does real recovery truly exist?

[njam]

HI everyone

just looking for some support really...

i have suffered with an eating disorder since i was 11/12 and am now 37 and feeling like it is too late to change but i really want to.

i have gained weight back up to a bmi of 18 but am really struggling to cope with it and although i understand to fully recovery i need to engage in therapy i am scared i will need to gain more weight when i can barely handle this weight.

i have 2 young children and a husband and i have read a lot to suggest that my family need to engage in therapy with me for me to successfully recover. my husband sees this very much as my problem and so i feel very on my own and that our marriage depends on me staying this way forever. ( i had some specialist help for a while and he was suggested a book to read to help support me but he hasn't even read it so i feel i really am doing this on my own) i really want to change but feel it means giving up a sort of life that i have when it would be easier to stick with but then at the same time i feel i have wasted much of my life and really want a truly happy future where i am not constantly stressed out about food, weight and eating.

i have lived a faking a half life and i feel at my current weight that is where i am stuck, i have read that people can really recover but it seems so out of my reach i guess am looking to hear that true recovery exists and wonder how i get there and if anyone else is in the same position as me in terms of a family, husband that doesn't get your problem and is unsupportive.

i just feel constantly on edge and that it would be easier to go back to losing weight again or wishing i was dead. just feel at the end of my tether really.

thanks

njam

[Trustee]

I think full recovery is important and I hope that you will not give up. Keep talking

[mark1962fullyrecovered]

Yes full recovery does exist. I completely beat my anorexia. I cant say its easy and in my experience full recovery is rare. but believe me its worth it. to be free of those terrible voices and the awful physical side effects of extreme starvation feeling like you have been reborn. I have now resumed my old career as a counsellor. i am trying to help other sufferers find a way to beat their eating disorders.

Yes. Complete recovery is possible

[loppyloo61 in reply to mark1962fullyrecovered]

Hi, thank you so much for giving me hope as regards full-recovery from anorexia. I have just commenced treatement @ S[ecilialised High-Risk Eating Disorder Team @ Psychiatric Hospital. This is out of necessity as my BMI is just 12, I had a shocking health scare last year when I collapsed rushed into hospital with pneumonia, respiratory failure, sepsis, septicemia! I ended up inIntensive care as my organs started to shut down. I was told I was "fortunate" to have made it as the odds were stacked against me. Spent whole month in hospital.

Like I said just started treatemnt with Psychiatrist, Councellor ect. My councellor is absolutely fantastic and I can understand things in such a short period of seeing her, although apprehensive about recovery I pray I can achieve what you have. Well done to you. Also I think it is wonderful that you are now a counsellor helping other suffers of Anorexia. I respect your decision to help others, especially recovering/recovered yourself. I would think you would be most helpful as you have experienced this incidious illness for yourself and would be an excellent counsellor!

Complete recovery is what we are working towards. I am under no illusion this is going to be easy by any means and have been told it will take a great deal of work and time!

Just by reading your "blog" has inspired me to embrace the help whatever/however long it takes. Your words "Reborn" are truly what I pray for, hopefully with the fantasic Team I have behind me, I, in time can get there too.

Total respect to you and Good Luck with your Career as a Counsellor, the clients you see truly will have the best chance of recovery!!

Grateful thanks for giving me encouragement and hope because in all honesty I did"nt think real recovery exisisted and can look to the future of "normal" (what ever that is) life without being chained to Anorexia or worse!!

Goodluck

God Bless you x

till loose my life to it as I almost did!!

[crazycrossstitcher]

I do know just how you feel - I have a husband who approaches my problem like yours - he can't understand it - he can't fix it - and he feels, and probably rightly, its only me that can recover - he does'nt seem to understand how important support is - you only have to eat like everyone else is his stock approach!! He also now needs to lose weight - so this has brought a lot of stress into things as we're now trying to go in opposite directions. I have just started counselling - specialist to ED - so am hoping this will give me a new approach and a new life .

Sorry not to be able to say I've recovered - but I can say a fully understand your situation and feelings.

[art62grammie in reply to crazycrossstitcher]

I read your post from 6 yrs ago. I see that you are still following these support group. I have truly enjoyed chatting with you. I am new to the group as you see. I will share this with you. I was in two marriages now recently divorced. The first marriage of 18 years ended in 2000. The man I was married to was abusive sexually. He never hit me but abused me. The 2nd marriage 17 years ended April 2018. He was abusive also. He was not physically or sexually abusive. He was very greedy with our money. I had to beg for everything and I was used as a slave on our big farm. I had suffered all the childhood abuse I did. I swear I will not be abused anymore. I have gotten lots smarter since my recent recovery. I will say this. I tell those who never had an eating disorder. If you have never walked in my shoes don't judge me. Those who have not had Anorexia nor Bulimia wouldn't get the picture. Like those with physical illness, if we never had it we would not know how they fell. The real caring people like me and you, would listen and be compassionate of their physical illness. Why can't they be understanding and supportive of our mental illness.? My recent, now ex-husband only cared about money. He walked off and left me to die with starvation one morning to go to work. If you make it you do and if you don't so what. I was not going to recover in that marriage. He also commented that I was the only one that is benefiting from my recovery. WOW! People saw me so skinny and looked sick. They told my husband that I was going to die. He never once got help for me. He laughed at me very often. Why don't you just eat? Well, he wasn't mentally ill. It was easy for him to say that. I seem to get a real attitude these days for people like my ex. He lived a childhood of heaven. If you had ever walked in my shoes don't you think you would be a little messed up in the head too? I would never recovered if I had stayed in that marriage. He was not good for me.

