The Truth’s of Eating Disorders

I put out a request to all of you suffering from (emphasis on this word!) any form of eating disorder and immediately received some brilliant and informative answers. Deep down I do wish I got no replies, because then these darling and beautiful people would not be suffering, but I know that people do, and I would much much rather that you speak out about it, not only to defy stigma and misinterpretation of this horrible illness, but for yourself, defying the disorder that is defying you of life.

I mentioned in my request that this is mostly to stop people from glamorising this illness (namely the title of my blog too), fighting against that megabitch that fakes an eating disorder (I mean, *SIGH* at her ignorance, attention seeking and major triggering of those who actually do suffer).

I was so shocked to hear from the responses that I am not the only person to know someone faking a disorder. I felt so horrible, fretting that I was the one in the wrong, but I know now that I am not. It is her stupid and naive actions.

I’m rambling.

So here is the literally painful truth of eating disorders. The agony behind your “thinspirations” and those who you praise for their willpower to avoid eating, the one human instinct that we need in order to survive. The vulnerable, teenage girls you exploit, including even me, with pictures of my half naked body plastered around the internet becoming a poster girl for near death. The little girls and boys that you tell in a whining, envious voice “I wish I was addicted to exercise like you”………… I am just gone, I mean, GONE.

This is the truth:

Rayette, in her email received immediately after the request told me:

“I am 23, and have OS F ED which is Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder (which I admittedly had to question the lettering/meaning of). I restrict my food intake and have intense fear of gaining weight. And intense fear of gaining weight.”

BellaX0 commented:

“When I was engulfed with Anorexia, I was constipated ALL the time….lovely, right? Now that I am in recovery, a lot has gotten better, but I still struggle.

I constantly body check and get stuck in the mirror… I will change clothes 3, 4 times a day sometimes if I have to go out.

The feelings of guilt after eating have not left.

One thing that was huge when I was in the throes of Anorexia was the constant obsession over calories that I was unable to control. As you go through refeeding, I noticed that aspect gets a little better.

There is nothing glamorous about eating disorders, that’s for sure.”

Ayla, Discoverecovery from for3v3rchanging.wordpress.com left another brilliantly informative comment, which frankly broke my heart a little because, darling, Anorexia is a mental illness! I know that there are differences in the diagnosis criteria depending on the country, not sure which is which but between the UK and US, one has a certain body weight percentage in the criteria which is frankly disgusting, forcing a person to become more ill in order to get help??

Here is the comment though:

“I’m currently in my second year of treatment for an eating disorder; although the diagnosis is shape-shifter (aha… pun intended). At first I was diagnosed with Bulimia, but now my tendencies have shifted towards restricting my calories rather than binging and purging. So I’m not really Bulimic, and I’m certainly not skinny enough to be diagnosed with Anorexia.

One of the things that really stands out to me is the self-bullying. I tell myself that I don’t deserve food, that I’m disgusting, that I’m so fat that my body could go for months without eating and therefore I deserve to starve because of my glutinous past.

I’ve also met people who pretend to have eating disorders or they claim that they “had Anorexia for a month in high school.” Realistically, if they knew anything about Anorexia they would know it lasts a hell of a lot longer than a month. It drives me crazy when people make statements like that! It’s so invalidating and makes it seem like it’s cool to have an eating disorder when in reality I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

Another brilliant and informative comment from the very supportive @helloanx from Instagram, which I am very grateful for is:

“My whole life I have struggled with my food intake. My biggest fear is new foods. I just cannot, CANNOT bring myself to try something I have never tried before. I eat the same things over and over again, and it can take me months, even years of contemplating to actually gather some courage to try something that is completely new to me. I am weak, tired, sad and practically dying constantly. My body does not get the nutrition it needs because of my mind.

It is not cute, it is not glamorous, it’s not something you want to have. It’s life controlling, hours of crying, periods stopping, heart palpitations, shaking constantly. It is hell. The stigma of mental disorders, especially eating disorders, affects us all. We no longer want to speak out in fear that we will be called attention seeking due to fakers before us. Mental illnesses are life threatening, horrible illnesses. You wouldn’t fake about having a physical illness, so mental illnesses should be no different. #stopthestigma”

 

Kate Powell’s Mental Health Artwork

I have just stumbled across this link on Pinterest when looking for something to post on my blog.

The introduction on the link described Kate as: “Talented teenager Kate Powell has shared her Art projects on social media platforms since she was fifteen years old. She currently has over 12,000 fans on Facebook and 34,000 followers on tumblr, with one of her tumblr posts gaining over 112,000 notes. We talk to Kate about how she has built this following and how she launched her career before graduating from high school.”

Kate achieved outstanding grades at school, achieving an A* in OCR GCSE Art in just Year 9, two years younger than expected and an A* for A level in year 12! She achieved full marks (100%) for AQA AS and A Level Photography in Year 13 and is currently waiting for her AQA AS History of Art and Art Textiles results.

