Going back to the fall of '99, I'd like to delve a little bit deeper into how the roots of anger, self-hatred, and fear that I have mentioned in previous posts grew into an eating disorder. I didn't have names for any of those roots when I was 15, so now that I can identify that those specific emotions were my feelings at the time, it is easier to recognize them when they come up in my daily life now.  Then I am able to take unhealthy thoughts captive instead of being captivated by unhealthy thoughts.

The first one is anger.  Anger is common; I have never met anyone who has gone through life without being angry.  The Bible differentiates between righteous anger and sinful anger.  It's everywhere.  Anger became a problem for me when I started to believe in religion's definition of anger instead of the true definition.  

My heart's intent was not to substitute religion for truth, but that was the end result in many areas of my life shortly after I was born again.  I wanted to live righteously, and I wanted to do anything but sin.  Those goals are admirable enough, right?  It seemed innocent enough, but I was deceived into thinking that I could achieve those goals in my own strength.

Part of doing things in my own strength was being self-controlled, keeping anger under control.  The thing is, I was a teenager, and I was angry about a lot of things.  I was angry that I had been born as a girl in a society that seemed to favor boys, I was angry that I had to go to school each day, I was angry that I had homework, I was angry that I lived in North Dakota, etc.  Typical teen angst.  Underlying all of it was an anger at God for creating me the way He did.  That was an anger I couldn't own, and one that I definitely couldn't express.  So where did it go?  Deep inside.

The anger held deep inside led to self-hatred; now, there's a fun topic!  I didn't learn how to identify this stronghold until I was 26.  My pastor's wife (whom I will refer to as my mentor, because she is way more than a "pastor's wife") pointed the presence of self-hatred out to me one night while I was sitting on her couch, and I felt a paradigm shift.  I also felt it rise up in me, wanting to destroy her for exposing it.  The biggest way that self-hatred led to self-starvation was in the lie that I chose to believe that said my life had no worth.  Almost as soon as I had made a covenant with God to serve Him and love Him and worship Him, this ugly thing started attacking my thoughts and told me I should disappear.  Just disappear.  You can't be perfect enough to be worthy of love.  Just disappear.  I hated my life, or so I thought, because I was looking at my soul instead of the new life of Christ in me.  All I could see was how horrible I was.  I knew God was good, I knew Jesus loved me, I knew the Holy Spirit was in me, but I could not love myself.

The main way that self-hatred sabotaged my recovery was by pushing me away from the people who reached out to help.  One example occurred during a session with my psychologist.  We had been meeting for maybe a couple months, and she basically felt like she was pulling teeth each time she asked me a question.  Every response I gave was the minimum bit of information I could get away with without actually being mute.  It was painfully awkward.  The real truth was that I looked forward to these sessions.  I knew she was on to something.  I knew she could help.  So when she asked me in that session if I wanted to continue meeting with her or not, self-hatred spoke up on behalf of me and said no.  She asked if I liked working with the dietician better than working with her, and I said yes.  

She looked at me really strongly and said, "Allie, this isn't just about food." I knew she was right.  I knew it more than I could say. 

But I didn't say anything, so that was my last session.  I regretted that decision for about 13 years.  I had been offered help by someone who could truly help, and I let the lie of "I'm not worth it" dictate my future.  However, if I have learned anything, it is that God is faithful.  He started the work in me, and He will be faithful to complete it.  Remember my pastor's wife/mentor that I mentioned earlier?   She's like my pyschologist on steroids, because she can (and will) say things that mental health professionals are not allowed to say.  She's one of the ways God has reiterated His goodness and faithfulness to me.

The third root that tied in with anger and self-hatred was fear.  Fear of abandonment is one of the big topics that I hear professionals and lay people alike discuss when they talk about common factors leading to eating disorders.  Although I don't specifically have a witness that the fear of abandonment was where the fear was rooted in my life, I do know that huge fear was there.  I mentioned the fear of growing up in one of my previous posts.  There was also a fear intimacy, fear of rejection, fear of fat, fear of being too high-maintenance, fear of being a burden, fear of being alive, I suppose.  I was also afraid of costing too much.  I remember doing this harmless exercise in 7th grade where the teacher told us she was positive all of us were wearing more than $100-worth of clothes.  So we each added up how much every item of clothing cost, and I think we must have included our backpacks too, and sure enough, it was about $100 altogether.  I remember feeling really self-conscious after that, and really selfish.  Really expensive.  Really undeserving.  That was not the intent of the exercise, but that is what I got out of it, because there was already a stronghold of fear/poverty inside me that was growing a little more each day.

 

This fear of costing too much and being selfish is what held me back from telling my parents, hey, I made a mistake.  I really would like to go back to talk to the psychologist.  I don't think I am well yet!  Each time I reached a breaking point, hoping someone would see how much I was in need of some sort of counseling, this voice came and told me I wasn't worth it.  Do you know how much counseling costs?, it would jeer.  Your life isn't worth it, it continued.  And besides, aren't you a Chrisitan now?  Shouldn't you be healed?  The devil and his demons are such lying bags of crap.  They really know how to hit below the belt, to fight an unfair fight.

 

Still more to come.