What is an eating disorder?
According to Wikipedia, ‘an eating disorder is a mental disorder defined by abnormal eating habits that negatively affect a person's physical and/or mental health.'
According to the NHS, ‘An eating disorder is when you have an unhealthy attitude to food, which can take over your life and make you ill.’
According to me, the answer is so much deeper.
As much as the internet loves to use broad diagnostic terms to categorise illnesses, I reckon that having a first-hand and lived experience, I might prove better at finding an accurate description. It is true that an eating disorder is a ‘mental disorder’. However, that term sounds scary, and immediately conjures up images in my mind of patients in straitjackets being held down in a dilapidated psychiatric hospital.
On my own journey, I used to believe my issue was solely about the ‘food’ and my ‘eating.’ Only now, can I more clearly understand that my real issues were being sugar-coated by a handy tool I learnt to numb any feelings. It was quite clever in a way, whilst watching people around me, naturally show emotions throughout their life, and communicate in words if they were upset, I developed a comforting, and rather ideal way to make myself feel better. I often get angry at myself for not having had the ability back then, like others, to use my words if I had something worrying me or on my mind.
Every brain is individual. Every human has their own method of communication. However, the majority learn mostly through social norms of society, the correct way to communicate. Somehow, I didn’t get the message. Somehow, my brain worked differently. I believed that my brain was damaged.
At no point did I decide to go on a diet. Also at no point, was I ever aware I took on these absurd coping mechanisms. They sub-consciously slipped into my mind over a long period of time, and I told myself that my way of life and my thinking was ‘normal.’ It was only much further on down the line, when I watched other people my age and saw how they behaved, and how they dealt with every-day emotions, did I realise that something was wrong with me. Yet again, instead of reaching out in my early teens and telling someone how I felt and how I felt different, I decided to look for some form of an anaesthetic. Again, this wasn’t a conscious decision. I worked out that if I ate less, the more I get hungry, and then the more I think more about food. I simply didn’t need to worry about anything else in my life.
For example looking back at school, when I was around 12 or 13, if I felt a particular lesson was difficult, I reinforced in my mind that it doesn’t matter if the subject is hard and I don’t understand the topic. Instead of telling a teacher, I told myself that I didn’t need lunch. Again, if I didn’t know who to sit with on the coach on a school trip, I felt reassured that I didn’t need anyone to sit with. I can keep my mind occupied and work out the best way of getting through the day, with as little food as possible in me. In a way, they were essentially mind games I played with myself to see me through, till I could get home and end the day. Again, I must stress that all these ‘games’ weren’t much fun, but they seemed normal to me, and didn’t at the time do much harm. Or so I thought…
Anyone who has watched an American high-school drama will understand the terrors of finding a seat in the lunch room. Every day, I had the exact same experience and instead of just learning to cope with what all schoolchildren might face on a daily basis, I instead chose to skip lunch entirely. This only exacerbated the unconscious decision to avoid food. Anorexia is clever like that...
Fast-forward quite a few years, when I was very underweight, with my blood tests showing signs of malnutrition, my blood pressure and blood sugars reaching dangerous levels, and feeling dizzy and weak and unable to walk around, did it finally hit me that these ‘games’ were far from fun. They belonged to an illness, that was so manipulative, so deceptive, that it nearly cost me my life. An illness that left me confined to the walls of eating disorder units, unable to even pick up my cutlery.
I’m furious and still am to this day, that I didn’t have the courage to just speak up when I needed to. This could have all been sorted out years ago, if I just had used my voice, and told someone I am not ok. I’ve been reassured that it wasn’t my fault and that I had an illness like any other. Yet, now feeling like I've been thrown so far out to sea, and as if I cant see the shore, I’m angry I let it get that bad. I’m still in the process of accepting that I wasn’t the one to be blamed. In fact, no-one can be blamed, but currently a large part of me still believes myself to be the cause of my anorexia. Through finally finding my voice so many years later, I am coming to terms with the fact that I unable turn back time. I can’t get angry at 12 year old little Lizzie for not screaming out. I simply didn’t know how. I have to be at peace with the fact, that I can’t change my past. The only thing I can change, is my future.
So going back to the start, and researching what the internet defines as an eating disorder, I have come to the realisation, that absolutely no website will ever be able to explain how they really manifest. They just rely on clinical diagnostic statistics. Criteria is unable to explain how my mind worked. My only belief can be, that in order for the world to understand mental illnesses, is to learn that each individual has their own story. Each story is different, and deserves the time to be told.
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