An Angry, Distorted, and an Exhaustive View of my body Image

By Krista Sturgeon and Mike Folker

The book is a read about how my eating disorder came into my life and how it took control over me. It's the battle between me and my eating disorder as it developed into its own entity. As it ruled my life, I sat back and watched it devour everything that I was and loved. As I was vanishing away, I had one chance to get my life back and recover from it. I chose to recover!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483548104

Book preview

help.

Chapter One

The term, mark, is derived from the occasion when carnivals would come to town. They would place a mark (an actual mark – usually a small white chalk mark) on the back of the person they believed could be conned or tricked out of money. That’s how Anorexia saw me. Because of my intellect, I was marked. She knew she could get into me and she knew she could take whatever she wanted from me.

I am lucky, I guess, because I have been told that I have a high intellect; however, later in my life I found out that this is more of a curse than a blessing. As I go through this ordeal, I find out that my intellect is what helped me. Now, the problem with a high intellect is that my mind wanted a lot out of me, maybe too much.

I put myself in a mental situation and may have been doomed from the start. This is more than just being smart. It is also how you think, solve problems, communicate with other people, and how you retrieve and store information.

Some people retrieve information visually and others do better by hearing. All these things make up your intellect and how you put all of the things in order is your personality. I like things with complexity. I don't like simple thinking and reasoning.

My mind demands a lot out of me and others. I like problem solving on my own. It’s not that I don’t like hearing other people's opinions, it is just that the trouble that I get into is my responsibility and I need to get out of it myself.

Later as you read and as I live my life, I find that everything has two sides. Sometimes you need to listen and gratefully take help from others. My mind is a blessing and a curse. It helped me get into my problems, but is saving me from them now.

Your intellect is made up four basic parts:

Abstract Thought, is the part of your brain that is, for the most part, the art side. This allows you to see or hear things, then process the information like seeing colors or textures. An example is seeing a piece of art work such as a red dot over a blue square. You might see the sun over the ocean.

Technical Thinking, this is like reasoning, logic, math, and things that require you think in an orderly manner. For this type of thinking you use the part of your brain that likes to solve puzzles and figure things out. This is the science part of your brain, more or less.

Instinctive Drives, these are your actual drives such as hunger, sex, etc. It tells you what your body needs and then it tells your brain, Brain, we need to eat now or need to sleep now.

Auto-Functions, these are your mind telling you to breathe and keep your heart beating - things that your body does on its own that you don't have to tell it to do. However, you can control these things to a certain extent if you do think about them, like making yourself stop breathing, for a period.

Don't think that your auto-functions are not a big part of your intellect. They are and they played a big part of my self-destructive behavior. They can tell your body just one more mile, or you can go without food for one more hour. Once you start doing this and your body still functions, it begins to play a large part in your decision process. I was able to withstand so much damage to my body that I keep pushing myself to dangerous physical limits, but I believe it is one of the reasons that I am still here today.

Your mind has struggles against itself. Some may have the technical thinking that smoking is bad for him or her, but they still do it because now smoking has an instinctive drive. The drive is greater than the technical thinking, so that person cannot quit. Now that may sound too simple, but you get the idea.

When you read this, think about what your mind is doing to your body. Is it good? Not just feeling good, but is it good for your body? We are often fooled by our bodies when it comes to pleasurable things, but don't be. A basic question to ask yourself is, Is what I am doing any good for my body, yes or no? If the answer is no, then think about what you are doing to it and why.

The problem is not your body, it is your mind. Your intellect is reinforcing your bad behavior and you need to stop it and then seek help.

What you don't want to do is wait. Do not waste any more time. One of the greatest things that I have missed is time in dealing with this. Stay away from things that might be pressuring you. These may be things you would like to do but you may want to seek help instead. There is no risk and no shame. Just as you go to a doctor for a runny nose or a scratchy throat, there is no shame in going to the doctor. You seek professional help and start getting your life back, then you can start living again.

My Mind Sets

My quest for perfection, I found, gave me no freedom. I could not be me. What I had to do was become perfect. Being perfect was not me. Perfect is not anybody.

