A cage without a latch.

As a child we had a family of budgies. For Christmas one year my parents gave my sister and me a breeding pair of the colorful (chirpy) little birds. Mine was the blue dad bird. My sister’s was the green and yellow mom bird.

Much to our delight and (I’m certain) some kind of written purchase guarantee from the pet shop combined with a neighborhood full of small crossed fingers and “proper” adult prayers for luck, come Spring the budgie pair did what the budgie pair was supposed to do. (Please don’t ask me how it happened- those are questions most of us were too small to contemplate and those of us big enough to do so didn’t want to.)

The mom bird got bigger and slower over the weeks. Soon after, four little eggs appeared in the wooden breeding box attached to the cage door, making cleaning and feeding our noisy friends near impossible. And not long after that our kitchen got noisier.

Three new arrivals survived. I wanted only one- the white one. I named him “Checkers”. (This is another mystery as he was plain white and I much preferred the intensity of a chess game.) As soon as he was old enough, I moved him to his own cage in my bedroom- theoretically to teach him to talk.

Communicating in the English language did not progress quickly. He obviously spent more time being influenced by my cats and the bells in his cage as it didn’t take long before my room had “ghost cats” crying when mine were fast asleep and he no longer needed to move along his perch to “ring” his little gold bells.

Nonetheless, I loved to play with him… aside from poop cleanup later (picture black and white goo in doll’s hair, in a Lego castle, dripped just beyond arms’ reach on the off-white wall, on a dress sleeve in the closet I’d failed to close before play date…).

One thing I never really understood, though, was why it was sooooo hard to get him out of his cage! After all, isn’t that why cages are needed- to keep them in one place? Apparently mine didn’t need a cage.

But what if he did need one, just not for what we assumed it was for?

Checkers had spent all of his life to that point behind and under thin white metal bars and overtop a solid newspaper floor changed daily, obviously to enable him to catch up on worldly events in my absence. He was comfortably surrounded by familiar toys, bells, a cuttle bone that he didn’t care for much (Maybe it was stale? Can cuttlebones go stale?), a seed bucket, and a wooden ladder which he chewed on more than the (apparently past-expiration date) cuttlebone.

But the cage that confined him also kept him away from my cats, from getting lost and disoriented in the open (crammed-full) closet, from getting tangled in the stuffed animal net hung in the corner, and from feeling unsafe in his little world.

Much like the thin white bars for my budgie, insecurities in life often cause us to build around ourselves a cage of resistance. While not visible like Checker’s was, it also serves two functions. The first is to confine us in life. The second (and equally illusionary) is to “keep us safe”.

The thing is, though, that, just like when his cage door was open (literally tied open using a bread bag twisty thing) such that it no longer stopped him from flying freely around the room nor kept either cat from reaching in with a claw, his confinement still provided a delusory haven.

CAGE: Concepted Automatically-Guarded Enclosure

In my posts titled “Pain is not the same as harm” and “Fearing a pinned shadow” I wrote about the brain’s response to threat- both authentic and perceived. And in “Are you seeing clearly?” I discussed how difficult it can be to accurately define our levels of knowledge and perception of our surroundings when we have found ourselves entrenched in behavior patterns long enough that they have become our “normal”.

These concepts- fear and pain avoidance (irrespective of presenting harm), discomfort of distressing feelings, and the neuroplastic wiring of the brain to adapt to and normalize given behaviors and environments- all link to our nervous systems. And they drive automatic protective behaviors to guard us. These behaviors then become our enclosure.

They become our cage. And no latch is needed.

It took me a while- maybe a couple of weeks?- to figure out how to get Checkers to come out and play. Forcing him only made him squawk, squeal, and squeak. (These are never good sounds to hear from your pet.)

First I had to spend time (literally) in his world. Hours passed with my arm awkwardly reached into his cage, resting perfectly still, and oftentimes numb from the odd angle. He needed to know 1) I wasn’t going to harm him and 2) I wasn’t going to make him leave his home if he didn’t want to. I would be patient, consistent, understanding, and my finger available as a transfer perch for when he wanted to venture out.

I also had to make sure he understood that the world outside of the thin white bars was (mostly) safe. The cats were not allowed into the room, the stuffed animals were arranged to cover all the netting, and the closet door was closed. Every… single… time.

