Adventures of Alice in Quasi-Land

Finding my way back out of the rabbit hole.

So, it turns out that there’s one very big problem with training to become a psychotherapist. You really have to confront your own problems.

This is a difficult but important post for me to write. If you’ll allow me, I’d like to tell a story that’s personal to me but familiar to many…

When I was sixteen, I went down a road I really shouldn’t have gone down. I followed the white rabbit, mesmerised by his bobbing little tail as I trotted dutifully behind him, not thinking to look where we were going.

He chattered incessantly. Jabbering on about healthy bodies and strong minds. His pink eyes were like jewels, refracting the light so the route ahead sparkled. He primed me about resilience and self-improvement. I continued to follow, even as the path got darker, and his talk soon turned to meal plans and excessive exercise. I listened intently as we disappeared together into the undergrowth, down the rabbit hole to meet what was to become my new master. Restriction.

I wouldn’t have previously thought myself to be one easily led astray, though I was a child whose head was already full of nonsense. Media-trained in the 90’s by a white-wash of waifs offering the ‘after’ pics of the ultimate goal: the body they called ‘heroin chic’. The aesthetic of death.

I’m being truthful when I say I hadn’t known where that white rabbit was going. I wasn’t trying to lose weight (at first!) and was accepting of the idea that my body could never be waif-like. I was ‘big-boned’ with a big appetite, big personality and big plans to match. But I’d tripped and fallen so many times on my short journey through life that by the time I was a teenager I no longer trusted my own footing. I wanted someone to tell me how I could do better. Be better. Sick of people laughing at my falls, I was willing to trade whatever I could to fly. And suddenly there was this curious little rabbit, so intent in his direction, assuring me he had the answers. Knowing exactly where we should go.

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

The journey that followed is not one for this post, although I will say that it’s a world that almost permanently locked its doors behind me and I’m thankful every day that I was able to find my way back out. That place is not for children, and is haunted by ghosts. It would take me a further sixteen years to make my escape. Finally entering recovery in the wake of half a life wasted.

Anyone unacquainted with anorexia may balk at the idea of ‘choosing’ deprivation. Anyone who is acquainted however, may well be triggered (look away now) by the reminder of those heady highs of self-control and the worthiness found in hunger. I get so angry when I see definitions of eating disorders as a loss of appetite. Anorexia is not a loss of appetite. It’s a war on appetite. Led by a psychological dictator who cares not for your needs and hungers only for control. Anorexia is an insatiable gobbling of the mind, that takes more from your body every day. Lighter, thinner, better. Less is not just more. It’s everything.

…she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; `for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, `in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?'

You see, to go against your own body is to think you can control nature. You become God over your own pain, deciding what can and can’t hurt you. You set the rules and you make sure you meet them. You can be the perfect grade-A student to your own internal headmaster, and you will always, always win, even when you start to see what you’re losing. Because by that stage you no longer care. Oh, to stare death in the face and still defy it with your ambivalence? Well, that can leave you feeling immortal.

There is increasingly more (yet not enough) information available about eating disorders but still disappointingly little on the psychological causes, the physical experience of real recovery, and what I believe to be the most important yet almost never spoken about phase: Quasi-Recovery. The limbo of make-believe. A wonderland in itself.

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, quasi-recovery is when a person has most likely (or almost) physically recovered from their eating disorder, but is still psychologically shackled to controlling behaviours and/or disordered thoughts. It’s a swinging door into anxiety, depression and, in some cases, compensatory addictions. The latter group most likely have the most hope, for if an eating disorder paves the way into another hell-sphere, you’re more likely to seek help, or be recognised as needing it. Sadly, it’s more common to simply set up camp in Quasi-land. Ravaged by the torment of early recovery, this is a place that finally feels safe. Sure, the flowers talk and there’s some chick using a flamingo to play croquet but that’s ok, right?

It’s no wonder the statistics show how few ever fully recover (reportedly just 21% in the case of anorexia) because no one comes looking for you here. You can hide, even from yourself, in the foliage of your own fiction. Only ever one twig-snap away from full relapse. You’re no longer sick, you don’t look ill, no-one is worried about you. You appear to be a high-functioning adult, but in truth you’re still mad as a hatter.

The depth of training involved in becoming a psychotherapist is like being sent back down the rabbit hole from which you first disappeared, only this time with a harness and community of spotters to yank you back when you give the signal.

Tracing back my steps, I’ve had to reckon with a lot of painful material that I’d previously refused to feel. This path continues to require vulnerability and a great deal of honesty, not just with others but, most excruciatingly, with myself.

“I ca’n’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir,” said Alice, “because I am not myself, you see.” 

The truth I have to grapple with is that despite a long and exhausting journey of recovery, from which I can tell many a harrowing camp-fire tale, my tent is, I'm ashamed to say, still very firmly pitched in Quasi-land.

The final letting go of my disorder is without a doubt the hardest part of this journey. Gone is the sense of adventure, the excitement of getting lost, even the thrills of peril. All I have is emotional exhaustion, psychological blisters, and the defeatist whine of 'Am I nearly there yet?!’

It’s hard to explain my fear of braving those last steps to full recovery. But for all the ways I might depict my disorder as the villain, my unconscious still remembers when it was my hero. My only friend. The one who kept me safe, held my hand, and shielded me from pain. My psyche fell in love with its own captor, and it’s hard to admit when you’re in a controlling, manipulative and abusive relationship.

For so long I’ve been hacking through the tangled weeds of my recovery, only to be dragged back by the underlying quicksand of fear. I fear that I don’t know who I am without my disorder - it’s been with me my whole adult life. I fear that letting go means losing control, and I have no idea what that might look like. I fear that if I gain weight I’ll lose social currency and acceptance from those who’ll think I’ve ‘let myself go’. And I fear that I may never fully be better, so why risk losing myself to a body that I’m convinced will feel so much worse?

These are the fears that haunt my days and nights. They show up in the dreading of social occasions with people I love, for fear I’ll have to eat at a time or place that doesn’t fit my schedule. In the limited diet of safe foods, never allowing myself the enjoyment and pleasure of the full spectrum of taste. In the agony of anxiety when routine is broken by a holiday or slightest change of plan.

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!

You might be wondering why I’m sharing this. Taking you down my own rabbit hole of disclosure. The honest answer? Because I’m so utterly deeply ashamed of myself. Of my cowardice. Of my weakness. It’s not only fear, but shame that’s keeping me in my halfway-house of living. Yet shame cannot survive being spoken, and fears can always be conquered. In writing this, I am holding myself accountable and committing, amongst witnesses, to taking those next steps to rejoin the real world. Whatever that might look like.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

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The Spin

• Things are not always as they seem, and we can never truly know what demons exist in someone’s inner world.

• The severity of eating disorders can not and should not be gauged by how ill a person looks.

• Quasi-land is populated by more people than you might think - it’s a hard place to leave.

• Shame cannot survive the empathy found in connection. Like the vampire it is, it’s destroyed when brought into the light.

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Adding More Weight (how on-point 😉)

A Note To Those in Quasi-Recovery

Why I’m Aiming for Overshoot

Self-Denial in Eating Disorders

For an Antidote to Diet Culture Try These 6 Podcasts

How To Practice Body Neutrality

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A pretty intense post - but thank you for letting me share this with you x