Meet Sarah

I’m broken.

I’ve got no willpower.

I’m useless.

 

That’s exactly what I used to think about myself every day and boy, was that exhausting. All that energy spent on self hatred with my inner critic shouting through her megaphone, reminding me how crap I was.

 

For me, it all started in my late teens with a diet.  A diet that got completely out of hand. A diet that led to anorexia. I was numbing myself, starving myself, as a way to cope with all the feelings and emotions that I simply couldn’t deal with.    Eventually, as my body was crying out for food, my anorexia took the well trodden path to bulimia. I was still under weight, but not to the point of complete starvation. I would eat a restricted diet and then become so ravenous I would binge and purge. This went on for a few years. It was awful. It ruled my life. I hated myself. Restrict, binge, restrict, binge, restrict, binge... I hated the disease and I couldn’t see a way out. I knew the damage I was doing to myself physically and my mental health was on the floor.  And who knew? I had a great job, amazing friends, my own flat. On the face of it I was riding high in life. I’d escaped the claws of anorexia and everything was perfect. 

 

Although it wasn’t. 

 

How did I break free?  To be completely honest, there was no defining moment for me. I found an amazing therapist who certainly helped, I devoured books on mental health, psychology, addiction, trauma and then nutrition, health and wellness. And eventually, with a lot of hard work and heart ache it slowly stopped. I no longer felt the need to be on the crazy binge-restrict-purge merry-go-round. Now I look back I realise that I’d unknowingly used a number of different tools and strategies to heal my body and change the destructive habit that I used to cope.

 

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