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)

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.)

Crazy Christmas Cat Lady Survival Pack

I wish there was a pack you could buy that had everything in it to deal with Christmas with an Eating Disorder. In fact, I think it’s brilliant idea that someone is going to make a fortune out of some day.

I think mine would definitely need things like a ready-to-assemble sound-proof screaming booth, canned answers to the questions that I get asked every single year several times over, Super duper clothing that no matter what I ate or drank felt comfortable and hid all sins (both imagined and real, and I think the maker of the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter would need to be involved.. in fact, scratch that, just give me the darn cloak already…) and so many other things I can’t even think of yet.

It’s very easy in the midst of stress and frustration and the whirlwind that the end of the year can be, to lose sight of the little but important things. For me, Christmas is special because of the people I’m so blessed to have in my life.

This Christmas I’m actually going to be wanted, included, and spending it with people who love me, do their best to understand and support me, and never would willingly hurt me as my family has done. This will be my first Christmas with my true, chosen family as part of the family  - as opposed to being a guest. In a way, this actually makes me a bit more scared of the actual food and social aspects of the day, because I although I have always tried my best to take part and not give others any reason to worry, more than ever this time, I don’t want to ruin the day for anyone, or give them cause to worry about me. That means participating to my fullest ability – whether the ED says I can or can not. I know that my friends will not be disappointed in me if I can’t, because they truly love me and want the best for me. But they would be sad, and I want to only give them cause to be happy.

I have always tried so hard – and most times, failed (In my eyes) because in hindsight, I might have been joining in, and pretending to eat, but I can see that I didn’t fool anyone. But this year I have more power, more insight, more love and support, and in many ways, I’m a different person to the previous years. Same person but better. (New and Improved Fiona?? LOL)

I do still wish there was a kit full of little lifesaving devices to help me through every eventuality though!

I have so much to write in the lead up to Christmas, that I don’t know where to start. So I thought I would start with this question to my readers -

What would you have in your Christmas Survival Kit?

Your Other Health Issues Are Still Important!

How many of you have ever brushed off health issues that aren’t related to your eating disorder (or depression, or whatever your most pressing thing happens to be?)

I know I have.

I can’t possibly count the times I’ve decided other health issues aren’t important, can definitely wait, or that it’s pointless to care for the ‘rest of’ my body if it’s just going to be killed by the ED.

ED has a field day with this sort of mindset. Add in the common beliefs of  ”I don’t deserve to be healthy”, “I can’t see a doctor because they might freak out about the ED stuff”, and gems like “I deserve to die so maybe neglecting my health will make it happen a bit faster”, and you start to see why many people with eating disorders don’t get the health care they need and deserve in other areas.

Also factor in the fact that it’s bloody expensive to have an eating disorder, and even more so to be in treatment for it – and looking after the rest of us is even less likely.

Last but not by any means making this list exhaustive – how many of you have hit a dead end the times you have brought up an unrelated health issue, in that your health care person has automatically assumed it must be related to your primary disorder? I know I have. There have been times when I’ve wondered if I turned up to emergency missing a limb from a shark attack, They’d tell me to go home and eat a sandwich so the limb might grow back! I have heard the line “Well if your nutrition was better…” in response to pretty much everything. Headaches, stomach aches, pain of any kind, colds and flu, skin problems, you name it.

Honestly, I’m not surprised. Severe chronic illnesses can completely take over your life, leaving no space for thought about other issues, putting everything including LIVING on the backburner. When you are in as much distress as these illnesses cause – you just want that to let you be, and other problems can pale in comparison. For caregivers, eating disorders can be frighteningly blatant to them, and they can be hugely fearful that it will kill their loved one or patient. Other problems might not be on their radar at that time. They just want to save your life.

obligatory cute photo pertaining to ‘balance’

Well actually, other problems do still need our attention. And they can still kill us. Imagine what a shame it would be if you put years of hard painful work into beating and recovering from an eating disorder only to end up dying from cancer, for example?

