Honesty Amidst Setbacks

I find it incredibly difficult to be completely honest about how I’m really going. Especially on such a public forum as this blog.

There are perhaps a couple of people I’m always totally honest with – and that is because they are part of my treatment team. Being honest with them is obvious to me. They can’t help  me unless they know what’s happening! Scarily enough there are many people with eating disorders who cannot be honest with their treatment team – in fact, it seems to be very common in the earlier stages of being so unwell, or when the person is lacking in insight. Insight makes a huge difference in this fight – being able to understand that you are unwell, and why, and that the people around you are trying to help you, not persecute you.

It’s quite obvious in the blog world, actually, to come across people who blog about their supposedly ‘healthy lives’, but don’t have the insight to acknowledge the elephant in the room, their eating disorder – and the fact that they are becoming more and more unwell and more people every day are speaking out in concern for them. I can never understand some of these people when they so blatantly ignore the concern and pretend they are fine, or worse, they are well - and it’s often hard to find respect for them. There are so many people, especially younger and more vulnerable people – who read these sites and take on board the messages these sick bloggers are putting out there. If there is one thing I would absolutely loathe myself for, it would be inadvertently causing or triggering someone else’s eating disorder.

But despite it being so easy for me to stand in judgement – we often forget that eating disorders are by nature, an illness in where the person suffering from it often lacks that insight or is in heavy denial. That they often act in ways that infuriate, irritate, frustrate, people around them. That deceit is a classic behavior  born of shame and fear and the need to hang on to their disorder. Being sick doesn’t make someone bad. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been thought of and told that I was a bad person, because I was too unwell to just eat and keep it down and behave. And I would have done anything at those times to ‘behave’ so that I could stop hurting, worrying or frustrating people – I tried with all my heart to do that. It wasn’t something I was capable of doing at that stage.

One of the main reasons I find it so difficult to be honest with people about how I’m really going, is deep shame. Long before I had the foggiest notion that I actually had an eating disorder, I saw people with anorexia on current affairs shows on TV and just was heartbroken for them, and frightened for them that they were so fragile and that they would die – and I couldn’t understand at all why they were doing that to themselves. It shocked me to think they had actually chosen to do that to themselves and then to continue to do so in the face of imminent death and the pleas of their loved ones. I just could not get my head around it.  I thought they were also incredibly vain, to be killing themselves to just be skinny – I didn’t even see the appeal of being skinny. All my life, I had found skinny quite ugly. Instead, I strived to be strong, and to be able to dance. I was extremely proud of being able to dance at the level that I had gotten to, and at what my body could do. Even as a young child, It had been obvious to me that the worst dancers in my class were the skinny girls, who just couldn’t get anything right and always looked gangly and out of place. Conversely, the biggest girl was also the best dancer and always front and centre. She was bouncy and full of energy and personality.

And I have to admit – I thought they were brats. Sick, scared, lost, hurting brats, but brats nonetheless. I thought they were selfish. I thought they were manipulating everyone who cared for them in order to get attention and mollycoddling. I truly did.

So when I finally had to admit just after my first hospital admission for anorexia (spent protesting that I had needed to lose the weight and that I wasn’t at all like the ‘real anorexics’) that I had anorexia too, it brought incredible shame and disbelief down on me. I couldn’t believe I had an eating disorder. I who had been overcome with fury when other class mates had whispered “That’s what Fiona has” during a biology class discussion about anorexia, who had disgustedly retorted “that’s what spoilt vain brats do, and I would never do something that stupid” had indeed, done exactly that. Talk about irony!

Now I know better. I know that’s not true at all. I’ve never wanted the attention having an eating disorder has brought me. And I didn’t have anyone to mollycoddle me – my family has never cared. My dad, when he tracked me down a few years into my hospital admissions, tried his best, even offered initially for me to move in with them in the Far North – but I was too scared to, at that stage he was a complete stranger to me. And I didn’t want to impose on him and his family. I didn’t want to bring my problems into their world, they didn’t deserve that. He persevered with me – and I stayed with him a week or two here and there over the eight years I knew him – it was such a blessing and a privilege to be given a second chance at having a real family. I loved my stays with them – I was made welcome, treated with kindness and respect, and my little sister was always all over me which warmed my heart – I loved her dearly. (Still do.)

Unfortunately, despite wanting more than anything else to be able to just ‘stop’ being unwell when I was with them, I couldn’t. I tried so hard! I usually lasted at best a few days. In those years, I wasn’t even really able to eat ‘normal’ food, so great was my fear, so I usually had my own food and created meals to eat with them, mostly dinner meals. I tried to make these meals look large and as close to ‘normal’ as I could – hoping that my family would just think I had other preferences and was feeding myself satisfactorily and not worry or be sad that I couldn’t enjoy some of their delicious meals. I wanted them to believe I was happy. I didn’t want them to worry at all. I failed.

A huge pile of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, and a million carrots (nibbled mostly during the evenings when I just badly wanted to EAT everything in sight) does not look like a good nutritious meal to anyone. Neither does a pile of brown, terribly overcooked cabbage. I only fooled myself. It was plainly apparent to anyone that I was sick, and even when I wasn’t staying with them, my dad worried. He would phone me (in the days I was still trying to communicate via phone) and ask me how I was doing, and I’d tell him I was going okay, hanging in there. Unfortunately he could tell just by my voice that I wasn’t well at all, he later told me, and instead reached out to someone he thought was a friend of mine – who had given him her details at a time he’d visited me in hospital and she had been there. She wasn’t a friend – I thought she was too for a while, she turned out to be an enemy – she fed my dad the nastiest of lies – told him my eating disorder was to hurt him, to ‘get back at him’ for not being around when I was younger. That it was for attention. That I was dying, when I was very sick but definitely not on my death bed (she also tried to force me to make a will once visiting me – and got promptly kicked out, who does that?!) She also contacted my sister, who was in her very early teens at the time, perhaps even a tween still at that stage – this forty-something year old (really)parent’s basement-dwelling woman, friended a kid. And fed her lies about me too. Told her that if I loved her, really loved her, I wouldn’t be doing this to myself, and that my dad died of cancer – melanoma – because of the stress I had caused him.

I have deeply regretted that I wasn’t honest with my dad about how I was really going, no matter how unwell I was. If I was honest, he wouldn’t have felt the need to ask someone else how I really was, and he might never have been fed such a pack of lies that probably coloured his views of his own daughter, nor would my little sister have been fed the lies that led to her gradually hating me more and more until the last straw was me actually doing something deplorable – shoplifting binge food and getting caught on the morning of dad’s funeral – for which she cannot forgive me. She hates my guts now. What’s more, I just reinforced the lies by what I did. Shoplifting is the thing I hate perhaps most about me. I haven’t done it for a while now – but I haven’t let my guard down and I never will. There have been so many times in my life that I have stopped, for years sometimes – and then fallen down that hole again. The urge to grab food is always, always so strong, even more so when I’m upset, stressed, unwell and definitely, hungry. And the bingeing and purging is the most horrible thing ever, I wish with all my heart I’d never started down that road, a road I feel unable to break free from now. I would never have struggled as much as I have, and I would never have shoplifted food – something so, so wrong to me.

I fear judgement so much. All my life, I have been harshly judged, by my own family, and by society. My own family (apart from dad) never made any attempts to understand me. When I got out of there  they didn’t know me. They had had nearly 17 years living with me from my birth to get to know me – and they didn’t have a clue. This was because they simply did not care.

