Health & Recovery – re-modelED

Identity Thief

October 8, 2013

“The Girl With No Face”

Art By: Ashton Powers

Picture this. You’re home alone when you hear a knock at the door. You go to see who it is, to find someone on your front porch. They push past you, but you don’t do anything to stop them, you just let them in. You don’t call the police and you don’t fight back; you willingly let a thief into your home. The thief takes your valuable belongings then leaves. Each day they come back to your house and each day you let them back in. They start taking more and more until you finally have nothing left for them to steal. Why would you let someone come into your home time after time and walk away with everything you own?

That’s basically what happens when you have an eating disorder (ED). You let ED, the thief, manipulate your thoughts and replace them with lies about your size, intake, and how much you should exercise. Eventually, this can feel like it is taking over your existence. Your eating disorder keeps stealing little pieces of you, of your identity, until you have nothing left. You become your eating disorder and lose who you are in the process. Eating disorders consume you; every minute of the day can be filled with these life-draining worries and thoughts.

When I was at my worst, I felt like I had no identity outside of my eating disorder. I wasn’t sure of who I was anymore. I believed all of the lies ED told me. Fear and shame left me purposefully isolating myself from my friends and family. No one seemed to understand what I was going through. My eating disorder had stolen my identity.

Stopping ED from coming in and stealing from you is not going to be an easy task; I still struggle with this thief on a daily basis. These are my steps to ED-proof your mind and prevent the thief from messing with your head.

Lock your door and don’t let him in – It might be hard at first, but get up enough courage and stop letting the thoughts control you and try to see them for what they really are.
Don’t be home – Go out and do something fun and completely not eating- disorder- related. Go spend a night out with friends, go for a relaxing walk in the park, or take up a new hobby. Do whatever you can to get yourself out there and get away from ED.
Call for help – Reach out to someone you trust. When you notice that you’re isolating yourself, ask a friend to MAKE you get away from ED.

No one deserves to have their identity stolen. You are not your eating disorder. Stop letting the thief break in and take what is yours. You are valuable, unique, beautiful and wonderfully made. There is so much more to you than ED wants you to believe.

Blog, Health & Recovery

From the Inside Out

October 1, 2013

Art by Ashton Powers (me)

Eating disorders can be very deceiving. On the outside it can look like you finally have it all together and your emotions in check, but on the inside it’s a completely different story. It’s very easy to hide your feelings and trick yourself (and others) into believing that you are better. This is what happened to me. After a year and a half of recovery, I felt like I was ready to get back into modeling. I’m sure to everyone else it seemed like I had it all together, but that was all a mask.

Throughout my recovery, I didn’t want people to know how I felt and what I was going through, but I decided this time to be more open about my struggles. When I got back into modeling this past month, I made sure that I was upfront with my roommates in the model’s apartment and told them about my eating disorder. I was hoping to come across as someone that had it all together. It didn’t take long for me to see that I wasn’t as put together as I thought. I began to realize that even though my outside might be right for modeling, it’s what was going on inside my head that matters the most. This has probably been one of the biggest lessons I have learned and it took me flying across the country to figure it out. Even though my body was cooperating and I looked the part, emotionally I had to be ready too. So I decided to take a break from modeling and I feel like this is one of the best decisions I could have ever made for me.

I’m not saying that everyone with an eating disorder should hide out for the rest of their lives; that’s the complete opposite of what I’m saying. It took me getting back into the modeling industry, facing my fears, going through the measurements in the agency, castings with clients looking me up and down and judging me by my appearance, being around other models that were not very sensitive to what I was going through, and living with the pressures that I put on myself to admit that I still wasn’t ready. Modeling is a very intense and pressure-filled job…and two years ago I stuck it out and tried to work through all the pressures at the worse of my eating disorder. I’m so glad that this time, I was able to see that it wasn’t right for me right now. I was taking giant steps backward in my recovery. I started going backward in my eating, all of the things I never wanted to relive. My eating disorder had surfaced again and I wasn’t ready.

A few years ago, I put my outside before my insides and I didn’t care what was happening to me emotionally. Thankfully now, I saw it for what it was. These are lies from my eating disorder that were controlling me again and I knew that I had to get out of that environment so I could take care of me. This time, instead of just worrying about my outside, I for once, thought about my inside…I cared about me.

I went back into modeling not just to prove to myself that I could succeed in the industry despite my ED, but also to help other girls that might be experiencing the same things I have. But in my mind, I thought I had to have everything together in order to help people, but that is the farthest from the truth. One of the main things I’ve learned is that I can help others in my brokenness. I don’t have to be perfect and have it all together to make a difference. I thought this blog would be showing girls how I finally “have it all figured out” or how I completely overcame my eating disorder in just little over a year. The truth is that I am not anywhere close to being fully recovered in my eating disorder and I might not ever be. That doesn’t mean that I can’t try to help others while I’m still recovering myself. I know that I will always worry about my outside, but in order to start feeling free from ED, you have to first focus on the inside-out.

Blog, Health & Recovery

Fun House Eyes

September 12, 2013

Art by my uncle, Mark Coile (1962-1997)

Going to amusement parks are always so much fun. The smell of funnel cakes and the screams and laughter coming from each ride will always remind me of going when I was a kid. One attraction that I remember the most is the Fun House. The Fun House was filled with long, moving, hallways leading me down many different narrow passage ways with more crazy rooms to explore. The best part out of all of it was getting to the room with the Fun House mirrors. I can remember looking at myself as I went from mirror to mirror. My reflection warped in front of my eyes as each mirror stretched and changed me. Those mirrors were a lot of fun when I was a kid, but not so much fun anymore. Away from the amusement parks and Fun Houses, almost every mirror I look in shows me some type of distorted and warped image of myself.

I was talking to my therapist about how twisted the perception of my body can be. I was noticing it more and more, one minute I can look in the mirror and see someone thin and I would be happy with the way I looked and then the very next second I would see the same reflection but see someone with thunder thighs and a big stomach. She told me that people with eating disorders can easily have what she calls, “Fun House mirror eyes”. These Fun House eyes make me mistrust my own reflection and second guess what I’m seeing looking back at me. I had never thought about it that way and then everything began to click with me. She was right. People rarely see themselves for what they truly are, but it’s a hundred times worse when you have an eating disorder. There is constantly a part of me that seems to be distorted and ridiculously huge. The eating disorder makes me feel like I can’t escape my own mind…like I’m trapped in my own wall-to-wall twisted and warped Fun House mirrors.

I know that people with eating disorders aren’t the only ones with a distorted view of themselves. EVERYONE has Fun House mirror eyes sometimes. I’ve learned something that has helped me when I can’t trust my own reflection. This may sound cheesy and cliché but, it does really help to start feeding yourself positive thoughts throughout the day. You could write something uplifting on your bathroom mirror or start listing all of the things you love about yourself in your head. On my mirror at home I wrote, “I accept myself unconditionally right now,” so I can see it when I wake up and see it right before I go to sleep.

Another thing that has helped me is to write down each negative thought that comes in my head that day. I take the list of each self-defeating thought and before each one, I write down the letters “ED” (for eating disorder). Writing ED shows that these are not my own thoughts, but are the thoughts and lies of my eating disorder. It reminds me that ED is the liar and the one with the problem with perception…not me.

I’m not anywhere close to seeing myself the way others may see me, but I am working on it one day at a time. Hopefully, soon I will look in any mirror and simply see my body for what it is instead of looking into some crazy Fun House mirror.

The Eyes Have It (art) by my uncle, Mark Coile (1962-1997)

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