“I think I managed to achieve high grades because I chose projects I was passionate about and which linked directly to me and my life – having this kind of connection with my work motivated me to work hard and prove myself. Since the beginning of my school life I have been concerned with/affected by issues of self-harm/eating disorders/ body image and after tackling these problems in art earlier in my school career I felt like my understanding came to a climax in my A2 exam piece (see below), responding to the title ‘Storyteller’. I was able to use art as a means of reflection and therapy as I tackled the issues closest to my heart, and, because I felt so emotionally invested in the exam piece, I was driven to give it my all.”

“Storyteller: Recovery”

I highly recommend that you visit the links and support this amazing artist.

I’ll post some more of her work below this text, but there are fantastic HD pictures on the link.

“The Butterfly Project”

“Scatterbrain”

Nature or Nurture: Which Most Impacts on Mental Health?

I began the 30 Days Mental Illness Awareness Challenge on my recovery Instagram (but have since deleted the posts as they did not fit in with my feed; damn aesthetics hehe).

But I came across this question and immediately made a note so that I could post it as a blog entry instead.

Do you believe nature (biology/physiology), nurture (environment), a mix, or something else has an effect on mental health?

This was a very important question: one that is very strong in my own recovering mind and one that link perfectly with this blog and its theme.

Personally I believe it is a mix; a potent mix of bad and harmful things to create something as dreadful as mental illness. From my own experience with my mental illnesses, it was definitely much more to do with nurture and the surroundings and company I found myself in, but this may be because it is (severe) Anorexia Nervosa that I mostly suffer with. An illness so naively promoted all over the internet as a poetic fad diet: pro ana breeding and spreading like a bacterium disease, feeding on the negativity of humankind and seemingly nothing else but ice cold waters (goodness I hope you don’t understand these references).

It is most likely dependant on the mental illness itself: whether it is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD or OC traits), or any number of the others that inflict daily, endless pain on the sufferers and victims of itself.

To give you an insight and make this post more personal, I’ll relate it to my own struggles:

I have always been underweight. Always. Varying degrees admittedly, but I have never been a healthy weight, especially not as a child stuffing her face with Fruit Winders and Happy Hippos and unbuttered white bread slices, one after the other. This was due to my super speedy metabolism (which I still have now, but perhaps not as much). This meant that there has always been some sort of obsession with my weight and size: as if other people couldn’t comprehend how I was so thin, or rather how I “stayed so skinny”. I was bullied in my tiny primary school, that had 65 people in its entirety. I was called “lanky” and a “stick insect” and pushed into walls because I bruised so easily. This may not sound so bad, and in retrospect it wasn’t, but this meant that there was an awareness awoken in me of my body and my size. As if a metaphorical demon woke up that I could never turn off. This is when I started self- harming, but I didn’t even realise it at the time as I flung myself at the floor to skin my knees and develop “carpet burns” at the age of 8.

(Just a reminder, I will try to keep this as related to the subject as possible: so clearly a lot more happened in these years but this is focused on my development of Anorexia Nervosa. I have mentioned this before, but I also suffer from severe forms of depression, anxiety and self-harming ((but am now clean)).

In secondary school I was, again, a commodity. I was something to stare and revel at in the changing rooms. When the class was weighed individually in fitness (part of the P.E curriculum), people would crowd around me as I stepped on the scale or just after to question my weight and gawp at my BMI that was dangerous to begin with but dropped another 2.0 or more as the monster took over. I began to become aware of myself even more, and as the natural process of development and puberty began, I was bewildered at the tiny differences that were all consuming in my head. I was developing two years after everyone else, and after all of this attention that I received for my size, being glorified and liked for being so thin, I began to wonder that if I were to lose more weight, would I be liked more? “OF COURSE! LOSE MORE WEIGHT. MORE AND MORE AND MORE.” Piped up the awakened demon which manifested itself into Anorexia over years. In the midst of all this of course was the revolting world of pro ana on Tumblr, mentioned in my previous posts.

Super long, stressful and traumatic story short, one thing led to another and I was not liked for being thin, I was worried and gossiped about. I was gawky, I was disgusting, I was fainting up to once a day. My heart was failing and I was rushed into hospital where I began my really rocky path to recovery. (Almost typed rocky road there hehe. )

Literary perfectionism hates the way that the above was worded, but I wanted to shorten my story as much as possible as it wasn’t particularly the subject of the post.

The point that I wanted to make with the above point was: did my mental illnesses develop because of nature or nurture?

For me personally: both.

Would I have been bullied for being so “lanky and thin” if it hadn’t of been for my genetics of growing tall so quickly?

Would I have become aware of my body at such a fragile, young age if it weren’t for this bullying?

