RECOVERY

This piece of writing was written almost entirely by anonymous contributors. You know who you are. I can't thank you enough for sharing your experiences, I have learnt so much from every single one of you and I can't put into words how much I appreciate your help in creating this piece. 

Keep on keeping on xxx

This is my recovery; 3 pieces of cake down and ready for the fourth.

'Recovery is...'

There are two definitions in the oxford dictionary for recovery.

"The return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength"

Although I don't believe the concept of 'normal' is the same for everyone.

"The action or process of regaining possession of something that was stolen or lost"

But recovery isn't just about retrieving the little broken pieces of ourselves we thought were gone forever. It's about learning that it's okay to leave some of these pieces behind and discover new ones.

Now, here are some of my favourite definitions;

"Recovery is when I have a bad day, but know I can pick myself up again by tomorrow. That knowledge alone makes you stronger than ever before" 

- Anonymous; depression

"Recovery is the process of learning it's okay to not be okay. A rollercoaster of extreme highs and depth defying lows that make you question everything about yourself. It is reinventing your own reality until it feels right again, and until that day comes you will face battles that no one, not even yourself, will ever fully understand"  

- Anonymous; anorexia

"Recovery is honesty – the moment I decided to be honest about my recovery was the moment I was able to actually start recovering." 

- Anonymous; anorexia, depression, bulimia

"Recovery was one of the most valuable experiences of my life; learning to be authentically introspective. I discovered exactly who and what I was, I became so lucid, I saw through a new child's eyes the beauty of the world, and I found passion again. All this lovely jubbly gooey stuff. I sound like a monstrous hippy, but really, in being honest with myself entirely, I looked into the world and saw only what made me passionate" 

- Anonymous; borderline personality disorder, co-morbid anxiety, depression

"Recovery isn't complete, but I am on the road, and although I can't quite see the finish line I now know it's there. Recovery is hard, almost harder than some of the bad days, but instead of acting on my impulses, I'm fighting them." 

- Anonymous; bipolar, bulimia

"Sometimes recovery is worse, and sometimes it's better. Sometimes it's a bath, and sometimes it's curling up into a ball and crying until it hurts a bit less. One of the most valuable lessons I have learned is that it's okay to not be okay." 

- Anonymous; anxiety, panic attacks

Amongst these people are obvious differences in the experiences that they have suffered, yet each commonly believe in the importance of being honest, kind, and understanding of themselves in this process of recovery.

'I am...'

Living every single day of your life by the rules of your mental illness, you become programmed to think that this is how you have to exist, this is how you have to live, this is what you are. This is what defines you.

I am Sam bulimic. You are anorexic. You are depressed. You are bipolar. You are your mental illness.

When we recover, my therapist once told me it's like trying to teach a dog to stop chasing a ball. Let's call him Alfie. It goes against every instinct in Alfie's bones to let the ball roll away from him. He has an overwhelming urge, a desire, a need to sprint after the ball as fast as he can, because that's what he's been doing for years. But now he's being held back on a leash so tight it nearly chokes him. He's not allowed be himself anymore, he's not allowed to be Alfie. But what he doesn't realise just yet, is that he can be Alfie without the ball.

This is the same with recovery. I wasn't allowed to go for 9 mile runs after eating one piece of toast, nor eat past 11pm because that was when I was prone to binging. I wasn't allowed to use the toilet until an hour after a meal, or stare at my stomach in the mirror for 45 minutes waiting to make sure the bloating went down. I wasn't to weigh myself every morning, afternoon and evening, and I wasn't to write down how many grams of fat I'd consumed on the back of my hand as the day went along. And then the hardest thing; I wasn't allowed to purge my food. At the time I thought all these things were what made me me, and I was petrified of what would happen when I wasn't allowed to be me anymore. Would I disappear too? Where would Sam go? What would she do? How would she cope?

