Ouch! ED, get out of my head!

I can't remember feeling this bad about my body for this long consecutively.  I guess that's because I used to numb it out with action.  If my legs looked big, I'd run til I couldn't feel them.  If my stomach felt chubby, I'd do situps til it burned too much to feel anything else.  Recovery is hard right now.  and as painful as it is to be this disgusted with myself, I know that that's not the real issue.  In fact, I'm kinda stalling by focusing on it right now.  I have soooooo much CRAP floating around my head that needs to be sorted out.  At least 2 major emotional core issues that have resurfaced multiple times in my life.  I just made the connections.  This morning I discovered the parallel.  It's really hard for me to see people in my career who attack their work with such single minded enthusiasm, blocking out all else, pushing harder than anyone else, making sacrifices, and succeeding.  Don't get me wrong... I love it too.  I love seeing perseverence paying off, but I'm told by so many therapists and advisors in program that it's that kind of unrelenting drive that got me into trouble.  I pushed myself over the edge, and that's why I crumbled.  These are the people guiding me in my recovery.  They tell me I need to learn to rest, take care of myself, and find balance...rely on a higher power, turn over my will, and make time for friends.  If I do these things, I can have a wonderful amazing life...like them.  But when I look at them and what they have, and judge it with my old set of values, it's not something i really want.  Especially when I've got a role model in front of me who has driven himself to the ends of the earth, sacrificing everything-time, money, health, friends, relationships...and he has achieved everything i've ever hoped to achieve.  He has everything I ever wanted.  In almost every way, he is who I want to be.  what do i want a life for?  Why should I give up living the way I want to, pursuing my dreams the way I see fit just to be like someone I don't want to be like?  If I want what HE has, then I should do what he does instead of listen to these women, who seem really happy and fulfilled, but they're not doing what I want to do or achieving what I want to achieve.  HE hates the idea of trusting and relying on a higher power because it's weak.  It means admitting you don't have control over your life or the power to actually set your own path and follow it regardless of the hardships.  That's how i've felt for most of my life.  If it works for HIM, why can't I do that?  Why not?  I don't know.  But I can't.  I freakin' hate being powerless.  I hate it.  I feel so inadequate right now.  If other people can push that hard and succeed, why did I fail?  Why can they drill themselves into the ground and come out on top, while I got burried?  I feel like such a failure.  I feel like I'm fighting for a cause I don't believe in, because I'll be annihilated if I don't betray myself and support the enemy.  So I'm carrying out orders from the enemy until I can become so brainwashed that I believe in their cause.

     Wow.  That's soooo ED talking.  i guess.  It really feels that way though.  and I know there are times when I'm excited and inspired by recovery, and in the long run, the rewards of this program will be worth it.  I'll be able to everything I set my mind to more effectively.  It doesn't mean I'm going to give up on my goals...in fact, they're more likely to get accomplished.  It's just...when I'm taking so much strong action against ED, his position of authority in my mind gets threatened, and he kicks and screams as an instinctive survival technique- a last resort.  If I keep working my program, and can get through this outburst, his temper tantrum will fizzle out, and he'll have to retreat and regroup.  I'll be free for a while.  It scares me, because he's dominant in my head right now, and it scares him.  I don't know who I am without him.  I'm scared of how I will change.  But the truth is (as thank God, many of my closest friends have reminded me), I will always love the activities I love.  I will always have a drive for excellence.  These traits and others that compliment them will only become more pronounced as I become a fully actualized human being.