Living with an eating disorder and other mental health problems

 What else do you do when you can't sleep apart from count sheep lol write a blog post lol. Seriously though 8 years ago I was sent to a locked rehab for ladies with personality disorders as a sectioned patient because I was severely self harming and suicidal but my problems began with an eating disorder long before that when I was only about 12.

I've told my story in different ways alot but to understand how it is now its easier to explain where it began. Someone who has an addiction to alcohol or drugs has a story and life history how they got there wether through starting through peer pressure or to deal with negative life experiences but once they're an addict all anyone sees is the physical symptoms and behaviours of the addiction but the life story shows the person under the addiction and the same goes for an eating disorder, the underlying causes are long gone and the eating disorder becomes all consuming in your mind.

In primary school I was known for 2 things being a slow eater and having to be sent into first sitting in the packed lunch room and not talking and being really quiet. For some reason it took me a whole lunch hour to eat 2 small sandwiches, a yogert and packet of crisps which I mostly gave away, it wasn't about weight but a psychotherapist I saw once suggested maybe subconsciously I wanted to avoid the school playground where I was anxious because of social anxiety and to avoid the bullying I got. 

I remember in the holidays before we started secondary school I had a friend at a guide camp and we would hide food behind the tent because we were fussy, I didn't fit in with many friends so I think that caused another connection to food where i felt i had connected with a friend, my mum won slimmer of the year at a slimming group and got alot of praise. I always felt I wasn't good at anything and lacked confidence so I think I thought if I was good at losing weight I would be good at something and if I wasn't fat (which I never was apart from having a chubby baby face) I wouldn't be bullied as much. Around about the same time I remember watching a program about anorexia and that connected with thinking achieving a low weight was my goal to feel I was achieving something. It starting with skipping meals and hiding food, I was about 13 when I first made myself sick and took laxatives but I mostly skipped meals and obsessively weighed myself. The only drink I drunk was hot chocolate and I couldn't get away with missing my main meal at home so I wasn't a low enough weight to be diagnosed with an eating disorder so despite being referred to child and adolescent mental health services when a teacher at school was concerned about my eating and some mild self harm I was discharged after 6 sessions and my eating wasn't even ever mentioned. As the years went on I was happy when I was losing weight and didn't want anyone to intervene. Once I was at college and university it was easier to restrict my food often eating only a bread bun a day or a tin of soup. My fingers were always blue and I would fall asleep on the bus, at work and in between lectures. At that time I was in denial it was a problem it was just the way I lived. Sometimes I would binge but I mostly then compensated by restricting and not eating again because being sick doesn't get rid of all the calories anyway. But then I got a job looking after rescue horses I told myself I had to eat to look after the horses well but I gained weight and the manager told me one day I was too heavy to ride a horse he had asked me to ride. It wasn't a small horse and I was within a normal weight range for my height so I wasn't but then I told myself I wasn't allowed to eat again so I would restrict and not eat in a daytime but then would be hungry when I got home and would end up buying food and bingeing and purging ( being sick) that became daily and I had yo move back home with my parents. I hid it for months being sick in carrier bags in the garden or when my parents were sleeping. 

As time went on an eating disorder " voice" started taking me over it was happy when I wasn't eating, the anorexic voice that wanted me to achieve losing weight and that told me I didn't deserve to eat because I was too fat but then when u gave into hunger and bulimia the eating disorder voice would be screaming at me it becomes like a bully inside of you and I think when your lacking in confidence in general it feeds off that so you believe all the negative things the eating disorder voice tells you. It got where I couldn't eat at all without the voice screaming at me but I would get hungry so I remember one day throwing a mug in frustration but then cutting myself with it. The eating disorder voice then would tell me if I ate I had to be  sick and punish myself by self harming and that went on. I tried asking for help off my gp who referred me to mental health professionals who didn't understand eating disorders so I never got ant therapy. It was 10 years later after my dad complained to someone within local mental health services that no one local was helping me I got referred to an eating disorder clinic in Leeds where I went outpatient then was told I was too severe for outpatient and needed inpatient for a planned 8 werk symptom interruption programme but I got no therapy and was discharged back home to no therapy and a care co ordinator who was off sick so I had to try recover myself. I binge ate bur stopped being sick for a period as I was aiming to be a mental health nurse and told myself I couldn't be sick or self harm and I did an access to nursing course but then I got bullied on the course, I always lose my confidence when I study because I struggle because I'm dyslexic and dyspraxic and college and school were places I associate with being bullied and not fitting in socially so I relapsed with my eating disorder and self harm. I eventually got a replacement care co ordinator and 20 sessions of cbt therapy for eating disorders 2 years after being discharged from the eating disorder clinic. The therapist was good but then moved away, I felt hopeless in life in general and was struggling to live with the eating disorder voice and it started getting worse making me believe I deserved to be dead and I would take overdoses in response to it but I didn't want to die, it gets where the voice feels stronger than your rational thoughts and I would try to get help. I was then diagnosed with personality disorders and classed as too complex for any local mental health services. Me and my mum found a therapeutic community in London that was centrally funded by the NHS and I got a referral there but by then I was too out of control with self harm and overdoses to be safe to lice in the community and I was sectioned on the local mental health ward and then was sent out of area to a locked rehab for personality disorders where I kept getting told they didn't treat eating disorders even though my eating disorder was the cause of the self harm.

I've had therapy since which did help me to stop self harming and being able to sit with the urges but when I'm really struggling and in crisis I dissociate which is where I zone out and something seems to take over my thoughts and actions and it's like it's not even me doing it. It's scary because I end up doing things like banging my head on walls and acting on suicidal thoughts but it's the voice that tells me I deserve to die I don't want to. 

There are other underlying reasons to my suicidal thoughts including I blame myself for my birth mum dying as a result of me being born and feeling I can't cope and times I get really lonely and depressed but it's when the eating disorder voice is strong I act on those thoughts. 

In my head there are always constant arguments in my head, there's an anorexic voice that says I can't eat, a bulimic voice that says I can eat if I'm sick, the anorexic voice then says if I give in and eat I have to self harm to punish myself but then another voice came in the mix when I dissociate which a support worker once called Trevor, no idea why Trevor but he's the one that comes in with I deserve to die and I end up banging my head and acting on suicidal thoughts.

No one would choose to have it and I think when my anxiety and depression are triggered by life events it makes it harder to fight the voices and they get stronger. This year I put pressure on by going back to work and took on 3 volunteering jobs and booked to go on a choir trip to Florence even though I often get anxious going to a local shop but I always try to challenge my anxiety as I want to be able to achieve things and not let my anxiety stop me enjoying the positive things. An eating disorder isn't a diet gone wrong not everyone who diets will develop an eating disorder but most people with an eating disorder have dieted. If you have an eating disorder or history of eating disorders you shouldn't diet but I always try and convince myself I can but I can only ever stick conventional diets or even normal eating patterns short term and then it usually spirals my eating disorder. That also happened this year as I started a calorie counting diet I had successfully fine for 12 weeks last year but it soon spiralled to where I felt guilty about all calories and led to me taking my first overdose in 4 and a half years because I felt guilty Eating a yogert.

Despite having regular crises this year I did go to a choir competition and Florence and although I struggled with my mental health I'm glad I did get to experience the good parts.

I'm going back to a group therapy for personality disorders to get back on top of managing my self harm which is caused by my anxiety and depression and I'm hoping that will calm the eating disorder down to a manageable level again. My story isn't over yet...