Be Well Presents: A Coping Conversation - "Joy"

Are you in need of Joy? Listen in to our Coping Conversation with Lindsay, who shares her powerful story of Joy.

Announcement: This episode centers around the topic of eating disorders. If you or someone you know is struggling with eating difficulties, you can seek support from the National Eating Disorder Association. Call or text 1800-931-2237, or you can visit them online at www.nationaleatingdisorders.org. Listener discretion is advised.

Kevin: I'm chaplain Kevin, and today I'm talking with Lindsay, who found herself trapped in a cycle of comparison. And through it all, she received help that supported her journey towards joy. This is “Coping”. Hi, Lindsay. I am so excited to have you here with me today. Thank you for sitting down with me and sharing some more of your story.

Lindsay: Yeah, Kevin, I'm so happy and honored to be with you today. And I actually have with me also, Emma Kate, who is two months old. She's resting on me right now, so you might hear her kind of make her little baby breathing noises.

Kevin: Sure. As I was reading your story, one of the main themes that came up for me was this idea of joy. How do you define joy? What does that word mean to you?

Lindsay: I think that joy is something that we are able to access and kind of cultivate when we make what is often has to be a conscious decision to remove kind of these glasses of comparison. So a lot of times. Actually, we might think of joy as putting on, like, rose colored glasses. Like, we just want to pretend like everything's great and fine and happy, and that's really not what joy is. I think when we choose to put on kind of glasses and lens of comparison, where we're constantly comparing ourselves and our circumstances, then we really kind of close off our ability to receive joy. 

Kevin: Yeah. Where in your life have you had to take off those glasses of comparison to really experience true joy?

Lindsay: So I started off as a kid, as a pretty joyful person, a pretty joyful kid, and I loved school. I was on a lot of sports teams. I had a boyfriend all through high school and was pretty confident in myself and had a lot of capacity for joy. I think I was the girl who would when you'd go to homecoming dinners and all the girls would order a salad, I would order the pizza. 

I was a very confident and healthy person around food and all that, but we had a family friend, a close family friend that had two girls. One was my age, and one was a few years older than I was, and I can remember that Nicole was her name. She started to lose weight, and everybody was getting really concerned, and we weren't really sure what was going on. And after some time, I don't remember it was I remember getting a call from my mom one day, and she said, Lindsay, Nicole's dead. And her mom had walked in. At that point, I think she was, like, 21 years old. Her mom had walked into the apartment, I think, and found her. Her body had just given out. And I remember going to her funeral service. And the biggest emotion I felt was anger. And I was so angry that we had somehow developed into a society that would make girls feel like they had to do that to their bodies in order to be beautiful or loved or accepted. And I can just remember my righteous anger about that. And so when I got to college, I moved all the way from the West Coast in California, all the way to the East Coast to Virginia, and was really excited about that but I moved into a dorm and really started becoming more aware of a lot of things related to body image. I was also sort of dealing with a big transition in terms of my identity as a student and was in kind of a tumultuous situation, trying to hang on to the high school boyfriend and letting go of that. 

Lindsay: There was just a lot going on. I remember coming home during Thanksgiving and I had lost a little bit of weight, which in my mind was really unintentional. And I thought it would be a good idea if I went to see my doctor back home just to check in on everything. And so I already kind of had that layer of support and checking in, making sure I was still healthy. But I hadn't really connected it at that point to any specific actions or mindsets yet. It didn't feel like a huge red flag, but it was something that we noticed. 

Kevin: And how did you feel? Did you feel like you were healthy even though you had lost a little bit of weight?

Lindsay: I think I was really separating my physical body from my emotional part of myself at that point. And I think I was probably in a little bit of denial about how much that transition was really kind of rocking me to my core because I so badly wanted to just keep being that really good driven student and daughter and person. 

So I think I probably was kind of becoming a little bit distanced from the connection there that was happening to me physically from the rest of me. Sure. Yeah. So once the doctor had kind of checked me out, kind of explained that this is not necessarily unusual to happen in a big transition, weight fluctuation. So we were just keeping an eye on it and at that point went back to college after the winter break and was gradually just becoming a little bit more obsessed with tracking my food and in the dining hall they would post calorie content and nutrition information, all that. 

I started noticing myself paying a lot more attention to that and trying to figure out a regular exercise routine. I had done sports year round in high school, so all of a sudden I was having to give myself my own schedule and routine where that had always been provided. 

Kevin: Who knew about this struggle that you were having with your weight but also with relationships? Who was helping you navigate some of these dynamics and difficulties?

