It was during treatment and my work toward recovery that I realised just how much my eating disorder had helped me manage difficult feelings and emotions. The more I committed to treatment and challenged the unhelpful eating disorder behaviours, the more intense my emotions became. The negative ones were the most frequent and powerful, where I experienced crippling bouts of fear, anxiety, and depression that would hit me without warning.
The most difficult emotion, however, was the acute anger that surfaced, forcing me into an insufferable state of mental despair as I was convinced feeling angry made me a horrible person — the complete opposite of what I was striving to be. I had spent years trying to become the nicest person I could so that people would have no reason not to like me, but also for personal reassurance that I was a ‘good’ person so I could live with myself in my search for personal acceptance, and I could not risk sabotaging the hard work and sacrifices I had made along the way.
but in reality, I was a people-pleaser and a doormat who put everyone else ahead of herself and
Tackling my eating disorder and the relentless behaviours that dominated my life, gave me the subconscious capacity to “feel” again. At first, my eating disorder had been a welcome method of distraction in many areas of my life. But little did I know what a beast it would become, or that it would eventually impose more severe feelings of self-hatred and distress than I had ever experienced before.
My eating disorder was like a dynamo powering itself off my vulnerable mental state. It capitalised off my desperation and despair, because these feelings were I reached harder for my eating disorder in a desperate attempt to numb my mental pain. I was trapped in a relentless cycle of chaotic turmoil that turned my life into a miserable existence
