Conscious Choices

by Ashleigh Stewart

After spending some time recently evaluating and trying to come to terms with understanding the facts of my own experiences of having the eating disorders anorexia and particularly bulimia I have come to the conclusion of one aspect of the whole thing and it is something which I have never been able to comprehend before now. This is a point of which I do feel is dismissed, ignored or most likely to be yet unrealized by those people who we refer to as being the 'victims' of these disorders. What is that? Well, after some recent experiences of my own I have concluded that people who have eating disorders are in fact not 'victims' of this so called 'illness' and to label them as being 'victims' or 'sufferers only succeeds in robbing them of the fact that they do have their own free will to choose whether they engage in practicing such eating behaviors or not.

You must understand that any person who has an eating disorder thrives on the idea that they are a victim because it indirectly gives them less responsibility of dealing with their problem, allowing them to carry on feeling sorry for themselves. This is all they need to avoid facing the reality of the whole situation that in the end, regardless of any other underlying problems that exist, that they do in fact choose whether or not they wish to have an eating disorder or not and this is a critical factor which will determine whether that person will continue to subject themselves to the horrors of such habits or not.

My words here might sound severe or unsympathetic, but I did go through all of this myself and I know exactly how horrific and difficult it can be to get out of the patterns of an eating disorder. What I know from it all is that someone with an eating disorder will do anything in their power to avoid not dealing with and even accepting it, even if they realize it or not. Also, what happens is that it becomes so normal to you that it becomes a lifestyle and it is difficult to see and admit the real extent of what you are actually doing to yourself when you are caught up in all the confusion.

I know only too well how difficult it is to understand why we feel inclined to keep punishing ourselves with these eating disorders. Even for someone who is at the 'tail end' of their eating disorder, or in other words, someone who has almost finished their healing process might feel as if they are stuck between two worlds of not knowing if they still do have an eating disorder or if they are free of it all. Certainly, in my own case this has what has been going on in my own life recently and I have realized that to be cured of this does not mean simply stopping the behaviours, it is in fact a psychological 'state of mind'. For me it seems to be that my own state of mind after spending years of thinking and feeling the same way about myself, my body and food has returned to being balanced, as it was before I begun developing the eating disorders in the first place. This is all very well, but lately there seemed to be a small part of me that wanted to cling onto the fact that I am a 'victim' of an eating disorder.

Why is that? Well, perhaps it is out of fear of letting myself go and handling the responsibility of investing some real love, attention and care towards myself which is something I have never ever done in my life before. Maybe it was a lack of discipline when it came to the point of always watching my eating habits and patterns, or maybe I just watched my eating too much which always reminds me that, yes, I was bulimic and I must be careful not to fall into the same old trap again! Or it might have been because I have been programmed subconsciously to think self degrading thoughts for so long that they still enter my mind.

About the Author

www.freespiritcentre.info
Ashleigh is a keen writer and is involved in writing for an internet web site called 'The Free Spirit Centre'. This site is focused primarily on healing, personal growth and 'human' issues. Her contribution to the site is by means of her writing articles based on her own life experiences and by some editing of the other writers work.