"After you experience a mental health ‘issue’, life suddenly becomes a process of not only ‘recovering’ your happiness, but also exploring and discovering ‘new’ happiness." 

- Anonymous

- This brings us back to Alfie. He is still on his leash, staring longingly at the ball in the grass. Until, he notices another dog further ahead dragging a giant stick across the ground. Alfie starts to wonder if playing with the stick would be more fun than the ball. And eventually this wonder turns into experimentation (which stick should I pick? This big one here or the one with all the leaves?) so the leash gets a little looser, which turns into exploration (maybe there's even more sticks in that corner of the park? Is that a pond over there?), until eventually he watches the ball roll away from him and does not flinch, instead he just lets it go. He doesn't need the ball to be happy anymore. He's still Alfie.

In the same way as Alfie, I realised that there was so much more to me than bulimia. I let bulimia go, and now I am Sam the one who paints, the one who runs, the one who goes to University in Sheffield, the one who always talks too much, the one who cries at TV adverts, the one who's South African. All of these are me now.

I was bulimic am Sam.

'I still...'

Because with every 'I still', there always comes a 'but'...

"I still have days where I look in the mirror and all I can think is ‘You are disgusting’. But I am beginning to learn that this is just another part of my recovery. I have gone through the phase where I was dependent on others for support and help. Now I am learning to rely on myself for that love and comfort. I may not be able to stop these thoughts, but I can rationalise them more easily, and that is something I thought I would never be able to do!" 

- Anonymous

"I have ADHD, and like many other people with this disorder I suffer from depression and anxiety. Due to a late diagnosis I struggled to understand myself, but I am getting better at it everyday. Although I wish I wasn't, I am still very private concerning my mental health, but things like this remind me that I am not alone." 

- Anonymous 

"Yeah I still take meds, I still have mood swings, I still develop delusions and sometimes get drunk in the bath (what are weekends for amirite?) but through all the therapy, the hours spent talking to myself, or talking to my therapist with that infuriatingly understanding look on his face, I found an honesty that brought me peace from so many unexpected places. I know who I am. And with that I carry on, hoping I hold the courage to be able to act upon what I know my happiness is." 

- Anonymous

"Clearly I am still 'working on things', but isn't that how life works? To lead a fulfilling life is it not helpful to look back at past experiences and learn from them to promote new, positive experiences? I think so. Recovery is not about having to say 'god, I'm still so entangled in all these difficulties'; it is the decision to pursue your own happiness for the sake of your own happiness. It isn't neccesarily about having a plan, but nor is it living in the moment. There is no handbook to recovery. Your recovery is owned by you." 

- Anonymous

'And now...' 

 "And now I look back on the worst times, and I smile because what my friends did for me is something incredible, and made me realise that happiness and life IS worth fighting for. The relationships and bonds we build with people are too good to be taken for granted." 

- Anonymous

"And now I know why it hurt so damn much. It wasn't just me that my depression was breaking to bits, it was my family too. That's what gets me out of bed everyday. That's now all the motivation I need. I won't let it bleed out into the people I love most, because they're the reason I'm still here. They're why I would now consider myself 'in recovery'" 

- Anonymous  

"And now I eat Yorkie bars. I forgot how much I f*cking loved yorkie bars." 

- Anonymous 

"And now I can live." 

- Anonymous 

Exercise for the week: Be open minded

I received a message from someone who suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), and it broke my heart. CFS is considered both a medical and psychological condition, as there is no known cause or treatment but has been associated with occurring after a viral infection.

"The stigma that comes with it makes it worse. So many people say to me 'Have you tried this', or 'you're probably just tired', or 'it's just all in your head, be positive'. It's exhausting." 

- Anonymous 

Just tired? Just in your head? So 250,000 CFS sufferers in the United Kingdom alone just need a nap, or a little lie down? Their prolonged episode of depression is just because they're tired and haven't had enough sleep? Right.

