When people try to help you....

When I was at my sickest with anorexia, I wouldnt let anyone try and help me and if anyone tried to give me advice or help me in any way, I would get incredibely angry with them. The thing was, a lot of the time I knew what they were saying was right however it was just too hard for me to actually listen. I was living in denial I guess, and hated people telling me what I needed to do, even if I knew they were right.

This caused me to push away some of the people I was closest too, as I couldnt handle them trying to interfere with how I was living. I suppose the anger that came through was actually my anorexia, as my anorexia hated anyone who questioned my behaviours or told me to change. I wish now I had been more open about how I felt and had just explained to the people around me that although I knew what they were saying was right, it wasnt as simple as 'just doing' what they said I should do.

Afterall getting angry at the people I loved and pushing them away only made me feel more alone and helpless. So instead of just yelling and screaming when your loved one suggests you need to eat more or stop a behaviour. Try to talk to them about it rationally instead. Explain to them that you know they are right, but you just dont feel strong enough to actually do what they are telling you to do. Atleast then your loved ones will realise you arent just ignoring them and that you do understand what they are saying.

Even now, I still get quite agitated whenever someone questions what I eat or how much I exercise. Also, I get quite distraught when my boyfriend asks me if he can weigh me. I know that he only does this to make sure I havent lost weight and because he loves me but i still really struggle with it. Standing on the scale in front of someone causes me ALOT of anxiety and my instant reacyion when he asks to weigh me os to get angry. So i just have to be very careful not to get angry and to just remember that he only wants to make sure I am ok.

Whilst I was struggling with anorexia, I had a wonderful relationship with my dad however I had a terrible relationship with my mum. And I know that this is only because mum continued to try and help me, when I simply couldnt be helped. Also my mum couldnt contain her emotions or frustration so she expressed herself by getting angry, yelling and screaming. My dad however fortunately realised very early on that getting angry didnt help the situation, nor did telling what i needed to do. He realised that he couldnt really help me to get better, that i needed to get better myself and so he just let me know he was there for me, whilst I was doing that.

This post has ended up being a bit unorganized and I know I have rambled on a bit but I just wanted to share with you all how I coped when people tried to help me in recovery and the importance of being open with your loved ones about how you are feeling, instead of pushing your loved ones away.

Self harm during an eating disorder

When I went to my blogger home page this morning, I noticed a post written by one of the bloggers I follow about Self Harm. When I saw this post, I found myself thinking 'I am really glad I have never done that'. But really, when I thought about this more carefully, I realised that I actually have.

When an anorexic person, or someone suffering from an eating disorder starves themself or makes themself purge, both of which I have done in the past, technically you are actually self harming. It is a common misconception that self harming refers to only cutting yourself but this is not the case. Cutting yourself is only one of many forms of self harm.


A definition of self harm, provided from this website, is; 'When somebody intentionally damages or injures their body. It is a way of coping with or expressing overwhelming emotional distress.' As you can see, nowhere in the definition of self harm does it specifically say how the self harm must be performed, therefore all anorexics really do self harm, whether they cut themselves or not.

I have honestly never even considered cutting myself, no matter how awful I have felt and I suppose this is because I had other methods of dealing with my overwhelming emotions, both by making myself vomit after eating an unhealthy food as well as by restricting my intake to a point of starvation.

So no matter what kind of self harm we may use to deal with our overwhelming emotions, they all have one thing in common, they are dangerous and destructive to our bodies so we therefore should not practice these types of behaviours. There are much healthier ways to deal with any problems or emotions we may be experiencing which can be just as effective, but do not harm us.

One of the things that I find really helps me when my emotions feel out of control is talking to someone I can trust or having a good cry. It may sound silly, but for me crying is a way that I am able to let eveything out. I always feel much better after having a good cry and the best thing about this is, that it cant harm you in any way. Bloggging is the other thing that helps me whenever I feel panicked or overwhelmed, just as writing in a diary would for people who dont have their own blog. I find that writing out your thoughts helps you gather your thought and better understand what you are feeling and why you are feeling it.

I am getting better at controlling my emotions now in ways that are not destructive to my health. I have not made myself vomit for almost three years and never intend to do so again. I have also learnt to nourish my body with the energy that it needs and deserves, regardless of how I am feeling.

After hospital (Part 2)

I know that it has been a while since I wrote the post After hospital (Part 1), but I have finally decided to continue my story. So this post is all about the time leading up to when I actually decided I wanted to turn my life around and recover.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, when things got to hard with mum at home, I moved in with my dad and brother. It was awful having to leave my sister but Ireally had no choice but to leave. My dad was managing a farm in quite an isolated part of Tasmania and my brother was living with him so he could travel to college in the city each day. I have always been extremely close to my dad so was happy to be moving in with him.

A typical day for me

8:00 Get up and make Breakfast
8:30 Go back to bed and eat my breakfast while watching a series on my laptop
10:00 Get up and go for a shower
10:30 Read
11:00 Go for a very brisk walk around the farm
1:00 Have lunch and watch another series
3:00 Fill in my food diary
4:00 Have something for afternoon Tea
4:30 Write in my diary
5:00 Go for a drive to find phone reception so I can check facebook ;)
6:30 Have Tea
7:00 Watch Telly with dad and luke
9:30 Go to bed

As you can see my days were extremely boring and didn't change all that much for the few months I was living down there. I was only eating 5500 KJ a day and was exercising so I was obviously losing weight. At the time I honestly wasn't trying to lose weight anymore, but I was too terrified to eat anymore as I though it would make me gain weight.

A typical days food intake

Brakfast: 3 sachets of oats prepared with water
Lunch: 2 Mountain bread wraps with ham, lettuce, 1 slice of fat free cheese, redbeet and capsicum and a Soliel diet chocolate mousse
Afternoon Tea: 1 chicken noodle cup of soup (only 180 kJ) and a small packet of rice wheels
Tea: 1 cup of terriyaki flavoured rice with pumpkin and frozen mixed vegetables (carrot, peas, corn, potato, broccoli and caulliflower)

In my diary entries from this time I wrote alot about exercising and trying to increase my metabolism. I never had any energy at all but would still force myself out into the freezing cold each day to walk. In one entry I wrote;
'I have become a bit of a fanatic when it comes to exercise. If I don't get some decent exercise I feel really guilty and feel as though Ineed to make up for it by lowering my food intake for that day. I couldn't do much exercise yesterday as I had to drive to the ity so ate less than I usually do. I also made sure I went for a really goood walk today even though it was absalutely freezing. I went for a brisk walk up and down lots of steep hills and it only took me 47 minutes, even though it ususally takes me 50. I planned to do 13 minutes of skipping this afternoon so that I could get my daily exercise up to one hour but my dad came home early so I couldn't :(

My brother found a baby Pademelon wallaby while I was living with him and dad who I rared. He needed lots of attention and was absalutely gorgeous. I had to feed him every 4 hours, even at night but he gave me a reason to get up out of bed in the mornings and always managed to make me smile.
















My dad had given up on trying to give me advice or trying to make me eat as he knew there was no use. He knew that he couldn't help me until I was ready to help myself. One night while I was lying in bed I checked my heart rate and was shocked to find that it was only 30 beats per minute which is much lower than it should have been. Suddenly I was terrified as I didn't know if I would actually wake up the following morning or not. That is the moment that I realised that I needed to change if I wanted to survive.

I moved back home with my mum and sister as I knew that my dad was going to be moving home shortly after. From than on I was actively making some effort to recover although it proved to be an extremely slow process for me. My plan was to try and get to a healthier state before starting university the following year. I will share the rest of my journey since deciding I wanted to recover in a later post! :)