Eventually my hand became familiar, and received the similar playful treatment he gave to the ladder he gnawed on. Stroking him gently on his stomach encouraged him next to step up onto my finger. And, after multiple attempts, setbacks in trust from bumping his head on the cage door, and random crashes from around the house sending him to the bottom of the cage to cower (and read the NewsPress as an anxiety distraction technique I think the blue dad must’ve taught him), the pair of us finally left the open cage together.

It wasn’t always smooth sailing, or “happily ever after”, for Checkers after that. There were a lot of new experiences- some fantastic (first lap around the room) and some not so fantastic (claws caught in pea-green carpet and a blue jay on the window ledge outside my bedroom). But he quickly learned that, while he could always return to the “safety” of his square cage and the companionship of a scratched up brass bell when he got truly overwhelmed, he was a bird meant for more! And the outside world could offer that.

Our time spent together was not without panic, sheer terror, a few bumps and bruises, and games of trust tug-of-war. But it was also full of excitement, hilarity, bonding, and… flying! (I mean, if that isn’t the epitome of freedom, what is, right?!)

Such is it also when we decide that we’ve had enough of not-enough, and when we are tired of being tired.

Distress doesn’t typically come during the honeymoon phase of dieting, a new exercise regiment, or engaging in an eating disorder. Any coping strategy, as poor and harmful as it may be, can provide us with that illusionary sense of safety, control, and detachment from the scary, overwhelming world around us.

But at some stage, enlightenment of even the smallest magnitude knocks at the door of our soul and presents to us snippets of the world we are missing out on. This is when, despite the heartache, grief, and upcoming battle of a lifetime, the future actually opens with possibilities.

I remember this moment. I stood one summer afternoon in the kitchen, looking out the window and longing to go to the nearby community pool or garden instead of chaining myself to an afternoon of bingeing and purging. In my mind, the white grids on the windows had become the bars on my imaginary cage of resistance. The doors were open with only a screen door between me and that other world.

Yet I couldn’t step out.

I hated the image and associated reminder of my tiny life in confinement that the bars on windows gave me so much that, in one house, we actually paid a whole year’s salary to have most replaced by grid-less panes! The view was fantastic without the interference of the white lines!

But the outside remained only that- a view. My cage was internal. My resistance, though invisible, was stronger than any physical cage could ever be- latched or not.

It took time for me to escape through the open door of my cage, and will for most. Months… maybe years. For me it was years.

Working to create a feeling of internal safety- in who I was, in my value, and in my importance to God just as I was (even very sick)- started the journey. Don’t mistake this as submission to the disease or struggle, for that wasn’t possible now that recognition and longing for more has set it. But it was necessary for me to vastly reduce the external pressure and fears of not being good enough and failure that created such resistance to exploration and growth.

And over the coming years I spent time learning about nutrition, the body, and recovery, as well as learning new things and establishing some hobbies. I spent a great deal of time in reflection over my past, and systematically worked to process traumas. Additionally, I allowed myself to dream about the life I wanted to have, as a way of healthy comparison to drive me forward.

When I was ready to try life without anorexia or bulimia, I knew that living in a society obsessed with dieting and weight world be a minefield. I was right. Just like I made sure the room was safe for Checkers to take flight, I had to disengage from social media, leave the gym, and even cut ties with most of the friends I had, who were not sensitive or supportive enough to talk about anything aside from fad diets, carbs, or fasting in my presence. Those who did not understand my struggle and battle to overcome, or who continued to disappoint and hurt me, were not truly my friends after all. I needed to let them go. (Read more about how to do this here.)

I had setbacks- days where fear got the best of me, or unavoidable exposures to the world were more triggering than my confidence and assurance could manage, and sent me back to my cage of resistance and restriction. But over time, as I got stronger and learned to navigate life without an eating disorder, I learned to fly. The world got much bigger. The grids on the windows became no more than a nuisance when taking pictures of deer in the backyard. I could go outside anytime I wanted to. And I did.

Just as it got to the point where it was actually hard to catch my little budgie and put him away for the night because he enjoyed freedom so much, so it became with me and the realization that my cage had no latch.

Until strong enough to escape the nets of diet culture waiting to snare you and wise enough not to fly into the dark closets of other harmful coping mechanisms, working with a coach through recovery, to safely, gently and supportively lure you out of your cage of resistance, can be of tremendous value. If you’d like to chat and find out how I can help, just chirp in my direction.