How I got out of Denial and into Recovery (My ED Story)

February 2016.

Trapped in a Self-Destructive Cycle.

In October of 2016 I was sitting in the office of a psychiatrist at Toronto General Hospital, a shell of a person. I was fidgeting incessantly, swaying my knees together and apart, perched on the edge of an all too cushy couch.  Sitting made me extremely anxious. Even though I had ran several kilometres to the hospital that morning from where I had parked my car, it still felt undeserved to be still.  I had not yet eaten breakfast, and I was not planning on it until I had ran back to my car and driven back home that afternoon. The doctor had me step on scale. He told me that at a BMI of barely 15, I had severe anorexia, and that I required hospitalization.

 I don't remember feeling much other than numb. I recognize that numbness now as fear. That psychiatrist also told me that he did not recommend me starting treatment at this point because he could see I was not “ready” to recover. My fear translated into resistance. I questioned the diagnosis, and the severity. Upon hearing that treatment would entail a “re-feeding” process, I think I laughed, unable to process the insanity of this.  

I walked out of the hospital feeling paralyzed. I knew what I was doing was unsustainable.  I  was always injured, losing hair, losing friends, hurting my relationships. I wanted to recover. But I was terrified. The psychiatrist was right. I was not ready to let go of the identity I had made a home in for so long. 

I ran back the several kilometres back to my car and I spent the next year in quasi-recovery. I thought I no longer classified as anorexic because I was eating, multiple times a day, of what I believed to be a lot. However, I was trapped in a vicious cycle of excuses and compensations that were ultimately manifestations of my disorder in different forms, rules, and compulsions. I was waking up every morning, telling myself that today was going to be different, and every night, going to bed feeling broken and defeated.

I was in Denial.

From the outside, I seemed to be doing okay.  I was graduating at the top of my class from a Masters program, holding a full-time job, and in a loving, long-term relationship. Yes, I was noticeably thin, but most people chalked this up to my reputation of being an “athlete”, and I was often praised for my level of fitness as something admirable. My body was becoming my masterpiece as my life was falling to pieces.  

July 2016

I was consumed by misery and self-loathing. I was fighting with my family, my boyfriend would barely touch me, and there was hardly a moment of my day that was not entrenched in some ritual or routine or compulsion driven by my eating disorder.  I didn’t know how much longer I could go on like this. I wasn’t sleeping, waking up every hour by nightmares about food and eating and being unable to stop. I felt suffocated by anxiety the moment my eyes opened in the morning, dreading the hours exercise I would drag myself to do, but too terrified to do any less. The more terrified I felt, the more I would punish myself during the day to “make-up” for feeling weak.

I Felt Out of Control.

In a moment of sheer desperation I found myself with the number of an eating disorder therapist. Every inch of me was vibrating with anxiety and loathing. It was another day of the same, feeling miserable with hunger and lazy and gluttonous at the same time. I was about to start my shift at work, where I would spend the next 5 hours finding every opportunity to pace hallways and run stairs and count down the minutes until it was over and I could go home and eat the ritualistic meal with the same fixation as an addict preparing and snorting cocaine.

And then the guilt and panic would set in and I would force myself out the door to run as long for however long it took that I would be “allowed” to eat dinner. Three bites more than I wanted, and the guilt and panic would set back in, and I would end up in bed feeling powerless and ashamed. I would vow not to eat breakfast (again) the next morning, and find myself somersaulting down the same same hill on the verge of losing all control. And that was a typical day.

This existence had made me feel so alienated from the person that I wanted to be.I didn’t even remember how it felt to be different.  I couldn’t take it for one more day. And in that moment, I dialled the number.

July 2017- I was working at a science centre.

Reaching Out.

The therapist offered me an opening she had the next day. I hesitated. That was sooner than I planned. But I knew I would only be prolonging the inevitable.

“Ok. I’ll take it.”

“Great!” she chimed, as if I had done something much more challenging than booking an appointment.. “Because really another day spent living with an eating disorder is another day wasted.”

I hung up and walked into work, her words reverberating in my head, and thinking just how true that was. 

The Intake Session: My First Foray into Recovery

“I’m just here to humour my mom,”  I told her.  She asked me to step on her scale.  I did, gritting my teeth. I was sure she’d basically tell me that  I was wasting her time, that I was good and healthy, and to get on with my life.  

Instead, she looked me dead in the eye. 

“You don’t know how sick you are, do you?”  

Until she spoke those words, I didn’t.  I didn’t know where my disorder ended and Jordan began. For almost a decade, anorexia had been my closest companion. I was terrified to let go, to be in a world without her.  

“I know you aren’t ready.”  My therapist told me.  “But  you’ll be dead before you ever feel ready enough.”

I might have rolled my eyes.

But deep down, further than I had ever managed to look, I knew she was right.

*********

I will continue my foray into recovery in Part 2. Stay Tuned.

-xoxo

Jordan