Feel

I haven’t eaten gum in over a month.

« Um…congratulations? Good for you? You go girl? »

Not sure what to say? I don’t blame you. After all, it seems like an insignificant statement, worthy of little or no reaction at all.

Except, for me, it is kinda a big deal.

4 months ago, I ate a lot of gum; 3-4 packs a day, to be precise. I chewed so much gum that it caused frequent, painful canker sores. But I slapped on some orajel and kept chewing.

At the time, gum helped make my intense hunger more tolerable and helped me delay eating as long as possible.

Then I started my intensive treatment for anorexia – where I ate three supervised meals daily.

I bet you are thinking that when I started eating food, I reduced my gum intake. That is certainly what I expected to happen.

And yet…

I kept on chewing.

I was baffled at first. Then, as I was driving home one night after a particularly emotional day, frantically popping gum into my mouth, I realized that I was using it as a tool to calm my anxiety. As you can imagine, I had a lot of pent up angst during my intense emotional and  physical journey.

Anxiety. The other « A » in my life. I have lived with anxiety for as long as I can remember, starting with separation anxiety as a child. It has fuelled my insomnia, driven me to work extremely hard and lead me to do anything I could to shut down all of my emotions (from workaholism to restriction to, yes, gum chewing).

My mantra was simple: Don’t feel, just keep swimming, starving and running from your emotions.

And therein lies the problem. Denying your emotions – including anxiety – can be extremely harmful. Corny as it sounds, and I resisted this in treatment at first, it is true that the only way to cope with your emotions is to allow yourself to feel and then express them, to find healthy ways to tolerate them.

Trust me, if there was any other solution, I would have found it. I would have sold my soul to avoid ever feeling shame or anger (my two least favorite emotions).

It is simply not possible.

So, after almost 4 months of work, I have found new ways to cope with my anxiety, ways that do not include swallowing it down and denying it or numbing myself to it.

Now, instead of cutting out food or reaching for a pack of Dentyne Ice, I have a whole new tickle trunk of tricks to turn to when I am an unpleasant emotion. I sing, I dance, I sit in the sun (hence the tan), I meditate, I write and, ouff, I talk about how I am feeling.

Yes. Talk…

about…

feelings!

This is very much a work in progress.

One month and counting…