I Fasted For Eight Years. I’ve Done My Time.

 

She was thirteen. She decided the world would be better without her, and she picked anorexia as the way she was going to leave it. She told her parents she would be dead by sixteen.

She went into a treatment center three hours from home with four adolescent beds and a building full of adults detoxing. The program treated her by the number on a scale. Reach this number, you can call your parents. Reach this number, you can go outside. Nobody asked her why she was doing it, and she already knew.

Paige Kelly, BSN, RN spent eight years in that illness. She got out at twenty-one on what she calls decision day, on a bathroom floor, with her body failing. She went on to become an emergency room nurse, because chaos was the environment her nervous system already knew how to live in. Then she got on a bike, then she got off it in a crash that showed her what eight years had done to her bones, and a doctor told her to start running to rebuild them. That is how she ended up finishing an Ironman in 10:07.

This conversation is not about any of that. It is about what nobody taught her: how to notice the thoughts running her life, how to tell the difference between her own voice and everyone else’s, and how to come back into a body she had spent a decade at war with.

Recorded live in front of our clients and staff at Camelback Recovery in Phoenix.

What we get into:

• why an eating disorder is a decision about the world and not about food
• the difference between an eating disorder and disordered eating
• why so many people eat before bed and what the nervous system is actually asking for
• the “I should” inventory she did with a piece of paper and a pen
• what to do when someone asks what you love about yourself and you come up empty
• the day she said hello to her own body and her body told her where to go
• why she keeps her promises to herself microscopically small, and
• the one thing she thinks treatment centers should be doing more of.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

I Fasted For Eight Years. I’ve Done My Time.

Paige Kelly, BSN, RN spent eight years in an eating disorder that started as a decision about the world, not about food. She came to our outpatient center to talk about what treatment missed, and what she had to teach herself.

My guest is Paige Kelly. She is a registered nurse who spent years in emergency rooms, and what she does now looks nothing like one. Here’s what you should know. She was thirteen years old the first time she went into treatment. The facility was built mostly around drugs and alcohol. What she was living with was an eating disorder, and she was in it for about eight years

She came out the other side, rebuilt her health, and became an endurance athlete. She did an Ironman at 10:07. That’s fast. She had to learn a second time how to live in a nervous system that had been through too much. Here is why she is in this room. Her work is not about fixing people. That is the whole point. She will tell you your mind and your body are not the enemy. They are information once somebody teaches you how to read them.

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Paige, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Give a warm welcome to Paige Kelly. Thanks for being here. The first time I met Paige was at an event a few months ago. She has the Ironman tattoo. I was like, “You did an Ironman,” and she turned around, looked at me, and said, “10:07,” which is fast. I’m glad you’re here. Anybody who does an Ironman, you’ve got to be a little crazy and a little excessive, and you’ve got to have some issues. My friend Larry says you’re either running to or running from. Would you agree with that?

To a degree, but my skill set didn’t take off until I learned how to rest. I can go full steam, but once I learned how to rest, then I made it to the top.

You were thirteen the first time you went into treatment, and the facility was built mostly around substance abuse. What was that like for a kid walking in with something the program was not designed for?

It was a wild experience. I went from private school. I remember the day I chose anorexia as my way out of the world. I had a subjective mindset for long enough, and that was my lens for interpreting the world. I remember the day that I was like, “The world would be a better place without me. This is how I’m leaving.” I was on a death march.

The first 30 days, I lost 25 pounds. I was out of town with my dad’s family. I came back, and my mom was like, “What happened?” I went from being this size to 30 pounds lighter. They did the best they could. They didn’t know what to do, so I was put in this treatment center that was three hours from home. They had four adolescent beds, and the rest were addicts, withdrawing.

It was a wild experience. There was no focus on the mindset. For the eating disorder part, it was, “Eat your way out. Once you weigh this much, you can talk to your parents. Once you weigh this much, you can go outside of the building.” It was focused on the fear of gaining weight, which I knew was not my reason. I was like, “I have a deeper motive. I have something more intense going on. This is the vehicle that I chose to deal with it.” It was interesting.

Did you know what was at the root of your eating disorder? At the time, did you know, or did it take you a while before you knew what was at the root of your eating disorder?

I knew it was my way out of the world. I told my parents. I said, “I’ll be dead by the time I’m sixteen. This is how I go.” I was pretty aware of it, but I didn’t know how to change my mindset. I knew that it was the way I was interpreting the world. I thought that the world would be a place without me, but I didn’t realize that it had been a subjective mindset that continued to develop.

I could watch it get worse. In a family fight, I would internalize and think it was my fault. It got to the point where I walked next to someone in the supermarket, and if they looked upset, I used that as information to fuel the eating disorder of like, “That was my fault. I did something to make them upset.” It was this continual cycle of validating why I was using the eating disorder with. In the beginning, there’s was no guidance on how to turn that around. How could I ever not need it?

That’s crazy. What led you to the decision? I’ve never thought about it like this. We’ve got drugs, alcohol, depression, and anxiety. You’ve got all the things. You say the eating disorder was your way out. I’ve never heard anybody say, “Alcohol is going to be my way out,” or, “Cocaine is going to be my way out,” or, “Sex is going to be my way out.” You made the decision that the eating disorder was going to be your way out. Am I understanding you correctly?

Yes.

That’s crazy. Why do you think the eating disorder was your decision instead of the substances, the sex, or one of the other things?

