Stick with Your Commitments
Written by Morgan Blair
Commitment to Recovery was Harder Than I Thought
Over my recovery journey, I have learned that motivation comes in waves. For me, it has been an unreliable emotion. Something that comes and goes as quickly as the wind. But I found commitment could be formed, molded, and sculpted into a firm foundation that follows me wherever I walk.
Finding my commitment was a battle that took years. Eventually, I found it had to be built out of the reasons my eating disorder wasn’t sustainable. These reasons unfolded into the things I desired for my life, the things I would fight to gain back.
Building My Recovery Dock
When I started recovery, I didn’t know how important it was to have a support network and I didn’t understand how damaging care that was not identity-affirming could be. I was blind to the whole process. But over the years, I learned recovery is not an individual endeavor. It takes a whole community of people who care and support you in addition to an equitable and identity-affirming care plan.
Without these two key elements, the unsustainability of my eating disorder wasn’t enough to propel me toward recovery. I couldn’t do this alone. And once I accepted that fact, I found my reasons to recover held far more weight with an army of people helping me along the way.
I call the reasons for recovery a recovery dock. I call it a dock because when I first showed up to a therapist's office, I was treading water, out somewhere in the middle of the ocean, deeply entrenched in my struggle but unable to identify ways to get out.
I knew I couldn’t tread water forever. I was fading. I felt panic. I became defeated, scared, and exhausted. I needed a place to take refuge. My first therapist helped me realize I needed a firm, solid foundation to stand on. I needed a dock in order to escape the crashing waves.
I built my dock out of my desperation. I knew I needed to change something. So, I worked to identify the reasons it was necessary to try something other than engaging with my eating disorder. My reasons were to see the world, to have deeper connections, and to explore my creativity.
I didn’t realize how powerful these reasons would become. They were transformed into the wooden planks of my dock. Through continuing to show up to therapy and finding a treatment plan that worked for my own individual needs, I was able to turn those planks into a secure and firm dock that promised me refuge from the exhausting feat of fighting my eating disorder.
Getting on the Dock
Getting myself out of the water (my eating disorder) and onto my dock (my recovery) was far more challenging than I thought it would be. I thought that identifying what recovery would get me would be enough to motivate me to leave the eating disorder behind. But, I was wrong.
My eating disorder did everything to fight for me to stay in the waves. When I would pull myself onto the dock, then it would whisper that I liked it better in the water. It was a master manipulator and liar, and yet, I fell for its tricks times and time again.
However, with time and patience from myself and my support network, I came to understand why I felt drawn to my eating disorder. Getting onto the dock was new and uncomfortable. I was used to being in the water. When I was on the dock, I still felt the rocking waves of the ocean. I still felt the alluring pull toward the saltwater. I wanted to be in a space I knew.
It wasn’t until I started to focus on my commitment to recovery that things began to change. I turned my attention to the reasons to get better, which were etched into the planks on my dock. I started to consciously look down and take note of the words - my words - I was standing on.
My words became the glue that kept my feet on the dock, that kept me from jumping back into the water. My words became the anthem for my commitment in recovery. And, when I couldn’t hear that anthem, my support network sang it for me.
Reflecting Back on My Recovery Dock
“Motivation is crap. It’s your commitment that matters.”
I’ve been in recovery for many years and now I am an eating disorder therapist. A few weeks ago, a client of mine said to me, “motivation is crap. It’s your commitment that matters.” This made me smile. My client's words brought me back. Back to the time when I was first hammering those planks into the dock that would become the foundation for my recovery.
Morgan Blair (she/they) is a counselor who writes about mental health, eating disorder recovery, and the messy parts of life that make us all human. Morgan owns a private practice in the Denver area where they support individuals who are recovering from eating disorders. Morgan has gone through eating disorder recovery and speaks openly about the struggles of living in recovery day to day. When they aren’t meeting with clients or writing, Morgan can be found climbing mountains or scuba diving in the ocean.