Everything in my life was something I was judged for. My mother spent my life berating me for all the good things she did do for me – telling me endlessly that if only she didn’t ‘have’ to take me to ballet, the car wouldn’t be wearing out, she’d have more money for other things, she would have more time to spend with my brother and sister. She would have been able to finish her studies and be working now. She would have been a successful artist. She would have fixed our filthy, unfinished house up.  It didn’t matter that she took me to ballet perhaps 3 times a week, which took about 2 – 3 hours at a time tops. That is not the lions’ share of the week. She had all day that we were at school to be an artist, to do her schoolwork, to clean up or fix things and so on – and she instead would sit around watching soapies on TV or working on the growing pile of receipts she kept to create another bill to send our dad of money she wanted to demand from him. She spent all day with my older sister who was home all day too, they were like best girlfriends rather than  mother and daughter. She had time to take my brother to soccer and martial arts and basketball. They weren’t starving for attention or time with her.

The last couple of years I lived there she didn’t even have to take me to ballet or pay a cent for me aside from absolute basics – food and clothing. My ballet was paid for by scholarships and sponsorships I’d won, and I got myself there using public transport. My days were long – a school day for me was up at 5am, chores, breakfast, cold bath, try to iron dry damp clothes I had to wear. Catch bus at 5.55am. Transfer to train, for nearly an hour. Transfer to another bus to school. We started dancing at 8am with Limber, followed by usually ballet class, then jazz or tap or repertoire or pointe or contemporary or something else afterwards. I danced during the class breaks, and danced afterwards til everyone had showered so that I was in there mostly alone to avoid the bullying that was happening all those years. Showered and caught our bus to school to begin academic work at about 2pm, going through til 4.30pm. Then reversing the transport home, at 6.30pm where there were more chores, homework, and endless family battles to navigate. I would practice most nights and end up either lying in bed all night exercising or falling asleep at about 3am at my desk, to repeat the next day. This was six days a week, there was no time for me to get a job and between the ages of 14 to 16, I was still extremely immature and probably wouldn’t have been able to find anyone to employ me anyway. (I did try – volunteering during my holidays and canvassing local businesses for work with my resume.) My mother, who was paid a single parent pension, an allowance for me for my disabilities, and maintenance from dad – refused to supply most basics for me aside from food – and very cheap food at that, usually buying food for the family and cheaper food just for me. She even refused to buy me a school uniform, and the school supplied me with one out of their spares cupboard, kept for accidents, four sizes too big and stained. One of my school teachers helped me tape the fronts of my shoes together and paint over the tape so they stayed on my feet. I also tried to keep my shoes together by nailing nails into the sole from the inside – and ended up walking painfully on them all day as they worked themselves upwards. (And I was grateful – it was a uniform, just like everyone else had.)

My point is, my mother was not only needlessly cruel, she seemed to blame everything on me. I was just a kid, and one who had been tightly controlled too, so that I was very emotionally immature, and she was my mother. My PARENT, who was meant to feed me, clothe me, look after me. Instead, she taught me that I was some horrible, unworthy and inherently wrong creature not worthy of what other people took for granted, and the bullying I suffered due partly to  my constant scruffiness (especially during ballet school where most of the others were from affluent backgrounds) and partly due to my ineptness socially, just reinforced this. I grew up deeply ashamed of myself as a person in every way.

My own family never cared enough to really find out who Fiona was, and they made it clear I wasn’t even worthy of being understood or accepted,  and so they certainly didn’t even try to learn about or understand eating disorders. They believed every stereotype there was – to them, my eating disorder was a sign of me being the spoilt naughty selfish girl they’d always told me I was. In later years they accused me of using a ‘made up illness’ to basically be a lazy bludger, never working, never achieving anything but sponging off the taxpayer, and this stung deeply. They of all people, knew how hard a worker I was, and how I surpassed all expectations, winning a local Australia day award among other acknowledgements for my striving and perseverance. They used their words and their cruelty to basically ally themselves with the eating disorder and strip me of the last vestiges of self – invalidating my past, and stripping me of even being able to hang on to knowing I was a hard worker and an achieve who was capable of better things than this, or that it wasn’t laziness that had stopped me in my tracks. That my whole life hadn’t all been a complete failure.

It makes sense to me that if your own family judges you so harshly, what can you expect from people who don’t know you? I went straight from leaving home into the arms of the man who raped and stalked me for years. It was a very familiar situation for me – and it felt like all I deserved. I’ve met quite a number of people who were more than happy to feed my insecurities like the so-called ‘friend’ who lied to my dad and little sister, and a certain number of ignorant people who don’t seem to realize that not everyone is born with the privileges they take for granted, that some of us have to really fight to even survive let alone enjoy the milestones that they are assured of achieving. In my own heart, I feel like the biggest failure ever, I reflect on my life and see missed opportunities, on so much hard work thrown away, and so much support and belief from people I failed in some way – let down, failed to meet their expectations, or cut off. I feel as though at 35, I haven’t even achieved as much as most teenagers have, and that there is no way I will ever be able to catch up to them, let alone those of my own age group.

I’m just so deeply ashamed.

I’m reminded constantly by those who have taken the time to get to know me, and who genuinely care, that I have come a long way, that I can’t afford to compare myself with anyone else, because nobody else has had to fight the same things I have in my life – same as there are so many people out there who have faced circumstances I have no idea of and for me to judge them on their face value at any point of time that I come in contact with them would be so wrong, and totally belittling how much they HAVE achieved – just in a life completely different and therefore with different milestones and measures of progress to mine. And yet, I am so scared of others judging me harshly and finding me a failure, a loser, that I judge myself the most harshly of all.

And here is where honesty comes into the equation – I’m already ashamed of the fact that I have an eating disorder. My shame when I am struggling more than usual or I relapse is many times greater than that. Throw in the harsh judgement towards people with eating disorders that I often come across online, particularly if they blog about it, and the shame of having fallen from my position of being able to say “Here I am, I am proof that a chronic severe eating disorder doesn’t have to kill you or mean you can’t turn things around.” and most importantly of all – “There is hope” – and it’s extremely hard to face up to people and be honest with you all about the fact that I’m not doing all that well any more.

I don’t consider myself to be fully in relapse – but I’m borderline. I’ve slowed down, perhaps stopped the weight loss, but I can’t seem to get it to go back up again – and what’s more, am sitting just above what used to be my discharge weight from hospital back when times were bad. And as always, ED brain has taken over – I struggle to keep hydrated, struggle to eat, struggle with bingeing and purging. Physically I have lost a lot of strength and the chronic pain I worked so hard to rid myself of is plaguing me again. And I’m so angry at myself – I know how hard I worked to get where I was – and now, I’m no better than I was on leaving hospital during those bad  years again. I am so disappointed in myself, and so scared not only for myself, but more so, for Shalimar. What if I get so sick again, what will become of her? I don’t want to send her back to the pet motel all the time – she’s getting old now. She deserves so much better than this. And I don’t want to miss out on sharing a single moment of her life with her. I missed too much of her life when I was in hospital. I’ve let her down, most of all. She depended on me and I am not living up to those responsibilities.

And I’ve let you down, the people who read my blog. It was supposed to be a journey of hope, reclaiming a LIFE, of proving that just because everyone has expected you to die, doesn’t mean you have to.

Here is where I am going to take on board my own message. I am going to believe in hope, and I am going to remind myself that it is always within our power to change our behaviors and our thoughts, if we desire to enough. The more I walk on my chosen trail in a forest, the more worn and visible that trail becomes, and the less visible the trail I’m no longer walking on becomes as nature reclaims it and grows over where it used to be. Same with my mind – the more I practice new ways to think and new behaviors, the more natural they become to me, and the less natural the old ones will be, too. It’s called creating new neural pathways. It’s also called not giving up, being stubborn, and fighting to live – all things true of me.

I have so much to live for – even more now. I have less than two months to go until I am officially a uni student again. And I’m finally realizing that my hopes and dreams and goals these days  might be vastly different, but they are still things I’m able to be passionate about, and my life still can be for good, rather than have been pointless.