I am writing this today to remind you all that you do still need to look after other health issues. Still get your check ups and appropriate tests done. Still ask for treatment or advice and keep on asking until you get it when you find something that’s not right. You have a RIGHT to adequate health care, no matter what ED tells you. I know some of us have felt very guilty about the amount of care we have already ‘taken up’, but friends – it’s there for YOU. If you still are having trouble justifying things like ‘costs’ of taking care of yourself – it costs your country and yourself and your family far less to look after something earlier than to let it get serious and even fatal.

I can understand feeling this way – I’ve had a few nasty people tell me what a sponge on society I have been, and how I steal health care from other people by hogging it. People like that should be thrown to a pit of crocodiles, I think. They aren’t worthy of being supported by society in the little ways that they are either. We are ALL supported by our society at some stage in our lives, in some way, and that’s why it works the way it does. We  are human beings. Unless you are a robot or an alien (and then probably even if you ARE an alien) you will not be well for the entirety of your life, and you will not be completely independent for the entirety of your life – when you are well, you contribute to society, and when you are unwell or in a bad place, society’s contribution (hopefully) helps you til you can get back on your feet again.

I hope some day that all of us can acknowledge to ourselves that we are deserving of, and worthy of, taking care of our health and being able to access care when we need it.

This week,  I was reminded of how important looking after other health issues really is.

When I insisted that I needed more help, and finally was referred to a psychologist, it meant that my GP and I had to go through and fill out a mental health care plan and a GP health care plan. Both of these, especially the latter, meant that all the health checks that I had NOT gotten came to light. My GP was actually a bit shocked that I’d never had a pap smear or a skin check at 35. With a family history of cancer on both sides and my Dad dying of melanoma, that’s taking quite a risk.

So I had my first skin check of my life. It wasn’t all that bad. My doctor just put on a funny headpiece and looked at every inch of my body through it, including my scalp and under my feet. (Melanoma can occur even where the sun don’t shine!) She took down the details including measurements of a few of my moles and freckles, and one of them on my back was declared ‘better out’. I had it cut out last week, leaving about 10 stitches in my back but it wasn’t all that big a deal.

Yesterday the pathology report for that mole came back. Melanoma.

Thankfully it’s very early – Clark stage one – and it hasn’t spread. All of it seems to have been taken out, although I’m going to have to get a lot more cut out of the spot next week. But it means I’ve dodged a bullet. If I hadn’t had this skin check (if I hadn’t wanted to see the psychologist that truly might have been never) – I wouldn’t have known til it was too late. It was a very sobering realisation.

As far as I know, I’ve had that mole all my life. Nothing was different about it (not that I looked at it much, being on my back.) According to the pathology report, it had only very recently become cancerous. Your health can change in an instant – for real. My dad was fine and then he wasn’t. He had a hit on the head at work, suddenly had trouble seeing from that, and had it checked out. There was a melanoma in his EYE. Up until then, he had had no clue.

I also realised yesterday that I do want to live. For years now, pretty much every single day at some stage if not for all of it, I just want to die, because I’m in so much pain in the various ways ED, depression and PTSD cause it. Much of the time I’ve put off other health issues or waved them under the carpet, my thinking has been “Well I’m going to die anyway” or “Hopefully if there is something wrong it will kill me faster and it will all be over then.” ED had a field day with this sort of thinking. But despite the fact that my behaviours had largely been killing me all these years, I was terrified and shocked at the news and so incredibly grateful that my doctor had just saved my life.

I’m not going to let other health issues lapse from now on. Even if *I* can’t see anything valuable about my life, there are people who do. Even if I cannot see that worth at the time, I need to have faith in them and what they see. All of us ARE here for a reason – no matter what we believe in. And all of us are as deserving and worthy as anyone else here on this planet – and deserving of the same care. I found myself yesterday realising that “someone up there” (in my case, God) doesn’t want me dying yet. I’m meant to be here. I don’t know the reason, but I am.

