Well, I appear to have got myself into a right mess. After my last post, forcefully stopping the wobble in recovery I was having failed. I fell further down the hole, hard, and I’ve been struggling to drag myself back out of it ever since.

Every time I scramble at the walls, digging my nails in, trying desperately to pull myself back up, the floor beneath me somehow sinks even deeper. Then any slip, however small, sends me falling further down than where I started.

It’s hard to keep clawing at the walls when the surface keeps moving further away while I’m exhausted, and while the reason for climbing out of the hole becomes less and less clear. I am so anxious about what is waiting for me at surface level that I start not wanting to leave the hole at all.

At least I understand the hole.

While it is also dangerous to stay here, my anxious brain has become so loud with constant what ifs that I have started convincing myself that whatever exists at the surface is worse.

The Fire and the Firefighters

My OCD-based anxiety is terrible. Falling further down the hole has less to do with my eating disorder and more to do with how I am really not coping with my anxiety.

I had worked hard this entire recovery. I started experiencing joy from food, something I had never really had before, and I genuinely felt like I was getting further than I ever had in previous recoveries.

Then my OCD flared, and suddenly it felt like none of that work existed anymore. There is currently no joy from food. All of it feels like a chore. It is hard to even make the same meals I have eaten every single day for months and genuinely enjoyed.

There was no better example of how severe my anxiety has become than the fire the other night.

My son stood at the window at 1:30am and said, “Someone’s lit a big fire on the grass between the buildings.”

I went to look and saw the fire, along with what I call “child adults” – adults who never progressed past the mindset of teenagers and think it is hilarious to, light fires, throw alcohol on them, pretend to jump over them, and scream at the top of their lungs.

Unfortunately, this is not a rare species where I live.

The fire was in an incredibly dangerous position: close to flats, buildings, and a huge car park full of cars. I watched it suddenly flare up as more alcohol was poured onto it.

“Oh god,” I thought. “I’m going to have to ring someone. I can’t just hope somebody else does.”

But instead of only being anxious about the fire itself, my brain immediately diverted into something far more ridiculous,

WHAT IF I get in trouble for calling emergency services incorrectly?

So before I even rang 999, I rang 101 first to ask permission. The woman on the phone immediately told me to call 999. I actually felt relieved. Good, I thought. Someone has told me to do it, so now I cannot get in trouble for ringing them.

I called the fire brigade. Nobody else had reported it, which made me feel briefly better because at least I had acted instead of assuming someone else would.

Then, all of a sudden, the anxiety fully detached from reality. My body shaking, adrenaline everywhere, I suddenly became convinced that:

if the fire went out before they arrived, I could somehow be arrested for wasting emergency services time.

I looked at my son and said:

“Please be my witness that there really was a fire when I rang.”

He simply replied, “Okay,” then took photos of the fire for evidence.

That gave me about two seconds of relief before my brain resumed trying to convince me I was going to prison for responsibly reporting a dangerous fire. I asked my son again to be my witness.

The fire brigade here are absurdly fast. Honestly, they seem to emerge from a wormhole. Whenever the building fire alarm has gone off in the past, they have arrived before we have even made it downstairs.

That night, however, every second felt endless. I felt like my entire future depended on them arriving while the fire still existed. The child adults had already wandered off laughing, leaving the fire burning unattended.

Eventually the fire brigade arrived. We watched their torches moving in the dark as they extinguished it. Then it reignited, so they had to put it out a second time and they remained there a while longer.

Only then did I feel even slightly calmer. Despite this, part of me still felt convinced I had somehow done something wrong. I remained wired on adrenaline for hours afterwards and did not fall asleep until around 5:30am. Once the adrenaline wore off, it was replaced with shame.

I lay in bed thinking about how absurd it was that I had not catastrophised about the fire itself – a fire that genuinely could have become catastrophic – but instead catastrophised about being a responsible citizen who prevented an entire car park, nearby flats, and surrounding buildings from potentially catching fire.

This is what my anxiety does. I do not calmly recognise:

“This is irrational anxiety.”

I react first and lose access to logic before conscious thought even catches up. In those moments, I do not feel like I might irrationally go to prison. I believe it.

I believe it so strongly that my son has learned not to argue me back into reality, but instead help me gather “evidence” that reality exists in the first place.

