Judy2

i'm training for a 13km run, and what i have noticed so far is that the physical exercise is the easier part. what's much harder is the mental aspect of motivating myself and busying my mind during the 10, 20, 30 min on the treadmill or outside. (10 is just post-workout but it's long enough to get me bored and i could go longer physically, if it weren't for my mind.) music helps a little bit, but not that much. podcasts are a bit too slow-paced. last time i went running with my brother, who's super fit, i begged him to tell me something interesting and he just went "no, you have to learn to deal with the boredom, too" and quietly kept on jogging beside me. i'm curious if we have any runners here who might have some tips on how to handle the mental aspects while running.

i don't.....i probably should. okay, interesting. sometimes when i play the piano i look up at the ceiling...maybe that's a similar effect. okay:)

when the anxiety hits, sometimes it's as though there simply is no future - like it's all grey, all lost, endless suffering. it helps to remember that there is, in fact, a future, and there always will be, and i'll be here, i'll stay with me. and there'll be good moments throughout this, too - again and again. there is a future. i should remember that.

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do i relax my eyes by closing them, or is there a different technique you recommend?

i do listen to music:) some time ago i also tried doing maths with my speed, time, distance - but my maths brain stops working when i'm running (which i guess is the whole point). yes, walking is fine - but with running the need for fast-paced distractions seems more urgent. hence why the same podcast i enjoy during a walk won't cut it when i'm running. i remember having a discussion with you about noises at the gym, and what you said implied they shouldn't bother me. fact is, though, they do, and i feel especially vulnerable when i'm trying to exercise....not just running, but this seems to be a related issue. it's mentally tougher to push my muscles till failure, for example, when certain triggers in my mind and environment are on, causing me to feel like i'd much rather recoil and lay on the ground than put stress on my muscles while staying nonresponsive to triggers in that environment.

@LastThursday yes, i generally enjoy it. i just notice my mind getting in the way at times... for example, when i'm thinking about some stressul events, personally i'm more prone to enter freeze-mode. but when my mood and the music are good, i enjoy it. it would help if somebody could observe me while running and give feedback on my posture, though.

@bazera i don't remember, maybe 30 or 40 min. my brother mapped out a 5km route for me to practice on, and at the gym i usually go on the treadmill after strength training, so i usually only do 10-15 min, 30 min on special occasions. the 13 km this summer will be a first, but i think that should be manageable. the organisers said i should aim to run relaxed for 60 min before the race, and i can work my way up to that in the months to come. 13 km sounds like exactly the right distance for it to push my limit but still be fun, so i'm excited:) maybe i'll do more the year after, who knows.

yes...i'd like to get a fitness watch at some point. i wonder if professional athletes know some sort of mental techniques for this...maybe they start labelling the colours they see while running and get into some kind of Zen state, who knows.

it might help a little bit to simply notice that this emotion comes and goes - it's not a permanent state. other than that, what you are saying already suggests that there's some awareness of the circumstances causing this emotion. so changing and or recontextualsing the circumstances may help.

okay i can't keep up anymore:)

... maybe sometimes i'm a little too honest. i'm trying to be kind to myself today, though. every now and then, when i'm relaxed, i manage to remember to love myself. i'm trying to do more of that. trust, relax, have faith. and it can't hurt to be a little more aware of my body, my thoughts, emotions, sensations, whenever i have a minute. maybe it's as simple as strengthening this muscle whenever i can. i'll be okay.

... earlier today, i felt good when i ran my last few minutes on the treadmill and then Lana Del Rey came on... thought i should write that down to balance things out a little. i also felt good reading my book, and talking to a friend.

who i am now isn't bad enough ending a life over, but who i am now is definitely not living up to the hype of "surviving anorexia", as though that'd be a guarantee of being good enough. like, that was pretty tough to let go of, if not an impossibility in many ways....and yet i did it, did the impossible.....and i shouldn't have, because look at me! nowhere near as genius as what this should have led up to.

again, i also wonder if i'm the only anorexia survivor thinking every now and then that i wish i hadn't. not even because my life is that miserable now, but because it can't quite live up to the grandiosity of having survived something so deep, having experienced such peak goodness when i was at my lowest. i'll never be as beautiful as i was when i was dying. just for purely selfish reasons, i would have maintained more personal integrity if i had died skinny. mission accomplished. i would have missed out on a lot, but people would have come to my grave, fantasising about all the good, beautiful things i could have been, had i lived on. - but now, as a "survivor", my life is everything but pretty, i lack perspective, none of it is really worth it, it's a struggle most of all - and it would have been the better option, to die young and beautiful, with all that glimmering potential everybody would project right into my deathbed. that's everything i would have been - endless, beautiful, gentle potential. - not this miserable, ugly pile of a mess that i am these days..... (apparently the dichotomous thinking is coming through again, there we have it.) i simply shouldn't have survived. that would have been better for me, better for my soul, overall.

