Terminal Uniqueness

I write again tonight, reaching deeply for a strong dose of humility and patience. I have been treading water in my recovery in the past month - pretending to "do the work" without being truly committed or dedicated. I go to meetings, struggle through therapy, and do a lot of thinking and talking about my eating disorder. But through all the talk, I've remained addicted to the control of anorexia and have absolutely refused to let go the reigns of control that bind me to the disorder. I haven't been eating - I've been refusing to sleep normally and the survival eating mechanism inside me has been in overdrive. My days are spent planning for the day when I finally will be "ready" to surrender to treatment, and obsessing about my body and the weight I have gained in the past months.

I just got back from an ED drop-in group, which proved to be painfully humiliating. I was trying to articulate why I'm having such a difficult time in treatment - why I still can't bring myself to fully trust the process or treatment team. I was explaining that I completely agree with their meal plans and guidelines for other people, but that I see myself as exempt somehow - I don't qualify to eat three meals a day and two snacks because I am, somehow, different. I need to eat less for some reason - I need to exercise more because of my athletic background - my body won't know how to respond to food in the same way as other people. I can think of a hundred reasons to not surrender to treatment, because I am just NOT LIKE OTHER PEOPLE.

One of my therapists heard this and bluntly said, "yep, that's common. In 12-step programs, it's called terminal uniqueness. It's this idea that your addiction is somehow MERITED because YOU are different - you have special circumstances - no one could possibly understand." Essentially, her point was that I am holding this self-righteous idea that I don't NEED the same treatment plan as everyone else because I think that I should be exempt - I am too good and too different to be "normal." I don't want to play by the normal rules, because I see myself as set apart from the group.

THIS STUNG.

The minute it came out of her mouth, I felt my defenses rise. She was right - I don't see myself as one of the group - I see myself in an entirely different league than the people for whom this treatment is designed. I see myself as needing different guidelines and standards because I have always been naturally thin, because I am a long-distance runner, because I have friends who are thinner than me (which, in my ED logic, means that I should be worried about LOSING, not GAINING, weight).

It stung because it's true.

I asked what it would take to push myself from "pretending to be in treatment" (showing up for meetings and talking about changing) to actually surrendering to the process (which would mean trusting my body, submitting to weight gain, and ACTUALLY EATING instead of just planning and thinking about it). My therapist replied with another stinging reality check: "humility."

Owwwwwww.
It hurts. I know it's true, and it sucks. I know it's true because every molecule in my body reacted... it was as if the word itself vibrated in me. I was so uncomfortable my breath caught in my chest... I HATE BEING TOLD THAT I NEED HUMILITY.

Being seen as arrogant is something that terrifies me - probably because I know that my inner self-composition is based largely on the idea that I am inherently different than (and thus, set apart from and superior to) other people. I know that I am deeply arrogant, and I hate it. It is a part of myself that I try desperately to hide - I don't even admit to myself that it is there. To have someone in a public space call me out on this great "secret" was humiliating, humbling, shame-producing, and defense-inducing.

So now, here I sit, well over an hour after hearing a therapist tell me that my eating disorder is surviving because of my arrogance... and I can't help but think, "no, that's not me. I'm different. The rules don't apply to me because of blah blah blah..."

Maybe I am terminally unique. Maybe that's why this stings so badly and why I am having such a strong reaction to it. I don't want to be normal - I want to stand out from the crowd. If I don't, how will I survive? My entire identity rests in being valuable and worthwhile by outdoing others... what happens if I am just one of many? Who will I be then?

I have to be special... we're told from our childhood that we are unique and special people. I believed it all, and then spent all of my time trying to stand out and find the spotlight by proving my exceptional "specialness." If I'm not special after all, what am I?

How do I LEARN humility? What does humility look like? How can I humble myself without degrading myself or declaring absolute self-failure? Every time I try humility, I end up undervaluing myself, my knowledge, my experience and opinions... I swing from one end of the pendulum to the other.

But I don't want to cling to terminal uniqueness forever. I don't want to continue to see myself as "exempt" from the rules of life - from the process of ED treatment - from the harrowing reality of anorexia. So where is the middle ground? And how do I go about letting go of the only identity I've ever known... the identity instilled in me from my very birth... that I am a "special" and "unique" child in the world?