A Mother Grieves by Making a Film About Bulimia – NYTimes.com

A Mother Grieves by Making a Film About Bulimia – NYTimes.com.

BORN Dec. 21, 1989, Melissa seemed in her early years to be a happy little girl. Her family lived in Wayne, N.J., and then in Pine Brook, N.J., spending two years in Coral Gables, Fla., in between, where Mr. Avrin was transferred for his work with a specialty chemical company. Melissa did well in school — producing A’s and short stories.

But at age 13, thing started to change. Melissa’s mood darkened; she didn’t want to go to school or do extracurricular activities. She developed stomach problems and constipation. Ms. Avrin took her to a pediatric gastroenterologist who said Melissa probably had an eating disorder. “I reacted the way most parents do: ‘That’s not possible,’ ” Ms. Avrin said. “We didn’t go back to him.”

In the early stages, the Avrins did not really see what was going on, in part because Melissa wasn’t visibly underweight, in part because they didn’t want to. But clues started to show up that were too stark to ignore — logs of cookie dough that disappeared from the freezer along with whole boxes of cookies from the cabinet. Empty pizza boxes. “I found containers with chewed and spit-out food and I’d never heard of that before,” Ms. Avrin tells Dr. Sanders during their filmed interview. “Is that very common?”

Eventually, Melissa was sent away for professional help against her will and thus began a series of programs over the next few years that had varying degrees of success. It wasn’t until Melissa’s third round of in-patient treatment — when she and other young women testified about their eating disorders in front of their families — that her father began to fully understand. “I really said, ‘Wow this is almost like heroin addiction,’ ” he says in his film interview. “They need to purge because it makes them feel high and it’s something they need to do. I never appreciated that.”

Sweet Poison – are artificial sweeteners deadly?

I have been trying to kick my HUGE artificial sweetener habit for years. Back in the late 1990′s I was living on diet coke and diet pepsi (among other diet soft drinks), diet jelly which had then just appeared in shops for the first time, sugarfree sweets, etc! Among other symptoms I had diarrhoea, bloating, cramps, horrific headaches, the shakes,  - and I knew that most of these were caused directly from my consuming these products.

But i was hooked. I can’t seem to taste sugar any more, when I try to use that instead (and this is aside from my fear of sugar for other reasons.) When I use sweetener in tea or coffee, I start out with a ‘normal’ amount. A few drinks later, I cannot taste that anymore, and have to use more. This keeps happening until I need an insane amount of sweetener to just taste anything ‘sweet’.

I read about pilots who were grounded from flying due to suffering Grand Mal Seizures directly from drinking Nutrasweet in their coffee, in a study written by a woman who had been diagnosed with Graves disease that went away as soon as she stopped drinking diet drinks.

Today a friend of mine forwarded me an email about artificial sweeteners called Sweet Poison. Unfortunately I couldn’t find who the author of this was – but I wanted to share it and ask you -

What do you think? Do you use artificial sweetener, or have you in the past, and has it ever affected you badly? Would you still use it despite knowing it could be deadly? Do you think this article (following) is legitimate or a propaganda style scare email? 

I do not necessarily endorse the opinions expressed in the following article – I am simply interested in those of my readers. It may or may not be factual – it came with no factual evidence, but from personal experience I know that there are some elements of truth there at the very least. 

here is the article as it was sent to me -

In  October of 2001, my sister started getting very  sick She had stomach spasms and she was having a  hard time getting around. Walking was a major  chore. It took everything she had just to get  out of bed; she was in so much pain.


By  March 2002, she had undergone several tissue and  muscle biopsies and was on 24 various  prescription medications. The doctors could not  determine what was wrong with her. She was in so  much pain, and so sick she just knew she was  dying.

She  put her house, bank accounts, life insurance,  etc., in her oldest daughter’s name, and made  sure that her younger children were to be taken  care of.

She also wanted her last hooray,  so she planned a trip to Florida (basically in a  wheelchair) for March 22nd..

On March 19,  I called her to ask how her most recent tests  went, and she said they didn’t find anything on  the test, but they believe she had  MS.

I  recalled an article a friend of mine e-mailed to  me and I asked my sister if she drank diet soda?  She told me that she did. As a matter of fact,  she was getting ready to crack one open that  moment.