[Hidden]

njam, yes I can identify with what you have written. I too have a husband of the "snap out of it/just fix it" type of thinking. However it did get a whole lot better when he attended a counselling session with me. This gave him the opportunity for us both to say what we were feeling in a more structured environment.

I have yet to experience full recovery but I do long for it. The trouble is is that anorexia has become part of my identity. Does it help to try to build a replacement identity?

[njam]

Hello

thanks for your replies

our marriage has been under much strain as a result of my ed getting much worse over the 18months. we did see a family therapist for a while but then i got discharged from the ed service a yr ago as they said i was resistant to change. 4months later i realised i had to start doing what the ed service had advised..follow the food plan cut down exercising etc etc. i've been told several times by my care co-ordinator that the service won't have me back, i assume because i am still struggling to follow the plan. i have had to build up very slowly and it still causes me great anxiety to follow it plus i got stuck in a severe starve/binge/purge cycle. my husband didn't know how to help and often went to the shop to buy me alcohol or binge foods. looking back i can't believe he did that, he obviously would rather fuel my ed than try to help me fight it so it feels like our marriage is all but over. it is the children i worry about, i could stay in the fake half life for them or finally seek help and try real change.

i have to go now, this is all too much i feel my world is falling apart.

it has been reassuring to know that full recovery is possible and that i am not alone in having a husband that doesn't get it.

thanks all

njam

[Ludovica]

Sorry for the late answer. I am married with 3 kids and i have been suffering with anorexia and bulimia for over 30 years i am 44. I have tried lots of therapies, they all gave me good results but none of them lasted. 5 months ago i felt i was really close to die , my body couldnt cope anymore. I decided then to start a residential treatment. I stayed there 4 months and i got really well, i was so happy and proud. All the efforts i did and the upsetting and unberable distance from my amily were definitely worth. Over christmas i left the place, the therapust said i was not ready as such a treatment lasts minimum a year , 18 months. Financially i really couldnt aford to stay there anymore and also i had gained a good eating plan and my mood was very good. At the same time i came across with some ebents of my life that probably i didnt want to remember, and with the help of psycologists i managed to analyse all the difficult situations of my life that may have add power to ed. but that was oly a dream. A week after i left the place i had a relapse ansd i got worst and worst and now i am almoat back to the same awful circle before the treatment. As i have already said i feel very depressed , nhs doesnt wont to help me anymore, i have been told that 4 months in a residential place are eough and that i dont need anythingelse and most of all i am not entitled to any other help. During those four months i have met people who have completely recovered though all of them have done long term treatment , even 4 years in the resudential place. I have also seen a girl not making it, she was so beautiful and young and i still cannot believe that had took her away. I dont know the answer if a full recover is pissible i just know i have tried hard i have done whwt they have told me but once bymyself i couldnt committ to what i had done in 4 months. My husbund is willing to help he hates the residential p,ace as it kept me apaart from him and the kids and that was hard for all of us. He says he can help me and that together we can beat ed and be happy with our kids as we deserve. I really hope it can happen, he knows about my relapse straight away i left the clinic but he doesnt know that i am getting worst and worst. Any suggestion, support, advise and help is welcomed i feel so alone now, i have ailed i fee a total failure and i really cannot cope anymore. Why i canor recover as most of people do after treatments, why nhs cannot help me, why i cannot beat ed, i hate it so much but if this is true why i still need it to live. I wished i could be more positive but the weight of this big failure is hard to cope with. I am not very keen on sport though often i have thought to do something just to add more to the awful practises that ed involves. But maybe sport can keep me away rom the thought of food. I know it could become a similar circle to the food one but i would esly swap my food obsession with a sport one. Any advice and support is really appriated

Ludovica

[fadedlizard in reply to Ludovica]

Hi Ludovica,

I'm so sorry that you are struggling again. It's so dispiriting when we have been doing so well and then it all unravels. You're not a failure, darling, you are trying so hard. You have made progress at the clinic. A period of adjustment once you leave would be normal. It does not mean that all is lost. That all that hard work has been for nothing.

It makes me so angry that there is so little support available to you unless you can pay for it and are willing to move so far from home. Both of which would be beyond most of us. I'm glad your husband is there for you although i appreciate the strain that an ed can put on your relationship. It is so hard to fight this fight on your own. You're not alone though. We are all with you. Keep posting. Let us support you.

Take Care,

Love,

Lizard.xxx

[Ludovica]

Dear Lizard

Thank you very much for your support. Your words are really lovely and encouraging. I am not doing great so I my husbund found on line a private help. I am goiing to attend an ED workshop on saturday as I really don't want to go deep down again and I feel it is happening. It is an 8 hour therapeutic workshop and I hope it can help to get strenght and motivation back. I will let you know and I will pass on all the good tips I will learn. Meantime thank you again it is very important for me to feel I am not alone.

Lots of love

Ludovica xxx

[fadedlizard in reply to Ludovica]

That sounds like a really good plan ~ hopefully this workshop will be exactly what you need to get you back on track, love.

I'll be thinking of you.

Let me know how you get on.

You are not doing this on your own, remember that at all times. You can PM me any time you need to chat

Love

Lizard.xxx