I’m not going to live up to the expectations of the people who taught me I would never be anything more than a loser.

I’m going to fulfil my own expectations – and those of the people who truly care and want the best for me. I’m going to fight and make this life truly count.

Thank you for reading, I hope to be able to bring a more positive post next time.

 

(Image sources: 1, 2)

Deep In A Hole

I’ve fallen into a hole since I got home from my holiday. A hole I can’t seem to climb out of – although I’ve never stopped fighting to escape it.

I suppose that what goes up, must come down. The holiday was such a high for me. I didn’t want to come back to my life. I couldn’t keep the eating disorder out of the holiday completely, but it was still a break, such a refreshing break. A glimpse of what could be a much better life to live.

I have come to believe that even though I still am adamanant that people do and can recover from eating disorders, depression, and other mental illnesses, I am not one of them. Depression is something I have fought in all my living memories – and was first diagnosed with at age 9, after I supposedly wrote a suicide note. It’s as much an organic part of me as my brown hair and my hazel/green eyes are. And like my eyes used to be blue, and my hair used to be white-blonde – I have hoped that as I grew older and wiser, the nature of the depression would change.

In many ways, it has. Twenty years ago, every emotion I felt threatened to burst me, inside out like a sausage splitting on the barbecue. I could not contain that pain, or that ecstacy when things were going right for me. Betrayal felt like literally being speared through the gut with a knife. These days, that has mellowed to some extent. The highs and lows are still excruciating – but they usually do not feel like they are physically killing me. Usually.

Because there are still times I could claw my own skin to shreds with the agony of it – and lately it’s been a lot like that. I’ve resisted, lying still under the heavy covers on my bed, pretending I’m buried under cool dark earth, contained, unable to hurt myself. Unable to be found or hurt by others either. But shards of anxiety and piercing distress still worm their way through the earth to nibble at me, relentlessly. I open my mouth to scream and eat dirt.

It hurts. Depression hurts. It feels like more than a human being can bear.

My eating disorder is intricately linked to the depression – it does make it harder to fight, when you cannot even bear to be. It’s easy to stop caring whether you live or not, or wish you would just die now and get it over with. It’s easy to forget there are so many reasons to live, so many people who are everything to you, that you have a beautiful cat who adores you nearly as much as you adore her, that your life is much better now, so much better than it was twenty years ago, and it’s getting a little bit better all the time, slowly but surely. It’s easy to forget that depression always ends. It will always get better. I know that, because I have been through it so many times before – and it always did get better. My question is – how do I make it stay better?

There is no easy way out for me. I’ve lost friends to suicide in the past, and it hurt so much to lose them – still hurts so much, more than it hurt to lose people through other means in many cases. I swore I would never put anyone through that myself – and never again attempted to kill myself. In the past couple of weeks, two people who were dear friends of dear friends of mine – have killed themselves. And witnessing the grief my dear friends are experiencing – is a reminder of my vow. I cannot cause this pain to another person. No matter how much pain I am in, myself.

Life has been all about pain for me. In many ways, I’ve courted it. As a dancer, more pain meant I was working harder and therefore becoming a better dancer. As a daughter and sister living through domestic abuse, as a student being bullied, and as the victim of the man who raped me, I bore it expressionlessly because I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing they had hurt me. And it reminded me that I was still alive, despite them. As someone with an eating disorder, I cannot remember a time without pain, physical or emotional – it is my every moment’s reality. I think I would not know what to do with myself were I not in pain of some kind.

But no matter how great my tolerance is to it, that does not mean it is not eating me away inside and damaging my ability to live.

These days, much of the pain I feel is from the past abuses. I wish it would go away, shut up already. Get out of my life! I’m free now. I’ve been free of them for ages. My life is my own to live now. To live as I believe, without hiding or changing myself so as not to draw more violence. To discover who I am, and be true to that person for once. I have rejected the past and the people who were part of it, and moved on. Except the pain didn’t cooperate and my days are haunted, I relive the violence and the taunting constantly. And I fall into holes of despair.

I’m working with the best therapist I’ve ever met. I have hope we are going to get through this. I just don’t know if I can hang on until we get through this. And I don’t know if it’s possible to ‘get through this’ and have it go away for good.

Do you believe that the pain from the past, can be over and left behind permanently? How did you manage to do this, if  you have?

If you or someone you know is suicidal, please get help now. 

Lifeline Australia

Suicide Help UK

Suicide and Crisis Hotlines USA

(image source)

Review – The Heavy

The Heavy – Dara-Lynn Weiss

I wanted to know Dara-Lynn Weiss’ side of the story, after a furore broke out last year over her putting her young daughter on a strict diet. Here is my review from Goodreads.

I’m actually glad I read this book – even though I expected it to be a complete food-and-weight-obsessed take on how to handle helping your child with a weight problem. I feel like it’s given me a lot to think about, changed some of my views on this delicate subject, and given me Dara-Lynn Weiss’ side of a story that you had to have your head in the sand to have missed when it broke last year.

Weiss famously wrote an article in Vogue magazine about how she put her then six year old daughter, Bea, on a diet, when told by her paediatrician that Bea was clinically obese. She was absolutely vilified from all quarters. There were supporters of her side – but they were mostly drowned out by a worldwide cry against her – she was called abusive, disordered, cruel, a bad mother, people said that child protection should be notified and so on.

I have to admit, I was one of those who was horrified. After reading Weiss’ book, I’m still not ‘with’ her, but I’m not against her either. What is certain to me in reading is that her actions came from a deep love for Bea and only wanting her child to have the best life possible. Bea was definitely aware of her size, aware and sad to be ‘different’ from the other kids, already had experienced comments and teasing. And there were also the health issues to consider. Obese children do mostly grow up to be obese adults. Now I know that a lot of people will argue the health at any size and Obesity isn’t necessarily unhealthy points here – but let’s just put those picket signs down and remember that this is the story of one mother, and her own daughter, a daughter she is charged with making health decisions for. Parents struggle with so many difficult choices when it comes to health – to immunise or not, for example – and judgement is rife. But it comes down to her right to make the choice for her child, depending on what she thinks is the best choice.

Weiss did take Bea to a nutritionist – in fact, she started out doing everything the way I’d probably have hoped someone whose child was obese would do – take the whole family to the nutritionist. The entire family have various issues and they work hard to follow the plans given to them – at this point their program is of the ‘green light, red light’ kind where they are allocated certain numbers of green lights and yellow lights to eat each day, and taught which foods and how much of them constitute each green, yellow or red light. Fruit and vegetables were ‘free’ as snacks.

I think this is where Weiss strays off the path. She has said that she has her own disordered relationship with food – and it’s obvious throughout this book. Weiss panics if Bea is wearing different clothes when she’s weighed – for example jeans instead of leggings – because of the weight difference. She refuses to allow Bea a snack before an after school appointment at one stage in case Bea weighs slightly heavier. She obsessively plans and re-plans her and Bea’s food plans, and obsessively embarks on a mission that many people with full blown serious eating disorders will remember well – to find out the calorie counts of as many different foods as possible, and to seek out ever lower calorie items. She gushes about the use of frankenfoods and artificial sweeteners in place of real nutrition because ‘low calories trumps nutrition’ and panics over lapse as small as 100 calories or so for Bea. This is not normal behaviour.

Especially, this is not normal behaviour for so young a child. Bea is growing. She’s 6 years old, 7 years old. Not only is she growing, but her relationship with food IS going to be affected by this for the rest of her life. And she IS pulling against the forced restriction. She’s constantly asking for snacks (fruit being free) to the point of having four or five or six snacks of fruit between each meal, and binge eating fruit into the night to the point of being uncomfortable. That is the behaviour of someone who is either starving, or deprived. I know from my own feelings of deprivation and consequent lashback into bingeing or hoarding food – that it can stick with you for LIFE. Bingeing and hoarding behaviors are also very common in foster children who have been deprived of food or food has been tightly controlled.