I told her not to open it, and to  stop drinking the diet soda! I e-mailed her an  article my friend, a lawyer, had sent. My sister  called me within 32 hours after our phone  conversation and told me she had stopped  drinking the diet soda AND she could walk! The  muscle spasms went away. She said she didn’t  feel 100% but, she sure felt a lot  better.

She  told me she was going to her doctor with this  article and would call me when she got  home.

Well, she called me, and said her  doctor was amazed! He is going to call all of  his MS patients to find out if they consumed  artificial sweeteners of any kind. In a  nutshell, she was being poisoned by the  Aspartame in the diet soda.. and literally dying  a slow and miserable death.

When she got  to Florida March 22, all she had to take was one  pill, and that was a pill for the Aspartame  poisoning! She is well on her way to a complete  recovery. And she is walking! No wheelchair!  This article saved her  life.

If  it says ‘SUGAR FREE’ on the label; DO NOT EVEN  THINK ABOUT IT!

I  have spent several days lecturing at the WORLD  ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE on ‘ASPARTAME,’  marketed as’Nutra  Sweet,’ ‘Equal,’ and  ’Spoonful.’

In  the keynote address by the EPA, it was announced  that in the United States in 2001 there is an  epidemic of multiple sclerosis and systemic  lupus. It was difficult to determine exactly  what toxin was causing this to be rampant. I  stood up and said that I was there to lecture on  exactly that subject.

I will explain why  Aspartame is so dangerous: When the temperature  of this sweetener exceeds 86 degrees F, the wood  alcohol in ASPARTAME converts to formaldehyde  and then to formic acid, which in turn causes  metabolic acidosis. Formic acid is the poison  found in the sting of fire ants. The methanol  toxicity mimics, among other conditions,  multiple sclerosis and systemic  lupus.

Many people were being diagnosed  in error. Although multiple sclerosis is not a  death sentence, Methanol toxicity  is!

Systemic lupus has become almost as  rampant as multiple sclerosis, especially with  Diet  Coke and Diet Pepsi  drinkers.

The  victim usually does not know that the Aspartame  is the culprit. He or she continues its use;  irritating the lupus to such a degree that it  may become a life-threatening condition… We  have seen patients with systemic lupus become  asymptotic, once taken off diet sodas.

In  cases of those diagnosed with Multiple  Sclerosis, most of the symptoms disappear. We’ve  seen many cases where vision loss re- turned and  hearing loss improved markedly.

This also  applies to cases of tinnitus and fibromyalgia.  During a lecture, I said, ‘If you are using  ASPARTAME (Nutra  Sweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc)  and you suffer from fibromyalgia symptoms,  spasms, shooting, pains, numbness in your  legs,
Cramps,
Vertigo,
Dizziness,
Headaches,
Tinnitus,
Joint  pain,
Unexplainable  depression, anxiety attacks, slurred speech,  blurred vision, or memory loss you probably have  ASPARTAME poisoning!’ People were jumping up  during the lecture saying,’I have some of these  symptoms. Is it  reversible?’

Yes!
Yes!
Yes!
STOP  drinking diet sodas and be alert for Aspartame  on food labels! Many products are fortified with  it! This is a serious problem. Dr. Espart (one  of my speakers) remarked that so many people  seem to be symptomatic for MS and during his  recent visit to a hospice; a nurse stated that  six of her friends, who were heavy  Diet  Coke  addicts, had all been diagnosed with MS. This is  beyond coincidence!

Diet soda  is  NOT  a diet product! It is a chemically altered,  multiple SODIUM (salt) and ASPARTAME containing  product that actually makes you crave  carbohydrates.

It is far more likely to  make you GAIN weight!

These products also  contain formaldehyde, which stores in the fat  cells, particularly in the hips and thighs.  Formaldehyde is an absolute toxin and is used  primarily to preserve ’tissue  specimens.’

Many  products we use every day contain this chemical  but we SHOULD NOT store it IN our  body!

Dr. H. J. Roberts stated in his  lectures that once free of  the  ’diet products’  and with no significant increase in exercise;  his patients lost an average of 19 pounds over a  trial period.

Aspartame  is especially dangerous for diabetics. We found  that some physicians, who believed that they had  a patient with retinopathy, in fact, had  symptoms caused by Aspartame. The Aspartame  drives the blood sugar out of control. Thus  diabetics may suffer acute memory loss due to  the fact that aspartic acid and phenylalanine  are NEUROTOXIC when taken without the other  amino acids necessary for a good  balance.

