Inner voice

I read this Tumblr post and it hit my right in the soft spot.  The feels that is.  I try to put forward this persona of not being affected by things, but this one snuck right underneath the barriers when I wasn’t watching.  It hit me somewhere that I haven’t thought about in great detail for years.

The post is about eating disorders and what they really are.  I have never seen a more encompassing piece of writing about eating disorders.  Of course everyone’s experience is different, but it was interested that when a friend shared it on her FB wall, there was a decent amount of head nodding.

I’ve talked about the obsession I had around food, about the feeling that, that obsession created in me.  However that was just skimming the surface, it didn’t talk about how I really felt for those years that I suffered/suffer from disordered eating.  I still don’t have a good relationship with food and the way that it makes me feel.  I laugh it off, but in the dark, when I’m alone, the reality comes back to bite me in the arse.

We all have that little voice in our head.  The voice of reason, and for people who have a healthy self esteem, this voice is more like an internal cheer leader.  My voice seemed to miss class that day.  She is nasty, brutal and is more than likely the reason behind my need to justify my decisions.

There was a while when I gave that voice a name.  I can’t remember the name off the top of my head now, and I don’t wish to go delving through my journals to find it.  However I do know that giving that internal voice a name meant that I had given her power.  I was allowing her control, where she had no business being in control.

This may sound strange, like I wasn’t in touch with reality and for a while I wasn’t.  This disconnect however is all part and parcel of having BPD.  I believed that my mind and body were entirely separate beings.  I had the belief that my mind was strong, and I (the body) was weak.  It was this belief that fueled a lot of my self harm, the body was weak and needed to be punished.

I still have that voice.  She still has most of the power over me.  I still find myself internally justifying everything I do to her.  However I know that she is a part of me.  I know that we aren’t separate and that it is simply my low self esteem having a voice.  Maybe this distinction is what allows me to dismiss some of the things that the little voice says.

Is your inner voice a cheerleader?

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