Then there is Bea’s lack of honesty when quizzed about what she’s eaten away from her mother. She’s scared of ‘owning up’ to having had three slices of pizza at a pizza party and tries to tell her mother she had only one at first. And when an unplanned ‘event’ happens in which Bea is faced with an array of food without her mother and herself having a ‘plan’ of what she can eat – she eats pretty much some of everything. Given that the point of some of these events was for the children in Bea’s class to try out food from other cultures, sampling a little of each offering was actually normal behaviour, but Bea probably would have been aware she was doing the ‘wrong’ thing, and definitely aware when she had to ‘own up’ to it to Weiss.

Then there are situations like at parties – where Bea wants another dessert or is still hungry, but has already eaten everything she’s ‘allowed’ to have. Weiss cops a fair bit of criticism from the other adults for not allowing Bea another cake or even to have the salad offered because it’s covered in a dressing. I do have to say, the other adults were not helpful. We don’t know what another child’s dietary issues might be. Bea might have been on a special diet for allergy reasons or she might have been diabetic and I’m sure the other adults wouldn’t have been so unsupportive then. And waving a food under the nose of a kid whose mother has just said NO to, is definitely not helpful, thoughtful, or kind.

Personally, I know very little about weight loss for kids. What I have heard (and believe) is that it’s not weight loss that’s important – it’s weight stabilisation – and allowing them to grow into their weight. In calculating what her daughter’s weight goals should be, at least Weiss kept her projected height in mind, but she was way too stuck on 77 pounds. If it was 77.2 pounds, that wasn’t good enough. To her credit, this weight was barely out of overweight into ‘normal’ for Bea’s height, so at least she wasn’t unrealistic on her weight – but just the general obsessiveness and inflexibility was a huge red flag for me throughout the book.

In the end, how is Bea? She’s lost the weight. She definitely seems happier, but at the same time, she still feels like a fat kid – she’s said she will always feel like one on the inside. She still needs to have her mother control her food intake – or it inches up again fast. Over time, though, Bea shows she is able to control her food intake herself and demonstrates this ability on a 3 week camp. This, here, is where I start to worry the most. Although Bea did very well – I feel like she’s too caught up in the ‘restrictive’ and ‘controlled’ eating – and it can very easily tip over into anorexia. That part of things just sounded off, and too good to be true to me.

Weiss was approached by Vogue magazine to write about her daughter’s weight loss journey after she expressed interest in writing a book about it. She was counselled to not include Bea in the photographs, but caved in to Bea’s pleas to be included – a choice she later regretted. I would not have liked to be in her shoes with what followed the publication of that article.

Overall, it was an interesting book, but unless you are already interested in the subject or share an obsession with food, weight, and dieting – it could be extremely boring. The book pretty much is a lengthy account of the process from beginning of diet to end. Weiss obviously has done a good amount of research for the book – but suffers from confirmation bias – in that she’s set out to justify her choices and seems to have cherry-picked whatever research backs her up and excluded that which doesn’t. Despite this, there are some good and salient points that she raises – for example, even the ‘healthy’ choices in restaurants and in school cafeteria food containing far more energy than a child needs in one meal, and actual energy content differing to the provided nutrition statement. I do now see her point in that had she been less strict with Bea, Bea would most likely still be overweight, because there just are not healthy choices there for kids to make – even those that ‘seem’ healthy are far too large or aren’t as healthy as they appear.

I still don’t think Weiss went about helping Bea become healthier the right way, and I worry about whether Bea will end up with a serious eating disorder in the future. But I now see Weiss’s side of things and feel she was justified in making most of the choices she did – and only meant well for her daughter.

ANAD had this to say about the article.

The decision of Vogue to publish “Weight Watcher” in the April 2012 issue about a mother’s story of her 7 year old daughter’s weight loss journey is irresponsible.  Dara-Lynn, mother to Bea, subjected her daughter to a rigid diet complete with mixed messages around food, stigmatizing remarks, and damaging body image comments. Voguemust take responsibility for publishing an article that normalizes disordered eating and contempt for bodies.Experts and advocates in the field of eating disorders and obesity do not support the approach used by mother Dara-Lynn and urge her to evaluate her own relationship with food and body image.

Vogue’s decision to run this article adds to the child’s humiliation and shame. Bea is not an adult who can determine whether or not her journey should be public. With the publication of this story, readers from all over the world are privy to BEA’s story and she will likely be increasingly judged, based on her size, over and over again throughout her childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. This is worrisome for her overall health, including mental status.

Laura Discipio, executive director of ANAD comments: “Dara-Lynn stated that Bea has not exhibited symptoms of intense psychological damage, yet the article reports “tears of pain fill her (Bea’s) eyes as she reflects on her year long journey.” Dara-Lynn was engaging in behaviors that most clinicians and parents would agree were detrimental to Bea.  The methods and tactics used by Dara-Lynn in front of Bea’s peers coupled with public shaming in a well-read magazine may indeed produce long-term psychological damage, including an unhealthy relationship with food and her body. ANAD advocates for overall wellness not weight, including help for emotional, physical and social well being.”

Chevese Turner, CEO of BEDA adds: “Research indicates dieting at such a young age can actually result in weight gain and eating disorders, which have the highest death rate of any mental health illness.  Childhood is a dynamic period; professionals and parents need to think twice before prescribing or implementing a diet. They must also consider that research shows stigmatizing, shaming, and bullying around a person’s size can also result in weight gain and eating disorders. Every good intention can have a negative outcome”

We invite Vogue editors and Dara-Lynn Weiss to contact BEDA or ANAD so they can talk to experts and others whose life of pain and struggles around food began with eerie similarity to Bea’s experience over the last year.  We also ask that concerned people respond to Vogue editors with their dismay at using this child’s experience to sell magazines.

 The Condé Nast Building

4 Times Square #12

New York NY 10036

212-286-8398 or 212-286-2860

Email: talkingback@vogue.com

I would love to hear what you think. Should you ever put a child on a diet? And if you do, how would you go about it? Where would you draw the line and say you had gone too far? 

 (Image Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4)

Lost? Time To Find New Pathways!

First of all I want to thank everyone for your support and compassion when it comes to my last post. I was, as the title suggests, extremely discouraged and depressed. I still am battling depression hugely, but there have been little glimmers of hope for me since I wrote that.

That post, as some wise owls also remarked in the comments section, was an example of pretty screwed up, negative, unhelpful thinking.

By saying things like “I will NEVER…” I totally deny myself any chances of that thing happening, before I’ve even really tried. I close the door just like that. And I do deny faith, deny God. (I’m sorry if you don’t believe in God – each to their own. I do) Deny any plans that He has for my life, or any faith in Him that with Him I can get through anything.

Diane mentioned that to come back and use my newly minted CBT skills on those statements I made would be very helpful and I agree. Those are thoughts that have been going round and round in my mind, upsetting me, causing me anxiety and making me feel hopeless. If I am not challenging them, they will never change. Challenging them is the first step.

I may no longer have the dreams I had when I was younger – but who of us ever knows what is round the corner? Even the best laid plans fall, and often. If only we had a crystal ball, we could plan our way to success and happiness step by step, including navigation around every hurdle we would face on the way! But life is not like that.

Life doesn’t only give us hurdles. It opens doors. All the time, in unexpected places. Opportunities don’t always announce themselves. We have to keep a look out for them. And we have to believe in them. If we don’t, we won’t look, and we will sail right past them.