Treating diabetes is all about  BALANCE. Especially with diabetics, the  Aspartame passes the blood/brain barrier and it  then deteriorates the neurons of the brain;  causing various levels of brain  damage,  Seizures, Depression, Manic depression, Panic  attacks,  Uncontrollable anger and  rage.

Consumption  of Aspartame causes these same symptoms in  non-diabetics as well. Documentation and  observation also reveal that thousands of  children diagnosed with ADD and ADHD have had  complete turnarounds in their behavior when  these chemicals have been removed from their  diet.

So  called ‘behavior modification prescription  drugs’ (Ritalin and others) are no longer  needed.Truth be told, they were never NEEDED in  the first place!

Most  of these children were being ‘poisoned’ on a  daily basis with the very foods that were  ’better for them than  sugar.’

It  is also suspected that the Aspartame in  thousands of pallets of  diet Coke and diet Pepsi  consumed by men and women fighting in the Gulf  War,  may be partially to blame for the well-known  Gulf War Syndrome.

Dr. Roberts warns that  it can cause birth defects, i.e. mental  retardation, if taken at the time of conception  and during early pregnancy. Children are  especially at risk for neurological disorders  and should NEVER be given artificial  sweeteners.

There  are many different case histories to relate of  children suffering grand mal seizures and other  neurological disturbances talking about a plague  of neurological diseases directly caused by the  use of this deadly poison.’

Herein lies  the problem: There were Congressional Hearings  when Aspartame was included in 100 different  products and strong ob-jection was made  concerning its use. Since this initial hearing,  there have been two subsequent hearings, and  still nothing has been done..  The drug and chemical lobbies have very deep  pockets.

Sadly, MONSANTO’S patent on  Aspartame has EXPIRED! There are now over 5,000  products on the market that contain this deadly  chemical and there will be thousands more  introduced. Everybody wants a  ’piece of the Aspartame  pie.’

I  assure you that MONSANTO, the creator of  Aspartame, knows how deadly it is.

And  isn’t it ironic that MONSANTO funds, among  others, the American Diabetes Association, the  American Dietetic Association and the Conference  of the American College of  Physicians?

This has been recently  exposed in the New York Times. These  [organizations] cannot criticize any additives  or convey their link to MONSANTO because they  take money from the food industry and are  required to endorse their  products.

Senator  Howard Metzenbaum wrote and presented a bill  that would require label warnings on products  containing Aspartame, especially regarding  pregnant women, children and infants.

The  bill would also institute independent studies on  the known dangers and the problems existing in  the general population regarding seizures,  changes in brain chemistry, neurological changes  and behavioral symptoms.
The  bill was killed.

It  is known that the powerful drug and chemical  lobbies are responsible for this, letting loose  the hounds of disease and death on an  unsuspecting and uninformed public. Well, you’re  informed now!

The Psychopath's False Sense of Omnipotence

Reblogged from Psychopathyawareness's Blog:

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Psychopaths aren't just after control over others. By controlling others, they aspire to a sense of omnipotence. This attitude is the result of the combination of their traits: low impulse control; the intent to harm others (predatory nature); and absolute narcissism (a pervasive sense of superiority to all other human beings and of being above all the rules and laws that govern the rest of humanity).

Read more… 448 more words, 1 more video

If there’s any consolation for their victims, in reality, psychopaths always lose in the end. They lose jobs, relationships and the trust and loyalty of others. With each new victim they feel invincible. As the victim starts to catch on, they move on to another that gives them the same rush of power. Psychopaths cheat on, lie to, steal from, hurt and manipulate others from a position of omnipotence. Their greatest strength is seeing other people’s weaknesses. Their greatest weakness is not seeing other people’s strengths.

Thoughts about Binge Eating Disorder and Compulsive Overeating

Reblogged from Clarity in a Crazy World:

Sure, I my label is EDNOS or AN (b/p) (depending on my doc) but at the very core of my eating disorder issues is Binge Eating Disorder.

I was 8 when I had my very first binge. I went for everything sweet, every food I wasn't 'supposed to' eat. I was so ashamed of my behaviour that I locked myself in the pantry to binge.

Read more… 772 more words

"Why am I telling my story, in more detail than my later disorders, because I want people to know that you CAN talk about it. I was 8 to 17 when I was suffering with BED, and even though I started compensating – the binge eating was always the core of my issues. I think it’s time we break the shame and talk about it."

