It is incredibly difficult to say those three words within your own mind, let alone unleashing them aloud: I need help.
We live in a world where our society defines us. A world where we must look perfect and act perfect to fit in. But what is perfect? What is normal?
Eight years of suffering from an eating disorder. Almost eight years spent in utter denial over the fact anything was wrong. Even in the darkest times spent as an inpatient in hospital never once did I use the “a word” because that was something other people struggled with.
I suffered from an eating disorder from the age of 12 to 22 and throughout this time and in the years after, I experienced social isolation and loneliness in many forms.
The thing I would like to talk about is the support that I have received from my family and close friends. At times I have tried to hide everything from everyone, but I did a terrible job because the problem became clearly visible when my weight plummeted.
I have always thought of myself as a very logical, objective person. But looking at the person that anorexia has made me become, I couldn’t be any further from that.
An eating disorder is not about an extremely low Body Mass Index (BMI) or an emaciated figure, and even though this is how it ended up for me it makes me wonder, now I am on the road to recovery, if my road could have been different.
What I can tell you about my experience of the early stages of relapse I hope will be helpful to friends/family/colleagues and employers and people in recovery, to make helpful choices and not ones that mirror the eating disorder anxiety and control.
I soon learned that rushing recovery was one thing that was stopping me from recovering. I was trying to be not only perfect within anorexia but also to have a perfect recovery – both unreachable goals.
None of these things would have been possible had I given in to the voices which told me I was too fat (they still do), that I didn’t need that much food, that as a skeleton, I had achieved perfection.
If you're like me and feeling rubbish about not getting well, you're not alone. If your friend or family member has been living with an eating disorder for years please don't give up on them recovering.
The last few months have marked some of the most significant events in my life to date. After six years I am no longer under the care of an eating disorders service, and after five years I have qualified as a Doctor.