There is no factual evidence at all that I will never amount to anything in my life. NONE. I am ONLY 35 years old. That is not even half of a person’s life expectancy. And I might not have things like certificates or diplomas or degrees, I might not have a job or career or a family or house or car, but I have lived experience – and that is something you just cannot buy or learn.

I don’t have a crystal ball or ESP. I have no idea what the future holds for me. I don’t even know what tomorrow really holds for me as opposed to what I’ve planned. 35 is not too old to begin anything. I might struggle to have kids, and who knows, maybe I never will meet a partner, but I have wonderful friends who love me in the ways I need to be loved, and there are many kids out there who some day I might be able to adopt or foster. They won’t be ‘my’ kids, but I would hope that I could be part of thier lives even if briefly.

There are definitely things I can do – I’ve been researching with the help of a close friend, Tertiary Preparation Programs, which are short uni courses that help you get back into being a student. I might soon be doing one of these, online and part time. It would be awesome to call myself a student again after so long – and this might be a pathway into something like a psychology degree or case management or social work, which might be another 8 years if I did it part time (and then still not be actually qualified) but I’ve just thrown more than 15 years of my actual life away to the ED, more than that, so what’s another 8 years when it’s going to be positive stuff? And this is very sudden – yesterday my therapist just suggested it as I was bemoaning exactly what I wrote here in my last post. I do need to feel like I’m actually working towards something again. The cognitive difficulties? I’ll tackle that as it comes. Even if I have to do only one unit at a time, I’ll do this. I’m still not actually finishing most books I borrow from the library, in fact I don’t start most of them – but I’m getting through more of the book before I give up. That’s progress I guess.

I’ve been told of a program that is run by survivors of child abuse, for survivors, that’s situated out in a remote area, a series of 5 day retreats. It sounds really great, and what’s more, they do not turn anyone down based on financial difficulty – they help you come up with a way to do it. Feedback sounds really good – some people say the 5 days was worth more to them than a 6 month hospital stay. What’s more, since the volunteers who run the course are all past program participants who have come through their own troubles and trained to then come back and help, that again is another pathway to my future that I might choose. I’d be really happy with something like that. To help other people like me as a volunteer at a place like that.

Basically what’s most important to me is that my life is meaningful, in that I left something behind that was better for my having been here (as opposed to leaving a deficit because I took much and contributed nothing or very little.) For me, meaningful means helping others, however I achieve that (whether directly or indirectly.)

I’ve looked into some other options for therapy (8 sessions left for the rest of 2013) including funding that’s set aside for people with Eating Disorders to attend therapy (not very likely but worth a shot) and a community counselling organisation which would provide free or sliding scale sessions. They do seem to specialise in ED,  I do worry that they sound very ‘feminist’ based which isn’t my thing at all, but again, I have nothing to lose by checking them out and I have an intake appointment next Tuesday to meet them and see what they are like. (And I am, as usual for me, petrified!)

A close friend has recommended a psychiatrist who specialises in Trauma and will bulk bill (sadly bulk billing is getting scarce these days), and psychiatrists are able to bulk bill I think 50 sessions a year as opposed to the 10 that psychologists can. I had given up on psychiatrists – my experiences being that they throw medication and labels at you but don’t do anything to actually HELP you, whereas psychologists are all about changing your thinking and behaviours and working with your emotions. They give you real tools to take away and use for the rest of your life. But I will give this fellow a chance if he will give me one. I googled him and he has a huge reputation in this country so I just hope he’s not too busy for someone like me.

To help me face up to the anxiety that is ruining ballet and volunteer work with, I’ve been working with my care team to come up with ways they can support me to get there – after which once I get stuck into it I’m fine. it’s getting there in the first place where I fall down most, and it’s spending 2 or 3 days before hand constantly in panic attacks about it that exhausts me. I panic over the simplest things like “will I get up on time” and “I need to leave by x o’clock, remember that” and to have someone support me in the getting ready and getting there will help a lot of that anxiety calm down. I’m also changing my volunteering day, because Mondays is perhaps the worst day of the week for me. My weekends tend to be my busiest days of all and by Monday I am physically and emotionally a wreck, which doesn’t help in getting myself there in one piece or feeling very productive and helpful once there. And to help with the anxiety about what people will think of my appearance at Ballet, I’ve visited Bloch and come away with some really nice dance clothes that cover my scars, are loose but not baggy, and breathable. (I hate that I fret over this, but to me, the people at Ballet represent a group of people that once judged me very harshly, and to go back to them covered in self harm scars and underweight is something I feel very ashamed and self conscious about.)

I bought dancewear very like these!!

This leotard in Rouge

A similar wrap top, but very light and floaty material (for our hot summer) in baby pink

Black skirted jazz pants very similar to these, with a tie front, but no pattern.

And one for the wish list:

Another reason I NEED to have children some day. So i can dress them up in adorable clothes and shoes.

I don’t help myself when I catastrophise about possible disastrous outcomes (that 99.999% of the time never happen) or engage in all-or-nothing thinking (“I’m not a success, so I’m a failure.”) I don’t help myself when I let what I feel override what I know to be true (for example, feeling fat overriding knowing I’m actually underweight, or feeling that people will judge me and find me to be a loser over actually knowing that those particular people like me, are nice to me, and accept me.)

I don’t help myself when I close myself off to any possibilities not just right now, but in the future, by declaring my life ‘over’.

I don’t help myself by forgetting that I don’t have to fight my problems by myself, or even face them alone. By forgetting that God has a plan for every single one of us, and that He has a plan for MY life too – even if I don’t know what it is yet. He is fighting for me every step of the way, and everything that I go through is part of His plan for my life. I don’t help myself by losing faith not just in God, but in my own self. (Thank you, Missy, for the reminder.)

Giving up on myself is the same as declaring myself worthless. And if God finds me worth fighting for, and even worth creating in the first place, who am I to have the arrogance to say “God, you are wrong, I’m awful!”

I’ve been enlightened in SO many ways since I wrote my previous post that I DO have more options than I can even know of right at this moment, that more options will be coming along in the future. That it’s never too late to change or to start afresh, to begin with something new. And that the fastest way to really fail, is to declare yourself a failure before you have even tried. It’s not failure when you give something your best shot. It’s only failure when you never even try at all.

I could go on, but this is already a heck of a long post. I am also needing to work on my screwed up sleeping patterns and have taken proactive steps to try and get more and better quality sleep –  but I didn’t mean to include boring other people to sleep as well!

Thank you to everyone for your support and your belief in me – and for reminding myself to believe in myself.

(Image sources – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Discouraged

The post-festive period is often a time of steep come-down for many people.

For me, lately, it’s been peaks and valleys.

If my life has been a journey, it’s been a rough one.

But that’s made me all the more determined to continue on, to make it through to the end – wherever the end may be.

For all the times I’ve struggled to climb a steep, rocky slope, I’ve slipped down an equally treacherous abyss.

For all the times I’ve realised just how worth living life is, how wonderful and amazing this world is and how much I love those people I am blessed to know, I have been equally as hopelessly lost in a black well of depression. Unable to see but a star in the sky – but I hang on to that star, because it reminds me that there is a way out. And it reminds me to dream. Because dream I do, and dreaming is how I convinced myself I had a reason to live when I was in my rock bottom places.

 

My dreams used to be high as the sky – there were no limits. I was going to be a dancer, a writer, a veterinarian, a biochemist, an artist.. there truly were no barriers. If I wished to achieve something deeply enough, I worked my guts out at it and I got there. My childhood and adolescent years were heady with the heights of my own successes. I rarely knew failure. I was labelled ‘gifted and talented’.

The hell of home paled when I threw myself into that world.