Lindsay: I think my friends were probably noticing some things but weren't really sure what was going on. And so I think what was happening was I was slowly becoming a little bit depressed and wasn't really sure at all. That had never really been part of my story before and so by the time I went home for summer break, I was working two jobs. I was a nanny in the day, I worked at a restaurant at night. And I really wasn't home that much. And so I was able to really start to isolate and to develop these really restrictive eating habits. I became really obsessive and really perfectionistic. I’d think about, you know, exercising all the time, counting calories and nutritional information of how many calories and comparing like should I eat this or should I eat that. And we're talking like a five calorie difference might really make me change my mind even if I really wanted something else. And so really losing my own ability to tune into my body like what do I want? What sounds good? What do I need? Am I hungry? Am I full? And really just ended up even being really secretive about certain things. Like if I wanted to eat a piece of pizza with everybody but I wanted to take a napkin and get all the grease off of it first. But I didn't want anybody to see me doing that. All these things that are just so actually unhealthy. 

But in my mind I thought I'm being so healthy and I'm going to make sure that I keep my body the way that it's supposed to look. By all of these standards, that must be right. And another really big talk about wearing comparison glasses. 

I was constantly looking at what would other people eat and what was their body type like and then wanting to make sure basically that I would eat less than they would eat. And so just hyper aware of what everyone else is doing and eating. And as long this kind of weird satisfaction if knowing that I ate less or I ate quote unquote, healthier. And I'm talking about like I had a spoonful less rice or whatever than somebody. I mean, just like absurd like that's going to make any difference. 

Lindsay: But that's how obsessed and kind of in my head. I was about things like that. So all these little really bizarre specific themes just really sucked the joy out of eating, which is really such an important way that we experience joy with people we care about.  It sucked the joy out of eating, but also the joy out of you. Can you imagine how you would feel eating with me? I mean, I was so not fully present to people. I mean, I was trying to keep up everything, and in some ways I did that for a while, but there was this lack of underlying joy. 

And by the time the end of summer came, I remember my mom coming home and finally just saying, what is going on? Look at you. You're not the same. You're really irritable. You never seem happy, and you've become a skeleton. And I remember going into a dressing room at a store kind of for the first time in a long time and looking, like, turning around, and I was trying on a shirt, and I think, like, looking at my back and being really horrified by what I saw. Just like, bones, basically. And that was when I had this moment of realization, like, yeah, I have a problem.

Kevin: We'll be right back.

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Kevin: Welcome back.

Lindsay: So it was like this physical manifestation. Like, yes, I had lost weight, and yes, I had physically become the skeleton, but I had also lost all the other parts of myself. Spiritually, I was starved. My friendships were really starved too. For just my fullness of presence, you're able to see it for the first time.

I really had become a shell of myself, kind of in very literal and metaphorical ways. And I was willing to say yes, like, something is really wrong and I don't really know. Then we got on board with finding medical professional help and my diagnosis was anorexia. And I really hated having that label at the time because it feels like it's just such a defining label. And it was also sort of like, how could I be anorexic? I saw what happened to my friend and I should have known better. 

And so I think grappling with that and I think for my parents, them experiencing the real fear that the same thing was going to happen to me, that I might die. And if I had continued on the path I had, then I would have died. I firmly believe that. It was August when this happened. I was getting ready to go. Supposed to be going back to school for my second year, moving into an apartment with with a roommate and my parents, I really am grateful to them and I think they wanted me to be able to go back and have this experience at this school that I really did love. And so once they knew they could have a team in place for me, which required three people, medical doctor, a nutritionist, and a therapist, then they were willing to let me go and start again. 

Kevin: But there was constant communication between the team and them. Did that feel restricting to you? Did you feel that it was a burden or did it feel like it was helpful? Could you see the help that it was intended to be at that time? 

Lindsay: I'm a people pleaser, and I've always wanted to be a pleaser with my parents. So I think I knew this is my new thing I have to do in order to be good and to be perfect and to do it on one level, I really knew I really had a problem. I was so deep in my eating disorder that I did not really understand what needed to change. I thought if I would just start eating a sandwich every day at lunch, that I was going to eventually things were just going to be fine. And so just a real lack of truly understanding the depth. I mean, I come back to the second year, like, excited and all of that, and what I come back to is a bunch of people who are like, what's wrong with you? Because I had even lost a lot of weight since I had left for the summer. And so I come back to friends who are happy and supportive, but I now am no longer just a normal college student. I now have a full time job of recovery, while I also have my full time job of being a student and I'm trying to hold those realities and keep one very secret and private because I'm essentially ashamed that I have this problem, right? And while also trying to still be my outgoing, extroverted self. 

So this real struggle to hold both of those things and recovery was really a journey. So I would have to go and be weighed on the scale every week while everybody else was just doing normal college things. And every week I had signed a contract, basically, that if my weight fell much further below, like a specific number, that I would then have to go into inpatient to an inpatient center. And so I did not want that to happen. And so every week having to go to get weighed was like this very fearful experience wondering, is this going to be the day that changes everything or not? And I really want to keep making weight, but I also don't really want to gain weight, but I want to gain enough weight, but not too much weight. 

