anguish that comes with facing uncomfortable things (like eating more, weight gain, handling conflict, being assertive, etc) is a good thing.  It means you’re making change… and that’s what you have to work through.

It was really weird for me to look at anxiety as some positive indicator of change rather than some big red “stop! uncomfortableness ahead!” sign. What I got out of the conversation at the time was that if I were waiting for recovery to be comfortable, it was never going to happen. Challenging the eating disorder was never going to feel good (at least not while still in the thick of it).

Reading Craig’s article put a different spin on it for me, though. I was still looking at anxiety as something inevitable that I had to push through to get to the other side. The blog post opened me up to the idea that uncomfortable does not equal bad. It’s just uncomfortable.

By the way, I’ve been meaning to write this post for a month (at least), but was re-inspired by something that I read on Carrie Arnold’s blog today:

The main factor for me was anxiety and fear about changing my behaviors. I was often tired of the eating disorder but unable to push through the anxiety that was keeping my ritualistic behaviors in place. Thus the status quo remained in place. My other issue was that this fear was coupled by my minimizing the issues that my AN behaviors created. They weren’t that bad, I could handle it, most people were on a diet- how was my life different? So how could I be motivated to work on a problem that I often wasn’t even sure I had?

I know that anxiety! It keeps me stuck, especially when it comes to the eating disorder.

I’ve read plenty of books on the healing power of pets (and I completely believe in pet therapy) but never a book on pets and Bipolar disorder. Now I haven’t purchased this yet (I assure you that it IS in my shopping cart, though), so I can’t review the book… but it did get me thinking about pets and recovery.

I remember two girls who were inpatient with me getting puppies as soon as they were discharged. At the time I was thinking,

1. Was this some kind of reward for completing treatment?
2. Are the puppies supposed to keep the girls happy & therefore less likely to relapse (some kind of logic that family/friends would use)
3. Or, were their families planning on getting dogs, anyway?

Or… maybe I was just jealous and trying to invent a way to convince my parents to get a puppy.

Anyway, after my junior year in college I decided to get a puppy. My roommates were gone for the summer, my boyfriend was a resident and scheduled to work in the ICU for the next three months, and my summer internship only was only in the mornings. So, for all of these reasons (maybe I should also mention that I was supposed to be studying for the MCAT and thought a pet would be a good study buddy — ha!), I decided to get a puppy. While I thought just having the companionship would be helpful, there were a couple of other things that hit me after a couple of weeks with him:

1. He needed to eat & go outside every couple of hours (he’s a yorkie and you have to be careful of hypoglycemia when they are little). This means I had to stop what I was doing every couple of hours and feed/walk him. At the time I was often, “too busy to sit down and eat,” so this was a bit of an unanticipated shock. It was important to stop and take care of him. What does that mean re: making time to take care of myself?
2. I am his mom (well, you know what I mean). No one else in the world is going to take care of him. I am the only one that he has to rely on. If he’s hungry, lonely, tired, whatever–I am the only one who knows that. This little tiny puppy is trusting me to take care of him. He NEEDS me. I am needed!
3. He loves me unconditionally. I don’t have to be afraid of screwing up the relationship — which is good, because I can’t run away from it if I do think I’ve ruined it. He doesn’t care about my weight, my job, my reputation, etc. He loves me because I am me, and just wants me to be there.

I know these are all such basic ideas, but everyday life and relationships with others can be so complicated. I had all of these excuses for each of these points…

“Taking care of myself is not important to the rest of the world — it’s not an excuse for not living up to expectations.”

“I am replaceable — No one really needs ME.”

“I am not enough and I ask for too much… there is always the risk that I could ask for something that I don’t deserve, and then I will wreck the relationship.”

So, in summary: What is it about the relationship with my dog that helps me question my distorted beliefs? Well maybe it’s positive regard. Really, this whole relationship seems a little Carl Rogers to me. The incongruence between the “real self” (who I genuinely am) and “ideal self” (who I think I should be) which is the result of my quest for positive regard. My construction of inadequate defense mechanisms in an attempt to feel less threatened or vulnerable. The ensuing neuroses

If only I had realized earlier that a PET would give me positive regard and allow me to realize my genuine, authentic self!

Excusing some of the sarcasm in that last statement, I do think that there is something to be said for positive regard and the unconditional love that you get from your pet.