But there comes a time when the good can no longer block out the effects of the bad, and the nightmare overcame the pleasantness. I no longer was able to become lost in the dreams I worked towards, no longer was able to concentrate, I was only partly there any more. I was dissociated.

Part of me ran away. Flew away. (Still wants to, all the time, today.)

Here I am now. I have incredible difficulty living in the present.

It’s scary to be me. I’m 35. I have nothing to show for it. No hopes. No dreams. They all were lost. Ravaged by what happened. By illness and trauma.

I have never had a job. Never will have a career. My brain is incapable of study. Cannot remember even the basics of stuff I need to know when I need it. Cannot read and enjoy books. Cannot concentrate to paint. Cannot hold a conversaton sometimes.

I will never have a partner or husband, never have children of my own. Never have grandchildren or nephews or nieces. Never play Santa or the Easter Bunny, bake birthday cakes, pick out pretty dresses or play in the garden with my kids. Never take them to school and coach them through their homework. Never be frazzled by tantrums and tears.

I cannot enjoy ballet, cannot enjoy volunteer work, because I spend days flooded with anxiety about just leaving home, getting there, being there, and coming home again. I’m wracked with fear about just doing every day things. I still do them. But enjoy them?

My brain is mush, my heart shattered, my self broken, my body wracked with pain. What is there to live for?

I have no future.

The best I can hope for is to survive. I will never heal completely from the traumas, because there are no options to help me with it here in Australia beyond what I’ve accessed already, and try as I have to help myself, I’ve gotten nowhere.

As a child, I was prisoner of my family.

As an adult, I’m prisoner of my mind. Of my past.

Is it any wonder that all I want is to fly far, far away?

(But I won’t give up. I never have. I never will.)

Image sources 1, 2, 3, 4

Community Safety Announcement – ED Watchdogs.

This post comes with a MASSIVE trigger warning. 

In the last few years, I’ve seen so much that’s truly shocked me. And I’ve become aware that the eating disorders community attracts predators of it’s own.

There are some utter scumbags on the internet. And, being the internet, it can be hard, sometimes impossible, to police them.

Ideally, the internet never should be policed. But there are lines that should never be crossed – some of which in this case are paedophilia, rape,  preying on those who are vulnerable.

ED Watchdogs is a recently set up facebook community that is hoping to spread the message of keeping ourselves safe, and of keeping an eye out for each other. The facilitators have spent several years working silently behind the scenes compiling thousands of screenshots, messages and emails, endeavoring to try and remove the worst of these predators one at a time. Reporting them to facebook has been only a temporary measure – they always return. Reporting them to authorities usually results in nothing – not enough evidence. With very real abuse and assault going on – these facebook meetings do cross into real life in many instances – they put in hundreds of hours of work in order to get the evidence to present to police and have them actually investigate.

However this is just too much for a couple of people, themselves members of this community, to undertake alone – and they hope for the community to become their eyes and ears.

ED Watchdogs has an Ask.fm page for anonymous tip offs.

Screenshots and other files can be emailed to ed.watchdogs@gmail.com and if you prefer to stay anonymous, you can use a service like Anonymouse to do so.

I’ll leave you with an example of just what sort of person is among us. (Trigger warning.) 

I would like to take this opportunity to warn you all about the user ‘Myke Nihilist Davidian’.My alarm bells went off about this man a few months ago when I saw hints in his profile information that he may be the type of character to prey on young girls with eating disorders.

~WARNING: The following information may be triggering to those with abuse or rape in their past.~

I confronted Myke about his page and flat out requested to know what his intentions were. This image was the last reply I got.

This is an example of the kind of character we, the ED Watchdogs want to warn people to be wary about.
Please take care.

 

Images courtesy ED Watchdogs.

Compulsive Self Deprivation

As I’ve written previously, I struggle a lot with body image. But much of the time these days I still manage to accept myself enough to not want to stomp all over myself until I’m a pulp, preferably invisible pulp.

I try and remember that I’m doing the best that I can do, with what I have. That’s all any of us can do, really. I’m not superhuman, nobody is. And I can’t force things to get better NOW because I’m so over the way things are. (If I could force things better, I would have been better a loooong time ago!)

The most important thing to me is to try and be a good person. To not hurt anyone – that comes first. One day I hope I can help people, but I know that at the moment I have very little to give. I try – because no matter how little we have, we can always listen, always care, always have a hug to give, a shoulder to lend someone. I can do those things. And they might not be changing the world, but they are something.

I try and be a kind person, too. I’m not always kind – I’m human there, too. I have thoughts that are angry, or mean, about others. But mostly I try and treat people and think about people with compassion – the same way I would hope people would treat me or think about me. I know that many people do not – but that doesn’t mean that I can’t either.

And yet, I hate myself. I always have. I know I’m not alone. I’ve met so many others who struggle with intense self-hatred. I’ve never found anything about them that’s hateful, either. Never.

It’s really hard to look after yourself when you hate yourself. Nothing you do is ever ‘good enough’. Everything is always ‘your fault’. Other people must secretly find you disgusting. They must be crazy for wanting to have anything to do with you, let alone LIKING you. You feel so guilty if you do anything nice or caring for yourself – including basic self-care.

My mother never really taught me basics of self care like looking after my finger and toe nails, how to properly care for my skin, etc – but even as an adult, having access to the information on the internet and in books and magazines, I struggle to allow myself these things. For years I didn’t bother moisturising my face, because moisturiser is an ‘indulgence’ to me. I don’t wear makeup unless it’s a special occasion and even that is once in a blue moon, maybe once every few years.  I’ve had my hair cut by a hair dresser a few times in my life time – preferring to just let it be in a pony tail or have a friend/some unlucky person trim it (Many of my adult haircuts have been while in hospital – a good excuse to not have to consider going to a salon.) And I don’t bother with my fingernails or toenails. I keep them short, and neat as possible, and clean, but that’s it.

When it comes to clothes, I LOVE clothes. Love looking at them in fashion spreads. But they are, to me, something that other people can wear. I just am on the outside looking in, liking them, but clothing myself in op shop finds and plain shirts and jeans. As a child, I never had nice clothes like the other girls, but it was to the point that all I wanted really was a clean, unstained or torn t shirt and a clean, unstained or torn pair of shorts. And a pair of shoes that fit and weren’t breaking apart. Basic things. As an adult, I have far more than that – and I’m thankful. So although I love fashion, I don’t crave it. I also feel guilty and like mutton dressed as lamb if I try and wear it – I still feel like it’s not for ‘me’ because I’m so ‘different’ to others.

Other people are worthy. I’m not. That is how I have felt for my entire life. And that is what was instilled in me personally by my family as I grew up.

Where I’m going with this is, that as an adult, I still struggle with these messages of having no worth, despite the fact that I rationally know they are not true, and that I am as worthy as any other person on this planet. Old habits of thinking die hard.

CBT helps a little. My therapist gave me a list of questions to ask myself whenever I have thoughts like this. I write down the thought, so for example, I will write “I’m not worthy of having nice clothes, everyone will think I look silly in them and fake.” And I feel shameful, disgusted with myself – that’s the emotion that’s come up with this thought.

Then, I question my thoughts. What factual evidence to I have to back up this thought? Is there an alternative way to look at it? What might a friend of mine think in the same situation? And so on. I know that I have no evidence to back up not being worthy of nice clothes – and nobody is going to look at me any more than anyone else wearing the same clothing. An alternative way of seeing it might be to ask myself, would you prefer to assault the eyes of the public by wearing indecent clothing? Because they would most likely prefer you had nice clothes too. And I know that my friends, in this position, would probably not even think twice before buying the clothes for themselves – because that’s what people DO.

CBT is starting to help  me with a lot of things – not just whether I’m worthy of nice clothes or not. But it’s something that requires me to do it every single day, like homework. Seriously. And it’s worth it.