I think it was what I was around. It’s what I had access to. I was in ballet. I wasn’t around drugs or alcohol. There was a lot of energy inside of me, and I kept trying to find things that would help numb it or make it go away. I don’t remember exactly how I came across it, but most likely, in ballet, it was being able to control your body, your intake, and what you’re feeling or what you’re not feeling. I didn’t have exposure to the others. I watched a movie where one of the girls was self-harming and cutting, so then I was like, “There’s another tool I can use.” It was subconscious things that I was exposed to.

It’s your environment. You are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with, and that’s the environment. There are certain activities or sports where an eating disorder is more prevalent, be it gymnastics, ballet, or dance. Cycling is one of them, too. You look at some of these cyclists. I didn’t realize that until I watched some of these documentaries. It depends upon the environment that you’re in. What are two things treatment did not give you that you wish it had or that you use in your own life and guide other people toward?

Healing The Root: From Eating Disorders To Nervous System Awareness

One would be awareness around the nervous system, and then also meditation and curiosity. It’s meditation in a different way. What meditation taught me was that I can be sitting in a room with nothing around me, safe, staring at a white wall, and the amount of energy that moves through my body, and memories, thoughts, or feelings that come up. It gave me a perspective that not everything that I’m thinking and feeling is in relation to my outside world. Some of it is my inside world that needs to either be seen, moved through, or expressed and released. That was useful. I didn’t learn that until a couple of years ago.

It’s always an inside job.

How do I stop translating my inside into the external if I don’t need to?

How would you explain the difference between an eating disorder and disordered eating?

The eating disorder has the driving force behind it, which is the desire to numb, to cope with something, or to not know how to survive a situation. That’s the tool you pick. Disordered eating comes into play when we’re subconsciously trying to regulate our nervous system. A lot of people overeat or purge because it instantly downregulates you. It forces you into rest and digest. There’s confusion between the two. With eating disorders, regulating the nervous system is a part of it. When it’s more disordered eating behaviors, the root cause is most often that the nervous system doesn’t know how to shift into rest and digest.

That’s your body’s way of shifting into that state.

I even did this after being an ER nurse and a caregiver. I couldn’t go to sleep unless I ate a big meal right before bed, but I didn’t realize that I was trying to force myself into rest and digest because I didn’t know how to get into it.

I know I used to think that I needed to eat something before I went to bed because I would be too hungry. Is that me forcing myself into rest and digest? Not in a dysfunctional or toxic way, I don’t think, anyway. I learned how to be hungry. I learned to be okay and embrace being hungry. Prior to that, I used to think that I needed to eat something, carbs specifically, to help me go to sleep. What’s going on with that?

It depends on the person. I try not to eat past 8:00 because I’ve realized that it does make my sleep different. It’s useful to experiment for yourself. I’ve noticed I used to eat at 9:00 or 10:00, and on the nights that I eat dinner late, I don’t sleep as well. I’m like, “I think it’s because my body’s trying to digest.” I’m also the type of person that if I eat a light dinner at 6:00, I’m nauseously hungry in the morning because I have a high metabolism.

It’s a great experiment of, “Do I sleep better?” or, “What comes up for me? Am I trying to shut my mind off?” That’s why I’m eating. For me, it’s more so if I can get myself to pause and be curious about why I’m eating, like, “Am I hungry? Am I dysregulated from the day? Do I want to sleep tonight? Why am I doing it? Do I know I have a high metabolism and maybe I didn’t eat enough today?”

I’ve never heard that before. If you have a high metabolism, you’re going to be starving in the morning, potentially.

I experienced that myself as someone with a high metabolism. If I go 12 or 13 hours without eating, I’m nauseous.

Are you an intermittent faster?

I haven’t gotten there. Part of me would like to. I’ve done a couple of three-day fasts. I’m also working with my body through that. I don’t have external data on this, but I feel like I have a PTSD response if I fast at the wrong time.

That relates back to your eating disorder.

My body’s like, “Heck no.” If I do it when I’m stressed, it’s like a PTSD experience in my body. It’s like, “Absolutely not. Not right now.” That’s one thing I’ve been curious about. Especially living in Arizona, there are a lot of people who fast, and there’s so much emphasis on it. I felt ashamed, like, “Why can I not fast? Right?” I was an elite faster. Now, I joke, like, “I fasted for eight years. I’ve done my time.” There are benefits, like cellularly. It’s also interesting to see what comes up and what moves through. I have to be intentional that I’m setting myself up for success, and that it’s not a toe back into an old coping mechanism.

I’ve never thought about that. Everybody has their own journey. To your point, we’ve got to test. For a long time, I enjoyed eating early. I still enjoy eating early, but as of recently, it has been weird. For some reason, I wake up at 2:00 in the morning, and I’m up for 60 to 90 minutes. If I eat a banana, the goal is for my cortisol not to spike. I think that’s what’s happening. I don’t know.

I don’t know why I said that, but it’s what I’m dealing with. Everybody has their own journey. To your point, everybody is into intermittent fasting, or a lot of people are, anyway. I can see how you might feel shame around not being able to fast, but you’re embracing it because you know your journey looks different than everybody else’s.

My healing process towards getting myself to be able to fast would look different than someone else’s. That’s the most important thing to hang on to any advice anyone gives you. It’s amazing that it works for your body and your journey, but you haven’t seen mine. Maybe that could be my ultimate goal, but I’m going to approach it differently.

When you started doing triathlons, that was after your eating disorder. I have a friend who had an eating disorder. In doing triathlons, she had to eat. You have to eat. You can’t train for Ironman and not eat. Tell me. What led you to doing triathlons? What did that journey look like?

