My experience of an eating disorder

My experience of an eating disorder

Tuesday 30th June 2020. For many it was just another lockdown day, in a year to be forgotten but this is one I will always remember. Being escorted to hospital in disbelief, in denial that things could ever have gotten so bad. Still believing in my mind that I was okay and didn’t need this kind of help, that I could do it by myself – despite no longer being able to walk unaided up the stairs, struggling to lift myself off a chair and having to ask my family for help getting dressed. It was a turning point for me, the moment I was hit with the reality and the severity of my eating disorder, the long-lasting damage that I might have done. And, with all control taken away, I was confronted with the power that it had on me. 

I’d known for a while that I was struggling, my friends at uni months before had told me they were worried. We’d agreed that it was anorexia – that I was showing those traits, that I needed to do something about it. And I tried. But something inside me kept pushing me on – increasing my exercise through ever-expanding daily step goals and work-out routines, with stricter food rules coming into place, peaking and dipping through purges and the compensations that followed. 

It was becoming obvious from the outside too, as my clothes drowned me, my face aged and my skin flaked away. I felt so ashamed. People would stare in the streets, and I knew they could see it. I often thought of how my family must hate going out and being seen with me. I hated going out with myself. I was embarrassed. Mortified as I started looking for clothes amongst the rails of the children’s section. Age 14-15. No. Age 12-13. No. Age 10-11. Finally, a fit! Was that something I should be celebrating as a 20-year-old? And yet as soon as I got home, I couldn’t help but fall into the toxic, habitual routines that had driven me there.

As I got weaker and weaker my body stopped me from doing the things it was telling me I needed to. Forced to take a rest I relented to some extent, knowing that I couldn’t go for a run before work for example. But that didn’t stop the thoughts that I should be, that I should make up for it somehow.

 

I’m lucky. 

After reading this far, probably not the first word that would come to mind. But I am very very lucky! While it wasn’t of my own choosing – people around me cared, they saw I needed help and made it happen – I was admitted first to a general and then to a psychiatric hospital. One of few that has a specialist eating disorder unit, and to be only 20 miles from home, I’m lucky. 

To have received the help that I have. Being taught about my disorder, of the effect that it could have long-term on my body with my organs struggling and my bones being broken down for energy. As well as, being alerted to how my behaviours were affecting all of those around me. I’m lucky. 

Of course, this was the place that looked to re-build my relationship with food. To unpick years of unhealthy messages that certain food groups should be cut. That I was better off without them. That I didn’t need as much as everybody else or that to achieve my ideal self and be happy I should burn them all off as soon as they were consumed. I was lucky to have access to a team of dedicated Health Care Professionals and dieticians who debunked all those food myths and worked with me to build myself up, confront my fears and find a balance where I can now enjoy the foods I like once again not worrying about what they’re made of or the consequences they might have.

But most of all I am lucky to have realised that this wasn’t an illness like most others. This was a disorder of the mind. I was fortunate enough to be taught the unhelpful thinking patterns that I was entrenched in: black and white, catastrophic, over-generalisation…  and how these in part can affect everyone. I was forced to reflect on how these had led me into a viscous cycle of negative thoughts, piecing together a timeline of triggers and momentous events that had elicited my Eating Disorder journey. From comments I received as a child, words that I’d held on to; to the influences of media and culture, with videos I’d seen online. I learned how I’d built my own distorted vision of worth associated with body image, size and characteristics, and of how my own inner critic had begun to rule, over-powering the cheerleader of self-acceptance. My esteem had plummeted. Not believing I could ever have or achieve value. That I would never succeed, be accepted or appreciated.

So you see, I count myself extremely lucky. To be able to sit here today and write this, knowing now that I am now free of that pessimism. With a different mindset, different outlook and different prognosis; coping strategies to help me by, awareness of past mistakes; and a passion to capture every opportunity, to push myself and believe in my abilities. But also, in the knowledge that many of those that I have met on my journey will never escape it.

Eating disorders like anorexia nervosa, bulimia and binge eating, have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses. They take the lives of far too many each and every day. And with the Covid-19 pandemic halting normal routines and prompting strict at home exercise routines, alongside the social-media lead ‘beach body culture and calorie counting diets, now more than ever they are affecting us a society. They’re no longer a condition of the young. They’re no longer a condition just for women or girls. And they should no longer be swept under the carpet for sufferers to feel ashamed.