Verbal Diarrhea

Reblogged from The Spiral Upward:

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According to the article, "Comorbidity of Anxiety Disorders with Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa" dated December 1, 2004 and located on the American Journal of Psychiatry website, the prevalence of Anxiety Disorders was much higher in people with Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa than in a nonclinical group. In addition, these disorders commonly had their onset in childhood before the onset of an Eating Disorder, which supports the possibility that they are a vulnerability factor for developing Anorexia Nervosa or Bulimia Nervosa.

Read more… 1,585 more words

A very helpful and informative look at how anxiety disorders and eating disorders can go hand in hand by one of my favourite bloggers, Elizabeth - who is as of yesterday, 41 days binge and purge free!!!! So proud and excited for her.

Why I hate hospital. A cautionary tale of Bulimia and it’s costs.

I was asked by Nicole in the comments on her post The Obese Bulimic to write about my experience with bingeing and purging in a public setting – and I’m inspired by Emma’s honest and courageous post about her own struggles with binge eating.

My eating disorder has very blurred beginnings, as I was weird with food from a very young age – hiding food and restricting as well as eating everything in sight when we were allowed to, from as young as four years old. I lost a fair bit of weight in my last years of high school (dancing full time at a state ballet company dance school) not just from the insane work load, but from depression caused by what was going on at home and school – there was never any way out of hell. Eating, most of the time, was just too hard, not to mention that I started strangely being paranoid of the girls who bullied me seeing me eating.

Probably, they bitched about everything else with me, they had bitched about how gross some of the food I had was. I imagined the next thing they would pick on would be the way i ate. Shame and food were inextricably linked early on for me.

After fleeing home, at first, eating was difficult, but i soon realised I COULD eat. There were no limits aside from what was available. And I ate, and ate, and ate. It comforted me. It was warm, like a hug. I didn’t have to think about anything when I ate. Hurting about my past and being so rejected and unloved by my mother didn’t hurt so much when I was scoffing tim tams.

Do we even NEED an excuse?

Of course, as a dancer, the weight gain (which I hadn’t expected, funnily enough, since my mind had never before been focussed on losing weight or dieting) – was disastrous. I soon linked weight gain to all the problems in my life. And being told by the lecturers at the university where I was now dancing full time that I was too big and needed to lose weight helped crystallise for me that weight loss = everything will be soooo much better!

For clarification – weight loss =/= solving your problems (or happiness, popularity, inner beauty, employment or promotion, wealth, confidence etc etc etc). this I know now.

But I launched myself now on diet after diet.  It became my obsession, i researched every single diet known to man as though I was enrolled in nutrition or dietetics rather than dance.

The ultimate JUNK food..

Long story short, after a number of failures (because diets do NOT WORK, I can’t say that enough) – Ed took over and created rules taken from the books I had ‘dined upon’ – took them too far. For example low carb = NO carb. Low fat = NO fat,  and if calories were so bad, why not just cut all of them out completely? Not long after that, guess who ended up in the hospital for her first admission in the eating disorders unit?

Yes – me.

I sincerely did NOT believe I belonged there. It took a couple of admissions before I could admit to myself that I did. I was powerless over the anorexia. I could not put anything in my mouth that was against my rules. But I relaxed enough to gain weight eating ‘safe’ foods and be considered ‘better’ and be discharged (in those days, many years ago now, the eating disorder unit I spent so much time in barely had a program and food and meals were pretty relaxed.)

Of course, I would go back to where I started – only worse. For some reason i kept getting worse. I would try to follow the meal plan they wanted me to follow, but I couldn’t trust myself. I threw out a lot of food because I was scared I wouldn’t be able to stop at one meal of it – and then just gave up and reverted to starving.

While all this was happening I was being abused and raped by a man. He did not live with me but came and went as he pleased. I didn’t want to be with him in the first place – he simply picked me up and put me in his car when I tried to walk away. After what he did to me, I just wanted to throw up. I was so defiled and dirty and had to GET IT OUT. But I couldn’t. Not for want of trying! But I just could NOT throw up. (probably had something to do with the fact that I wasn’t eating ENOUGH to throw up anyway.)

During this period I drank copious cups of warm water and epsom salts. Please do NOT try this. It’s disgusting. The worst thing I ever tasted. And dangerous. For me, remembering my mum referring to it as what they used in ‘her day’ as a good clean out of the system, it was the only way I could feel ‘clean’ after the bastard had his way with me.