The Decision Day: Turning Point Of Recovery And Endurance

I recovered from an eating disorder when I was 21. I call it Decision Day. There was a day when my body failed. I was on the bathroom floor, and I knew, “Anorexia is going to take your life, or you apply everything you learned, change your mindset, and turn your life around.” That was my Decision Day because I wasn’t going to give it up until it was going to take me. At 21, that happened.

I checked myself into rehab to help myself gain weight. My brain was addicted at that point. There was a chemical experience that was going on, and I knew I couldn’t get myself out of that. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to have the thought process to change my thoughts. I did that and gained weight. There was a time period when I didn’t exercise because I had to learn how to not cross-transfer it.

My family was cyclists, so I started cycling with them. I got into a race, and I crashed. I sat up, and I was like, “I’ve watched YouTube videos. I’m fine.” It was hot, and I looked, and my wrist was over here. I was like, “I think I’m going to not get up.” Based on that, because of anorexia, I had osteoporosis by the time I was fourteen. I had the bone density of a 72-year-old. This crash showed me how brittle my bones were.

Cycling breaks the bones down. My doctor was like, “You need to start running to build the bones.” The guys across the way happened to do a triathlon. I was like, “I already know how to ride a bike. Let me add running into it.” I signed up for a local race, and I took second overall. I was like, “I like winning. That’s cool. That’s fun. I wonder what else I could do.”

I had fully recovered from the eating disorder at that point. It wasn’t a transference. There are a lot of people in cycling and endurance sports who have an eating disorder and are cruising with it because they found an outlet. I had an incredibly dysregulated nervous system, so I became an ER nurse. I can thrive in chaos. That’s what I knew. I was like, “How do I create a career in it instead of shifting who I am?” The eating disorder didn’t pop up with the Ironman trap on it. It popped up two other times in my life, and it was when I didn’t know how to survive that situation. There was a point in time in those situations where I was like, “I might go back to it because I don’t know how to get out of this alive.”

Navigating Toxic Relationships And Finding True Safety

Do you want to talk about it?

Sure. One was being married to a sniper. It was a very toxic experience. I didn’t know how to get either of us out of it alive.

What do you mean?

It’s a dangerous situation. You die if you stay. You die if you leave. I remember telling him, “I don’t know that I can survive much longer in this experience.”

Meaning, in this relationship?

Yes. Someone was going to go health-wise with where he was at. The thought of going back to my eating disorder came up because I didn’t know how to leave this relationship and not have my life taken. I also didn’t know how to stay in it and continue to feel what I was feeling. It was a point in time, like, “Do I go back to the eating disorder to numb out?”

The eating disorder sounded like a good solution. It sounded like a solution.

I was trying to think, like, “How do I continue to handle this?” To me, that’s what signals true recovery. It is when I have no need for the eating disorder because I’ve changed my mindset and because I continue to do checkups and look at my mindset and how my thought process works. Am I looking at the world subjectively? When it does pop up, that’s my signal to pause. I’m like, “Something’s not okay. Why do I feel like I need this to survive this situation?”

You said you were stuck in this relationship and you didn’t know how to get out. One of the things I’ve learned in recovery is how to have hard conversations. There’s a guy named Dave Kekich. He says, “Life is easy if you live it the hard way, and hard if you live it the easy way.” To me, I think about hard conversations. Prior to getting clean and sober and prior to doing the work, I couldn’t have the hard conversations. I would sabotage. There were lots of other things that I would do besides having the hard conversation. It sounds like you somehow figured out how to have the hard conversation.

I learned a lot about communicating after that relationship, but in it, it was difficult to know what was going on because he had PTSD and brain trauma, and then was also fairly manipulative. There would be times when he would see red, and he wasn’t in his body anymore. There were other times when it was manipulation.

To a degree, I was willing to have the hard conversations, but it takes two people to have them. Sometimes, the hard conversations would end up in me getting manipulated. Sometimes, the hard conversations would end up in him going back to somewhere else and me being like, “Do your best to stabilize this environment.”

Now, in a world where I’m around mostly healthy people, I can have the hard conversations. I can also notice when I’m being avoidant, when someone else is being avoidant, or when maybe I want to have it sooner than they want to have it. It was a unique, wild experience that I don’t think was a good example of normal communication, but I learned a lot from it.

As they say, life happens for you, not to you. You are here as the person you are partially because of that. That was part of your experience. What do eating disorders and substance abuse have in common when it comes to recovery, and where are they genuinely different?

I haven’t had a substance disorder per se, but I would say the mindset is the driving force. What is my thought process like? Why do I need this? Is there something that I don’t know how to feel, or is there something that I wish I had control over but I don’t? It is to start to look at it as like, “I’m not the eating disorder. I’m not the substance abuse. I am me. Why do I feel like I need this? What has shifted in me that I don’t need it?” It is to have my own identity away from it, and then to be able to notice when I start to go closer to it or further away from it what it was that shifted in my world and outside of me.

Substances were never a potential trigger or issue for you.

They were for a short time. In my twenties, I discovered cocaine. I was like, “I can numb out, still function, and then not eat very much.” There was probably a six-month period where I did have a substance abuse issue. When I thought I was going to get caught with it, I decided to consume it all. That was a deadly amount. I was like, “There’s a problem. Why would I not throw it away?”

You’re wasting money.

I wasn’t thinking right. I would say there was a short period.

You put down alcohol. You cannot put down food. Three meals a day forever with the thing that hurt you. What does that teach the rest of us about recovery?