However – even though I have noticed an improvement in my thinking in that I am automatically asking myself the questions, automatically starting to correct my thoughts that way and tell myself “That isn’t true, that’s something you feel, but it’s not based on fact, the reality is..” I still find myself believing the old messages. I know I am worthy of nice things. I know I am worthy of self care. I know I am just as worthy as any other person.

But I don’t believe it.

It’s the same as when I’m telling myself  that I look fine, I’m not fat at all, that’s the eating disorder lying to me, my eyes and perception lying to me – I’m not believing it, because my reality is the opposite.

Also, the way I’ve thought for so many years is my NORMAL. When I’m feeling sick, hungry, in pain, fatigued – that is not pleasant, but it is normal for me. And so things feel ‘secure’ in my world, in some tiny way (because they aren’t really secure.) When I’m feeling satiated, strong, healthy, awake – that is such a scary feeling. It feels alien and wrong to me. And I know this sounds so screwed up. It’s like I am wired backwards.

It’s like I am wired for self-deprivation.

Recently I was reading an email newsletter from Psychcentral.com, when I stumbled on a blog entry about compulsive self-deprivation. The author wrote about it in the context of being the silent partner to addiction. (This blog is about sex addiction – ignore that, unless you actually do have a sex addiction!)

These paragraphs grabbed me:

“Where does compulsive self-deprivation come from?

Self deprivation has to do with how you care for yourself.  Most often .. addicts come from families in which they experienced a lack of appropriate nurturing.  In adulthood, people tend to care for themselves the way their parents cared for them, or failed to care for them.

In other words you treat yourself the way your parents treated you.  Growing up with less than adequate nurturance, you may have no idea of what good self care should look like.  If your parents were rigid, distant or withholding caregivers you will learn that you are expected to “disappear,” and to disregard your own feelings and needs.  By being compliant in this way you as a child hoped to please your caregivers and gain their love or approval.” (Source)

This is me. This is so true for me, for my history, for the people who brought me up. Another piece of the puzzle as to why I am the way I am – and understanding is a first step to being able to change that.

I related so much to the common features of compulsive self deprivation: (source)

Compulsive self-denial or self-deprivation can take many different forms. The behaviors can be superficially acceptable behaviors like religious asceticism and fasting or they can be extreme behaviors that qualify as mental disorders in their own right, like anorexia, workaholism and self-harm.

YES this is true for me

Not taking care of your basic needs

This includes neglecting all kinds of basic self care such as attending to medical needs and dental needs, neglecting hygiene, allowing garbage to pile up, not repairing things that break down, not paying bills or taxes and not reaching out to significant people in your life.

YES. I used to be so careful to take care of myself and do all the things I was meant to do – but for years now I have found it really hard to do these things, sort of like I am trying to let myself fall in as big and deep a hole as possible.

Denying yourself pleasure and tolerating pain:

This includes restricting food, going on unusual regimens and cleansing routines, compulsive exercise, excessive body piercing or tattooing, and cutting yourself. It also includes avoiding sex and other pleasurable activities, hoarding money instead of spending it on legitimate needs and becoming over-involved in religious or spiritual practices that demand excessive self-denial and withdrawal.

YES to the point that it’s terrifying to me to not feel really bad, painful hunger, it feels wrong to NOT feel that. It feels scary being ‘well’ again rather than feeling awful and sick, despite it being so awful. I do NOT ‘like’ the pain/unpleasantness/being sick – I just find it really alien to not feel it, it just feels too wrong. I only feel okay when I’m suffering.. if that makes any sense?

Avoiding success and abundance and living in fear

This includes avoiding opportunities for success, working for free or for too little, overwork, going into debt, living in minimal surroundings and with a lack of fulfilling relationships or activities, and letting go of previous recreational pursuits.

I want SO BADLY to have success, to achieve as I used to – and yet it does seem like I’ve gone out of my way to stop myself doing so. Right down to refusing to let them pay me when I used to volunteer because it just freaked me out and I felt too guilty.

Do any of you relate to this at all? 

Compulsive self-deprivation is very much a strong part of my whole eating disorder – and I need to work at permitting myself to meet my basic needs, believing in my own worth as a person, believing that I deserve to feel okay physically and mentally – and to practice staying with feeling ‘okay’ until that becomes my normal instead.

Of course, it’s not all that simple, life never is – but it’s helpful to have an idea of why we feel the way we do.

(Featured Image credit, Image 2 credit, Image 3 credit.)

Happy New Year! High Tea, Friends, Happiness, And More To Come.

Hello! I just wanted to quickly pop in and share with you my special, challenging day – and most of all to wish you all a wonderful, happy New Year.

I can’t believe that 2012 is coming to a close already. It goes so fast!

Today, I did something that a few years ago I never would have dreamed of doing. Another something – after Christmas and my Sleepover parties!

I met up with two special friends for a Fashionista High Tea at a pretty amazing place, the Palazzo Versace hotel on the Gold Coast. We had high tea in this amazing room – the Le Jardin restaurant -

High tea was sublime -

Eyeing off the goodies…

Of course, I take terrible photos. Focus on the FOOD, and the surroundings! The pool was amazing. We are all going to have to come back at some stage and get ourselves a pagoda!

That can totally be a New Year resolution.

I’m not really big on actual formal resolutions any more. I used to aim for the sky, far higher than I could possibly hope to achieve. It meant for me, that I fought harder and usually achieved more than had I aimed for what was ‘reasonable’. That was one of the secrets behind my high achievements of my younger years.

The biggest secret was that I was obsessive and relentless and pushed myself, body and mind, beyond the limit – and this contributed to my eventual break down. I guess there are ‘reasonable’ limits on most things for a good reason.

I often think just how much more I could have achieved in my life, had I stuck to limits that were reasonable for me. I might be in a career now, I might be married, or at least have a partner and kids, I might be a totally different person in a totally different position to now.

But we can’t waste more time with regrets. We only have right now – our future is made up of a series of ‘right nows’ – and it’s by making right now the best we can make it that we ensure our future will also be the best it can be.

And that’s what I’m going to focus on in 2013. Trying to make every moment count. Trying to continue the good things I’ve managed to achieve this year, and add more, but not overwhelm myself to the point of relapse.

In 2012, I achieved 2.5 years hospital free, and with a fairly stable weight at around 15 kilos heavier than what I used to fall to, and 5 kilos heavier than what my discharge weight used to be. I started volunteer work, graduated from physiotherapy after 18 months, started ballet classes, moved suburbs, completely cut off my biological family, and grown in many other small ways. I’ve taken up some more hobbies like gardening and sudoku, been painting and in an art show,  and I’ve been stretching myself so much more socially – getting out there meeting friends and DOING things with them instead of letting the social anxiety part of things cut me off.

I’ve eaten out so much, eaten so many new things. Like Christmas dinner, birthday meals, just meals at restaurants and picnics, high tea today. A couple of years ago, there was no way I would even put a speck of that stuff in my mouth, or keep it in my body,  and that’s before we even get into the ‘in public’ stuff.

I’ve  even gone swimming in a public pool and at the beach, and I’ve slept over with friends twice.

And I’ve started proper therapy and am working hard, making good  progress.

It’s been a great year. And there is so much more to come.

In 2013, I just want to keep expanding on these things. I want to increase my work hours so I can get a real job, and keep on volunteering because it’s good for my spirit. I want to do more ballet, and tackle the crippling anxiety that I have to fight to get to do it every single time. I want to do more things with more friends more often. I want to enjoy my own time more, doing more things I like or find meaningful or constructive rather than sleeping my life away or being sucked up by all ED thoughts and activities. And I want to progress even more with the therapy, and hopefully be able to achieve some peace – to that end, I already have an intake appointment lined up with an independent ED-based counselling/therapy service provider early in January and hope that when my 10 psychologist appointments are up, this fills the gap. (I also found the courage to ‘fire’ my private psychiatrist.)

