A TESTIMONY

HOW FACING DENIAL AN PRIDE HELPED ME…

It took me a while to get over my denial. Like most people I didn’t even know or believe that I was in denial. I struggled with pride in my life that actually fed the denial, but I would NEVER for one minute think that I was prideful. I had such low self esteem and I always tried to keep everyone happy. How could I possibly be dealing with pride?

When I finally opened my heart to God and let Him show me the truth, I realize that I turned my pain into pride.

It started when pride wouldn’t let me look at what was hurting me so. I didn’t believe anything was wrong with my past and I especially didn’t want to let go of the “ideal childhood” that I created in my mind. Pride kept me from looking back and facing the fact that things were in fact not so peachy. By refusing to look back at my past, I was holding on to grudges against my parents and other people. These grudges and pain from my past kept me in bondage, regardless of my superficial efforts to deal with the symptoms. Unforgiveness was standing squarely between me and God, and God was the only One who could free me.

• I was actually very proud that I “used” my past pain to become a perfectionist. I was going to control my life and everything in it. I now realize how much pride went into that one thought. I know now that no one is perfect and that you can not control anyone other than yourself.

• When I saw that I wasn’t in control of my weight I simply had to find a way to control this area as well. I refused to look at the danger involved in abusing diet pills. I just wanted to be thin at all cost. This prideful attitude also made me deny the fact that I was bulimic and that I could die from this disorder.

• I cared more about what people thought of me than about my health, my loved ones, and my relationship with God. I thought being thin would take away my pain and when it didn’t, I just had to find another way to make the pain go away: I then had to have the perfect outfits, decorate my house perfectly, and be the perfect hostess. I was totally self-absorbed 24/7 and I couldn’t even see it.

• Despite the outward charades I always felt sad and hopeless, like I was crying on the inside. Yet, pride kept me all along from crying out to God for help, or asking people around me to help me.

• Constantly pleasing the people around me turned out to be my prideful way of controlling them. I was trying to control what other people thought about me, and how they felt about me. I wanted to have “perfect relationships” and I pride myself in the fact that I had no enemies, no-one disliked me, and I always avoided conflict. But this was an unnatural state of living. If we control others, we can not grow in relationship with God and find self-control, which is part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. So as long as I controlled others, I was not in control of myself. I was always anxious and my eating disorder prevailed.

My denial about having an eating disorder looked like this:

Denial: “I don’t have a disorder, I just need to find the right diet and lose some weight and I’ll be fine”

Truth:  I could never find the right diet, so I had to turn to dangerous methods (abusing diet pills and finally purging) to lose weight

Denial: “I don’t have a disorder, the pills are just helping me to have more self control, and I can stop taking it any day”

Truth: When I stopped taking the diet pills due to complications to my health, I couldn’t stop binging and had to turn to more drastic measures (vomiting)

Denial: “Okay, maybe I do have a problem, this can’t be normal, but I’m sure I can stop this if I try harder”

Truth: I couldn’t stop it myself. Only once I realized that all of my best efforts was useless, my denial finally fell away.

My denial about needing help looked like this:

Denial: “I just need to read the right book; I don’t need to let people into this”

Truth: I didn’t get any better; all the books just made me feel better for a little while

Denial: “I’m good at so many things, how could I possible fail at this? I should be able to get this right if I try harder”

Truth: I kept failing, because I wasn’t perfect, and I desperately needed God and other people to help me. I spent years trying to fix myself, without any success. I was ready to look for a helping hand

Denial:”Surely this isn’t something I should ask from God, he would have healed me by now if He wanted to. This is probably one of those things that he wants me to do for myself”

Truth: The truth was that I lost faith in God; I didn’t think he could or wanted to heal me. In my eyes this eating disorder became HUGE, much bigger than my God. This was a sin and I had to repent from my unbelief.

My denial about the danger looked like this::

Denial: “Come on, get real. This is not a real addiction. It doesn’t affect me like alcohol or drugs would”‘

Truth: I couldn’t function normally in many areas. The food struggle became the center of my life and took up all my attention, it became gradually worse and affected all of my relationships.

Denial: “I can’t die of this; it’s just a problem with food‘

Truth: I started getting health problems from the pills, the vomiting, and the huge amounts of sugar and fat. Slowly my eyes opened to the many people around me who die every day of eating disorders.

When I finally worked through my denial, I knew that:

• This is definitely a disorder – I do not eat in a normal, healthy way

• I needed help, not just a quick fix, but a program and people who knew what was going on with me and wouldn’t “feed” my denial, but tell me the truth that I so desperately needed

• I could lose my health if I didn’t get help. Carrying on like this was not worth it. I could lose the people I love, in fact, I could lose the one precious life God gave me

I finally came to a place where there was no more hiding behind denial:  I was down and out
I repented from the sin of pride that I let into my life and I also repented of unbelief. I asked God to help me trust and believe Him again.
This was my first big step: I felt such relief when I took this step towards surrendering my life, and especially my eating disorder, to God

Are you ready to take the FIRST STEP out of the jungle of denial and pride?

Join me in Section C of this Week for some guidelines and ideas

Click here to go to the next section: “You can do it!”

PS: Please help me improve the quality of our members area by using the comment box below to let me know if you pick up on any technical errors, spelling errors, or typos. Thank you

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