You learn how to live with the thing that you used to cope with. What does that teach the rest of us? I don’t know. It’s different. You can live without alcohol, but you can’t live without food. Does anyone else have an answer for that?

When we get to the question and answer section, somebody else can give me their take. When someone in treatment for depression or alcohol dependency has an unaddressed eating issue operating below the surface, how does that manifest externally? I don’t even know who this question is for. Do you want to answer that question?

I can dive into it. Since we’re in a world that’s so focused on eating and diet, it’s very easy for that to also become a focus or a crutch. It’s about continuing to discover what works for you and be curious about why you’re doing certain things. It’s like, “Am I sticking to the strict diet because it’s helping me, or is it something else for me to focus on and avoid being in my body?”

I understand that. Have you had any mental health issues, like depression and anxiety? Tell me about those.

Depression was pretty prevalent. Anxiety was more so related to the relationship I was in, and then because of that, PTSD.

Decoding Stored Emotions And Somatic Body Awareness

Do you still struggle with depression or PTSD?

The PTSD I’m still working through. It seems silly, but I’ll use language, “Sadness is here,” instead of, “I am sad,” or, “I am depressed.” I’m like, “Sadness is here. I wonder why,” or, “Rage is here. I wonder why.” I feel things intensely and energetically in my body. It was interesting when I started to go through the PTSD. The hot points of my eating disorder were thighs, arms, and stomach. That was where I was like, “Get it out of me.” For me, a lot of it was stored emotions that I didn’t know how to process.

To a degree, I also believe body dysmorphia is our body’s way of saying, “There’s something stored there,” and it needs to be addressed.” It wants to be looked at or witnessed. That has been a cool experience and a different approach to realize what parts of my body feel intense, and to go into them and be curious about, “I wonder what’s going on in my stomach. It’s different than a stomach ache.” I can feel rage in my thighs, and I’m like, “I need to go stomp in the desert. Something is coming up.”

Sometimes, it’s an internal experience. Sometimes, it’s PTSD that’s burning off or parts of me that are finally safe enough to come forward. Other times, there’s an experience in my outside world that my soul or my body is like, “Heck no. We are not doing this again.” The body is so brilliant that I feel like my body is more in tune before my mind is. How do I learn to start to get curious about what it’s trying to tell me before I create it in my outside world?

 

Being in recovery, what I’ve learned is that I get to feel all the emotions, not just the good ones. That’s what I’m hearing. You’re getting curious. You’re embracing the pain, anger, sadness, and loneliness. You’ve got the yin and the yang. You’ve got to have those negative emotions. When you have negative emotions, the joy, laughter, love, and happiness feel better because you’ve got both sides of it.

Another thing that was useful was saying, “A part of me feels mad. A part of me feels hurt.” That gave me permission to start expressing things. I didn’t ever want to say, “A part of me thinks my grandma was not-a-nice-word.” My grandma’s not a nice human. A part of me acknowledges that she’s not a nice human. A part of me acknowledges she’s doing the best she can. I wasn’t ever able to express that, even in therapy or whatever it may be. Once I started using the parts language, that was useful in allowing it to be a part of my experience that can live in my body but doesn’t have to hijack it. Does that make sense?

Yes, it does.

If those parts were parts that I didn’t want to focus on, admit, or address, and I suppressed them, there was usually a day in my life where they would hijack the bus. They’re like, “You’ve silenced us enough. We’re here to run the show.”

Dismantling “Shoulds” And Shifting Your Inner Programming

Most of us have no idea what our own minds are doing. What are the automatic thoughts and patterns that shape somebody’s reality, and how does a person begin to see their own?

We’re all going to have different ones. One way that I started to see my own is I started to notice the I shoulds that I was telling myself like, “I should be doing this right now,” or, “I shouldn’t wear this,” or, “I should go to the gym.” I started noticing all the I shoulds. What I did was I took a piece of paper, wrote down all the I shoulds that I have going on in my mind, and then sat with them.

On the other side, I went through them, and I was like, “Whose voice is that? Is it mine? Is it someone from the past? Does it work for this version of me? Do I still want that belief?” I did this right before Christmas one year, and I was like, “Everyone is getting their stuff back for Christmas.” I realized there were so many I shoulds. There were so many beliefs running my programming.

Everybody’s getting their stuff back? Everybody that gave you stuff for Christmas, you’re sending it back?

It was all the I shoulds that I had running my mind that I didn’t want. I was like, “They can have it back. That doesn’t work for me,” and to do it in an energetic experience. I would be like, “Listen, Grandma.” A part of me would love to, but it wouldn’t go for so long. Honestly, that was one way that I started to discover what was going on in my mind.

A lot of that created a lot more ease in my experience of being like, “I don’t even want that belief. That was something that was there from a long time ago. Does it work for me? Do I have this frustration with myself because it’s a belief that I don’t want and yet I’m still telling myself?” I did that with both the eating disorder, like the mindset, and the I shoulds.

On one side of the paper were the negative thoughts, and on the other side of the paper, I put what else the thoughts could be, like, “Maybe this is possible.” The I shoulds that were running the programming, and put, “Is that mine? Does it work for this version of me?” Some of them are past versions. Then, it’s like, “What do I want in place of it?”

Is it Tony Robbins that says, “Don’t crap all over yourself?”

I think so.

I love that because I think it’s not, “I should or I shouldn’t.” It’s like, “Whatever.”

It’s a great insight into what’s going on in my mind. Even if I’m making a food choice or outfit choice, it’s like, “Which one do I want to wear? I should wear this one. Why?” Get curious. Maybe it’s not a problem. Maybe it’s because I like pink.