Then, a few years into the constant hosptialisations, I got talking with another girl on the ward, who claimed she had bulimia (she did not. She had munchausens – bulimia was another in a long list of  illnesses she manufactured for attention, but was soon found out.) She, in front of me, ate an entire loaf of bread, toasted, smothered in butter and jam and honey, drank an entire 2 litre bottle of full cream milk. I was just goggle-eyed… I had never seen anyone eat so much, not even my brother who could polish off enough for four big adults in one sitting.  Seeing my horror, she pulled me by the arm, we snuck down the hallway to the toilets and she quickly locked us inside. Where she proceeded to step-by-step demonstrate throwing up. It was DISGUSTING to watch, but something clicked in my sick, sick mind – and when I later tried myself, I was able to throw up my meals.

So I became a restricting anorexic who threw up her lettuce leaves, and the spiral of sickness plunged ever deeper.

Another few years passed – this time the fellow patient was rabidly bulimic – she was in utter hell. She did not CARE who saw her bingeing. She was that desperate. She stole half chewed food off the elderly patient’s plates. She ate from the bin. She hoovered up everything in sight, even when nurses were trying to pull her away. One day on an earned walk off the ward, i ran into her in the hospital canteen where she was buying a HEAP of food. She asked me if I would like to join her, and curious, I did. She ate and ate and ate! And soon I joined in. We went from canteen to canteen, I ate five paddle pops! At first I thought to myself – I have been so good, working so hard, gaining weight – come on Fi, you deserve a treat. Have a paddle pop. But then I had another paddle pop, and soon I’d had five. And then we were in the toilets throwing up before going to the next canteen (there were three on hospital campus back then.)

click to go to Binge Eating Therapy site.

I later learned she went to a popular buffet restaurant, Sizzlers, every day and just ate and purged and ate and purged. I later was friends with one of the young people who had worked at that restaurant (small world!!) who told me of the horror and dillemma that the staff there were in – after all it was all-you-can-eat, and you can’t exactly say to a patron, you are eating too much. that is what they have paid for – free for all. But THIS girl was throwing up and coming back for more and more for hours at a time. They could see it, the other diners could see it – she simply did not care as long as she could binge and purge. Their biggest dilemma was the fear (and real risk) of her collapsing or dropping dead in their restaurant. It was an ethical minefield, and most of the staff were really just kids themselves still.

Click to go to the Alliance For Eating Disorders site

Myself? i continued with my purging behaviour, but ‘every now and then treats’  (really binges) grew in size and regularity. Soon after being discharged, I had fallen into an endless cycle of starving all day and binging and purging at night in place of even attempting to eat meals.  I felt like I was in a dream a lot of the time – no longer did I need to deny myself when I was hungry or craving (which was always) – it was anything goes. As long as I got rid of it. I also became physiologically ‘hooked’ – blood sugar swings so violent that a few minutes after purging I would be dizzy, shaking, blacking out and terrified,  and frantically searching for more food to binge on just to feel like I wasn’t going to pass out or worse.

From then onwards, I really was in freefall. My weight plummeted. The hospital quit trying to make me gain as much weight – my discharge weight set by them fell to just-clicking-over-from-bmi 13 to bmi 14. That too made me feel that they had given up on me and were just keeping me alive because legally, me being under their care on an involuntary treatment order – they had to.

My bingeing behaviour became the only way I coped with life, and when things were harder, I was out of control. On my numerous admissions to restore weight or medically get me out of danger, the staff decided to keep me in a locked HDU rather than let me join the program. I was never out of control to the degree my friend had been, but because I was so medically compromised and so underweight (as low as BMI 9) bingeing and purging was deadly. Not only did it strain my body terribly, but it took just one purge to make my potassium levels plunge dangerously low – which potentially could lead to cardiac arrest. Even when I was doing ‘better’ and not bingeing or purging, they refused to consider letting me on the open ward like anyone else.  From then on, when I was admitted, they automatically put me in there, no questions asked.

The HDU is a horrible place to be, it’s reserved for the sickest patients. The violent ones. All your possessions are confiscated, even shoes and underwear. Often eye glasses and dentures are taken. I had to fight for my hearing aids. The idea is that ANYTHING in the hands of a crazy person can be turned into a weapon against themselves or others. And after several fires, that included paper, books, etc. You were restricted to hospital pjs, no underwear in case you hid something in your regular clothes. So I sat there, day after day, in a bare white room. Nothing to see, do, read. No clock to tell the time with. No pen or pencil to write with. It was utter hell and I lost more and more of ‘who am I?’. I forgot who I was, I forgot there was a world out there. And I slowly became a blank nothing.

