21 Aug Experience stories | Eating disorder recovery, is that possible and how fast?
At GGZ.nl we like to share stories and visions of experience experts in mental health care. With this we hope to make various topics easier to discuss, to create more openness about mental health and to stimulate the sharing of experiences.
Inger has experiential knowledge in the field of (C)PTSD, eating disorders, depression and suicide. She is currently working as a project assistant at the ExpEx Foundation and is completing her training as a social worker. In addition, she provides information about mental health at secondary schools, colleges and universities, among others. Inger regularly writes a column for GGZ.nl about her experiences with mental disorders, the recovery process and about her experiences in the care sector. Inger is also currently expecting her first child as a consciously single mother; her journey can be followed on Instagram via @eensolomama.
Eating disorder recovery, is that possible and how fast?
You have to eat, otherwise you will die, eventually… But I had lost the urgency to eat and where I used to be able to push away 6 sandwiches for lunch as a little girl, I was no longer hungry when I hit puberty.
Full of disgust I looked in the mirror during ballet class and sadly I stood on the scale because I thought I was way too fat. However, I found it difficult to lose weight, I skipped almost all my meals and even went vegetarian! But once or twice a week I got into huge eating binges in which I got rid of bags of candy, chips and packs of biscuits. I was then very ashamed of this, so I downplayed or even denied this behavior.
Due to the changing eating pattern, my body ended up in a low-power mode and all the nutrients from the eating binge stored up in my body, so that I ended up on a plateau. I didn’t lose weight, retained a lot of fluids and felt shaky and weak day after day. Yet there was little to see about my body, which I carefully hid in oversized baggy sweaters.
Eventually my parents discovered that I was laxative and vomiting and I was referred to mental health care where I was also assigned a dietician. In all tonalities, I continued to deny that I had an eating disorder. The diagnosis I received, eating disorder NOS, didn’t help. That wasn’t a real eating disorder, for an eating disorder you had to be skinny, bone thin and I wasn’t.
In retrospect, I think many counselors didn’t take my eating disorder seriously either. That way I didn’t have to draw blood or make heart films. Once a week I was expected to attend therapy and my dietitian settled for a food list consisting of an apple and cracker a day. My father let me go for a run and when I kept up with that, he also thought: it’s not too bad.
As time passed, those around me saw that my character changed, they saw that I looked paler and my eating disorder was increasingly “out in the open”. I passed out and ended up in the emergency room a number of times because my intestines could no longer process the amount of laxatives. So I was referred to a specialized clinic.
The sooner an eating disorder is treated, the greater the chance of recovery. Figures show that 45% of people with an eating disorder recover, 30% partially improve and 25% do not recover. Of these, between 5% and 10% of patients die. Rapid specialized help is therefore essential.
An eating disorder is not about food, weight or physical health. The seriousness of an eating disorder, like all other mental illnesses, lies in your mental health and resilience. Being taken seriously before the BMI drops too low, without there being any physical damage and without anyone running the risk of refeeding, is therefore essential.
I believe this teaches people with eating disorders that they can take themselves seriously, that they can take their suffering seriously. Unfortunately, today I still hear too many stories about teenagers not qualifying for help because they are not underweight or because they overeat. None of this means that these teens are not suffering, that they are not at an extremely high risk of being ill for a long time, dropping out of their education and developing a disadvantage in the labor market. These teens deserve help, in time, before the eating disorder shows up.
It is possible to choose recovery, but the environment and the aid workers must fight for this because the battle is too tough to win alone. So let’s not think like that eating disorder does. But let’s focus on what’s healthy, on a life without an eating disorder in your head.
2023-08-21 13:24:56
#Experience #stories #Eating #disorder #recovery #fast #ggz.nl
