Grey Thinking

“I’m not going to rearrange the furniture on the deck of the Titanic.” — Rogers Morton

I think that during recovery, a lot of people get stuck rearranging deck chairs. While you’re spending all this time working on some trivial issue, your overall recovery progress is stagnant (at best).

Examples from my own history:
* Dozens of Dermatologist appointments during the height of my eating disorder (I’m sure my acne was caused mostly by nutrition issues). When asking my Dermatologist about the depression side-effect of Accutane (since I was already on antidepressants), she replied “oh no, it will actually help grey’s depression! she’ll have clearer skin so she’ll have higher self-esteem and therefore be less depressed.” … Really? And who cares about acne when my EKG is off?

* Spending months talking about how I was controlling food because my parents were too controlling of me. (not only do I think this is complete BS, but really… what were we waiting for? My accepting this as true and therefore then being able to move on and give myself permission to eat?

* Three months fighting with my nutritionist about eating a sandwich. She felt the sandwich was very symbolic of my motivation to recovery…. I felt (and still feel) like it was just a sandwich. I wasn’t eating more than 1000 calories at the time (obviously not a stellar recovery period)… who cares about the sandwich?

* Art therapy. Okay, lots of people participate in meaningful art therapy… but really, I was happy to just draw pictures and make stuff up about their significance. “My mother and I are wearing the same color because we compete with each other.” “My flower has no roots because I don’t feel like I know myself.”

My point: Great Feng Shui won’t keep your boat from sinking.