Somehow, a random fire at 1:30am became one of the things that pushed me further down the hole away from recovery.

Shame Joins Me in the Hole

I feel so much shame for my anxiety being this way. Being so extreme. Being so resistant to medication and the multiple therapies I have tried. It often leads me to being very angry with myself.

Even mindfulness often causes this type of ridiculous anxiety for me. I do not think I have ever successfully done mindfulness without eventually spiralling into a panic attack afterwards.

Then there’s everyone else:

“This cured my anxiety.”
“Travelling cured my OCD.”
“Have you tried this?”
“Have you tried that?”
“Have you tried imagining your thoughts as leaves floating down a stream?”

No. I’ve been sat here for decades doing nothing at all. I am not aware of the existence of yoga /s

But how would it work anyway? When my anxiety is triggered, I am not aware of leaves, streams, mindfulness, or even logic. I am too busy fully believing I am about to go to prison for responsibly reporting a dangerous fire.

Hearing endless stories about how easily other people “fixed” their OCD often just makes me feel even more broken.

There is not even any meaningful way to avoid my triggers, because my triggers are often just related to being an adult who is alive. Especially uncertainty, which life and the universe are completely full of.

I have had the exact same level of catastrophic anxiety over a letter sitting in my mailbox as I did over a dangerous fire near a giant car park full of vehicles and flats.

My eating disorder, unfortunately, is the only thing that has ever “helped” this anxiety.

While I still had anxiety during my relapse, I experienced far less of this type of anxiety because my brain became redirected towards weight, calories, food, routines, and restriction. My world became smaller and narrower, but also more predictable.

The “danger units” became calories instead of uncertainty, existence, adulthood, responsibility, random events, and every possible catastrophe my brain can imagine.

At the same time, my body was literally starving, which meant my brain became increasingly absorbed in food and survival instead of existential or uncertainty based fear.

So when all of this intense anxiety returned recently during recovery, I felt devastated. So devastated that I’ve felt so down and flat since. It’s bordering on depression currently.

This was the life I originally tried to escape from because I could no longer cope with this level of anxiety. The level of anxiety that had become unliveable.

And by the way, I did not consciously choose to fall further down the hole because my eating disorder “helps”. It was not some master plan of mine to fix my anxiety. It just sort of… happened.

The Days After the Fire

I’ve barely slept since the fire. I became so wrung out from anxiety and feeling low that I didn’t even feel hungry anymore. One day I went from waking up until 8pm without eating or drinking anything except black coffee before eventually forcing myself to make my burrito bowl.

I have uncontrollably fallen asleep after dinner multiple times, just like at the beginning of recovery, because my body is so wired from anxiety and energy-seeking all day that the second I finally eat, rest and digest seems to hit me with, “finally.” It just shuts me down.

Every day I’ve tried to get back on track.

“Just go eat something. You are making this worse.”

I have bought foods I genuinely love with every intention of eating them, only to leave them sitting there untouched while I cry because I do not know how to eat without fear either.

I have built so much to lose in recovery that sometimes I sit here crying, questioning why I am willing to stay this uncomfortable from lack of food and risk losing everything I have built simply because I cannot tolerate the alternative either.

And the worst part is that logically, I know how irrational that sounds.

Everyone says recovery is a choice, but if recovery is a choice then apparently I am “choosing” this instead, and I do not believe that is true.

I am mentally unwell and becoming increasingly incapable of making even basic decisions – like responsibly calling the fire brigade for a dangerous fire – without becoming completely overwhelmed by anxiety.

So how exactly am I supposed to calmly logic my way through “choosing recovery” in the middle of that state? At times, “recovery is a choice” starts sounding painfully similar to, “just eat.”

I have tried to “just eat” and recently, I have repeatedly failed.

Maybe this is actually depression too, because choices become much harder when you stop being entirely sure what the point of anything is anymore.

I am not fully sure how I am going to climb back out of this hole. However, I do know lapses are part of recovery, even though they also say recovery is a choice.

And I also know I am still trying and I wont stop.

This song is what my ED feels like it’s singing to me in my head right now:-
“Are you feeling nervous
Are you having fun
Its almost over
Its just begun
Dont overthink this
Look in my eye
Dont be scared
Dont be shy
Come on in
The waters fine“