So are you. So, have you been letting your other health issues lapse? And what will you pledge to get seen to today? Better safe than sorry. 

(Image Sources: 1, 2, 3)

If You Could Have A Say…

For almost 15 years, I had no say about when I was admitted to hospital, or what happened if I needed to be admitted. I had no say in any decisions to do with my health.

Recently, I’ve been offered a little bit of that power – an opportunity that I think many of us who are fighting eating disorders and caught up in the health system would give anything to have.

As I am a ‘complex patient’, my case manager is now required to have plans drawn up for every aspect of my management. Usually my admissions have been planned – I’ve been becoming too unwell, or medically I’ve become unstable, my case manager and/or GP has contacted the ED specialist unit at the hospital, and because they know me, it’s pretty much been a case of “Okay, she’s coming in at x time, see you then.” All that’s remained has been for them to bring me in.

However there have been emergencies and crises, as there will be when someone is battling a long chronic illness that has so many volatile aspects to it.  And without a written plan in my files, they have been difficult and even traumatic. There was the time I was taken to hospital by a case worker who was standing in, for chest pains. The registrar didn’t check me out – instead, he gave me a few lectures about how people with eating disorders are manipulative, spoilt brats who just want attention – and told me to go home and eat a sandwich. I really did have heart problems – ended up in hospital with them a few days later – but that experience is just one of many similar, not just for myself, but for friends I’ve talked to.

It’s scary that many of us will not go to emergency under our own steam, because of the fear of being treated with no understanding, even being accused of attention seeking or malingering. Often staff in emergency aren’t aware of what to actually test for medically – beyond basics like electrolyte levels, and even that at times has been something that if I haven’t reminded them of, would have been overlooked. One of my friends who had to attend for her self harm was stitched up with no anesthetic, because obviously, she wanted the pain, right? (No, she didn’t, and it traumatised her.)

So having a chance to control some of what happens in this situation is truly an opportunity I don’t want to waste. It also might go to abate some of the fears I have of ever being in hospital again – that I will always be at the mercy of others, never have a say, just be reduced to a body, because I have a mental illness and therefore I don’t get a say.

As far as my health goes, my case manager is going to help me take out an Advanced Health Care Directive. It’s a good idea to have it done now, and have it signed off by a doctor to say that I was mentally able to make my own informed decisions at the time that it was made. When I’ve been in hospital, there has often been a point at which things have been too much – too traumatic or too painful – and I’ve wanted to be able to say “No more”. Indeed, I’ve begged them at times to let me die – because at that time, there was truly not much hope, I had tried everything and tried it many times. I was tired, I was broken, now medical help had just become more abuse – and I wanted them to just be kind to me now. But because I was mentally ill – I was told that I didn’t know what was best for me and was incapable of making those decisions.

Recently in the  news there have been two women who have been in this situation – and it went to court. One woman was granted the right to not be fed – (trigger warning, stupid cliché anorexia photo) despite wanting to live. The other was ordered to be fed against her will – despite there being no hope for her and suffering the medical and psychological effects of years of a long, hard battle. Today, I am glad that I was kept alive despite wanting then to just be allowed to die. Because I’m still here, and I have a chance. One of my past doctor always used to say to me “While there is life, there is hope.” And she’s right.

A now long gone friend of mine was resuscitated and her chest was smashed from the efforts, she lived in agony for a while before she died. That terrifies me, because I have severe osteoporosis so the chances are the same would happen to me. I do have heart complications, according to my case manager, so it could happen. I wanted to have a Do Not Resuscitate order at one stage, was knocked back because of the ‘mentally impaired’ thing. NOW, I can have it if I want it. But I’m scared of not being resuscitated, too. As much as I struggle to live, struggle to want to live when hurting and fighting 24/7, I’m scared of dying too. Who isn’t? The thought of having a heart attack and them NOT trying to save my life is too scary to think about.