As I grew sicker, they had to resort to feeding me intravenously – via TPN. As pulling out a picc line was so dangerous, I was restrained with two point restraints (your wrists are tied to the bed on either side when you lie on your back) to prevent any possibility of pulling the line out.

Psych nurses here are rarely required to care for someone in that position. I had bedsores, was left dirty after toileting, was bathed irregularly, my mouth was allowed to go so dry that the nursing director threatened that heads would roll. And lying on your back in one position for weeks on end is very painful.

This is a cautionary tale. Rarely when we set out with something that seems like a good idea at the time, do we envision what it could very well lead to. We often don’t think that the worst could possibly happen to US. I certainly thought that. Bingeing and purging when I started seemed an amazing way to eat all that yummy stuff I’d not had after subsisting on pretty much nothing for years – and not pay for it. But you pay. You always pay. And dearly. Many people pay with their LIVES. I am lucky I have not – but every single time I do it, I am putting my life on the line – I could die. So could you. I have had friends die from it.  A couple died after they STOPPED doing it because it was too late to reverse the damage they had done.

So please, please, seek help. And try your best to help yourself in the community. Hospitals and treatment centres are minefields of tips and tricks passed from patient to patient. Ways to cheat, ways to compete. You only ever cheat yourself in the end.

The best advice I could give to someone who had to go to a hospital or treatment centre would be to keep your eyes on your own plate in all ways – literally when at the table. On your own journey – because so many of us (I did too) compare our journey – “That girl is so much sicker/thinner/more disordered/eats less/purges more than me”. We will NEVER win this way. We will ALWAYS find ourselves wanting, and have lost a valuable chance to work on what is really the problem.

Because it’s not the food or the weight. It’s something far, far deeper than that. And it needs to be addressed in order to stop needing your eating disorder to cope with it.

Click to go to the Butterfly foundation page (Australia)

Click to go to the Academy Of Eating Disorders (worldwide)

What do you think should happen when someone is obviously bingeing and purging at an all-you-can-eat restaurant?

Have you been affected by other people with eating disorders that you have met? How?

Obese teen girls three times more likely to be bullies than their slimmer peers | News | National Post

Obese teen girls three times more likely to be bullies than their slimmer peers | News | National Post.

This really surprised me. Another reminder that often our stereotypes are very wrong.

Also a reminder that those who hurt others often do so out of their own deep unhappiness and lack of self-worth.

Bullying is so wrong, so devastating for the bullied, has already led to publicised deaths this year (and we are only in January)

The  stereotype shocker for  me is that i have always believed that people with eating disorders are ‘nice’ sweet people who wouldn’t hurt a soul willingly. Just about every person I’ve met who has ED (and it’s been quite a number of people due to all the years of hospital) has seemed to fit into a very similar behavioural and personality type.

The other day one of my friends formally ‘quit’ treatment despite being dangerously acutely ill, directly because of the bullying of another girl on facebook who was not a friend of hers but was also a patient at her clinic. She blew me away describing the bullying in general and bitchiness that has gone on at this clinic, and how she has lost faith in treatment because it seems every time she is actively in treatment she gets bullied somehow.

What the….??? I’m shocked! This girl is very unwell, and nobody knows better than we do the absolute distress and suffering we go through!

please, please – be kind to your neighbour. Even if you are in pain, hitting out at someone else isn’t going to make you feel better in the long run – it only leads to MORE pain.

Hello Faith and Meow! – and staying with what doesn’t feel good.

No, you haven’t come to someone else’s blog! Shalimar and I are still here, still blogging, nothing has changed but our blog address and user name.

In the interest in not being as ‘visible’ online to a few certain people, I decided it would be a good start to not use the same conglomerate of our names as I’ve used in so many previous places. If someone has already bookmarked my blog I’m sure they will still end up here, but i’m hoping that anyone i DON’T want to find this, will not be able to just plug our names into Google and land here, at least not easily.

I walked past my old place today, and it’s all empty and repainted a different colour. I felt a deep pang. And yet… that’s the old. There aren’t many good memories there – only sickness and dying. I love my new home. So why the pangs? I think as it was my first stable, permanent home, it will always have a special place in my heart.

