For a while now, I’ve wanted to share my story and my experience with an eating disorder, as well as the changes I’ve experienced in recovery. It’s not that I haven’t shared any part of my story, or that I’m ashamed or afraid of my past disorder. I’ve shared watered-down versions of my story and touched on the broader, general truths of an eating disorder, but never the full story because it’s an intense story and putting it into words seems graphic or even disturbing.
The truth is, it’s very difficult to go through an eating disorder and at least equally as difficult to recover from one. I’ve been through a lot of treatment, received a lot of support from my friends and family, and used all of the coping skills I know, and for me, I think it would have been very impactful to understand that I was not alone in the intensity and disturbance level of my disorder. I would have certainly benefited from hearing someone else share about the feelings and experiences associated with their eating disorder without filtering the severity of their story.
In my own journey to recovery, I was not going to recover because of any logical epiphanies I had. That’s not to say that it’s not possible for other people, but for me, it was not going to happen. I could make all of the logical connections and understand completely what was happening to my mind, my body, and my life, but it wasn’t enough. What I needed was emotion. I needed to understand many truths about who I was and what I was feeling before I could truly recover.
So, I’m writing this because I believe there are people out there who, similarly to myself, need to understand the same truths about their own identity and emotions before logic can have any impact on their recovery journey.
I do want to initially explain that I will do my best not to write any content in this post that may trigger any readers, meaning I won’t dive into any specifics of behaviors, health predicaments, numbers, etc. However, I am going to discuss my disorder and recovery in general language, and I am not going to filter the emotions or thought processes that I experienced in my eating disorder and in my recovery. That being said, it is important that if you feel this post will not be beneficial to your emotional or mental wellbeing, please choose what is best for yourself.
I remember the night I first heard the voice of my eating disorder. I had just gone to the movie theaters to see a movie that I loved. It wasn’t promoting anything harmful in any way; the movie itself was completely benign. However, that night, I lay in bed obsessively comparing my body to the main character in the movie. I wanted to look like she did, and I knew how I would do it. I had grown up embracing diet culture, so the idea of restricting my food intake to lose weight was automatic. Before I went to sleep, I made a specific plan for how I would create my ideal body in as little time as possible. I knew my plan was unhealthy, so I couldn’t tell anyone or they would try to stop me. But I didn’t spend time thinking about the risks of my ideas; I felt a lot of urgency, and I would have done anything to achieve my goal weight in an instant. I felt completely helpless knowing it would take time for this to happen.
Remembering exactly how all of this started often makes me feel guilty and ashamed of everything that happened. I know that my eating disorder hurt a lot of people around me, as well as destroyed a significant part of my life. I feel that because I made the plan to begin restricting, I chose to put this on myself and those around me. I feel that I chose my eating disorder. However, I know that eating disorders are not a choice, and I find it helpful to write down reminders of this truth and try to think of the reasons that night went so wrong in the first place.
There’s a lot of background that is important for me to cover for this story to be completely honest. Before that night, as I mentioned, I had been deeply impacted by diet culture. I was in love with the idea of having control over my diet, my exercise, and my body. In addition to my obsession with diet culture, I had just experienced a loss in my family and was grieving, while being away from my family and in a setting that was relatively new to me. Through this grief, I felt I had to keep a happy face on and not show I was hurting because most of the relationships I had were somewhat new at the time. Without really allowing space for my emotions, I was falling apart, and I needed something to put me back together by either holding space for my pain or taking my pain away altogether. And that something was my eating disorder, whispering in my ear that I needed to look like that celebrity and telling me how to do it.
In the weeks following that night, I worked compulsively to achieve the body I thought would make me happy. I put everything I had into executing my plan, and when I wasn’t happy with my progress, I fine-tuned the plan to make for a more intensive, but hopefully more productive course of action. What I didn’t know was that, with every tune-up in “my plan,” my eating disorder took over more and more of me until there was nothing left. In no time at all, I was a complete slave to my eating disorder, and I believed I was better off that way. Every single day became entirely devoted to controlling my food, my movement, and ultimately my body. If I wasn’t actively engaging in a behavior, I was planning my next behavior. I knew that my behaviors were harmful to my physical and mental health, but I didn’t care.
I was convinced that I had found the cure-all to any kind of emotional pain in my ED, because I wasn’t feeling pain – but I really wasn’t feeling anything at all. My ED led to depression and anxiety like I had never experienced before. I felt intense emptiness when I was just laying in bed (which was most of my free time), but I felt extreme exhaustion and a desire to return to my bed when I was anywhere else. All I wanted from the beginning of every day was to reach the end of the day as soon as possible. Additionally, I couldn’t stop my mind from racing. Every possible situation to worry about made me overwhelmingly anxious all the time. But, in all of this, I was convinced that my eating disorder behaviors were my rock in the storm. That my ED would get me through if I could just try a little bit harder. I was sure that one day I would look in the mirror at my body and be finally satisfied, and then all of my afflictions would fall away.
The truth is that the only way to appease my eating disorder would be death. I would never look in the mirror and be happy with what I saw because that wasn’t my ED’s real goal. Its real goal was me in a grave, and I was giving it everything it needed to accomplish this goal.
