Don’t Let the Slip Becomes a Slide

Lately, I feel like everything is going wrong. I am not interested in doing much activity during the weekend. And the creepiest part is, that I am very anxious about welcoming the Monday. It is so not me as I was always very excited about work.

So I did a little contemplation and self-check this morning.

First and foremost, I always wake up late although I already go to bed at 10pm every day. I am no longer doing many things that kept me sane: I haven’t been writing much (except for tweeting 😢), reading sparingly (only tweets 😭), and my podcast listening has become very infrequent. My schedule is packed with work, Arabic classes, family commitments, golf, and gym sessions. During my free time, I find myself binge-watching Netflix due to exhaustion. My life is a mess right now.

Something is definitely amiss in my life, and I need to get back on track. Replacing Twitter scrolling with journaling sounds like a legit baby step. Just like what Jeff told Jenn in “I’m Glad My Mom Died”, don’t let the slip becomes a slide. Let it still be just a slip.

Slips are totally normal. When you have a slip, it’s just that. A slip. It doesn’t define you. It doesn’t make you a failure. The most important thing is that you don’t let that slip become a slide.

…this is going to be one of the most important parts of recovery. Accepting slips and moving on from them. People with a propensity for eating disorders tend to be the types of people who get very caught up in their mistakes and struggle to move on from them. Perfectionists.

The problem with this is that if we beat ourselves up after a mistake, we add shame onto the guilt and frustration that we already feel about our mistake. That guilt and frustration can be helpful in moving us forward, but shame… shame keeps us stuck. It’s a paralyzing emotion. When we get caught in a shame spiral, we tend to make more of the same kinds of mistakes that caused us shame in the first place.

So it makes slips become slides.

Jennette McCurdy, I’m Glad My Mom Died

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