Wear the one that you want to wear. It’s like, “I should have worn this one.” You should wear the one that you wore. How do you know? It’s because you wore it.

I don’t know if men experience this so much, but I have a lot of programming in me. I have a lot of I shoulds, like what I should and shouldn’t wear and what I should and shouldn’t look like. That goes deep. That’s more than superficial in clothes. That’s who you are as a human.

You ask people what is already working and what they love about themselves. There are people sitting here who would come up completely empty on that question. Where do you start with them?

My first tattoo was One Love. It was because I had to figure out how to love simply being in this life before I could figure out how to love anything else. Even if someone doesn’t necessarily know what they love about themselves, it can start with, “I love that the dog said hi. I love the plants outside.” I can start with these little joys. It can be like, “I love that I made that person smile or that they laughed.”

Let it be that simple and that small because it’s not that small. The outside world that has this whole self thinks it’s small. They could use it as well, honestly. It’s about giving ourselves permission to be like, “What do I love? I love that I noticed flowers. I love that this chair is comfortable.” Start to notice all the things that are okay and safe. That helps bring us back into the present moment as well.

That’s similar to doing a gratitude list. You can start by being grateful for the little things.

Sometimes, you can make a game out of it, like, “I love that I didn’t pop off on that person.” That was self-control.

“I love that Betty came up to me.” Everybody here can say that.

It could even be like, “I love that I wrote that down in my journal instead of saying it to their face.” There’s so much progress and so much credit that we don’t give ourselves that we can. Especially if you’re super in a dark place, it’s like, “I love that I even had the thought of doing the dishes and not doing them. Things are still working. My brain is still working. I am still here. There is still movement and motion. I’m not stuck.”

Rebuilding Trust With Your Body Through Small Promises

Let’s talk about the body and the nervous system. How does the person begin coming back into their body and experience it as information instead of something to fear or fight?

That was an interesting one for me. I realized after being in the ER, I didn’t live in my body. You can’t be a good ER nurse and be incredibly emotional. I also wasn’t very emotional in my outside world. I remember being in a personal experience one day and being like, “I should be sad. Why do I not feel sad?” I couldn’t access it. I started to notice what my body was doing, because the body doesn’t ever stop even if I’m disconnected from it.

I started to notice my body language. If there was someone I didn’t want to be around, or if there was someone I did want to be around, I started to notice what my body was doing. I would be like, “That’s interesting.” I find myself talking to this person I consider a friend, and I’m like this. That was my way to start to notice what my body was doing. I would also go on walks, and I would be like, “Hey, little body,” to try to reconnect and rebuild that conversation.

I remember exactly where I was the first time I did this. My body was like, “You can go eff yourself. You have not talked to us in so long. It’s not going to be that easy.” It was me rebuilding that relationship with my body and being like, “That’s fair. You’re right. I have put you through so much. That’s cool. If that’s where we start, that’s fine. Thanks for at least saying that.” It was starting to converse with my body and then making sure that if I made a promise to myself, it was so small that I could keep it.

It’s one of the most important promises we’ll make to ourselves. It’s starting small, like, “I promise myself I’ll drink one bottle of water,” and then I celebrate when I do that. That’s how I rebuilt the trust in my body to be like, “You are going to do what you say you’re going to do.” Our subconscious and our body are so wise that they won’t trust us. It won’t trust me if I keep making false promises. They have to be like, “I have to make sure to set myself up for success and make them so small that I can keep them.”

Our subconscious and our body are so wise that they won't trust us. Share on X

My dad’s in the hospital. He had a tumor removed. It was an emergency surgery. I spoke with him this morning. His digestive system wasn’t working. His intestines weren’t working, so he wasn’t able to eat. He’s not doing well. Have you heard of hospital delirium? It’s comical, but it’s sad. Not long ago, I saw him, and he shaved. They shaved him. That’s a win. Celebrate the wins, to your point. Even though they might seem small, celebrate the wins. He was able to have ice chips.

That’s awesome.

He wasn’t able to have anything. He hasn’t eaten since September 4th, 2026. Can you imagine that? It’s celebrating the wins and the awareness. That’s what I’m hearing you say. It’s the awareness. Awareness is step one. It is the awareness that, “I’m an alcoholic. I’m a drug addict. I have a major eating disorder, and I’m going to die.”

It is then having compassion for yourself and noticing that you’re not paying attention. I know for me, I wasn’t paying attention for a lot of my life. I learned to hit pause. They say pause when agitated or doubtful. I say pause, period. You have to give your mind and your body time to assess what’s going on and what’s happening. That’s step one. They say 90% of transformation is awareness.

The balance between compassion and parenting those parts. There’s a time and a place where I have to be like, “Listen. That’s not what we do anymore.” Meet it with some force. Meet it with some power. It is saying to myself, “I get that that’s maybe the only coping mechanism you learned. This inner child doesn’t have the tools that I have. I’m willing to sit with you and teach you, but that’s not what we do anymore.”

Redefining Identity After Recovery And Leaving The Past Behind

Was changing your identity part of your process?

Yes.

How did you go about changing your identity?

Paige the Anorexic was my identity for so long, but I knew that Paige the Recovered Anorexic wasn’t going to fly for me. I was like, “We’re either doing this in the grave, or we’re not.” It was starting to discover, like, “Who am I without this?” and to look back at it, like, “I also had a job. I went to school. I’m a daughter.”

