One of the experiences I value most from my years attempting recovery from an eating disorder has been the opportunity to listen to the voices of other people on the same path. I’ve heard people describe the mental, emotional and physical suffering that is part of their daily life and had no doubt in my mind that these people were suffering from ‘valid’ eating disorders. Yet over and over I’ve also witnessed the genuine suffering of these same people as they struggled with doubts as to whether they were ‘sick enough’ or ‘hopeful enough’ to deserve help.
Recently I have begun to ask if that same self-criticism and sense of insecurity about whether or not there is a ‘real’ problem is part of what keeps me and everyone else trapped in the eating disorder.
A few days ago, I got into a discussion with a few other folk in recovery about denial, body image distortion and how scary, destabilising and demoralising it can be to suddenly become aware of how wrong our self-perception is at times. There was a shared consensus on how not believing ourselves and fearing not being believed is part of what maintains the disorder. There was relief at the idea that it is possible to recognise this doubt and denial as a red flag affirming the presence of the eating disorder rather than a green light to stay silently trying pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
And then one of us suggested, ‘maybe you need to hit rock-bottom and have real medical complications in order to accept that you have an eating disorder and need to do something about it.’ She was suggesting this to a long suffering friend of mine who looks ‘healthy’ on the outside and who often struggles to accept that she has a problem and deserves to talk about it because she is aware that she looks healthy and worries that people will think that she is just weak and attention seeking. I felt this upsurge of passion and heat and for once in my life I had the words in the moment to say that waiting for ‘rock-bottom’ where eating disorders are concerned is a really bad strategy because there is no rock bottom with an eating disorder – it’s a tedious, destructive on-going spiral. Time and again I’ve had to admit that the eating disorder will never be satisfied. Time and again I’ve had to turn and crawl slowly away as its seductive, coercive voice turns to rage and hate. So much of learning how to live without an eating disorder is learning that you do not need to hit rock bottom in order to deserve help. The idea that permission to seek refuge from the mental torture of an eating disorder through gaining a certain externally measurable level of self-destruction is fantasy.
They say that early intervention is key. I would love to live in a world where people could access help BEFORE physical symptoms develop. I would love to live in a world where people could feel confident going to their doctor to access support for this Mental Health condition without feeling like they had to look a certain way or have their suffering reach a certain pitch.
Having an eating disorder eroded my self-esteem and sense of permission to have a voice but I would like to say loud and clear right here that you can’t tell how much a person is suffering by looking at them – we have to listen to them to know.
I am grateful for the people in my life who were been able to affirm me in my sense that I had a problem and that I didn’t need to hit rock-bottom to deserve help. In my experience, serious medical complications, when they came, were clarifying for about a moment and then I was back to business as usual. I had an eating disorder and needed help long before I had anything that would show up in a physical exam. As I live through recovery I’m discovering that a key part of living without an eating disorder is listening to the voice inside me that knows when something is wrong and allowing myself to ask for help or support when I need it.