Today I’m going to talk about a concept I think of as “self-prescribed rigid box thinking,” – rule-bound, all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinking we can impose on ourselves. This is something I used to struggle with a LOT when I had an eating disorder and this way of thinking can still impact me regularly (but thankfully usually in much lesser degrees).

About a week ago I decided not to do a marathon that I had been training for the past few months. The marathon is only a month out, but I was at the height of my training plan and my knee was starting to flare up a bit. I felt like I could have pushed through it and done the marathon, but I really did not want to risk any injury, especially since the last (and only) time I did a marathon I was out for 5 months after the race recovering from a knee injury in the same knee that was flaring up last week. (The marathon was totally worth it at the time, but I would not recommend running a marathon on a semi-good knee!) I also felt like my motivation for doing this marathon wasn’t in the best spot. For the first marathon, I had a lot of fun training, and completing the marathon was my only goal – and it ended up being one of the best/most exhilarating days of my life! Running a marathon was something I had always wanted to do, and I didn’t know for a long time if it would be possible for me to run a marathon healthfully due to my history of anorexia nervosa and 6 years of restrictive eating/overexercising-induced hypothalamic amenorrhea.

However, this time around, the training started to feel more like a burden than a joy. I had wanted to do the second marathon to run a BQ, since I ended up (unknowingly at the time) being only a few minutes off that time in the previous marathon. I definitely think there is generally nothing inherently wrong with pursuing a running time goal or any other athletic goal. However, I began noticing I was experiencing a lot of “rigid box thinking” and self-imposed pressure around the race which I ultimately decided wasn’t healthy for me.

The other week when the knee pain started popping up and I started questioning whether I should run the marathon, I was experiencing a LOT of anxiety all of the sudden. I felt like I wouldn’t be able to hit the time goal I wanted if I took a couple weeks off, and I felt like I HAD to reach the time goal – otherwise the marathon was “pointless.” Classic all-or-nothing, rigid box thinking! – pressure and rigidity that I was imposing on myself. Not that others wouldn’t be excited for me if I had done the marathon, but it’s not like anyone else really cares about how fast I can run or if I do the marathon or not. I was putting the pressure on myself and attaching too much of my identity to being able to run a specific time. The anxiety and rigid boundaries I was experiencing internally got me thinking that the truly healthy and life-giving thing for me to do would be to NOT run the marathon. I don’t think that it is healthy to attach one’s self-worth to being able to run a specific time, and I felt like that was what I would primarily be pursuing by doing the marathon – not seeking to listen to and honor my body, and enjoy the race, regardless of the time.

While this was a more obvious example of rigid box thinking in my life recently, I also experience this type of thinking in lesser degrees more regularly in other ways. One of these areas is TIME. While again, I have experienced significant progress in this area of my life, I still often feel too rigid and anxious when it comes to how I spend my time and go about my day. For example, right now I have pretty much total control over how I spend my time each week Monday-Wednesday. However, it is like there is this external person imposing a schedule upon me and if I am not “on schedule” I am doing something wrong and need to “get going.” Of course, I am the one imposing the rigid schedule upon myself! I feel like I am often second guessing how I am using my time, wondering if I am going about my day in the “right way” and experiencing a mild baseline level of anxiety over this uncertainty and self-imposed rigidity.

By the grace of God, I have experienced significant victory in rigid box thinking when it comes to food, to the point where this pretty much isn’t an issue in my life anymore. During the eating disorder and to lesser degrees in the years following, I experienced significant anxiety when it came to food/eating patterns, and thus developed intense amounts of rigidity and self-imposed rules surrounding food/exercise to manage this uncertainty. I pretty much ate the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and snacks every day. Even if I ate something like a tablespoon more of almond butter than “planned,” this caused me a great degree of anxiety, like I was somehow failing and out of control. If we were going out to brunch or it was a holiday, I felt very anxious over the deviation from my normal eating. I had to do the exact same workout every day, and if I even did a few sit-ups too few this also caused a lot of anxiety. RIGIDITY and SELF-IMPOSED BOXES TO THE EXTREME!! Obviously no one was making me do this – I was addictively compelled to impose these behaviors upon myself and literally felt like I HAD to do these things in this rigid way. I didn’t know how to trust and listen to my body and let that guide my decision-making.

Anxiety and OCD-like tendencies are very common in those suffering from AN or with a history of a restrictive eating disorder. Carrie Arnold, in her book Decoding Anorexia, does a great job describing some of the pathology and purpose of rigid thinking when it comes to AN. One function of rigid thinking is often to reduce the anxiety that may be associated with the complexity/overwhelming aspects of life. In an interaction with researcher Craig Johnson, which I totally relate to, she describes:

“‘When I would get into the eating disorder,’ I [Carrie] said ‘it was also a way to rapidly decrease any complexity that I had [about life] because it didn’t matter. It was totally extraneous to what I am going to eat, when I am going to exercise, and how much do I weigh.’

[Johnson] ‘You made your world small by essentially organizing yourself around the rules of anorexia nervosa.’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘My first psychiatrist told me, ‘When you have too much on your plate metaphorically, you make sure that you have too little on your plate literally.’

‘Exactly,’ said Johnson. ‘I always say I wish I had a nickel for every anorexic that I sat across from and I ask, ‘What happened? What do you think happened that led to you developing the eating disorder?’ A million times, the answer I’ll get is, ‘Things just got too big.’ “Well, what do you mean by that?’ ‘I don’t know – it just got too big.’ And of course, anorexia nervosa is about making everything small again and reducing the complexity of everything.'” (Decoding Anorexia, pg. 66)

Recovering from an eating disorder involves learning to actually sit with and feel our emotions and anxiety/discomfort over all the overwhelming feelings that life can bring, rather than shutting these feelings out by focusing on rigidity and control surrounding food, exercise, and our bodies. Recovery involves re-learning to listen to and trust our bodies and our intuition surrounding how/what/how much to eat/exercise, and how to best care for ourselves and go about our days. We don’t need a rigid internal taskmaster telling us to eat this and NOT that, to exercise for THIS MUCH and not a minute less, or to run a marathon in THIS time OR ELSE. We don’t have to live according to our self-prescribed, anxiety-driven rigid rules. There is so much power in realizing we have CHOICES and don’t have to eat, exercise, or go about our days in an overly rigid and controlling way. We don’t have to have all the answers in any given moment about how we “should” eat and exercise – our bodies are so much smarter than we often give them credit for, and we can listen to our bodies intuitively moment by moment to guide us in these things. Our bodies know when we need rest, when we need to eat and when we are full, when we are craving something sweet or something savory. It’s when we get in the way, meddling and controlling things with too much “mind input,” that our bodies can get off track. There is so much FREEDOM to be found in being able to listen to and honor our bodies/intuition – freedom to live our lives in a way that is best for each of our unique selves, and to focus our lives on the things that matter most.