I want to be able to decide when to no longer push to save me. When I’m to be considered ‘end of life’. That is also such a hard decision. When is anorexia ‘end of life’? Who gets to make that decision? Nobody with an eating disorder should ever get to that stage but it does happen. When you are in organ failure, for example, it’s a bit silly to try and keep saving you, especially if it’s painful and traumatic.

I definitely want to specify that I not be restrained ever again. That isn’t worth it, and I’d truly rather die. I don’t know if that would be acceptable on an AHD, but I can try.

Generally, I get to have instructions to emergency staff about what is helpful for me, and what is not. For example – not to say “Go eat a sandwich” to me! My case manager is putting in details of what medical things to test for (in case they don’t know, but seriously, I hope it becomes compulsory for all front line nurses, doctors, and any other professional health staff to be taught about eating disorders, since they are often the first point of contact for sufferers and how they handle the situation can heavily influence the sufferer’s attitude towards accepting help in the future.)

Very importantly, I can have instructions to care for Shalimar. I’ve always been scared that she would be left alone to fend for herself if I was suddenly unwell and none of my treatment team were around to arrange for her to be cared for. She is to me, my ‘child’ – and she is reliant on me in as many ways as a child.

I’m struggling to come up with what things I would like to have on my plan. I was shocked to be given the chance to have input, and thankful that I have a chance to influence what the future might hold, before I got to a point where my opinion no longer counted – NOT that I ever intend to revisit that state of health again. The most important thing here, is that this is a safety net for me in many ways.

What would you choose to have on an emergency admission care plan? For both medical and psychiatric emergencies? What would you want the people who are helping you to do or not do? Are there any triggers that you would benefit from the staff knowing in advance and so avoiding?

Would you ever take out an Advanced Health Care Directive or do you have one? And what would you have on that directive? What is your biggest fear health-wise?

Thank you for your input! I am so interested to see what you all think.

(Image source – I love this picture, and I love this verse.)

Psychoeducation – And I Don’t Mean Education About Psychos.

Lately I’ve been shaking my head a lot, wondering why I waited so long to insist that I needed more help than I was getting.

Maybe part of the reason was that I’ve had SO MUCH support. So many people involved. And I certainly didn’t feel like I deserved to ask for more..

I know I’m not alone in finding it very hard to ask for what I need – let alone for what I feel is more than I need. Hands up any of you who are reading this who find it hard and avoid asking for help, or have found it hard and now are practising asking despite feeling undeserving?

In a way, I’m actually very fortunate that I became so sick, and that I had no family support whatsoever. I have often asked my treatment team members why I got so much support – when I had friends just as sick who seemed to get none. The answer was usually that they had family and I didn’t.

I know, too well, that just because one has family around, doesn’t mean that they are actually supportive. Or that they are prepared, or equipped to be your support person through such a serious illness.

So yes – I’m very lucky. It meant that the public health system – from which getting adequate treatment and support services is like extracting blood from a stone – decided I needed more and I ended up with an extensive treatment team – consultant psychiatrist, up to two mental health case managers, GP, physiotherapist, endocrinologist (changing to bone specialist now), private psychiatrist, dietician when needed, and also the help of Non Government Organisations (NGO’s) for help with everyday living. On top of all that, over 100 admissions to hospital.  Very, very lucky.

Before I go on with my post, I just wanted to give a call out to Fed Up NSW Health. A friend of mine has been searching high and low for treatment for months now – and she’s critically ill with her ED. Is there help to be had? NO. Not just that, but she’s constantly told she’s ‘not sick enough’. Finally, fed up with the health system, she started rallying.

I would really appreciate as many people as possible supporting Ella’s cause. You can sign a petition, and read a recent article about Ella and her cause here.

If you are living with an eating disorder, you know just how hard it is to ask for help. The battle doesn’t end there for us – accepting and using any help we get is also a struggle.  How many times I simply turned away from help because I couldn’t let anyone help me – because I believed I was worthless and that the world would be a better place without me.  ED screamed at me abuse for daring to ask for something I didn’t deserve and wasn’t ‘sick’ enough for.

