Eating Disorder taking over my life :(

LegacyUser

Ok, I know this is very depressing & most people wont even want to know but im really in trouble & dont know what to do. I have a really serious eating disorder, i eat too much & make myself sick around 2 or 3 times most days & have recently started using laxatives. This has been goin on years & even though my family have known at times & told me to stop, i have become very good at hiding it so I think they just think it was a phase I was going through.
The thing is when im thinking straight (like right now) everything seems so like i can figure stuff out, i know how wrong it is, i know its making me ill, i know that i actually put weight on at times when im binging/purging all the time.
The scary thing is I am so good at hiding how much i hate myself. I come across as being so confident, I have loads of friends and from the outside I know it looks like I have everything going for me. I'm 22, have a degree, a good job, a lovely car, plenty of money, a wonderful boyfriend, a lovely family & people are always tellin me ive a lovely figure as im a size 10 & 5ft 8. When im in a positive humour like now i can admit that im a nice looking girl who gets loads of attention for my looks and i know some of you are thinking what the hell am i complaining about?
the thing is, i am only thinking like this about 30% of the time. The other 70% i hate myself for being like this, i have a life many people would love, yet im ruining it by spending so much time thinking about the next time ill stick my fingers down my throat. I lie to my boyfriend friends and family all the time about stuff so i can binge. I hate myself for this and recently often think about just finishing it all because i cant handle it anymore.
I just want to know is there anyone whos gone through this and come out the other side ok?

Nevyn

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pretty-in-pink

Its a tough place to be in, I've been down that road, and I'm fine now. I found having a "buddy" who I could call/text when I felt bad helped a lot. You can come trough it- at least you have that 30% to work with....

Maybe contanct bodywhys or someone to give you tips? You can reg and PM me about it if you want too.

xzanti

Call the Marino Therapy Centre http://www.marinotherapycentre.com/ a friend of mine was in your place and she found them very good.. Good luck..

PS. don't be so hard on yourself, it's an easy thing to slip into, just make sure you talk to someone before it get's any worse..

Also, I think the 'attention' thing and people telling you how lovely you are doesn't help tbh, I think all it does is make you even more self aware, it's like their praising the idillyc body image that you're creating and making it hard for you to relax about yourself.. Try to detach yourself from that if you can.. Nobody's going to die if you gain a few pounds.. which, if you are to recover is what will happen because your metabolism will have slowed down a lot.. That may not have been worded perfectly but it's early in the morning, I hope you get what I mean..

Crumble Froo

quite a good post, xzanti, can only imagine how wonderful twoulda been if twas later in the day :pac:

ok, im taking quite a while to write this post. OP, i've been there, and while i cannot honestly say i've quite come out the other side, im annoyingly, ridiculously close to the light at the end of the tunnel. 95% of the time, im grand, great, even. but when things start going wrong, and, particularly as a depression sufferer, things just *seem* to be going wrong, the old thoughts and habits do come back. starving, bingeing, purging, cutting, it's just so hard to keep on top of myself.

but from the couple of times ive tried to take my life, and the years i spent just obsessed with the disorder, ****, there is SO much more to life, and life can be just the most amazing, beautiful thing in the world. i, personally, found bodywhys kinda useless... all the info there, i kinda knew already, waht did work for me though, was finding a counsellor who could help. went through a couple, some who were really just complete jokes, but one guy, at Marino, where xzanti has linked to, probably did save my life. he's not there anymore, unfortunately, and due to my own personal and financial situations, i couldnt afford to stay going with him (i truly believe i could have gotten to at least 99, if not 100% at the end of that tunnel with his help, c'est la vie).

i know at least one other poster on here who would agree with me when i say that yes, there is most definitely a full recovery there. it's scary as hell to start the process of *doing* something about it, but, from what i've seen, there's usually so many complicated, intertwining issues behind the eating disorders that are so often just so hard to just get at, let alone deal with or accept... i do highly and truly recommend finding a good counsellor... i know that it can be paid off via tax, or something (dammit, i was never good at this bit), but try marino, give them a ring, find out as much as you can, they do specialise in eating disorders, and have a group therapy/support group thing as well, which i found really really useful too.

sorry it's a bit lot rambly, organised thought is not my forté, but i think all that needs to be said is in there.

sorry if some of it isnt the most encouraging, but, it's not easy changing years worth of habit and crap, and really really facing up to yourself, and relearning a whole new way to live. it's scary, but so enlightening, and so so so so worth it.

im gonna stop rambling now. and possibly delete this later. but hope that what's up there helps.

