7 years after an Eating Disorder Diagnosis

7 years ago, anorexia tried to take my life from me. For the past 7 years, I've been trying to take it back.

7 years ago today, I had a physician tell me that I was on track to die in about 6 months.

This was moments after being diagnosed with anorexia nervosa -- an illness that at the time, I had absolutely no knowledge of, no inkling that there was actually a name for the horrible mental battlefield that I was living within.

The doctor, a leading Canadian physician specializing in eating disorders, told me that she saw cases like this all the time, and that she would refer me to a nearby hospital inpatient program. She then said that the waiting period to get into that hospital would likely be around a year - and they wouldn’t even accept patients that were in as dire of a state as I was in, physically - so in the meantime I needed to get a head start on outpatient recovery, on my own.

I didn’t realize at the time how those two words, anorexia nervosa - that I have only said out loud a small handful of times since then - would alter the upcoming course of my life, or how recovery from it would be the most difficult thing I would endure (to date).

It’s quite a strange conundrum, to suffer from a mental illness that causes you to engage in self destructive behaviours. My lack of understanding of eating disorders at the time caused me to believe that I was engaging in the disorder willingly, and that maybe if I were just a bit smarter or a little stronger, I could have prevented it from ever beginning.

My life over the next few years consisted of weekly assortments of doctor visits, dietician appointments and therapy sessions. With each appointment came a lot of tears, a ton of confusion, and so much shame over having unconsciously become so entangled with this demon that wanted me to die a slow, painful death. Eating disorders - like other addictive patterns such as substance abuse - have extremely high relapse rates, and I was on par for the course when I inevitably returned to the disordered behaviours multiple times whenever the stressors of life came to be too much.

You can imagine how wonderful the pandemic was!

Due to this inevitable nature of relapse, anyone in any form of recovery has likely become friendly with the phrase, “recovery is not linear.”

After many fallbacks, I exhaustedly started to accept the fact that this disorder might just be something I always deal with, a soft presence in my mind that I would just have to learn to coexist alongside. I was not the type of person meant to live a happy life, and maybe I needed to start viewing the constant mental turmoil as my new normal, or at best some sort of quirky party trick.

About a year ago I was in the middle of practicing meditation, a daily ritual I have come to adore as one of the modalities of healing for my major depressive disorder (I know - clearly my mind is a charming place to be).

The meditation was one focused on muscle relaxation; the beautifully soft, feminine voice began to take me through the practice of the rotation of consciousness, which is basically taking the existence out of the mind and into the body parts. I’ll never forget the moment I heard that gentle yogi from the guided track whisper the words,

"You are not your body.”

I typically meditate with my eyes closed, but at that moment they blinked open.

“You are not your body.”

I am not my body. I am not my body?

Struggling with anorexia means that one has a dangerously distorted concept of self -- the way one looks, the way one is to treat their body, the impact one’s body has on their life and ability to feel worthy or happy. Most of us have met someone -- or perhaps been the someone -- involved in a very toxic, abusive, or even codependent relationship. This type of relationship often involves at least one party falling victim to fear, torture or abusive manipulation that is very hard to disentangle from, especially at such a close proximity to the threat.

That’s kind of how I would describe struggling with anorexia to someone who has never experienced it. A severe eating disorder embodies an all-consuming demon that exists so close to you - literally, inside of your brain - that you cannot escape from without perceived consequence of retaliation or personal demise. Similar to many addictions, EDs often do not occur without shame, hiding/lying to those around you, and continuous self-inflicted harm that you truly believe you must partake in in order to survive.

I know I teach meditation, but even I'm aware that not everything I say is going to resonate or totally land in a non-fluffy way with my students. So, no, those 5 words did not miraculously heal me from anorexia. Rather, they did something much more simple:

They presented me with the idea that there is another way to exist - a way that does not involve me being hyper focused on, or overly identifying with, the physical vessel of my body.

Whether I was scrolling past endless flat-tummied “what I eat in a day” videos or tight lipping through another unsolicited comment on how "cute and tiny!" I was, I couldn’t escape the message: the most important thing about me as a woman - and the thing that everyone seems to be paying attention to no matter my relationship to them - is my body. If you’re reading this post, without knowing who you are, what you look like, or anything about you, I can pretty much guarantee that at one point in your life you have looked in the mirror and not liked the physical form you saw looking back at you. Today's chronically online culture has created an increasingly narcissistic generation, where social validation and approval is considered to be more important than personal health and happiness.

We say it’s normal to dislike your body, it's normal to feel uncomfortable in your own skin, but is it really - normal? Or is it yet another societal facade that we’ve been relentlessly conditioned into believing is normal, through the trillion dollar diet and food industry, social media, celebrity culture…what am I forgetting?

I started teaching meditation this year, and thus I've spent a lot of time engaging with Eastern spiritual philosophies and ways of knowing. Buddhists believe that the body is a gateway to liberation. Once one learns to detach from one’s body - from the desires, cravings, sufferings that occur within the body - can one be liberated from the body. However, we as humans come to know and recognize one another often based off of the way that we look, and the different outer forms that we each take on. It’s very hard to detach from something that seems to be so intensely intertwined with your personal identity.

While I strongly believe meditation is a practice that everyone should engage in for many benefits related to mental, emotional and spiritual health, I know deep down part of the reason I feel so strongly about it is because it has been the most transformative tool in my healing journey from an eating disorder thus far.

Where am I, 7 years later? I am slowly starting to embody those 5 words by finally realizing that I don’t have to attach so much meaning and value to my body. I don’t have to change my emotions about my body every time it changes, I don’t have to go through every day convinced that it is the best thing about me that I have to offer. I can’t convince others to also liberate themselves from the societal obsession with physical appearance, but I can continue doing the work myself - with the hope that others might realize I’m onto something.

It sounds like a lot, so what helps me is reminding myself of a much simpler matter: my relationship with my body comes down to choice. I can either choose to work with my body, or I can work against it. I can either beat my body up for factors outside of its control, or I can treat it in the best ways I know how to. I can spend every free moment of thought scrutinizing the inches of my body I’ve been conditioned to hate, to no avail. Or, I can just … accept the physical vessel I’ve been given, the very existence of which is solely for human and earthly functionality purposes - not aesthetic ones - and move the fuck on to something more worthy of my time and energy.

In case you’ve forgotten, you can make your choices too. It’s not easy, I’m not saying that it is or that it will be. 7 years later, and I still dread the holidays as a result of the influx in unsolicited body comments, and the pressure to overindulge on food. 7 years later, I am still doing the little, seemingly insignificant and repetitive work every day just to stay well. However, 7 years later I am finally starting to see little glimpses of a life where I'm not obsessed with calories burned or the bloating of my stomach, and it feels pretty damn good to think that there might just be a different way to exist with a body.

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I’ve written many blog posts on my journey through recovery over the years, and it’s quite amazing looking back at them and seeing how much my perspective has changed and how I’ve grown. Feel free to peruse this blog where I have been a shamelessly open book for the past 6 years now!

Thank you for supporting the work of a local writer. May we continue to humbly grow through what we go through.

"One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through and it will be someone else’s survival guide." - Brene Brown

Julia🌞🌈🧘🏻‍♀️

Check out more of my work over on the You Empower Tomorrow Niagara blog!

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