These patients not only have to fight for what is a right – basic care – but fight their ED to allow them to fight for their own lives, too.

Valuable time is lost, and people with an eating disorder can deteriorate so quickly. Ella has been in emergency, her life in danger – but she still isn’t deemed ‘sick enough’ for a bed. One of only two beds for people with eating disorders in the entire state of New South Wales.

The situation is similar in my own state – where there are only four beds for a state that covers nearly 2 million square kilometres, and has a population of 4,580,700 people. (Source) That is simply crazy, and dangerous. We don’t have other services to back up this deficit either – no day patient or outpatient programs, for example. If you are a public health patient – and many are – that’s IT for you if you have an eating disorder, and if you are ‘sick enough’ to be in one of those four beds, (even if you ARE, there is a wait list longer than Santa’s) this ED unit is really just basic care – refeeding. Not therapy. It’s the ED unit I myself have spent years at. And as you can see – I’m far from better.

Back to asking for help – far deeper than the ED runs the complex PTSD, past traumas torment me day in, day out. For years, I’ve just borne this. I’ve seen it as my lot to live with – and had no hope at all of ever living any kind of peace and safety in my own mind. I feel like I’m constantly surrounded by ghosts – of my past, of myself. I’m haunted.

I’ve seen so many psychiatrists and had a few psychologist and counsellor sessions – never have I really done more than told them how my week has been, or how I’m going with the ED symptoms. A few of them in more recent years talked about my past with me – but then it was just talking. I am very much able to separate myself emotionally from my story and just tell it.

But talking about it is NOT processing it.

Trauma therapy does not only consist of telling your story or focusing on traumatic memories, though of course that is a crucial part of the work. Bringing trauma memories to mind, talking about them in a trusting relationship, and developing the capacities for managing them while staying present in the moment are all crucial parts of the healing process. A premature emphasis on traumatic material can in fact do more harm than good. Many trauma survivors may first need to learn and practice a variety of self-care skills that you can then employ during the memory work phase of therapy.

In the past, trauma survivors were encouraged to speak about their abuse in the belief that this catharsis would be healing. Sometimes this instead led to re-traumatization rather than mastery of the material or healing. In fact, some trauma survivors are able to tell their stories easily, but in a dissociated manner. Because of the risks involved, this healing work is best done with the help of an experienced trauma specialist who can help you learn techniques to cope with memories effectively. One goal of trauma therapy is to help you connect to the past while staying in the present. – Dr Kathleen Young (Emphasis mine)

Yesterday I had my second session with the psychologist who specialises in trauma. And this is the main reason I’m shaking my head about waiting so long to insist on seeing someone like her. Only two sessions in, I know without a doubt that this woman can help me in ways that nobody before has even touched on.

I have hope, because for once it really does feel like I am not going to spend the rest of my life haunted.

We have started with some psychoeducation. My psych wants me to understand why the trauma affects me the way it does – a better understanding of an illness leads to being able to better manage it.

Objectives of psychoeducation for PTSD:

• Develop vocabulary to describe PTSD feelings
• Identify cues and symptoms that he is experiencing PTSD (and similar symptoms of anxiety)
• Link those feelings to specific triggers and areas of vulnerability
• Develop a short-term action plan for dealing with PTSD
• Accept that his PTSD is causing him problems
• Link cues and symptoms of PTSD with triggers and with harmful coping behaviors (Source)

She also stressed that there has been exciting research in recent times about how creating new neural pathways in the brain helps people who have been through trauma - you can learn how a trigger makes you feel, then learn a new way to respond to that trigger. By practising the new response, you are creating a new pathway, and the more you do it, the stronger that pathway becomes and the old one dies off. (This is a very simplified explanation from my understanding) It means that you don’t have to spend the rest of your life feeling fear, danger, panic, anxiety, etc when something triggers you. You can teach yourself not to.