My mind was torn between two masters, one was what I wanted to do and be, and the other one was perfection, and the cost of all this was my freedom.

How was I going to do this? How was anybody going to do this? For me, I not only believed that I could do this, but that I had to do this. Perfection was the answer to all of my problems - what I demanded out of me, what was expected of me - and my mind believed that I could do it.

I believed that I could do this, be perfect, and I was capable of doing it. And why not? If you are going to do something in life, seems to me that being perfect was the thing to be. How hard could it be? I hoped that it was going to be hard. I wanted something that was not going to be easy.

I did not like myself, so that meant for me to change, and the more punishing it was the more I liked it. I hated who I was so something that changed me and was rough on me, I liked.

My mind was made up, I had to become perfect and I was willing to do whatever it took to do just that.

Low Self-Esteem

The problem was not just my low self-esteem, but negative self-esteem, when it comes down to it. I don't think that there is anything that I felt that I did right.

I found that the difference between low self-esteem and negative self-esteem is that with low esteem you may not try things you feel that you could not do, but negative selfesteem causes you to feel that no matter what you do or have accomplished - it was wrong or not good enough.

Before I even got out of the gate, I was a loser. In my mind, that is what I thought. I was excited about getting on with my life, but in the back of mind I was already a failure. Each part of your mind has its own Sphere of Understanding. In this Sphere are things that you feel about yourself and your mind tries to see it. These Spheres may or may not be true. They are how you feel about yourself.

These are my feelings. They may not be yours, but this is how I mentally felt about myself. This is what my eating disorder had to work with. I believe this is where my eating disorder marked me. This was what gave the wolf the scent. I had the mental money that the swindler, the con, wanted. They could live off me for a long time.

My first feeling that marked me and the biggest one is negative self-esteem. This one starts it all. I just didn't like myself. I didn’t like my looks, but it goes deeper than that. I felt that there was nothing I could do right no matter how things really were. I was never going to be good enough in my eyes.

A negative self-esteem is a mystery for me. I know that I should not have it, but I do. Coming out of high school, I was a smart, pretty girl and looking forward to getting on with my life. I was told that I had a lot going for me.

People were looking forward to the things that were going to come, but I did not see it then and even today I don't see it.

Low and or a negative image of myself affected me in ways that I should not have let it. You are not going to do things or try to achieve things that you feel are above you. My relationships, especially early on, I should not have been in. I thought that it was justified, based upon my low opinion of myself.

No matter how good, or even great, I might be doing - I would always find something wrong. I could be the richest person, have fame, be whatever I wanted to be, and I would still see something wrong. I believe this is the root to a lot of my self-destructive behavior. Why build up something that you hate? People try to destroy or stay away from things that they don't like, but you see that was me.

I did not like...me.

How are you going to identify with anything or love anything, if you can't identify or love yourself? How are you going to make friends, if you can't be friends with yourself? How are you going to live with other people in this world, if you can't live with yourself?

Some people are humble. They are grateful for and feel blessed or lucky for the job they might have, or money, or fame. They can honestly talk about the things that they did right in their life and can show other people what to do to get what they have. For me, I felt that I had nothing to say, nothing to share, nothing give back and nothing to contribute to society.

It is plain and simple...I was not worthy of anything. No matter what I did, there was something wrong, something I hated, something that I needed to change for me to be a part of this world. I was not a young, very smart, pretty girl coming out of high school. I was anything but that.

Need to Succeed (Perfect)

I had a desperate need to succeed because, I felt that if I could SUCCEED I could find some self- worth, but I found myself feeling just simply desperate.

I thought that the only way that I ever could feel about myself was to be successful, but I did not know what that meant, yet. If I could be that, well then I could like myself, but as I was going through my life I kept thinking, in the back of my mind, would that be enough?

Something slowly made me feel that I had to do more than just be successful...I know I can be perfect. If I was perfect, then everything would fall into place, but how was I going to be perfect? I felt that I could do this, somehow I could become perfect...I needed to become perfect.