So the eating disorder kind of took on this. It kind of adapted to this new phase of recovery, to where I could be in recovery, but still kind of hang on to the eating disorder. Right. It was still that people pleasing that you're attempting to do within the illness that you're eating now, because this is what your team and family want you to do, but you're holding on to not eating too much. 

So still not super joyful, if you can imagine, because my head is really still all up in this space of comparison. Your joy is about making other people joyful, fulfilling other people's plans and goals for you. 

Kevin: Yeah. You mentioned that you thought eating a sandwich would be enough to turn things around and that you really had no concept of what that really entailed. What did your true recovery actually entail? 

Lindsay: Yeah, so if I kind of think about the first months of recovery, I had to kind of I'd like to call it kind of date a few therapists until I finally down the right one. So in those early months, I was in just kind of this very superficial level of recovery. 

I remember being in college at a party at someone's apartment early in that second year of college, and going into the bathroom so I could lie down and do sit ups. That is how obsessed I was about things still and thinking, like, I'm still in recovery. And clearly, that's just such a not a normal thing to do. And I can remember early in that year, too, like, going to hang out with a bunch of people at someone's house and having some friends who hadn't seen me all summer and pulled me aside into a room, off to the side and were like, what's going on? We think you have a problem. And having to convince them, I know I have a problem, but I am getting help. And people kind of not believing me because they didn't really have much evidence to back that up. 

Kevin:  And did you share the label anorexia with them, or were you vague and what details you shared with your friends?

Lindsay: That's such a good question. I don't know if I shared that label. I think I probably steered away from really claiming that label too much. But there was a time later when I lived in a sorority house and I had a sorority sister, like, tell our house mom that I was throwing up, which I wasn't, but I was basically accused of being bulimic so I had to sit down and have a meeting with them and think kind of all these series of these, like, meetings, and having to explain just made me, I think, feel really ashamed, as if the recovery and the illness wasn't enough. The stigma with it, too. I was afraid to admit, like, I had fallen into that, too.

Kevin: Right, right. So you're in the midst of recovery. You have this team of support around you. You're dealing with the stigma of your diagnosis. Where does your journey take you next?

Lindsay: Yeah, so I reached a point where I kind of hit sort of a plateau, I think. And so I was basically in early recovery, but the eating disorder still had a really tight grip on me, I would say, and we ended up finding a referral to a woman named Kate Bruno. And she did work almost primarily with eating disorders, and she was right in the town where I went to college, and so I started working with her, and she had had an eating disorder in her past as well, anorexia, and had recovered. 

And one thing that a lot of people don't realize is that it's really common in the eating disorder world to sort of frame it as, listen, this is an issue that you will always struggle with. And to me, I do not think that has to be true. I can remember one night falling to my knees in tears, because at that point, I was like, I don't want to live like this forever.This is actually miserable, and I can't just wake up tomorrow and it be gone. But I know I don't want to just cope with this. And Kate was the first person, I think, who really gave me hope that you can. You can recover from this and you can get your joy back. And I'm an example of that. 

She saved my life in so many ways. It took her voice kind of helping to retrain the voice in my head to really rewire my brain. And it's the reason why my daughter's name is Emma Kate. I knew years ago, before I ever met my husband, that if I ever had a daughter, I would want to name her after Kate. Because to grow up in a world that doesn't always teach girls and women to be confident and joyful in who they are. So naming her after Kate was sort of my way of honoring just the importance that Kate played in my life in my recovery. And I actually got to see her this summer for the first time in like eleven years or something and tell her in person that I was going to name the baby after her. 

Kevin: Wow. What advice do you have for those who may be struggling with eating disorders right now?

Lindsay: I think if you find yourself in an eating disorder type of situation, specifically, I just would want to encourage you to find your Kate, to find help and to know that you're not alone.  It's such an isolating sickness and it's its own form of addiction as well. And there's a lot to lose in that. But you don't have to stay stuck in that. And you're not a bad person because you've experienced that. 

I mean, I think about now how much I value and love the students I've worked with that have gone through that, and it doesn't make me view them less. It makes them strong in ways that other people might not get to experience. 

Kevin: Sure. And what advice do you have for those that are struggling with joy because of those glasses of comparison?

Lindsay: I think there are probably lots of your listeners who don't identify with an eating disorder specifically, but I would be willing to bet that many, if not all of them, know what it's like to kind of live in a state of comparison, of constantly wondering if we're measuring up and how quickly comparison is the thief of joy. And so comparing to others is really never going to help us become better ourselves or be a better version of ourselves. And there is a verse that has always really captured, I think, what recovery looks like. 

It's from Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” I think just knowing the fact that it is possible for us to rewire our thinking, to be transformed in our thinking, that that recovery and healing, it really is possible and I am a testament to that. 

Kevin: Lindsay, thank you so much for sharing your story with me today. Thank you for your honesty, your vulnerability and these lessons that you've shared with me today. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time today. 

Lindsay: Yeah, thank you so much.