Autism, Anorexia, and a Fridge Full of Ensure - Phoebe's story

I was ten when I was first diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. It wasn’t about wanting to be thin. I didn’t care about that. What I wanted was to be normal. I thought if I looked unwell, people might stop seeing all the other things that made me different.

I was always that kid on the edge of things. Social situations felt like foreign countries where everyone else had a map and I was left guessing. I missed cues, said the wrong things, and felt exhausted just trying to keep up. I didn’t have a name for it at the time, but I was autistic. I just knew something about me didn’t quite work the way it was supposed to.

Eating less gave me a strange sense of control. It made the world quieter. And in a twisted way, it gave me a reason for why everything felt so hard. If I were ill, then maybe it wasn’t just me being “weird” or “difficult.”

For eight years, anorexia was my way of surviving. Three inpatient stays. Lost school years. And a suicide attempt that I wasn’t supposed to survive.

It wasn’t until that point, after everything, that someone finally suggested I might be autistic. Getting the diagnosis at 17 didn’t magically fix everything, but it gave me a kind of relief I didn’t know I needed. Suddenly, there was context. My brain wasn’t broken. It was just wired differently.

I’m now studying Psychology with Counselling, and my research focuses on the overlap between autism and eating disorders. I’m trying to understand what I lived through and to make sure others don’t have to wait as long to be seen.

One thing I know for certain is that autism can make standard treatment difficult. I was given CBT through the NHS more times than I can count. It never felt like it fit. It focused on challenging thoughts and behaviours, but no one ever asked me what those behaviours were doing for me. Or why I needed them. Or how the world felt from my perspective.

I didn’t need someone to fix my thinking. I needed someone to understand it.

The turning point came when I switched to person-centred therapy, and eventually somatic work. Suddenly, I was allowed to take up space in my own recovery. I wasn’t being told what to do. I was being asked what I needed. Somatic therapy helped me reconnect with my body, which had felt like a threat for so long. It helped me build trust again, slowly, from the ground up.

Recovery has not been all gentle affirmations and glowing transformation montages. There was extreme hunger. The kind that kept me awake at night, gnawing at me like I hadn’t eaten in years. My body was trying to catch up with what it had missed, and that came with pain. Physical pain, emotional overwhelm, and a truly absurd amount of Ensure.

But eventually, things softened. My body began to feel less like an enemy. I could eat a meal and feel full instead of panicked. I could rest without guilt. I began to realise that healing didn’t mean becoming someone else. It meant returning to who I was, beneath all the coping.

What I wish more people knew is that autism can be deeply entangled with eating disorders. The routines, the sensory sensitivities, the need for predictability, and the overwhelm all play a role. And if treatment doesn’t take that into account, people like me fall through the cracks.

I won’t pretend recovery is easy. It isn’t. There are still hard days. But they’re just days now. They don’t consume me.

If you’re reading this and you feel like no one gets it, like your brain doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to, I promise you, you’re not alone. You’re not broken. You just might need a different kind of support. One that listens more than it talks. One that meets you where you are, not where it thinks you should be.

I used to believe I had to be normal to be okay.

Now I know being myself, autistic, healing, and wonderfully strange, is more than enough.