irrespective of the communication with my parents....i feel a bit of sadness, regret, just circumstantially speaking, that my choice was taken away from me. no one took it, but when i was 18 years old and decided on my undergraduate degree, i was barely able to make an informed, future-oriented choice. i was 60-sth lbs and barely able to think clearly, and just thought E lit sounded good, basically, with every fibre of my being focussed on how to survive the now....without a single thought spent thinking about my future self, and then the years after that i felt quite unwell, too. (maybe i should have died [when i knew i was good, looked good, in that moment....should have died young and beautiful...if i'd died when i was starving, there would have been no time left for me to become corrupted in any way....i would have died pure and beautiful and innocent]....now i'm stuck with the burden of a life to live, decisions to make that will shape me and my lived experience...a pile of mistakes to sort through...) i'm trying to be smart now. people say i'm still young - i'm also quite old, but i also like to think i'm worth a second chance, my life is worth a second chance, for me to still re-think my choices and opt for something that may end up being fulfilling. i don't know...the situation is far from ideal.

i felt anger, and now i feel hurt. why does he not care enough about my emotional well-being to stop pushing when it's obvious things are getting too much for me, when i am explicitly telling him it's getting too much? i kind of want to be so sassy as to tell my parents, hey, maybe if dad knew when to leave me alone, i wouldn't have started self-harming, i wouldn't have become anorexic. they still blame it on Germany's Next Top Model... and they'd be real shocked to hear that they did, in fact, have a part in all this. which is somehow a truth you're not supposed to tell the parents of mentally afflicted people. i kind of want to tell them, every time you don't know when to stop pushing, i want to run upstairs and look for ways to hurt myself. maybe i should...not sure. that would be antisocial on my end, typically not my style - but it doesn't mean there's no truth to that. i hate how they always pretend i'm the crazy one, and they're fine and too old to change.

i am experiencing self-harm urges because my dad kept asking questions about what i want to do in terms of university/getting my degree, the matter is already complicated enough when i spend time thinking about it on my own, and his insistent questioning made me feel bad. i'm trying not to act on this, but thinking about the emotion now, maybe i will. dad is especially triggering when i set a clear boundary and or become visibly agitated, and he keeps pushing.

hi there:) so i'm still in the process of figuring out what i should do with myself, and this has been quite stressful tbh. while i'm trying to decide on further university programmes etc. i may want to sign up for, i figured that one thing i could do now, without a degree, is to write a cookbook or even start a recipe blog. in general, i really enjoy cooking and baking, i enjoy creating new recipes or watching health and nutrition-related content on YouTube. while i have been thinking for a while that i could also start making my own content, i have a number of concerns in this regard. as i have a pretty intense eating disorder history and have been experiencing more immediate symptoms again in the past few months, not only may the aspect of thinking about recipes etc. be triggering - so may the whole body image aspect, "putting myself out there", being vulnerable etc. i am not fond of the whole self-presentation thing, this idea of needing to "sell yourself" online, and i estimate it would be a huge, huge trigger for me to think about how i am being perceived all day every day. some of you may know that it was a huge fuss for me to have a profile picture with my face on here....and i doubt i'd be comfortable showing my body or even just my face on a blog post or on the cover/inside of my hypothetical cookbook. in general, my vision would be to combine recipes with some kind of framework that communicates more gentle nutrition tips, as i am aware that while many people on this planet need to lose weight and the aggressive approach of certain fitness coaches online may yield great results for some people, it can also aggravate mental symptoms in others as nutrition is not just scientific and objective - it's also subjective, emotional, and psychological. so i'd like my recipes to be framed by that kind of compassionate approach and include tips on how to have a healthy relationship with food etc. (which i don't have yet). anyway, i don't know if i can realistically do this with the current body image and disordered eating challenges at hand that i am facing in my personal life. i also assume it might be quite embarrassing to try this kind of thing, if people who know me find out about it. i'm also not sure to what extent this kind of domain presupposes i'd have to start making videos for YouTube/Instagram, if i'd want my cookbook or blog to be successful. by the way, i also do not have the slightest idea how to start a blog in the first place - if anybody knows, fire away:)

okay, thank you:)

i wish someone could tell me to stop consuming all diet-, weight loss-, and fitness-related content. i can tell how that's always working within me, day and night, and it's not good for my mental health, only making certain struggles worse... but i also feel like i don't have permission to look away, and maybe i shouldn't "need" to look away....i should be strong enough to face the truth of it without letting it affect me like this. but maybe the kinder thing would be to allow myself to focus on different things, at least for some time. ugh, this is heavy. i feel bad about myself, and alone. this is always such a silent struggle i'm dragging along at the back of my mind.

me? i don't know if this is the healthy thing for me to do right now.

yes. i wonder how so many people (politicians, Leo, other public figures,...) are brave enough to publicly say anything at all then. how can you speak with confidence if you know that 20 years from now, you may disagree with what you said, at least partially? how do people write books and give advice or pretend to understand life when it's clear their views will keep changing?

i think a wise person (or person in the process of becoming wiser) can still struggle, and their wisdom cannot hinge upon the absence of disadvantageous circumstances or challenges in their life. for this reason, i wonder how i would - in an ideal world, as a wise woman - respond to the presence of certain harmful behaviours in my life. for example - would i keep them to myself? would i talk about them? would i annoy people by talking about them...cause that doesn't seem wise, but then not talking and keeping struggles a secret doesn't seem wise, either. is it okay that i don't want to feel alone and lonely with certain struggles, or is it weak and unwise of me to look for people to share them with? they need to be the right people, of course, but still. sorry if this is weird.

that is pretty smart though