At the end of the session, I admitted to her that I wasn’t sure that cognitively I was doing very well, because I’m still struggling with my eating – and that was an issue for my case manager about me seeing her, along with the worry that digging up the past was causing me to relapse. She said that being cognitively impaired will not at all stop me from getting a lot out of therapy – and was shocked when I told her how all these years the most constant refrain I have had from everyone who has ever been a treating professional in some way has been “You cannot work in therapy until you are weight-restored and cognitively well.” It has been a catch-22 for me – the traumas fuel the eating disorder, but I can’t work on the traumas because the eating disorder makes me too cognitively off-the-planet.

Here I am, shaking my head yet again. All those years, I bought into that myth that it was pointless for me to engage in therapy while I was cognitively impaired. That I would have to simply live with being haunted by my past and all that it caused me to go through until such time as I’d been sufficiently able to fight my eating disorder to gain and maintain adequate weight. I truly thought that I was a lost cause because what I needed to gain weight to have therapy for, has always been one of the biggest causes of my eating disorder in the first place.

So round and round I went. No more!

I’m going to get the most I can out of this opportunity.

And I’m not wasting any more time. My psychiatrist – Headshrinker –  is fired. I don’t have the rest of my life to tell him how my week was while he fidgets, watches the clock and surreptitiously picks his nose. (I wish I was joking about the nose picking.)

I always have so much fun finding the pics for these posts! I am in love with a lolcat-filled Internet

Anyway – never let anyone tell you that you can’t do therapy until you have gained weight. Never give up asking for help when you need it. If you think you need help, you need help. Remember that being able to access the help you need means you are less of a ‘burden’ to society than if you don’t get that help and end up much sicker for much longer.

I hate even writing that ‘burden’ bit – that’s the sort of thing a few ignorant and nasty people have loved to say/write about me. Many of us believe it. But it’s not true. ALL of us are worthy of the help, care and support we need. Every single one of us. Nobody should have to fight to get just basic care, and nobody should be made to feel guilty for being sick and needing help – something none of us chose to be in the first place.

We didn’t choose to be sick, but we can choose to fight to get better. And so, it’s even more important that we be able to get help when needed – and low of those who guilt us for being ‘burdens’ for attempting to take away our choice to fight, too.

Keep fighting, everyone. Because there is always hope! There’s a whole world out there to discover! 

Have you struggled to ask for help? Have you struggled to access help? How has this affected you? 

Have you ever had therapy, and do you think it’s helped you? 

What improvements would you make to the public mental health system in your country? 

Image Sources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

WIBurntW? Shame On Us Both!

Just the other day I posted about shame and how much it SUCKS! But sometimes, shame can also be good for a laugh. I thought I’d celebrate us being half way to the weekend with some laughter. They do say it’s the best medicine!

I rarely (if ever?) post What I Ate Wednesdays. I just don’t see the point – and when you are living with an Eating Disorder, why add to the obsession about what you eat? I’m sure they have their place though. Especially if you have cooked up something awesome to share!

I would say I have something unique, at least.

It scared the hell outta me.

This is why you should never, ever chat on the computer to someone when you are cooking. Never. Because after your eggs boil dry, they EXPLODE.

In fact, they pop like pop corn! One even hit the ceiling.

By the way, I just edited that image to make it smaller. The bigger it is, the scarier those eggs are.

Would anyone like to come over for dinner?

Okay, that’s enough shame for me tonight! I thought I’d share it around. How funny and wonderful is this site on Tumblr - http://cat-shaming.tumblr.com/

Shalimar is going to have to be careful. She will have a starring role there, otherwise. I’m already plotting about catching her in the act of various transgressions and submitting the evidence. In the meantime,

You are NEVER going to be safe from my camera, Shalimar. NEVER.

Keep looking over your shoulder!

Confirmed Negativity Condition?