Would I have been paralysed with fear of gaining weight and of losing my poisoned “popularity” if I wasn’t glorified at the height of my illness, then discarded like rubbish as soon as it “went too far”?

Perhaps most importantly: would I have even known how to lose the weight, or even wanted/felt the need to if it weren’t for society: modelling, pro ana and the typical trash talking teenage girls in the changing rooms?

One thing leads to another in this world. But the journey would not have begun at all if it hadn’t been for my natural genetics: something out of my control.

I wanted to know what you thought about it, and I’d certainly love to write another post about it.

Do you believe nature (biology/physiology), nurture (environment), a mix, or something else has an effect on mental health?

Think in depth about it: how did it affect your own journey or those around you, or even what do you predict is the truth?

Glamorising Mental Illness and Harmful Behaviours: Channel 4’s Drama Series “Skins”

This post is again raising awareness of how mental illness is wrongly portrayed. It links back to my previous post relating to promoting mental illness on Tumblr..

I have personally watched the drama series Skins (4/6 seasons). I watched them with ecstasy as I fell in love with each character and their unique representations. But I watched this as my own world was crumbling and as my severe Anorexia (Nervosa) developed, the familiar characters plastered over Tumblr were there to reassure me that this behaviour was all fine and dandy. This post, although it may seem to be straight forward “slagging off” of the show, is to raise awareness of over glamorising in the TV and media. This is not the way mental illnesses are. At all.

This is but one television series’, labelling people and judging them. Using mental illness in order to make their characters more quirky and exciting; and therefore for them to be spread around on Tumblr and other, similar websites.

In the programme, “Skins”, a fictional UK drama on Channel 4, we follow the lives of multiple teenagers throughout two years of sixth form. This has never particularly sank in for me until now as I type, having received my GCSE results less than a week ago and being at the fragile age of 16 facing sixth form or college to further my education.

Nearly every character in this drama had something “wrong with them”, either in the form of a mental illness, an unstable relationship or drug abuse. Yes, every character, as if mental illness in teenagers is compulsory and something everyone goes through as if as a hormonal phase.

Hannah Murray played the fictional character Cassie Ainsworth, who struggles with an eating disorder, suicide attempts and the abuse of illegal drugs. She was only sixteen herself when she applied for the role, wearing a watch around her ankle and unusual clothing style and was immediately cast. Is this really what a growing mind should be subject to? Exploitation of her thin frame; remembering full scripts of melancholy lines relating to negative aspects of life, trivialising illnesses that kill 1 in 5 sufferers ,all whilst studying for A levels?

The programme not only showed mental illness, but encouraged and promoted it. In one memorable episode, Cassie showed her love interest how she got away with not eating at home by completely showing a pro-ana tip. But that was just the tip of the iceberg, as every episode had more than one negative quote: now a black and white photo radiating through Tumblr, poisoning the minds of everyone that comes into contact.

“I didn’t eat for three days so I could be lovely” and “I stop eating until they take me to the hospital” are just two of the horrible quotes that came from this show. Promoting unhealthy means of weight loss and the unhealthy need to be ill and striving to be this way. This character, and indeed actress was only sixteen! She shouldn’t have these thoughts at this age; and in an ideal world: never.

The show not only promoted eating disorders, but suicide and drug use. “[Do you remember when] you rode in the ambulance with me when I tried to kill myself? … That’s what love feels like.”

Excuse me, what?!

When they did delve deeper into the eating disorder problem, they used unrealistic references to inpatient care. They made it, once again, fun and made fear foods of Anorexic patients almost laughable. Cassie smiled and shrugged away the fact that she could eat a certain food. I watched this in secret merely months before I was rushed into hospital, threatened with a section, forced onto bedrest for an entire month and quickly transferred to inpatient care for a 5 month stay. In all honesty I left with a worse mind-set than when I entered. Inpatient care is traumatic. It is an every-day struggle: surrounded by nurses, NG’s insisted and forced when a meal was refused, patients and close friends of mine attempting suicide and being violently restrained. It was not the façade that the media portrayed it as, with peppy quotes of hiding weights in underwear. In reality patients are weighed in hospital gowns without any underwear at all, not even suspicious hairstyles. I could fight this out until my voice has all but disappeared; I am so desperate to defy these LIES.

Perhaps what angered me most about this character and her portrayal, was that the show created an unnecessary “therapy video” which they uploaded to YouTube and other video websites. This showed Cassie sitting outside telling people in less than three minutes, that she “hated her thighs”, and that she “liked people who don’t smile”.

Why?

Were the creators of the show aware that their quotes had thousands of “reposts” and “likes” in such a negative aspect? That their character was a main promoter of Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia, suicidal thoughts and depression?

Did it seem rational and moral to create an unrelated video to fuel the horrors on the dark side of the internet?