It’s to look back at all these other things that I do and focus on the other things. I’m like, “I hold the door for old ladies.” I start to notice who I am and what I do in the world and to let that start to build my identity of who I am. Also, I’m like, “Who do I want to be?” Otherwise, there can be this void of, “If you take this away from me, it has been my identity for eight years. Who am I?”

I can say, as an alcoholic or a drug addict, my whole life, everything revolved around drinking and doing drugs. I drank before the football game. I drank at the football game. I drank at the birthday party. I drank at the bowling alley. Everything revolved around drinking. Does anybody relate to that? In everything you do, drinking and doing drugs are part of it.

In my experience, everything had to change for me and most people that I know. New eating habits. New sleeping habits. You pray and meditate. New friends. New hobbies. New interests. Everything has to change. With an eating disorder, is it similar? I’m hearing you say that you had things in your life that would still work that didn’t trigger the eating disorder.

To a degree, things had to change, especially my environment. One thing I always heard was, “You can’t get well in the same place you got sick.” Even when I go visit my family in Florida, I can feel all the energy in my body, and I’m like, “No wonder I wanted to starve this out of myself. I don’t want you guys around me. You’re not very nice humans.” I can feel it in my body. It’s the awareness around, “It’s not mine to feel. I don’t have to feel it. I don’t have to be here anymore.”

There is a big part of changing the environment, changing the routine, and changing the pattern to make it easier to break it because sometimes, it’s a subconscious habit, or it’s something in our circle that was a driving force for why we needed it. It could be a person that dysregulated us, an environment that wasn’t great, or a home that wasn’t safe.

Nature As A Tool For Nervous System Regulation

Learning how to be a different person is step one before you go back to that environment, in my opinion, anyway. What’s one thing that recovery centers and other healing experiences could be focusing on more?

They do it out West more than they did where I was, but nature. I think nature is incredible. We work so hard to re-regulate our nervous system, and nature is out there like, “I’m already at that frequency. I’m already calm. Hug a tree. Go in the water.” Nature is an amazing tool that doesn’t ask us for anything, but naturally helps us.

Stand on the grass with your bare feet. Watch the sun rise. Watch the sunset.

If I’m sad, I’ll hug a tree. If I’m mad, I’ll go stomp in the desert right. What does the energy moving through my body need, and how can I get that from nature? It’s a big part for me.

Without going back to your drug of choice, be it eating disorder or whatever else.

Sometimes, I’m tired of doing all the inner work. I don’t rely on someone else to do it for me, but nature’s like, “I’ll help.”

We’re into this for a little bit. We can open it up to questions. Do you have questions?

I had a question. What was the thing that you said when you go to sleep about digestion? I don’t remember what word you said.

Rest and digest. The nervous system has autonomic, which is fight-or-flight, where I’m up, and then there’s parasympathetic, which is rest and digest. Sometimes, we can use food or other coping mechanisms to force ourselves into rest and digest because we don’t know how to get there ourselves. Does that answer your question, or was there more to it?

Yes, I was curious because I heard you say it, and I never heard it before.

Rest and digest is like, “How do I downregulate?” Even after a car accident and I’m amped up, that’s the autonomic. Rest and digest is like, “I can sit in a chair again.” That applies to so much of life, too.

The question you asked was how drugs and alcohol relate to the eating disorder. For me, specifically, when I was struggling with my eating disorder, I had to form a relationship with my drug of choice, which is the eating disorder. You have to form a relationship with your drug, which is much different than abstaining. It’s pretty difficult to do stuff like that, to form a relationship with your drug of choice. That’s how it coincides for me at least.

If someone tuning in doesn’t know what they love about themselves yet, what’s the very first small thing you would invite them to notice?

I would say to first see if there’s anything you can think about in your body that maybe you do like or love. It’s like, “I like that I have ankles and not cankles. That’s pretty nice.” Honestly, that’s where it started for me. People are like, “Look yourself in the eyes in the mirror and tell yourself you love yourself.” I’m like, “I’m going to break the mirror if I do that. Someone’s going to get hurt. I can’t do that. I don’t understand. I don’t know how to do that.”

Do a body scan of any small part. Maybe it’s even like, “I like my ears cause I can put earrings in them. I like my neck. I like the way this necklace hangs on it.” Start with that. If that’s not accessible, then go somewhere that you enjoy being and start to notice what you like about that. That’s a beautiful trait. You’re present enough to notice what’s going on in your environment and what you enjoy and to appreciate what’s around you. That’s a rare thing that a lot of people don’t have.

I feel like most people with substance disorders or eating disorders are highly sensitive. They are highly aware. We have massive hearts. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so hard to live in our bodies. We’re feeling everything that we feel. I would say to do a body scan. See if there’s something tiny that you can appreciate, even if it’s a correlation to it. Then, put yourself in an environment that you enjoy and see if there’s anything outside of yourself you can notice. Is that useful?

When I was in junior high, I was on the verge of having an eating disorder. I hadn’t grown yet, and I felt like I was overweight. I don’t think I was overweight, but I felt like that. Being in my body was uncomfortable. I went through this little period where I started an eating disorder, and then I found meth. It took the appetite away. It was an eating disorder and meth, but it turned into a drug addiction. I felt like that was my coping skill for not having to feel the hunger of not wanting to eat, but not being comfortable in my body. The meth took that away, and it became unhealthy.

Thank you for sharing that.

How did you build a new foundation after leaving your previous relationship? I’m struggling with that personally.