Wanting to be perfect quickly changed to needing to be perfect. This desire filled a lot of my needs. If I was perfect, then things would be better for me. If I was perfect, then I would like myself. If I was perfect then people would be amazed by that. If I was perfect then...fill in the blank. That is how it was for me.

The thing about perfection is that it is a myth. Nobody is perfect, nobody can be. It's not a viable solution for anything. It is an abstract escape from my problem, my low self-esteem. My becoming perfect, I thought would be the answer to all my problems. It was like someone seeking revenge, it gave motivation and a goal.

Where the two Spheres intersect, there is the trouble. If you have a low self-esteem and a willingness to do just about anything, that is trouble for a lot of people and for a lot of young girls out there who are ready to start their lives.

How far will you go? …

You will go as far as you let it take you.

For me, it was five pounds short of dying. I don't know how far it would be for you. For me, I was almost there. My low self-esteem and my other mind sets almost drove me to my death.

I was off on a shaky start already. I am showing you this so you can look at your own thoughts and see how you are.

What are your mind sets filling your thoughts with? Is your self-esteem low? Are you desperate to prove yourself to someone? You can see how this was basically a ticking time bomb for me.

I also think that this is an easy trap to fall into. I believe that a lot of young girls fall into this trap.

Over-Achiever

I’m afraid my problems didn’t stop there. I have one more Sphere - the Sphere of Disillusionment. See, just like the person reading this book, I also had an over-achiever mentality. That in itself is not a bad thing, but I saw reaching for perfection a viable and necessary goal.

This was like any other instinctive drive for competition, for doing my best, and doing everything I could to try to succeed in whatever I was trying to do. In high school I had a lot of extra after school activities. I was a member of a lot of clubs, even President of the Student Council, which I enjoyed very much.

I liked the job of President of the Student Council because I had some control in my life. The sense of control that I got the position was fulfilling and I felt that the more I was in charge of something, the more I was in charge of my life. I like to be in control.

It was also a fun job to be on the student council. A lot of my extra school activities weren't so fun, but this one was. I believe that I liked this job so much because it filled my intellect. I had to think about technical things and have a vision of some abstract thought. I had to think about the future about the school and about the student body.

What got me at the beginning of my being vulnerable to anorexia was my mindset subset - the linkage between all the sets - anorexia. This might not be the case for all people but it was for me. Anorexia filled my intellect. She was abstract thinking, so she was art. She filled my technical need and she filled my need to be the best.

I could have a vision and I could see what I wanted to see. She also was very technical. There was counting calories and training my auto functions to believe that my body can handle my journey to be anorexic.

This is the chaotic mindset that I was in. I felt that nothing was ever good enough, no matter what I did, but yet I still had to do it, no matter what that was. What could come of this – the SEED? The Seed is the little piece where all of these Spheres came together.

I can see it now. That little piece has been planted now, not just in my body and my mind, but now it has entered my soul and it liked what it saw. It just had so much it could grow on. I made it live - like my mindset was the sunshine, water and earth - it was just an ideal condition for it to grow.

The Seed

The mold was being made before I was even born. The crafting of it was done out of love. They cared for what it would be. As a blank slate placed inside, believing that enough time and pressure inside the mold would make me into what I was going to be. What you want to be and what the world thinks you should be is almost always in conflict. I was about to learn this.

Especially for girls, the world has an image of what it expects you to be. When you do not fit this image, the world puts pressure on you. Sometimes you are going to look at the world to find out what kind person you are going to be. The problem here is that you can fool yourself.

You fool yourself into thinking that what you want to be and what the world wants you to be is the same thing. However, when the mold opened, I was never what the mold tried to make me. When the product came out of the mold, it did not meet the quality specs. When disappointment was shown, it was devastating for me. Knowing that I did not meet the expectations of me was crippling.

What did I do wrong...and what was I going to do to fix this? I hadn't left home yet and I have failed and was there more to come for me. Was failure going to be a one chance meeting or was it going to be an old friend? There are many things that I did that I felt were important and successful.

I really didn't know what success meant at