It’s raining again, raining cats and dogs! Deja vu of the floods here in Queensland last year. Last year, I was evacuated but otherwise safe. This time, I’m in the middle of a flood zone! Already just down the road from me, the river has broken it’s banks. Hopefully this is just a normal wet season, and I am fretting because of the extreme weather last year. But it’s hard to just let it go.

Shalimar has never seen rain like this in her life! She’s seen it from inside my old apartment, or from the latticed in balcony. She’s gotten wet from the rain spray. But she’s never been so close to the grass and trees as the rain washes and thrashes them and sprays mud and puddles and gushes over the ground. She’s never smelt anything like this, so fresh! She keeps meowing to go outside, demanding – and when I give in and take her, takes a few steps, feels the raindrops and looks at me as if to say “What the hell?” Very puzzled! Quite funny. And it just makes me so happy to see how happy she is. She has had no problems settling in and I don’t think I’ve seen her this happy, ever.

Today when we had a respite, we went out, and it was quite funny to see her lifting her paws in surprise as they got wet in the grass, and trying to tiptoe around the wet bits. She still keeps to the paths and concrete paved area around the washing lines, as though a bit worried about the grass underfoot. So to encounter puddles on HER walking space was puzzling for her too!

I’m glad we had a break in the rain today. It’s a bit like where I am with the depression – still stormy, but there are signs of Fiona shining through.

Eating disorder wise, I’ve still maintained my weight. It will be two years in May, amazing for me. Two years also of no hospital admissions (bar one for having wisdom teeth finally removed – another ‘prize’ for being healthier) My BMI might still be very underweight, but it’s still the highest I have been in all these years too. I’m not handling that very well – I might be maintaining it, but I still hate it. Feel like the Michelin Man and want to literally cut off the fat and throw it away.

I truly see myself as and feel like this (click for source)

But I don’t. I don’t go out to lose it. I guess that’s a huge progress for me. It doesn’t seem much at times – all I’m doing is staying here. Staying with this.

And yet, sometimes i realise that this is what it’s all about – staying here.

When I struggle with memories, flashbacks, feelings I can’t cope with, intense pain – I have dealt with it by losing weight. Instead of thinking about how I was hurt, my mind has made a complete switch almost instantly to calories, fat, carbs, exercise, lose lose lose.

Now I’m staying with what doesn’t feel good. I’m sitting with it. Seeing it through.

Every time we avoid something that doesn’t feel good, we interrupt the natural progression of that feeling. We interrupt it’s peak and then decline. And that means that the next time we have to start right at the beginning again. We aren’t coming from a position where we have gained some strength and ‘immunity’ to what we are experiencing – we are feeling it all as strongly as we did the first time.

By staying with it – anxiety, fear, sadness, anger, etc – we ride that peak out, and then the emotions fade. We do feel them again – but the next time, they will not be as powerful. The peak will be lower. And each time after that, it will continue to lower – until one day it doesn’t bother us at all.

Here's a silly graph I nicked off the net and modified (click for source of original)

I hope that this made any sense! My wording is a bit clumsy. I hope the gist of it came across. But what I’m trying to say is that I’m staying with what haunts, hurts, scares me – so that I can deal with it better and better each time it happens, rather than constantly finding it all too much to bear and seeking refuge in the eating disorder.

This is also a problem for me in terms of bingeing and purging. I find it hard to write about that, I still feel so much shame about it. Shame and self disgust. And yet it’s not shame and disgust that I should be owning – it is not an illness I chose to have. It’s not something I like doing. It’s not me being ‘emo’ or a spoilt brat or vain. It’s not about how I look. It’s about trying to cope with what I just can’t bear. So I’m going to say it – yes bingeing and purging is a huge problem for me, has been for years, and is another way I cope, as well as starvation and overexercising. And although I have cut it down immensely, it still happens.

It takes a long time, and a lot of perseverance, especially when you are constantly frustrated and feeling like you are getting nowhere – but you are. I couldn’t see that when I was slogging through the harder times, but now from this position when I look back I can see just how far I was climbing during those times. It’s added up to saving my life, and the steps I’m taking now will add up to making it better, more functional, more enjoyable.

Hello sunshine - I have missed you :)

I don’t know if I can get through this

I don’t think I’m strong enough

I don’t know how I can take another day

another moment.

But then I look back at how far I have come

and I realised I have survived worse than this

I’m not going to let go and fall to the bottom

after fighting to come so far.