I’ve heard over the years that people with eating disorders commonly tend to have a very negative mindset.  In particular, I’ve heard about Peggy Claude-Pierre’s hypothesis that Confirmed Negativity Condition (CNC) is a condition that all sufferers of Anorexia Nervosa also have.  It is not limited to Anorexia, it also occurs in depression, agoraphobia, panic disorder, OCD, somatic disorders to name a few.

To me that makes sense, given that all these illnesses are characterised by negativity, self-blaming, anxiety, etc.

CNC is used to explain the constant voice or voices in the mind that we have, that one that interprets everything negatively, that tells us how awful we are, or coerces us into harming ourselves in some way. It’s sole reason, Claude-Pierre said, was to destroy us.

Bargaining – do you do that? I do. Feeling unworthy? Yup. Punishing myself? Been there, done that, always have in some way. All of these, the author says, also are part of CNC.

I don’t know what my opinion of CNC really is yet. I would have to read a lot more about it first. I did read The Secret Language of Eating Disorders back in the late ’90s, sadly I threw the book away because I felt guilty for having read it. A lot of what was said hit home hard for me – and yet, at that stage, I was heavily in denial about having anorexia. I also felt guilty because of how lovely the sufferers were described as, and I didn’t feel lovely – so I had to destroy this book. I wish I hadn’t done that, because I can’t find a copy any more.

I strongly relate to things like this:

“Anorexic-minded children will want to create perfection and, given that beauty and accomplishment are highly valued, they are often attracted to such things as gymnastics and modeling. Yet the drive for perfection is not so much for personal gratification, but that they want to improve the world, or think there will be less pain. They take on the responsibilities of the world, without understanding that they cannot manage it. They tend to think that they should handle everything, so the condition is essentially a breakdown from overburdening themselves. Such a distorted perception probably starts at a very early age, but by the time symptoms appear the victims can no longer deal with their perceived inadequacy, and relinquish the right to live” (source)

And I say “YES, YES, YES!” to this:

“The suffering that they go through is something that nobody can relate to. Anorexics worry about everyone else – not themselves – and when they realize that they can’t fix everything, then they begin to feel worthless. That negative self-image is so powerful that victims simply stop eating. These unusually sensitive people realize that they cannot solve the world’s problems and collapse into self-loathing. Anorexia is really an unconscious attempt at suicide because the victims don’t believe that they deserve to live. There is a negative mind-set that convinces them that they have to die. It is a complex and devious, deep mind-set. The victim’s mind is able to construct such negativity against themselves so that the patient actually has a civil war going on in their head” (source)

This was so true for me, and still is to some extent. It could have been written about me.

But Claude-Pierre goes on to say that all anorexics are using the eating disorder as a slow form of suicide:

“In the most simple terms, Claude-Pierre believes that eating disorders stem from an extreme ‘negative mind-set,’ which may be present even at birth. Anorexics and bulimics, she says, want to make everything right. When they realize they cannot, they turn their sense of worthlessness inward in an unconscious attempt at suicide. ‘Anorexia isn’t about thinness,’ says Claude-Pierre. ‘It’s about death. Victims starve themselves in order to disappear.’ But anorexia and bulimia can be completely reversed, she believes…” . A former professional ballet dancer who “had been around cases of anorexia and bulimia for years,” renders the self-killing aspect of anorexia as rendered by Claude-Pierre in a lecture she had attended:

She spoke about the helplessness and hopelessness that people suffering from anorexia and bulimia face every day. Most of  them enter one treatment program after another, yet are still not cured of their eating disorder. Peggy described how she discovered that it is not the desire to lose weight, but the desire to literally not BE, that causes someone to starve themselves of food. (source)

This was totally true for me.  I lack a sense of self worth – food is symbolic of that for me, as well as being something that I have a screwed up relationship with. I did not ever engage in my eating disorder with the conscious decision to die – at least not initially. But as the years passed, I realised that was actually my intention – to die. I hated myself, and I couldn’t see a life in which I would ever be free of the disorder, ever be at peace in myself, and I was SO tired. I had nothing left to give or fight with.

