An interesting insight.
With my group this week I asked them to be absolutely honest with me about if they had "cheated" on their recovery. None of them owned up, and all did the false smiles and "Oh, it was perfect! Absolutely great this week".
I then said to them, "Well, I've been recovered for almost six months clinically now, and even I didn't have a perfect week. So you're all lying. I want you to all give me at least one way you've been cheating yourselves."
And you know what, every single one of them recalled multiple instances of cheating themselves. When you think your recovery is going "perfectly", the chances are this is a mental shroud; and your broken ED circuits are making this happen too.
So long as you keep telling yourself "I'm in recovery!!" and smile, then you often let yourself slip. You're allowed to. You're "recovering". You keep telling yourself that. "I'd better have lunch now. I'm recovering. I'll have the chicken sandwi... the chicken sala... the garden sala... yeah, the garden salad. That's what I fancy today. It's cool, I'm still in recovery, I'm going at my own pace.
Only you're not recovering at all.
I asked one of the girls why she cheats herself - she said "it's because I get to feel normal, even though I know I'm not". She wants to be normal, but she doesn't think she is. So instead of simply being normal, she lies to herself and those around her - she gets to dip her toe into the real world by saying "check me out, recovering, doing normal things!" but inside, she's the same void, digging deeper into her habits. It's like a mask, only she loves the look of the mask, never wants to take it off - but underneath her face is gnarled, worn, gaunt. But if you asked her, "would you want your face to BE this mask? For your face to look and feel exactly like this, so you wouldn't NEED the mask any longer? She would refuse. She would rather be a vulnerable, ill girl wearing a healthy girl's mask.
And when I told her this mask metaphor, she began to cry. She said I was exactly right, and that she was too frightened for the mask tobecome "her forever". She said she loved being able to pretend she was normal but needed the ability to regress and use the illness as an excuse, a weapon, a power - whenever things didn't go her way.
A terrifying thought, to use your own dying body as ammunition for attention, for solace.
So what'll it be guys? Wearing a mask as the face underneath dies? Wearing a beautiful mask that makes you appear gorgeous and confident that you adore, whilst you waste away underneath...? Or having your own face that looks that beautiful - and you never need take it off again? When you have only one face, there is nothing obscured, or TO obscure. Your life is clear, and all is beautiful.