Over time, it became clear to my treatment team and my support system that the only remaining option was to admit me to a residential support community, where I would receive 24/7 treatment for my eating disorder. I was not convinced that this was the only option. My ED told me a couple of other options that I favored greatly. However, for the sake of my loved ones, I agreed to go to residential treatment for a while, with no intention of actually recovering, just making everyone else feel better about my health. After a very short amount of time, my eating disorder screamed at me to leave this residential treatment center so that I could go back to my old behaviors. But this would be a tricky endeavor because I didn’t have my car with me and would require someone to come pick me up. So I decided I would convince my loved ones I was healed and no longer needed help. I would even walk the walk to convince people I was better, but it was all just so I could go back to my old behaviors in time.
Eventually, I was back in the same place I was before. Depressed, anxious, craving control, and blindly following wherever my eating disorder led. For far too long, I lived my life this way. Every day dragged on as I scrutinized over every detail of my body and my food intake. At this point, I knew that my life was a mess because of my eating disorder and I knew that my eating disorder was not making me happy as it promised. I even knew that it probably never would make me happy, but I couldn’t stop. I tried time and time again to begin recovery. I went to support groups, followed the meal plan that was prescribed to me, and took major steps towards taking my life back. But every time I made any progress, I ended up right back in the same place I started. I felt completely helpless against my urges to use behaviors. I believed I had effectively ruined my life and the lives of those around me, and there was no way to fix it. So I gave up trying.
I’ve since realized two essential parts of recovery that none of my previous attempts to get better had involved.
The first of these is asking for help. Like many people, with or without eating disorders, I’ve always felt like a burden for asking for help. To be honest, I haven’t found a real solution to that thought process. Some reframes I’ve heard are “I don’t see other people as a burden for sharing how they’re feeling so others probably don’t see me that way,” “my feelings matter and count,” and “sharing how I feel helps others know I trust them.” These are all true and very helpful ways of thinking. What really helped me in my specific situation, however, is simply understanding that my eating disorder is harder on the people who care about me than my asking for help would be. Since I’ve learned how to ask for support from the people around me, I’ve gotten encouragement and validation that will stick with me forever. I can say with certainty that I would not be in recovery today if I never learned how to ask for help.
The second essential component of recovery that I hadn’t previously tried was actually allowing, accepting, and acknowledging my feelings. My entire ED began because I was looking for an escape from my emotions, making it very clear to me now that an escape was not the solution. When I began recovery for the final time, I noticed feelings of guilt, inadequacy, anger, depression, anxiety, isolation, and helplessness, all of which I could account for and explain. What did surprise me though is the feelings of grief I experienced. I hadn’t lost anyone in a long time, and yet I was feeling overwhelming grief. I understand now that the feelings of grief that were present when my eating disorder began never went away completely, and I was going to have to accept and experience them before I ever felt relief.
I won’t lie and say that asking for support and allowing space for my emotions was a wonderful experience and I recovered immediately after implementing these changes in my life. Actually, the opposite happened – I hit rock bottom. I looked at what had happened to my life, and I was wrecked. I felt completely alone and I was infuriated that my brain worked the way it did. The turning point for me was the night I spent 4 hours crying on my knees on the bathroom floor. I knew I needed my life to change and I knew how to do it.
The next day, I began the process of going back to residential treatment for my ED, for real this time. I found a wonderful place that focused on intuitive eating and listening to your body, and I admitted within the next week. The team at this residential center was more supportive, insightful, and empathetic than I ever could have imagined. My therapist held space for the way I was feeling while helping me stay grounded throughout the experience. My dietician helped me uncover the lies that my ED had told me for so long. My group therapists explored important topics with me that allowed me to have a full life in recovery. It wasn’t easy at all. Everyone says “recovery isn’t linear,” so it sounds cheesy now, but it really is true. I took steps backward almost every day, but in the end, I took even more steps forward.
I did not come out of my residential treatment center recovered. It was a process that began in residential, and then took as long as it took. Recovery does not follow a timeline. Even now, as I consider myself fully recovered, I still have distorted thoughts and urges that I struggle with, only now these thoughts are way quieter, and I am confident in my ability to let them pass.
Now that I am in recovery, I feel extremely angry with diet culture and the eating disorders it causes. My eating disorder was one of the most miserable and all-consuming experiences of my life, and now that it’s over, I see that it accomplished nothing. I did not ever reach a point where I was confident in my body. I did not ever reach a point where I was happy and fulfilled. I did not ever reach a point where all of my pain was taken away. Nothing that my eating disorder viewed as an accomplishment was ever going. What I hate is that there are millions (yes, I do mean millions) of people like me who are suffering from eating disorders and believing what is happening to them is okay.
The point of me sharing this story is not to coerce anyone into recovery. I believe that is a personal decision. I do hope this post helps every reader to feel less alone in their struggles. I hope this post brings light to the darkest of places along the journey of readers who have eating disorders or are in recovery. I hope that my stance on support in eating disorder recovery is clear and that anyone reading this understands that I am here to support, validate, and encourage you. I am in your corner, not your eating disorder’s. I believe that there is hope for every single person struggling with disordered eating.
If you or someone you know has or may have an eating disorder, or any form of disordered eating, it is important to seek professional help as soon as possible. If you need someone to confidentially share with at any time, text HOME to 741741 to be connected with a trained crisis counselor for free with 24/7 availability. Additionally, you can visit the ANAD website for free support groups, recovery mentorship, a helpline, treatment team directories, and more.