Phenix

hi OP, i have also been there and know exactly how you feel. but the good thing is you have taken the first few steps, you admit you have a problem and you admit you hide it from family and friends. You need to go to councelling. Feeling good 30% of the time isn't enough to get you through this on your own, and what you are doing to your body is dangerous and can have lasting consequences.
like the other posters said, contact councelling agency's and try get help as quickly as possible. Would you consider telling your family/close friends/boyfriend? They can help you as well as your councelling as if you continue to hide it, it could be easier for you to continue on in secret. Some people find it easier to talk to people they dont know. So keep posting here if you find its helping you along!!
Best of luck, its going to be hard work but you can get help and you can get through it

LegacyUser

Hello there

I too have been there. I abused laxatives and swung from starvation to binging on sweets and back and complete obsessions with my weight and appearance for almost ten years.
The other people are right, there is an end to it. I am for the most part over it. When I say for the most part, if you can include still being very weight conscious and self critical as not over it then I suppose it still stays with me to a certain extent, but I'd say that goes for a whole lot of women all over the world anyway and we're conditioned to be self critical since birth. The main thing is I am not abusing food and it does not control my every waking thought or my life any more. I think different men and women do it for very different reasons and although it's a global illness, or state of being (if you don't like labels I suppose) every single person who found themself into it wil only find themself out of it through their own work. So while I can talk to you and guess about mine, yours will be very different.

Mine became very insignificant after a spell of watching somone I loved waste away to nothing from a terminal illness. The person in question had such a joi de vivre, loved life so much and had an appetitie for life and food, to watch them not be able to enjoy their life or their food and then to lose them, made me feel very humbled. I'm not saying this all came into my head in one big thought as it happened, more like a thought and feeling process for the couple of years that followed losing them. I began to see that I wasn't the master of my own destiny after all, and began to appreciate and enjoy the small things again instead of feeling I wasn't enough, or too much, or that I wasn't living as I should be. My reasons for falling into it was all self punishment for either being something, or not being something else, or feeling so insignificant and entirely average, or something. Don't know if you'll get any sense out of this, but, it was only seeing the life being drained from someone else that made me feel I had no right to try sucking it all out of myself. It got boring for me too, after that.

It's really slow going sometimes and you just want to stop, like you said. But keep going with your stuff, even when you start boring yourself, it'll shift eventually. I found bodywhys no good either but it was a group and I'm not good in groups, and I found it rather sad and depressing to be honest. But the counsellor on that evening said it was one of the saddest evenings she's ever mentored. (So yeah then I went home balming myself for that seeing it was my first time there, and I hardly even spoke! See ...the self punishment stick to beat ones self theme comes in again?!!)

The funny thing is now that I am eating healthily my weight is almost the same if not slightly lower than when I was binging and purging and over excercising and starving, so none of it really even alters your weight that much unless you are in the far advanced stages of anorexia , that is. It's a pretty complicated syndrome or whatever you wish to label it. But at least now you know there's people who have been in it and are now out of it. Hope this might have given you some hope..... Xx

Crumble Froo

mods, im not sure if this counts as medical advice or not... but i think it should be ok

ok, this is kinda weird, but i was just thinking about it in work, but when you make yourself sick, the seemingly natural thing to do is want to brush your teeth, both to feel a bit fresher, and to hide the smell. don't brush your teeth till at least a halfhour later, and preferably, have a drink of milk after throwing up. the acid in your stomach settles on your teeth, and by brushing them, you are rubbing it in, while the milk is neutralising it. weird kind of advice, but two of my best mates here are in their late 30s, and were pretty bad with the eating disorders (one has spent almost 4 years of his life in hospital for it :eek:), and their teeth are absolutely manky. worn away, brittle, decayed. ... not particularly pleasant.

and while my thought is on that track, you should try and book in with a doctor, to check your bone density. i can't remember exactly what that test will include, i was in and out of hospital for a few things at that point, and most of those years are quite blurry now anyway, but the eating disorder puts you at higher risk of osteoporosis.

while i was with marino, they strongly recommended seeing a GP who works in conjunction with them, who carried out tests monitoring my vitamin/hormone balances, and it was in one of these visits that i got the bejaysus scared out of me enough to start really really changing my habits and way of thinking, and motivations.

hope that wasnt inappropriate to say, im always bad at this kinda thing.

anyway, best of luck, OP, and feel free to PM me if you ever need to talk, or would like more information etc...

b3t4

Life is a messy one isn't it? I've been through sh!t myself and look back now and find it hard to see the person of today and compare her to the person of 8yrs ago. I'm happy to have known the person I was 8yrs ago but I'm even happier for the person I am now.

Be assured you can get through this.

But also be assured that it won't be easy. It'll be fu!king hard.

Be gentle and kind to yourself. Recognise that the road ahead is long but is passable. You will come out the other end a strong and more self aware person than the majority out there.

But get help, get as much help as you can and get help from yourself. As you say you're a well adjusted person in all of the 'normal' ways then you can move past the horribleness of now.

Best of luck with your journey,
A.

LegacyUser

thanks everyone, its nice to know there are people who went through this & more and still came out ok. Sometimes it seems like ill never be able to stop. Think i need to just cop onto myself and realise that theres plenty of people alot worse off than me who dont have the choice to put an end to it!! thanks for all the encouragement x

Crumble Froo

hope things work out as best as possible, OP. i think positive thinking and self love and credit are two of the most important things you can have right now... hope this is the start of a life-changing journey for you, wish you *all* the best