Part of the reason I felt so afraid to recover was because I thought I was empty and boring outside of it.
When you spend such a long time engrossed in the career of micromanaging your food and body, you crowd out the other things that make you human.
I didn’t read the other kinds of news.
I didn’t have other hobbies.
I didn’t have other passions or interests.
I didn’t have other perspectives.
I believed there were no other dimensions of myself. And why would there be? I hadn’t cultivated them. There was no time, and no desire. My energy was always focused on my disorder.
But there were windows of an itch beyond that life. When I was in college (arguably the worst years of my life), there were psychology courses I took that made me forget about all of that. I would find myself immersed in the material, feeling something akin to hope. In a cloud of depression, there was a temporary lifting of the fog.
It happened again as I was getting my Occupational Therapy degree, taking neuroscience classes and learning about the nervous system and how our brains are wired, how our muscles work. I would record the lectures and listen to them two and three times over, walking through a trail near my house that I now visit regularly. At the time, I was averse to exercise, but somehow those lectures made me want to get outside and move.
And again, during my Coaching certification, when I learned about how humans are motivated, and how to build a practice by helping others work with themselves instead of against themselves.
Something about these periods of my life stood out to me as ME, and simultaneously something that made me forget about myself.
I teach about these experiences as “flow states,” which are times when you lose track of time and feel a semi-state of euphoria. It’s being present and invigorated and hopeful, both inside and outside of yourself.
Following our flow states is a part of learning about who we are and where we want to go, or where we want to spend more time.
(My flow states are clearly rooted in learning and education — I am a true Enneagram 5.)
Before my recovery, I did not have access to much Flow. I kept getting sidetracked from it because I had to enter numbers in MyFitnessPal.
Part of recovery is gaining more access to these states. Exploring them, pursuing them, understanding them. And this can take years.
So it’s really scary to jump from disorder (distraction from flow states) into recovery, because there is no sense of flow states — and now, no distractions. It feels really empty, and boring.
Several years into my recovery, I am moving toward my next state of Flow by enrolling in a program to get my degree in Mental Health Counseling Therapy. This is a decision that I have come to as a natural byproduct of paying attention to what makes me move into zones of flow, and following them patiently.
In disorder, I used to make “bad decisions” constantly because I was desperate to find meaning, and I’d jump into decisions without feeling them through.
Feeling decisions through is just as important as thinking them through, and it’s not something we generally have access to when our feelings and thoughts are consumed by food and body directionals.
Whatever stage of this journey you are on, ask yourself when and where your flow states speak to you. Where and when have they showed up before? Where do you suspect they may be now? And if all seems vague and cloudy, know that you are not alone, and it doesn’t mean nothing is there.
Keep making room.