I need you to know that this is so wrong. That these are all lies. That programmes like these should not be made, and yet they continue to be made every day: creating more and more lies. Lies lies lies lies lies.

Using Mental Illnesses as Adjectives

You may have seen this poster around on the internet: I certainly have, countless times. Yet it seems with thousands of “notes” on Tumblr, the message still isn’t getting across to us as a society.

So, simply why are mental illnesses used as adjectives?

Saying that someone “looks so Anorexic” or that your “OCD is coming out again” is just wrong. Looking like a mental illness is not possible. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is just that: a compulsion and an overwhelming need to do something that doesn’t just go away and come back. Depression does not appear for one day then lift as if it were a momentary haze. It is all consuming.

How would you feel if you were sitting on the bus and someone made a distracted comment that “the weather today is so cancer”? Disgusted? What about if someone were to say that “the weather today is so depressing”. Would you even acknowledge it? It is the SAME.

Think about if someone asked you “what have you got to be so asthmatic about?” but yet we can ask “what have you got to be so depressed about?” or “why don’t you just eat?” Mental illnesses are as important as and perhaps even more severe than physical illnesses. They consume and take lives. Anorexia kills more people than some forms of cancer. Suicide remains the most common cause of death in men under 35, with 90% of people having committed suicide able to be diagnosed with a form of mental illness.

So why is it so often is disregarded?

I can’t even begin to describe how many times I have heard these comments carelessly thrown around in day to day life.

You “almost had a panic attack”? Did you? Really?

You almost lost control of all of your senses including your own bladder control. You were sweating and violently shaking. You were wheezing as tears burned in your eyes and the room span around you. You felt as though you were actually going to pass out or die. Really? Well I face this every single day, time after time for the tiniest things. Sometimes even without a reason.

Take a moment to think before you speak. Seriously.

I sound like a middle aged mother advising her five year old child to stop bullying another. It’s really quite embarrassing that our society needs told.

——

Have you encountered anything like this? I’d love to hear about your own experiences in the comments below.

Promoting and Romantcising Mental Illness (namely Tumblr)

The main objective of this blog, and indeed where the title of itself has been created, is to stop the romanticising of mental illness.

There is a horrible, glamorised version of mental illness in the media: mostly online on blogging platforms such as Tumblr.

In as long ago as 2010 Tumblr had in excess of 169.5 million blogs, with the number continuing to rise each day. I ask you: take a moment to imagine how many there are now… Hopefully this gives you an idea of influential a website like this is to the growing minds of the 14 to 21 year olds (its majority age range) that use it on a daily basis.

In a quote from Mary Schwartz, the true extent of what is happening under our noses to the adolescents of the world is revealed, “[They romanticise] being in an unstable relationship, being an addict, cutting yourself, killing yourself, wanting to kill yourself, hating yourself and being in a mental hospital.”

This seemingly endless list should not exist at all.

On Tumblr being anxious, depressed or in any way mentally ill is often regarded as something mysterious and poetic and a desirable trait to add to your About Me page. The melancholic quotes added to black and white photographs suck people into their grasps and this readily accessible sea of dark poetry could easy drown out those whose suffering has reached a clinical level.

There are photos and moving “gifs” of fresh self-harm; the blood rushing to the surface and dripping onto the floor in an endless loop. Black and white photography of girls whose “thighs never touch” with horrible comments lain over the top. Portions of programmes completely unrelated to sadness and depression, edited so dramatically that that is seemingly all that the programme stood for. Pills in shaking hands. Nooses and razor blades. Empty plates, scales, and tape measures…

“During the years in which teenagers seek out self-affirmation and recognition from others, this new, easy promise of being recognised as strong, beautiful and mysterious by Tumblr “followers” can be very tempting,” says Dr. Mark Reinecke, chief psychologist at North-western Memorial Hospital. This is a professional mental health worker, sharing in the sane opinions of the well minded public.

People begin too pine to be similar to the haunted teens they see before them. They want to fit in. Be part of the competitive illness; seeking to be the best.

At what?

At slowly killing themselves?

At destroying their childhoods through no fault of their own?

I will never understand why people suffering from mental illness would promote the very thing that is destroying them. How could you possibly want others to suffer as you do?

Tips are constantly being exchanged in an attempt to make others more and more ill, disguised as helpful advice. Please; this is not helpful. It is so triggering to sufferers, and even those who do not. You are promoting an ideal that does not exist at all in the world. You are promoting agony and death.

Would you pine to have cancer? Share black and white photos of bald, sunken patients sitting through endless chemotherapy? No. Of course not. That sounds disgusting, right?

Yet it is alright for us to promote eating disorders; when Anorexia Nervosa is proven to kill more people than some CANCERS. That is 1 in 5. How truly beautiful and poetic right? NO. NO. NO.

The above is just an example of one of the tons of mental illnesses and their subtypes being glamorised and glittered.

MAKE IT STOP.