Each week we will share a testimonial. We often hear how these testimonials from graduates provide hope for clients. We hope you find hope in these words. 10 years. That’s how long I lived with a fully-fledged eating disorder. Unfortunately, that’s the number of years most people endure an eating disorder before they get some serious help. For me, I dabbled with therapy here and there but always put recovery on the back burner when I felt there was something more pressing – finishing school, then graduating university, then landing a promotion in my job, there was always something. I told myself that I would easily be able to fix my relationship with food once I had the “time.” The irony being, I never made the time. And so I became a contradiction with a pulse – I continued to succeed at perfecting everything I strived for in my public life while spiraling out of control behind closed doors. I would tell myself – “that’s the last binge” or “this is the last stint of starvation,” but the merry go round only sped up each time I wrapped myself in the perceived security of these promises. At rock bottom I quit my job to focus on recovery, thinking the time and decision for wellness alone would lead me back to the land of the free. Wrong again. The eating disorder continued to thrive and I was beside myself with no direction and no answers. Fortunately for me, my pursuit of a recovered life led me to Eatfed and it was only when I began the program that I realized the sheer gravity of an eating disorder, how it infiltrates every aspect of a persons life and how it is simply impossible to heal alone. I had never been in a space where the therapist truly understood the complexities, the shame and the relentless torture of an eating disorder. In fact, during my therapy prior to Eatfed I had cheated myself, allowing the psychologist to believe I had “recovered” simply because I’d stopped the behaviors, never letting on that the moment life threw me a curve ball I fell back into them, worse than before. This kind of recovery wasn’t even an option with the Eatfed therapists – many of whom have had their own grapple with an eating disorder – they were always one step ahead, helping me shine the light on personal beliefs, relationships and lifestyle choices I didn’t even realize were perpetuating the eating disorder. What they have given me is a recovery path which goes beyond giving up behaviors, which allows me to find who I really am and show that person to the world each and everyday. Recovery has not been pretty. For me, it has been like rummaging through Mary Poppins bag – sometimes I will discover something magnificent, other times I will pull out a shit sandwich, which can be pretty tough to digest. Regardless, the alternative is to remain stuck in a prison inside my mind, with a sentence of eternity and nothing is worth staying there. Eatfed has given me the strength and support to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to just keep going. I cannot even articulate the impact these women have had on me and how grateful I am that life led me to EATFED. B – Aged 25 yrs – August 2013 eatfed.au/testimonials
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 02:30:01 +0000
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