I’m not making any ‘absolutes’ though – because we never know what is going to happen, and I think that as long as I’m going in the right direction, that is what matters.

I hope all of you have a wonderful, safe, happy new year, and that it brings better times – better health, peace, stability, healing. I hope that the good things are only a sign of things yet to come. And despite wishing you all so much more, in the same breath, I wish you all enough.

Okay, enough of my long winded ‘quick’ post! Go celebrate, go sleep, go see out 2013 in a way that makes YOU happy, and start the new year in a way you mean to continue.

And thank you all for being so supportive and lovely to me throughout this year of blogging.

(Image Sources: 1, 2 , 4, 5, 6)

(Ps, Shalimar has informed me of her desire to spend the new year eating, sleeping, catching lizards, and repeating it all over again )

My Experience Of Body Image

I do a lot of pretending.

I pretend a lot that I’m going better than I really am.

I pretend that I’m happier than I am, or at least, not as unhappy as I really am.

I pretend that I have a lot more hope than I do in reality.

And I pretend that I don’t really want to be ‘thin’.

I don’t know what to say to explain that one!

No, I really do NOT want to be emaciated, or even ‘too thin’. I feel like such a failure, and that everyone can SEE it when it’s that obvious. It’s not a nice look at all, in fact, it can be quite disgusting. Have you ever seen someone who is emaciated’s bottom? There is this big… concave HOLE there. And the anus that is usually hidden by flesh is.. stretched out in the middle of that hole. Too much info right?

Grossed out yet? Imagine LIVING WITH THAT. Still want to be thin?

And yet, I would give anything to go back to being almost 15 kilograms less than I am now. I don’t care how gross it might be. I don’t care about people looking down on me or treating me horribly because of it. I don’t even care that it might kill me. I am too much, and I will always be too much. At least in my mind, I am too much. I know in reality I am not, far from it. But to me, always too much. Always. And even at my lowest weight, I never even started to not be too much.

My body image is SO distorted. Even when I was at my lowest weight, on a good day I would see a normal, maybe rather fleshy person. On a bad day, I’d practically be able to roll myself around. And yet, under all that, my wise mind was constantly saying “But I’m too thin. I know I’m too thin. The ‘numbers’ say I’m too thin. And yet what is this incredible fleshy hulk I’m hauling round with me every day?”

Every now and then I’d catch a glance of what I called “Michael Jackson” in the mirror – a glimpse of how I truly was – and scare myself terribly. But that lasted for a glimpse and a few moments post-glimpse – before “too-much” loomed over me again, threatening to squish the ‘me’ right out of myself.

Okay, I know my nose is bigger and it’s REAL, but yeah. Scary stuff.

One of the common myths is that people with anorexia and/or bulimia enjoy their disease, enjoy the ‘thinness’ that many of them achieve. I think the reality would be closer to we don’t even get to experience it let alone ‘enjoy’ it.

How do I really see myself?

Imagine your body is SO heavy and huge that you find it hard to move. You find yourself very weighed down. Sluggish. One of the reasons my dancing started to fail in uni was because, yes I’d gained some weight initially, but after that, even though it was plunging DOWN, I felt heavy and unable to MOVE properly due to having so much flesh stopping me. It was a complete utter delusion.

You can’t walk with your legs together because your thigh rolls prevent that.

You can’t put your arms down properly to your sides because the rolls of fat under them and on your torso are too huge.

And it all feels SO REAL. So completely utterly REAL.

It’s not just about the body image way of being ‘fat’ either. It’s about being that aforementioned ‘too much’.

I experience the world as though I’m towering over everyone around me. I am more tall than I am short, but I’m not THAT tall, and I still feel this way when the person next to me is actually a lot taller than I. The same with width – I feel monstrous next to everyone else, even if the person beside me outweighs me by 100 kilos.

Even without the comparing of size, I just feel too much ME.  I’ve spent my life trying to squeeze myself out. Trying to disappear. To be invisible. Apologising for taking up too much space, for being so wrong, for being so grossly overimposingly massively HERE.

The way I experience my own size against that of the world has also see-sawed along with my actual weight, except that it’s strayed ever further than reality each time. The first time I ever lost weight, I felt tiny, I could feel myself and see myself shrinking. The world became huge, but only in relation to my own size.. Then I was refed, and although I grew, oh boy did I grow bigger, the world seemed to stay the same size. Each time I went down after that, the world got bigger while I stayed the same size. And each time I was refed, I grew bigger and the world stayed the same size. Can you understand that? We were becoming more and more skewed the more I lost and gained, I growing ever bigger, the world ever smaller.

Whoever invented those carnival mirrors, I wonder if they knew what this was like to live with?

This is just how I see my own face! My brain stretches it out so that it appears smeared.

So my problem is, I guess, that it’s so hard to live in a body that you feel so wrong in, one that you constantly wish you could literally unzip and step out of.

And while I struggle so much with my body image, I guess I have had to get to a place of maturity – listening to my wise mind and rationality over my discomfort and my desire to strive for something I find more pleasant to both see and be. 

Not everyone has reached that place.

Eating disorders are NOT about food, shape, weight – that is surface stuff. That is the language of our culture. That is the language we fall to first, when we are not happy, worried, anxious, have problems, and have no other way to express them but “I hate myself, I am so ugly, I am so big, if I lost weight, my problems would be better.” But food and weight and body image issues are often triggers for eating disorders to begin – and for the malnutrition that they cause to trigger the cognitive deficit and irrationality that leads to it becoming a mindset and something that overpowers us easily.

It’s very dangerous to be constantly giving us images to which we are expected to conform when they are physically not even possible for most. So many of us are struggling to even accept ourselves, let alone find ourselves acceptable in context of the rest of the world… and we are bombarded by reminders that apparently we never WILL ‘size up’.

What do you think of this?

And here I will end my ranting and leave you. Do you feel you ‘size up’ or are you too much? Is your body image distorted, or normal, or can you even tell when you only see what YOU see? How do you know if what you see is the reality?

If you have an eating disorder – how much do you feel it’s about food, weight, body image? Do you find that if you take those issues away, you still are stuck with your disorder and the problems that are underneath?

Do you find yourself yearning for something that is forbidden and dangerous? How do you deal with that?

And – if I don’t get to post again before midnight tomorrow - HAPPY NEW YEAR!! May 2013 be the happiest and most positive year all of you have lived to date – with better things on the horizon. xx

(Image Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 taken from Facebook.)

It’s Nearly Christmas

Christmas has come so fast! In a few hours in Australia, it’s Christmas Eve.  I will be going to the Gold Coast to spend Christmas Eve with a very close friend and her family – followed by a huge Christmas Day. I’m so excited and also so nervous – it’s the biggest challenge so far to the eating disorder and the various forms of anxiety.

And I’m going to rock it.

“…is it FOOD?”

My only sadness is that Shalimar will spend Christmas day alone. Comfortable, yes. Well-fed, yes. But not with me. Thankfully, she will not even know it’s Christmas!  I know now that she will be more than fine – she will spend her time sleeping, watching lizards and lying next to her bowl, scooping the chow out with her paw towards her mouth. These things make her very happy indeed!

No matter what you celebrate, and no matter where you are with your own individual journey – I wish you all a happy, safe, peaceful and hopeful holiday season, and hope that the New Year is one of positive and hopeful times.

Thank you to all of you for your readership, your comments, and your amazing support during the just over a year I have been writing this blog.

All the best – Fiona and Shalimar xx