Not the healthiest right off the bat. I went from that relationship right into becoming a nurse and an ER nurse. Through that relationship, I was incredibly isolated, as with most abusive relationships. It was just me. I started similarly to where I did with the eating disorder. I was like, “Who am I? Who do I want to be? What are the positive experiences I still have in my life?” Sometimes, an autobiography can be useful, but to focus on the good. Not all the things that I’ve struggled with, but who I am because of it or who I still was during it.

It’s also a radical permission where you have a blank slate. You get to be whoever you want to be. Starting to daydream about that is useful. I call it like trying on different jackets. Maybe one day, writing would be cool. I tried it on for a bit, and I realized that I don’t like writing. It’s permission to be curious about, “Who do I want to be in this version?” Also, to honor that.

 

My system is highly attuned to who feels safe to me and who doesn’t. I radically honor that. I made my world small. I’ve done it several times to allow myself that deep safety so that I can figure out what’s coming up from the past and what’s coming up from the present, and I’m not trying to navigate who around me feels safe and not.

Thank you for coming out. Food was my first addiction to escapism versus eating as a kid. It was also a comfort thing. I was a little fat kid. In high school, I got in shape. I went into sports and all that. I did wrestling for one season. That’s gnarly restricting and all that. I didn’t know anything. This was back in the day. We didn’t have access to all the information we have now. It’d be like, starve, restrict, work out a bunch, and binge. I had no idea what was going on.

Eventually, it led to bulimia. I went to a whole bunch of places. It was pretty gnarly. It is so weird how it’s so much different than substance abuse because it’s so much about control instead of escapism, I feel like. My question would have to do with knowing a lot of people here struggle with relationships with food and body image. What would be a couple of helpful things to help change the relationship with food and body image that you found most helpful in your journey?

Thank you for sharing that. I do believe they go hand-in-hand. I also think that society doesn’t necessarily set us up for success in that. There’s so much, “You’ll feel better if.” Also, the food that’s getting put out there is so crazy. The first thing is that clean foods helped me. Whole foods. This might sound a little weird, but it also allowed me to notice the experience processed foods caused my body.

I went from eating clean in a healthy way, not restricting, not counting calories, and starting to get in tune with my body and eat healthy. I went and ate a meal out, and within 30 minutes, I was so sad. I did my little thing where I’m like, “Sadness is here. That’s weird. Nothing in my environment changed, but I ate this one meal. I’m wondering if some of the emotions and the experiences I’m having in my body are related to what I’m putting in it.”

That was a useful tool of starting to eat clean and then allowing myself to trust that because I’m eating whole foods and clean foods, I don’t have to worry necessarily about how much I’m eating. I can let that worry go. To naturally, intuitively start to eat, and then to discover. It’s like, “I intuitively ate seven bananas. I don’t feel so great. Maybe that wasn’t intuitive.” I laugh at myself, like, “That was a neat experience.” It feels less scary because it’s whole foods. It’s nutrients. If your body doesn’t need it, it’s going to get rid of it.

Probably, most of our bodies are in such a deficit that it’s going to do something beneficial. I would say whole foods. As far as body image goes, I still deal with it all the time. One shift that I’ve made is that instead of being used to what I look like, I intentionally appreciate what I like about myself. When there are parts of my body that I don’t like, I usually go into a meditative state of, “Interesting. I’m noticing that I don’t like my legs today. Is there something else going on?”

I do this weird thing, too, where if I feel the energy in my legs, like the rage or whatnot, I’ll be like, “That’s interesting.” I’ll go there, look, and be like, “Does it have a temperature? Does it have a color? Is there anything it wants to say?” I find a lot of the stored energy in my body has a message to tell me, and then it wants to go be something else. Energy and motion is emotion. A lot of these times, it’s a lower-frequency energy that I stored because I didn’t know how to handle it at the time.

Energy in motion is emotion. Share on X

Now, it’s safe enough for it to come up. It wants to tell me something, and it wants to go be something more fun. A lot of it’s inner children being like, “That was messed up that we had to raise the whole family. I wanted to go and play.” It’s a wild experience, but it’s been such a useful tool. The energy stored in my body is usually a younger part of me that wants to give a message and wants to go and have fun.

Not long ago, a couple of parts came up that were related to my eating disorder. I was like, “Heck no. I thought we were done with that. I don’t know how to go about this on my own.” I had my friend sit with me because I was like, “I don’t know what’s in there.” It was me going into my own internal experience. I needed someone I trusted next to me because I didn’t know how much grief or sadness was going to come up or what was going to come up. That was cool.

The part of me that I dove into was like, “Don’t ever do that thing again.” That was his message for me. It was like, “Don’t ever take care of everyone at the risk of your own life. Don’t ever do that again.” I was like, “Thank you for staying here and letting me know that. That’s fair. I probably needed to hear that because I’ve done that a lot.” That’s a long answer.

Haven’t you written a book yet?

Do you know what’s interesting? I want to start. I don’t know how. I did bodybuilding for a bit as well. The funniest question I’ve ever had in the gym was someone was like, “Who hurt you? Why are you so strong?” The title of my book was Who Hurt You. It was something about starting to shift from not who hurt me, but who I got to become because of it. I’ve been through some crazy things. Many of them I signed myself up for.

I am such an incredible person. I was even then because I felt more than other people did. I saw more than other people did. That’s one common thread that people who struggle with eating disorders and substances have. I decided that if I’m the only person that can see all of this dysfunction and feel all of this dysfunction, then it must be my job to fix it.

I remember being little when I decided that. I was like, “No one else can see it. No one else can feel it.” I took it on as a little kid who has no tools to fix everything. That’s where my subjective mindset started. It was like, “If I’m the only one that can see it, I must be the one that is supposed to fix it. That wasn’t my job.” I don’t know where I’m going with that.

