Your Stories

It can be hard to enjoy a holiday when there are so many things around that make it feel chaotic. For someone like me, who copes with anxiety by needing structure and routine, the spontaneity and fun of a holiday season is enormously difficult to navigate.

For many years I accessed online support for bulimia and was repeatedly told ‘recovery is always possible’. This felt really hollow to me. People kept telling me it was possible but not how it was possible.

For someone like me, with such a long history of anorexia nervosa behind me, exercising is a tricky affair and, unlike people who never experienced that, I can never lower the guard.

We talked to our Helpline Manager, Sam, about some of the common questions her team gets around this time of year, and her insights and tips for dealing with the challenges of Christmas.

Why do we perpetuate this enormous lie, that sets a beauty standard that makes grown women cry?

I can't eat, I'm not hungry, I can't eat, I feel sick, I can't eat, I'm too busy, The excuses are slick.

2018 is going to be an amazing year. That’s what I thought back in January. I’d not long landed my dream job, I’d moved back to London and I had a list of destinations to which I intended to travel. I also had an official diagnosis of anorexia nervosa to my name

I guess my eating disorder began pretty generically. I had booked a girls’ holiday and didn’t want to feel uncomfortable in a bikini, so about six weeks before I was due to embark on a fun-filled week in the sun, the ‘holiday diet’ began.

Five years ago, I left my studies at university, gripped by depression and anorexia. I was living a life of darkness, shame, misery, hopelessness, helplessness and grief over a long-term relationship that I couldn’t admit to myself was falling apart.

Bulimia is a hidden illness. On the outside, it looks like you're fine, when inside you still feel the ache in the throat, the discomfort in your stomach and general body, the guilt and the shame.

I wanted to offer an insight into how I am now, near enough four years into a robust recovery, following ten years of a very active and debilitating eating disorder. I am certainly not perfect in my recovery and this was the main point I wanted to try to get across.

Dear Ana,

I’m breaking up with you.

We’re done. We’re through.