"The heart is not so easily changed, although the head can be persuaded.".......

I've been 'nudged' to write for the last couple of days, but I'm not entirely sure what to write. I'm not sure how to say where I nor am I confident that I can put a cohesive cognitive thought together. If nothing else, perhaps I can show faith by putting forth this attempt.

Yes, I'm still at odds with my circumstances in relapse. ED has been trying to tell me that because I am in relapse that I need to follow a whole slew of his rules; that there is a caloric intake limit, that there has to be a standard at which I exercise, and that my mind has to devote a certain amount of time spent is self-loathing. If I don't do all these things, that I couldn't technically consider myself in relapse. I know full well that the majority of you reading this cannot make sense of the mental illness associated with eating disorders, but perhaps you can relate to the skewed thinking associated with mental illness in general. I remember learning from a previous relapse that the longer your down, the harder it is to get back up. So of course it would make sense to not stay down too long.........right?

Now, let me take a moment to explain (in case you didn't know already) that simply eating is not the cure. If you know someone who struggles with this and you see them eat, do not dismiss them as 'recovered.' Can you see it as encouraging? Yes. Is that one time the end? By no means. This is a disorder of the mind, that can commonly have physical repercussions. Any physical cue that something is out of line is only secondary to what is going on in the thought process.

My therapist has recently introduced the idea of doing our own IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program) where I promise and commit to doing certain things on a regular basis in addition to making and keeping regular appointments with my dietician, my therapist plus being held accountable on a daily basis to a member of an accountability team. The incentive in all of this would be that if I didn't keep my commitments, I would in turn end up back inside an impatient treatment center like where I've been before.

I have started to get nudges in what or how to go about doing this. (I do not live in a metropolitan area that already have a IOP set up in the community.) I'm yet to make a commitment on the starting date or to make any commitments of any sort........yet. I'm having a hard time changing my heart. I'm finding myself reluctant, because I do want the scale to be lower than what it is now, and I'm trying to figure out how to force my mind to switch that; to tell my mind that its not that important.

 

I'm not at that point yet. I'm *almost* wishing for something to happen or to cross my path that would scare me just enough for me to make a course correction, for me to change my heart.

 As stated in the movie "Frozen,"

the wise elder troll, Pabbie informs us that "The heart is not so easily changed,

but the head can be persuaded."
.