It’d be a powerful book because of your journey.

Thank you.

Embracing Continuous Healing And The Power Of Intuition

When I went through the inpatient treatment center in California, I was doing EMDR trauma therapy. The very last thing that I could think of was something that’s been bothering me all these years, and I didn’t know if I chose not to remember it or if I didn’t remember it. It was the sexual abuse as a kid. Once I spoke up about that, so many more people were like, “The same thing happened to me.” People in meetings, when I shared about it, came up to me and said, “The same thing happened to me.” It takes one person to give others courage. You were very helpful.

Thank you. I appreciate that. One thing that I learned was that my healing journey isn’t over. I would get to a point where it wouldn’t come up, and it would throw me off when it did come up. I was like, “Where is this going to go?” I moved in with somebody because I knew it was time for me to work through the PTSD that I had. That was a wild experience. It’s him and me in the house. This is the first time that I have ever felt deeply safe in a home with another person. It’s wild what’s reprogramming in my body.

It’s also interesting what’s coming forward. I’m having memories come back that I didn’t remember. I see that as a beautiful experience. I’m starting to be safe in these new depths that these old things feel safe enough to come forward. They were there, and they were running the program behind there. Now, they’re coming forward, and I’m meeting them with curiosity and sometimes fear and grabbing a friend.

For me, it was important to learn that the healing journey is continuous, and life isn’t going to stop throwing things at us or doing things. How do I continue to go in and be curious? Honestly, ignore 95% of the rest of the world. If you’re not a highly sensitive person, a lot of people, with as much love, don’t get it. I can be in a room and be like, “What are you looking for?” Someone’s like, “What?” I can be in a room, and I can feel when someone flips into rage. People are like, “What?”

 

Growing up in a house that wasn’t sensitive, I thought I was crazy. They’re like, “What do you mean you feel that, or you’re sad?” It’s about starting to look at how cool my body and my unique abilities are. Maybe I don’t share them with many people because they don’t understand or because they’re scared of their own. That doesn’t mean that I have to be.

I am a very nice, loving person, and I am not the person to mess with. Most people are like, “You’re so nice.” I’m like, “You have no idea what I’ve been through. If you want to start something with me, best wishes.” I know what I’ve been through. To me, I love that. I love that people see this outside kind version of me and that I know in my depths that I’ve been through so much. That allows me to love other people even more and have boundaries.

I’ve seen this study that was done on people who have been through trauma, have PTSD, who have been cheated on in relationships, who have been abused in relationships, and all these different things. They develop intuition, but a different type of intuition that you’re not born with. It’s developed through trauma and all this stuff. You’re able to read people better because of all these things you’ve experienced. It was cool to see the scientific stuff behind it. The body is amazing.

There’s a difference too, between being highly attuned and being hypervigilant. For me, there’s a difference. When I’m hypervigilant, I’m noticing everything, but I’m on high alert. That’s taxing on my body to stay in there versus being relaxed and having intuition. Dual superpowers.

Let’s talk about future self-work before we wrap up. How does somebody imagine a future self when they cannot picture next Tuesday, let alone 2027?

One thing that has to be discussed is whether that person’s imagination is online. After intense PTSD and traumatic experiences, my imagination went offline. I lived years of my life where I couldn’t imagine what I wanted to do next. The imagination being online is important. Also, it’s body image or any other stepping stone.

I walked myself through a process. I’m like, “I can’t imagine big pictures, but let me see if I can sit here and imagine my closet and a couple of different outfits that I would want to try on.” Then, it’s like, “Let me see if I can imagine a couple of different places that maybe I would eat lunch at today.” Start to do that. We think it’s this big, “Where do you want to be in 30 years? Where do you want to be in five years?”

It’s overwhelming.

It’s like, “What can I imagine today? What can I imagine tomorrow? Start there.

When did you start to realize that all the work that you were doing was paying off?

I’ve had different moments. One was the day that I went 10:07 on the Ironman. That was a tribute to me being able to heal my mind and body, and to do so in a healthy way. That was one. I started a new job. That was another moment of like, “Wow.” Before that, I felt scattered, but I was like, “I do have an incredible skillset.” There are these moments throughout life. One of them was the Ironman. Starting a new job was pretty incredible. Those are the two.

Is there a question that I should have asked you that I didn’t ask you?

Not that I can think of. We covered a lot.

What do you want to share? How can people find you? Anything that you want to promote?

My Instagram is @PaigeKKelly. I’m more than happy to connect with people. Sometimes, I share things that come up in my awareness or thoughts like that. Recovery and full recovery are something I’m passionate about. It’s something that I go through every day. I’m still in my process. I’m still learning. I still notice when I’m like, “It’s strong today or it’s not.” I would be more than happy to be a friend. If you want me to come back, and you have any questions or anything, I’m happy to hop back in.

Let’s give it up for Paige Kelly.

 

Important Links

• Paige Kelly on LinkedIn
• @PaigeKKelly on Instagram
• I Love Being Sober on YouTube
• I Love Being Sober on Apple Podcasts

 

About Paige Kelly

Paige Kelly, BSN, RN is a former emergency room nurse who brings a background in psychology, healthcare, and integrative wellness into helping people build a deeper relationship with themselves.

Her work blends powerful questions, body awareness, pattern recognition, guided self exploration, and future self work.

She recovered from an eight-year eating disorder that began at thirteen and has since worked through PTSD and nervous system dysregulation, which is where her current approach came from.