Eating my usual meals and snacks, and not binging and purging, has gotten slightly easier. On the other hand, I am feeling a lot of things that I really don't want to feel, and it sucks pretty hard. Of course, I knew this would happen, but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with, unfortunately :/. BUT I seem to be coming up with a decent amount of insights already, and I haven't even been here for two weeks. Knowing the reasons for things is helpful, because it allows me to challenge old assumptions and beliefs that I otherwise would never have been able to challenge (because I would have just assumed they were all inescapably true, and would think it was too difficult, or even absurd, to question them).

For example, if I had assumed I was deserving of pain because nobody really loves me (in a general sense), I can look at the times in my life when I didn't perceive that I was loved, and figure out from that where it all sort of started, and the circumstances behind it. Knowing that my mother was a huge source of I-never-feel-loved, and realizing that she likely has issues of her own that prevent her from being able to express her love in a way that I can intuitively understand and believe, helps me to be able to reframe things, and say to myself, "Actually, she did love you. She just didn't know how to show it." And so even though my experiences still hurt, and still make me feel angry with her (and slightly bitter), I have the basis to be able to think that maybe I was loved, or maybe in the future I could be loved.

There are about a thousand and one faulty assumptions and beliefs I have that need to be challenged this way, and I know it's going to take awhile to sink in... not to mention that on an emotional level I still need to process the hurts, and all the other feelings that come with all the crap in my head. My brain, as I have discovered, can move a hell of a lot more quickly than my feelings. So all this cognitive work is going to have to be applied and applied and applied, a thousand times over, before my emotions are even going to recognize it, let alone accept it.

I am realizing that if I wait to be ready, or to feel better, or to have things make sense before I try to do the cognitive changes, I am NEVER going to do the cognitive stuff, and I'm also never going to get better. So even though it feels backasswards to do things starting at my brain and trying to extend to my feelings, it's the only thing I can think of to do that might actually help. The feelings themselves simply do not change on their own. So using my brain (which I can control) to try and help myself move past all the emotions that are keeping me stuck is actually the ONLY thing I can do to help myself in a practical way. I mean, I could do years of analytical or very deep therapies, but without trying to retrain my brain, all these automatic thoughts and associated feelings are just going to continue, and everything is going to keep feeling like shit. Or I can try to put new patterns of thought into my brain to replace the old ones that make me feel like shit, and someday, when the new patterns actually get grasped and absorbed by my brain, maybe I will feel better (as well as think better). That's the idea, anyway. And it's worked for other people (as I've read in Life Without Ed, among other books I've come across lately), so why can't it work for me?

I don't know how much sense any of this makes. It's all kind of a jumble in my head, to be honest. I'm still trying to piece it all together. All this cognitive and emotional and no-behaviors stuff is all waves crashing into each other, and separating it all sometimes is like pulling taffy. But I hope that with enough time, effort, and patience, I will be able to organize and process it all, and thereby actually start a true, and PERMANENT, road of recovery.