An awareness for anorexia

Hi my loves,

As some of you may be aware the 25th February- 3rd March 2019 is Eating Disorder Awareness Week, and as a topic that is very close to home I wanted to raise awareness for it. Shockingly, there is that saying that 1 in 5 people will die from anorexia every year. What I will say is not expert advice, I am not trained in the field, rather I just want to offer help from a personal rather than professional perspective, in an attempt to help change that awful statistic.

There are lots of memoirs about anorexia from the first-hand sufferers, or from the parents point of view, but there is never much of a say about it from the siblings point of view, which is why I am writing this. People have a lot of assumptions about anorexia nevosa, which is often due to false miseducation. I too used to be blissfully ignorant about the illness, thinking it was merely a disorder where skeletal girls starved themselves, but from experiencing it as a witness to my sister I could not have been further from the truth. This is why I want to raise awareness for it, so people can try to understand this complex illness and as a sibling looks out for another sibling, make it easier for whoever may be reading this to apply the same way of helping to a friend or relative. 

As I mentioned above, many people think it is simply a matter of losing weight. However, anorexia  not only takes over the sufferers whole being, career and life, but also the life of their family and friends around them. If you ever watch documentaries about anorexia, you can see the drained faces of the sufferer and also the worried relatives who are so desperate for their family member to get better. As a sister, it was a constant battle between whether to be a loyal sister and allow her to make the occasional eating slip-ups to stop her crying and cling onto my sister, or whether to almost become another authoritative adult with my parents and lose her to her anorexic side, and lose her as a friend. I would watch her skulk away upstairs, locking herself on her own in her room. She became not only a recluse, but her personality became a recluse running away from her body. I used to wonder, just how did it get this out of control? How did it get this bad? 

In terms of tracing back to the beginning, I first noticed it with my sister after her idea of changing up her diet to be a bit healthier and do a bit more exercise became more excessive to the point where it wasn't just an addiction, it was an obsession. Gone were the causal gym workouts, and a point where physically she looked super toned to someone who was beginning to look a bit emaciated. I remember once almost wanting to laugh at how hysterical she would get if she couldn't do her dance workout in our spare room, or the time she said she would have one Lindt truffle as a 'dessert'. We had just had a talk from our teachers about eating disorders, and I suddenly wondered was it possible my sister might be suffering from one? The problem is with eating disorders is that it can easily be overlooked, and so many excuses can be made to hide the disorder. When approaching my sister about the topic, she was in denial and gave me a strong reassurance that 'I'm okay' and that she was just being particularly careful at the moment in terms of watching what she was eating. This was the problem. It wasn't just her losing weight, it was the need for absolute control in every sense of whether she was eating or exercising. One thing I cannot stress enough is that anorexia is not just about restriction. It is also about control. Anorexia actually is an example of just how clever and twisted your brain can be. Anorexia proves that the brain can not only train itself to be strong-willed and resist eating, but it can do it to the point that you still believe you're actually 'normal'. If me, my family and even my sister had known that this was just one of the many complicated aspects of this disorder then maybe my sister would not be struggling with this kind of behaviour for over six years. I remember Lady Gaga once said a habit takes twenty-one days to form; imagine that on your brain, but with a self-destructive habit. I see Anorexia a bit like a nuclear bomb, even once it's cleared up it still leaves debris and toxic rubble all around it, that can take years to fully repair and return to a vague sense of normality. 

Once my sister had been diagnosed, I think what shocked me the most was the lack of funding that the NHS have towards eating disorders. We were told to go (well I'll admit I felt subjected) to weekly CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) appointments, where there would be a weigh in, a therapy session for my sister and also a family therapy session. I felt like each week the advice took us around in circles, and all I could see was my sister spiralling more and more out of my grip. I couldn't even fathom her behaviours, and some of the secretive things her mind told her to do almost horrified me. That is the other thing, anorexia makes the sufferer resort to being very child-like- sometimes it can be a cause: the fear of their body changing. It can also cause lead to the sufferer developing other mental health issues such as body dysmorphia, anxiety or in more extreme cases, depression. As the brain is starved, it runs into survival mode, meaning sufferers act irrationally (explaining my sister's anorexic behaviour), the body starts forming hair (lanugo) in an attempt to stay warm, fingers and nails are often blue, and cold, cold, cold is the sufferer both inside and out.

For so long, I truly felt like I would lose my sister. I could barely recognise her, and I honestly felt like I would never ever reconnect with her. She was a shell, barely functioning, and it got to the point where cutting myself from emotionally investing in her seemed easier than trying to get her to live. It feels like the sufferer is in a void, they are alive, but only just. There is a glimmer of their former self, but with anorexia, it is squashing their real self down very heavily. The most important thing you can do with a sufferer is be patient. They know deep down, in their web in their head that it is no way to live, but there is an even bigger fear to overcome it at the same time. My sisters time in a unit was an extremely traumatic experience but the most necessary thing for her, to try and even attempt to get some sense of a fight for life back. More extreme cases need admission, some people need therapy, but what you can always do is support from the sidelines. Even if it's just holding their hands whilst they cry over a sandwich, or scream at you for being 'controlling'- that is just the illness talking.

In light of Eating Disorder Awareness Week, instead of having another statistic, here are a list of some behaviours to look out, if you think someone you know may be suffering. If they have one in five of these aspects going on, chances are they could be suffering right now.

Some signs:

1.) The need for control

2.) restrictive/ abnormal eating patterns

3.) a weirdly obsessive interest in food (more than they used to be previously) or more of an interest in exercising.

4.) a change in behaviour (e.g. mood-swings, reclusive patterns)

5.) weight loss

More needs to be done generally to make this statistic go away. Another thing to remember is that just because a person is a 'healthy' weight, does not equate to how 'well' they are. Some people you might perceive as 'healthy' could indeed be going through the biggest battles than those at their lowest weight. Each battle is different, but as a society surrounded with body image and obsessive beauty, if we are more conscious to others around, perhaps we can form more of way to help battle this illness together. 

Although I could go on about symptoms and lessons learnt, the biggest thing I have learnt through all of this, is that no matter how frustrating, painful, exhausting or upsetting the trauma of this illness has caused my sister and family, is not once was this ever my sister. It is an eating disorder that has been overlooked by many, an insidious illness and a veil full of vicious cycles that gripped and controlled my sister. This illness can fuel so many emotions, but now I want to fuel this towards beating it. 

Thank you so much for reading, 

Odette xoxo

Some websites with more information:

https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk

https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/eating-problems/types-of-eating-disorders/#.XHmaNjKcbsE