K'S STORY: "THE ONE THING THAT MADE MY OWN EATING DISORDER IMMENSELY MORE DIFFICULT WAS THE CO-MORBIDITY FROM MY OTHER MENTAL ILLNESSES. I HAD PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIA..."

"I wanted to share my story with you because it is an out-of-the ordinary eating-disorder story and I feel that the insights I have gained from my own recovery thought process will help a lot of your readers. All of our stories are unique but the one thing that made my own eating disorder immensely more difficult was the co-morbidity from my other mental illnesses. I had paranoid schizophrenia to overcome as well, which I suffered from in silence through my teens, and did not get help for it until my early 20's after my substance abuse issues came to a head. By this point I was suicidal every day and had lost the will to live. I had mail boxes telling me to kill myself and I was mostly preoccupied with voices in my head, epic proportions of paranoia, and my eating disorder was still a big issue. I suffered from an eating disorder for 18 years and after years of having no success with therapists, dieticians, etc.

I had to rely on myself and take full responsibility for my recovery - which I have done successfully, and it is something I am very proud of. I am a firm believer that I create my own reality and I am accountable for my behaviour in an emotionally responsible- not alienating way. There is a difference. I am proud of having a healthy body, of taking up space and being able to use my voice. I have also recently learnt that a healthy person is far more of a social threat to society than someone who has starved themselves into submission and silence. I think eating disorders are a great conspiracy designed to keep women small in a world where men are feeling more threatened by the power that we have yielded socially, in our careers, etc. eating disorders are not just individual diseases.

I think they are also a manifestation of a patriarchal value system that prizes work, logic, order and routine over more feminine qualities that are massively downplayed in our culture- self-care being one of them, as well as taking the time to tune into our own emotions, honour and respect them as worthwhile parts of ourselves. As my mother was emotionally distant and has been as a result of her own mother, I absorbed her belief system unconsciously. I began to feel the same disdain for my own emotions and would often repress them. I started to see that this was not working for her and I saw a connection between my inability to nourish myself in a nutritional sense, feeling as if I 'didn't deserve' food, and a part of me that also felt I was undeserving of love and other forms of emotional and spiritual nourishment.

For me, recovery was learning how to adequately address these needs and become the caretaker for myself that I never had in my own mother, as a 26 year old woman. Loving yourself in this day and age seems like such a lofty ideal as we are being constantly told that there is something wrong with us but I am here to say that it is more than possible because the rewards of loving yourself and appreciating yourself spill out to every area of your life- your relationships, your family, your friends, your work, etc.

The best thing we can do is firstly realise that these people do not have our best interests at heart, and cultivate an organic appreciation of our own bodies- our so called 'flaws' included- as we do with our own individuality, and learn to love it in spite of the opposition coming from our culture. As women, we have natural intuitive and nurturing qualities that the more we tap into, caring for ourselves becomes second nature. It is very much at odds with the attitude towards one's body that it is like a 'sculpture' that needs to be 'refined' and 'chipped away at' like a piece of art.

The idea of body modification forces ideas on culture that the body is more of an object that can be manipulated than a living, breathing, sentient being in itself, capable of so many things. It is our unique home. Acceptance and self-love is such a powerful thing as I am only very recently discovering. Imagine a beloved pet or a baby, a small creature that can be observed and appreciated for its unique beauty. Imagine it going under the knife unnecessarily or having some surgery for the sake of its looks, how you would feel if it was your own child or pet, and you had an emotional attachment to it, and watch it getting sliced up by equipment. Does that look inhumane? Do you feel hurt? I'll bet that through the eyes of seeing something we love and care about having its very essence being manipulated would bring tears to even the most stoic person's eyes. Why is it then, that we are not able to care for ourselves and see ourselves in such a way?

I can't exactly recall when my eating disorder began. I was overweight as a child and teased at school like millions of other eating disorder sufferers. It's so clichéd, but the comments of other children ran far deeper than that- that is to say, they brought an insecurity out of me that was there in the first place and like many eating disorder sufferers I am extremely sensitive and creative. I dieted over the summer between my 2nd and 3rd grade and I was overwhelmed with compliments when I returned to school.

I was getting into fights with my mother over food, I refused to eat and made holes in the wall and started destroying property in general. I would smash windows and put running hoses through open windows at school. I was pretty out of control. Food was the only thing I could control having grown up in a chaotic household where my father was subject to numerous health problems, operations and bankruptcies that sent my mother into crisis mode trying to orchestrate rehab for him at home whilst working several jobs to send myself and my older brother and sister through a private school.

My best friend died and a family we knew died in a horrific outback car crash in 1996 and 1998 respectively, post 1998 saw me spiral into depression and anorexia promised a secret hiding place where I could withdraw and distract myself from the unpredictability and chaos of my outer life by creating chaos within. Whether or not I was uncomfortably stuffed from bingeing or completely numb and crazy out of starvation - I had found a way to manipulate my chaotic emotional states through manipulating what I put into my body. I noticed that starvation numbed me and bingeing made me feel 'too much'. I felt entirely too much, worthless, and not entitled to the space I was taking up on the planet so the need for me to shrink my physical body in order to compensate for feeling a huge lack of entitlement to taking up any space at all- made sense, in a really messed up way.

I spent my teenager years starving myself, bingeing, exercising compulsively, self-injuring... it was all a blur. Then my early 20's were mostly marred with substance abuse and schizophrenia which is its own story, but I will save that for another time and somewhere else. I can't remember many details because I was 'out of it' most of the time, but it was such an insular world of misery I had created for myself alone. It was a way to keep people's hearts at bay. To this day I still struggle with forming emotional bonds with people and being honest about my feelings when I really care for someone, but I'm getting there.

At least now I don't need my eating disorder anymore as a crutch and I no longer romanticise eating disorders at all or fantasise about being at a really low weight like I used to. I felt like I would much rather devote my thoughts to building a productive life for myself. I have quite a bit of catching up to do in a career sense as I have lost most of my teenage years and pretty much all of my 20's to mental illness, but I have still managed to complete a degree and am going on to do some further study for the next 2 years before I look for work. I think that when I finally do become financially self-sufficient it will give me a great sense of accomplishment.

It breaks my heart when I read about how many people become casualties to mental illnesses, bright, intelligent, creative people who could move mountains if they could only find a way out of their misery. I consider myself one of the 'lucky ones'. Remember that when we are well, we can move mountains and bring the change we want to see in the world, but we must change ourselves first. I believe that our current society and its values that strip people of their self esteem will not last. I think that the recent natural disasters are almost like a manifestation of the earth, which is a sentient being in itself, becoming angry with the belief systems of its inhabitants so it is bringing about change through crises. 'Crises' is the Greek word for Change I believe, and often Change only comes about from a significant crisis. Otherwise we would have no incentive to remove ourselves from our comfort zones.

A friend of mine who is a psych nurse, said to me once when I was feeling down about my lack of real progress in my life currently, is that she sees people like me going in and out of mental institutions for decades, they never seek help because they are too far gone. Knowing this makes me even more grateful to be where I am and I am grateful for every day I wake up healthy. I hope that whoever reads this gleans something positive and inspirational to help them on their own journeys :)"

Link to photo:

http://www.rhinda.ca/what-is-a-mental-disorder

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