I might not be able to see the view from the top yet

But I know it’s there. 

modified from source - click

The sun is always there – even when we can’t see it. 

Things never stay bad forever. There is always a beyond. 

Keep on hoping, keep on fighting – and thank you for reading xx

Light a candle, Blog for mental health.

I have been so blessed to have met a group of the most amazing friends through blogging. I’ve been inspired, given hope, heartwarmed. I’m sharing their ups and downs as we all fight our battles together.

Melis at http://iamnotshe.wordpress.com/  has touched my heart by reaching out in unconditional friendship, sharing her struggles and triumphs, and having the courage to speak out. She has given me so much hope. Thank you Melis for the CandleLighters award – I hope that I can keep the light shining with my own sharing of truths, stuggles, and TRIUMPHS and that I can reach out to people as you have all reached out to me.

I’ve also been nominated to take the Blogging for Mental Health pledge, which I gratefully accept – raising mental health awareness is very close to my heart, not just for myself, but many friends who struggle, and from my volunteer work in the homeless community which brought home to me just how many people with mental illness fall through the cracks in our society.  Thank you so much to Emma at http://doesmybumlookbiginthis.org , another blogging friend who both reaches out to me in friendship and inspires me as she raises awareness and shares her fight.

The rules of the pledge are:

1) Take the pledge by copy and pasting the following into a post featuring Blog for Mental Health 2012

I pledge my commitment to the Blog for Mental Health 2012 Project. I will blog about mental health topics not only for myself, but for others. By displaying this badge, I show my pride, dedication, and acceptance for mental health. I use this to promote mental health education in the struggle to erase stigma.

2.) Link back to the person who pledged you.

3.) Write a short biography of your mental health, and what this means to you.

It’s hard to know where the actual mental health issues began – I think I was born with some of them. Certainly I have had weird food/eating issues as far back as four years old. I was first diagnosed with major clinical depression at age nine after a suicide letter was (supposedly) found. I was again diagnosed with the depression as a teenager and tentatively labelled with borderline personality disorder. Anorexia was officially diagnosed when i was about 19 years old after years of struggling with anorexia, binge eating, and exercise addiction. I started self harming at this age too, much to my own shock as before that I had no idea anyone did it at all – I just thought I was some crazy nutter and if anyone found out I would be locked away forever. I developed bulimia in my mid twenties after several hospitalisations.

Today at 34 I have over 150 hospitalisations mostly for Anorexia type 2 (binge purge type) but for the first time in years I’ve managed to stay out of hospital for nearly two years and maintain the highest BMI i’ve maintained in most of that time too.  I no longer self harm and have not overdosed in years. I still have major depression. The label of Borderline Personality Disorder has been rejected in favor of Complex PTSD, which does fit me. I’m not a fan of labels, but they at least help me know that someone knows what’s wrong, why i’m this way, etc. And hopefully if they know what’s wrong, they know a way to help me help myself.

I’ve lost a lot – lost friends, homes, an incomplete degree (with only half a semester’s work remaining), been unable to keep volunteering, never had a paid job, lost my dream of being a dancer, lost people I loved dearly, independence, lost a lot of health and strength.

I’ve gained a lot – amazing friends who now are my family, a wider view of the world, insight, maturity, a gratitude for life and even the most basic things in life, an amazing cat Shalimar, hope… and so much more.

I know I’m going to beat this now – I’m not out of the woods by far, but I can see now how far i have come all those years I thought I was getting nowhere. I’m never going to stop fighting now.

I would like to pledge other people who inspire me and raise awareness – it’s hard because I think most of the bloggers I read have already been pledged but I will see who I can find -

Melis at http://iamnotshe.wordpress.com/

Anorexic Chap at http://anorexicchap.wordpress.com/

Keira at http://clarityinacrazyworld.wordpress.com/

Eliza at http://elizadolly.wordpress.com/

Elizabeth at http://thespiralupward.wordpress.com/

Missy at http://missymiller.wordpress.com/

And Surviving Anorexia http://mylifewithanorexia.wordpress.com/

There are many more of you who I would love to pledge but you either have been pledged already or i have forgotten you (and I’m deeply sorry!)

Again, thank you so much to you all, you are all awesome – and we are slowly but surely making sure that in the future, the stigma and ignorance of mental illness is greatly reduced.

Depression update : I’m still here, still fighting – still reading your amazing blogs and still needing a bit of a quieter time. Sending love to all of you xxx