After finally seeking treatment for an eating disorder after 15 years, I can completely relate to this. Relinquishing control is especially difficult when you didn’t realize that’s what you were doing in the first place.
Anita Johnson uses a great metaphor about eating disorders: you fall into a rushing river, and you’re drowning, getting pulled down. You grab onto a log and it saves your life, and carries you to calmer waters. You can see the shore, and people telling you to let go of the log and swim, but you can’t (I guess it’s a humongous log), because you are too scared to let go of it now.
The log is the eating disorder, or other unhealthy coping mechanisms, and the point is that it has served a purpose, it materialized for a reason. But you can’t get to where you need to be by taking it with you.
