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Dr Pooky Knightsmith Hesmondhalgh, a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Specialist shares a recent post from her own blog.
If I could speak to myself at each of the pivotal moments in my illness, starting when my anorexia developed after my 16th birthday, this is what I'd say.
Without a doubt, people look at you and long for your long curly hair, your curves, your eyes or your confidence.
I woke up a few years back with a voice in my head, at first, I thought it was my friend but over time it filled me with dread.
I don't recall booking a flight for two, but there you were, firmly planted into the seat next to me.
Some would be shocked and consider it a waste of NHS money if I told you I spent some sessions just sobbing or in angry silence, but that was what I needed.
My story begins when I was 16 with a motivation to shift a few pounds to look ‘slimmer’ in prom photos. It became a monster of an eating disorder.
So I'm visiting the place where, in one respect, it all ended but, in another, where it all began.
It was a shock to be diagnosed with anorexia at the age of 32. I wasn’t a teenager, I didn’t see myself as skinny, I was still eating.
The realisation that I had no control over the one thing I clung on to so tightly was my breaking point.
If the community isn’t making you stronger & helping you then it no longer serves a purpose in your recovery, but you have the power to change that.
What may help, & what aided me in my recovery, was personifying the eating disorder – I chose to give mine the deliberately reductive moniker 'ED'.