In this blog post, I will review the potential cons of taking some time out.
They are:
You spend your newly available free time distracting yourself with other things to avoid recovery
‘In recovery’ becomes a way of life
You lose a sense of normality
You lose social contact
Newly available free time is spent distracting yourself
When I had an eating disorder, I found free time to be deeply unnerving and uncomfortable. When I didn’t pack out of schedule, I was left with my thoughts, which predominately revolved around my fears, anticipations, and intense mental hunger. The real risk that exists when a period of time and space is made available is that new distractions emerge as a means of keeping occupied and not being left with the disturbing ‘space’ left behind by the absence of your usual routine. In order to fill it, and in order to avoid the growing preoccupation with food, possible imminence of recovery and potential overwhelm of the undefined future, it can be very tempting to deliberately create arbitrary distractions for yourself. Again, it comes back to a case of pushing back whatever lies on the other side of uncertainty. In short, the success of taking time out relies on recovery actually happening when time out is taken.
‘In recovery’ becomes a way of life
Quasi-recovery is a state in which one can certainly exist in. A risk of devolving all responsibilities is that the status of being ‘in recovery’, whilst not pairing it with reasonable recovery actions, is that the status of being ‘in recovery’ becomes a way of life.
Could it be that without any external expectations put upon you for a prolonged period of time, you find yourself in the relative sanctuary of the halfway house with nobody ushering you to move out? Could it be that you find that not having those work stressors or the pressure of coursework deadlines is actually pretty nice? Or could it be that perhaps those who are close to you are extra gentle and bend their routines to yours in a way that they didn’t when you weren’t so obviously in a healing phase? Could it be that maybe this way of living – somewhere between life and illness – is one you find gives you a bit of peace and breathing space?
As soon as you park yourself here, with the label of ‘in recovery’ without healing action, you are living in pseudo-recovery. Sure, you can dress what you’re doing up and still make it look like you are trying, but when you reflect on what progress you are actually making, the strides are not moving you in a direction that is ‘out’ of recovery.
You lose social contact.
Not only do eating disorders thrive in secrecy and isolation, but loneliness can exacerbate feelings of hopelessness. If leaving a work or education environment means not seeing colleagues or peers, one can be left with a limited pool of people to retain a sense of normality from, especially those who don’t treat you like you have an eating disorder, and don’t accommodate it, unlike how some of those people who are in our closer bubble accidentally might.
Furthermore, though there are definitely many people who have deeply dysfunctional relationships with food and movement, there are also many who don’t. People exist outside of the eating disorder bubble, who go out to eat often, who eat and drink in abundance, and who try different foods in the supermarket on a whim. Though this might seem obvious, it can be all too easy to lose sight of the fact that the fewer people you interact with day to day, the narrower your reference point you have to calibrate your own new normalities by.
Additionally, colleagues and peers are catalysts for social situations involving food. Without these peripheral friendships, unpredictable and spontaneous events like grabbing a coffee after work might be unwittingly avoided.
And that’s the lot. The final blog post of this series will dot the I’s and cross the T’s on this topic.
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