Please, be open minded. Do a bit of reading on the internet about a mental health condition, or pick up a pamphlet if you're at the pharmacy, or watch a documentary on BBC iPlayer. Mental illnesses thrive on silence, so we have to be vocal, we have to be aware, we have to talk. 

0300 123 3393
info@mind.org.uk
Text: 86463

Eating Disorders Awareness Week

We are over halfway through an incredibly important time of the year for me and maybe for you reading this, as well as 1.6 million other men, women, boys, girls and transgender in the UK ALONE. It's Eating Disorders Awareness Week. I want to discuss two areas with you: 

1) The picture society has unintentionally created for eating disorders.

2) Functional or 'mainstream' disordered eating. 

https://www.b-eat.co.uk/

1. My Puzzle Theory

Firstly I HATE puzzles. Maybe this is why. 

This imaginary, very strict puzzle makes a picture of what an eating disorder looks like. The pieces have to fit exactly in order to use them.

What happens if one puzzle piece has the pattern on it that may match the picture, but one of the sides is broken and so it doesn't fit with any of the other pieces? You don't use it for your puzzle because then it ruins the picture you want to copy. What happens next? You just don't use the little broken piece. Instead there is a hole in your picture, because it might be too difficult to fix a broken piece or to try and understand why it was broken in the first place. 

I was a slightly broken puzzle piece. I didn't fit the exact social criteria for "bulimia", or some of the diagnostic criteria for that matter. Generally both of these have a picture of what an eating disorder should look like, and individuals are like puzzle pieces in that if you can't fit them to the other pieces of the puzzle, they won't make the picture. 

Problems with this

Aside from being a weird analogy (feel free to suggest alternatives, I was late to my lectures and had to come up with something quickly), one issue with this extremely simplistic, physical way of identifying these mental illnesses is simple; humans are complex as f***. We are the most complicated, confusing, intricate, irritating and most amazing creatures on the planet, but we break. And what we don't realize often enough is that people don't always break in the same place. Not all sufferers will look like the stereotypical example of what an eating disorder is. Some people do, but a lot of people don't.

The second issue with this theory is that an eating disorder isn't physical, we can't take a picture of it.

"But they don't look like they have an eating disorder?"

Because it's not an appearance.  

Chrissie Wellington- World Champion triathlete,
Anorexia and Bulimia

I didn't look like I forced myself to be sick after I ate, or that I'd woken up at 3am the night before to eat anything I could get my hands on just to then purge it all once I couldn't fit anymore in. I didn't lose 2 stone, I wasn't obsessed with the topic of body image, in fact I avoided it all together. I wasn't bullied, my parents weren't divorced and I wasn't particularly moody. I was athletic and sporty, I had good grades, I studied hard, I had the best friends anyone could ask for, I went on exotic holidays with my family, I'd had a boyfriend. I was normal. 

But I didn't wear bulimia on my body for the world to see, because it wore me. I was its host. Its puppet. Why do we focus so hard on what we can see physically in an illness that is entirely mental? I'll tell you. Because it's easier. It's easier to try look for cracks in the surface than to start chipping away underneath. I was so guilty of this. I thought that because I didn't 'look the part' for an eating disorder, that there was no way in hell I could have one. My pieces just didn't fit the puzzle.

Now what about men? Men are strong. Men don't stick their fingers down their throats whilst crying over the toilet bowl.  Men don't starve themselves or weigh themselves every morning, lunchtime and bedtime. Men don't take diuretics or laxatives to make the number on the scale smaller. Men don't cry. 

But if this were so then why are men doing it? There seems to be a whole other picture for men, and that picture doesn't include eating disorders. 

Freddie Flintoff- Cricket player, Bulimia

The National Eating Disorder Association has found that 800,000 men have suffered with bulimia at some point in their lives. Out of all eating disorders, men make up 20%. 

Dennis Quaid- Actor, Anorexia

Realistically this figure is a lot higher, however due to this picture we have unintentionally created for men to look like, the majority of male sufferers will hide their disorder. 

The anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder wear them as a disguise for years (and for some, forever).  

2. 'Functional' Eating Disorders

"Anorexia is without a doubt a serious eating eating disorder, but there is a hell of a lot of mainstream disordered eating going on out there."

- Emma Woolf, Ministry of Thin

Author of Apple a Day 

Social media is sprawled left right and center with people being 'healthy'. I'm currently taking a psychology module on Health Psychology, so this area is particularly interesting to me. What does healthy actually mean?

"A state of total physical, mental and social well-being, and NOT merely the absence of disease or infirmity."  

If your day-to-day life is preoccupied with...

• what time you're going to eat
• what you're going to eat
• where you're going to eat
• where you shouldn't eat
• what is safe to eat
• what is bad to eat
• what you can't eat later because of what you're about to eat now
• whether you're going to skip a meal because of what you've eaten
• how many grams of fat you're about to eat
• how many grams of protein you've eaten
• how many meals have had carbohydrates in them
• how many hours of exercise is going to burn off your meal last night
• how many calories you've eaten in the last week
• how many calories you've eaten this morning
• how many calories you're going to eat tomorrow

You get the idea. If these sound like you, you are engaging in disordered eating behaviours. You are overthinking and over-complicating such a simple, primal behaviour to the point at which it begins to dictate what you can and cannot do. Of course I fully appreciate that some individuals have medical conditions where they for instance cannot eat gluten, or are trying to gain or lose weight for medical reasons, or are simply trying to be a bit healthier. However the danger with any kind of extreme focus on food is that the control you exert over yourself becomes addictive and obsessive...

If you find yourself in a position where you are unable to function without engaging in these kinds of behaviours, please take a moment to think about the definition of 'healthy' I gave you earlier, and whether or not you can say with your hand on your heart that you are physically, mentally and socially healthy.

What I've learnt about eating

Over the past couple of years I have learnt lot about what a relationship with food should be. The most important thing for me has been that food should not be complicated. Eat when you're hungry, stop eating when you're full.

The second thing is to not do food maths. Or any kind of maths if you can avoid it (I just hate maths). What a lot of mainstream disordered eating and full blown eating disorders have in common is that they try and introduce maths into food. Maths is right or wrong.

2+2= 4. Correct.
2+2=8. Wrong.

eat clean cake

If you start using maths with your eating habits, such as calorie counting or grams counting, there becomes a right and wrong with food. And food isn't wrong. Ever. It doesn't matter what type of food it is (unless you're allergic or intolerant- sorry!). Food lets you run, explore, workout, create, write, photograph, indulge, treat and enjoy yourself.

I have removed numbers from my life entirely. I haven't weighed myself in over 2 years now, and I have absolutely no intention of doing so. I haven't calorie counted, I don't get my BMI checked, I don't keep a food diary, I just don't let myself be defined by a number on a scale or a packet anymore.

If you're struggling with separating your self-worth from calories and kilograms, try removing a number from your life. It doesn't have to be it all at once, maybe start with trying not to weigh your food, or to not look at calories on drinks. Small things first.

Take home message

I'll keep this short (apologies for the length of this- it's a lot longer than I intended, I get quite carried away, like I am right now)

Everyone is different. Try not to fit people to pictures. Don't do puzzles. Maths is for school not for food.

If you think your eating behaviour is affecting your day-to-day life, don't dismiss it because you don't think its 'serious' enough to be an eating disorder. Eating is our most basic human instinct, and it shouldn't be difficult and complicated. Talk to someone, write it down, call Beat's helpline 

0345 634 1414 or 0345 634 7650- they are incredible and they will not turn you away. 

LASTLY- as it's Eating Disorders Awareness Week, please be open minded. Do a little bit of reading about eating disorders, buy yourself a chocolate bar, treat yourself to a takeaway, and talk. 

Chips are potatoes. Potatoes are vegetables. Chips are salad.