And I didn’t have the courage to live.

But I didn’t have the courage to kill myself, either. So I chose limbo – the not living, not dead state that my eating disorder kept me in.

I also believe that choosing neither to live, nor die, was me fighting it in a roundabout way – there is such a deep self-loathing and sense of ‘not good enough, not worthy to pollute this earth with my self’ – there was always this constant, unspoken but nevertheless STRONG drive to self-destruct – to wipe myself off the very face of the earth. Like a cockroach being stomped on.

I do believe Claude-Pierre makes a heck of a lot of sense with what she says about the CNC and why we think the way we do, blaming ourselves, hating ourselves, catastrophising… but at the same time, I also think she could just be grouping together a bunch of symptoms common to people with eating disorders and giving them her own name. Pretty much all these symptoms are acknowledged already by the psychiatric field – not grouped together into a condition all on their own as CNC does – but then again – the truth is, every single person with an eating disorder is so different, I find myself doubting that CNC could actually be true for every single one of us with an eating disorder.

That’s why I’d like to hear YOUR opinions. Do you fully relate to CNC,  or not at all? Or a bit? And have you ever read the book “The Secret Language of Eating Disorders”?

Thank you to Icanhascheezburger and failfunnies for the Images  

Famine is? Trigger – calories.

Hi everyone, thank you so  much for so many lovely comments – I really appreciate your support and it means a lot to me that people find what I have to write helpful to them, wherever they are in their journey. I’ve always hoped that some day, I can use my past to help someone else have even a tiny bit better a future – and it helps to know that even with so far still to go myself, I can already use my own experience for good. It makes it all have worth going through.

I might be posting and commenting very sporadically over the next short while as I’ve run out of my internet allowance for the year (yes, and it’s only July!) and have to go back to the drawing board. I’m with the Public Trustee here – they took over my affairs when I was too sick and constantly hospitalised to manage them meaning they have complete control still over my finances, which I’m working on winning back bit by bit. But it means that I have to negotiate for every single thing I need, meaning it’s not just a case of needing and buying – it takes a while for the back and forth and then the granting of funds etc. Always a good reminder of why to keep working for more and more independence!

Before I go, I just wanted to drop a little bit of info your way for you to toss over. Did you know, that famine is declared when:

Famine has a technical definition based on food security and nutrition. In order for a famine to be declared, there must be evidence of the following three conditions:

1. At least 20 percent of the population has fewer than 2,100 calories of food a day;

2. Prevalence acute malnutrition must exceed 30 percent of children; and

3. The death rate must exceed two deaths per 10,000 people, or four child deaths per 10,000 people per day.

Tragically, all three of these conditions have been found in southern Somalia. The average daily caloric need is 2,100; therefore, eating fewer than 2,100 calories often results in hunger. Measuring malnutrition differs from measuring caloric need. Malnutrition occurs when a person does not eat food that provides the proper amounts of vitamins and minerals to meet daily needs. Finally, the death rate in some areas is as high as six deaths per 10,000 people with children especially vulnerable. UNICEF has estimated that as many as 14 children are dying every hour in parts of southern Somalia.

A bit of food for thought! I know many of you will be surprised since many of you have expressed distress at eating far far less than 2100 calories. Also many of us tend to not even come close to giving our bodies the actual nutrients it needs, regardless of how much energy we consume. We are horrified at conditions in famine-torn countries. And yet many of us subject our own selves to this level of deprivation. Reality check time!

Also – still not convinced that you NEED those ‘recommended’ calories? The average calorie content of rations for one person for one day supplied by the World Food Program is 2178. (Although in reality for various reasons, often less is actually eaten by the person). What Refugees are Eating.

What is your idea of a famine-torn country? We see hungry, desperate people on our news programs. They are malnourished, they are starving!

An 1849 depiction of Bridget O’Donnell and her two children during the famine. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And so are you – if you are not feeding your own body what it needs.

Defintely food for thought!

Look after yourselves, everyone xx