I'm not responding but I still really care

I normally have texts to reply to, facebook messages to read, letters I ought to be writing and sending but sometimes I just don't have the brain space to respond. It's hard when you have a day when you're feeling low or finding it hard to muster together the motivation to do all of the things you need to and then there's being sociable added in too.

When I was first admitted on to Naomi, I became a bit of a hermit, it was all too stressful and intense to think about any other aspect of life. I was attending to my needs and trying to get well; fighting the everyday battles, some of which took place in my own head. But throughout that time I appreciated the contact from my lovely friends and family. I couldn't quite manage to respond or get into conversations about how things were or what it was like, how I was doing. But I took a great amount of comfort from the friendly messages from the people I loved.

Now I'm in the real world, again I still have day's when socialising or getting in touch with people is just a little extra that is a bit of a struggle. The delight of replying to everyone, getting in touch but then getting replies and once again feeling a little snowed under is all too familiar. But again, it really really doesn't mean I don't care and don't want to talk to everyone, I'm just not quite up to speaking right at that second.

I realise it must be really hard to keep trying to message and talk to a friend who doesn't always reply, and no doubt a lot of my friends and family must have times where they think they won't bother to keep trying. But know that your friend/family member will reply when they have the brain space to, and they will definitely appreciate knowing you are there, care for them and will wait until they are ready to talk.

Hopefully that rambling makes a little sense!

A carrot on the end of a stick

Photographs by Lizzie @elizabeebeebee

Recovery is a hard journey, that much is clear but how do you hold on to the reasons you're doing it and manage to get through the dark and difficult times. When I began my recovery journey, I wasn't totally sure I wanted to be well. I was advised and subsequently talked a lot about 'giving it a go and deciding at the end whether I wanted to continue to recover or not'. It was something that filled my family with trepidation, would I make the decision to stay well or would I opt for the eating disorder again. I *think* I'm continuing to make that recovery focused choice each day, it's hard but it is achievable if you break everything into bite-sized (ironic I know) chucks and tackle the little bits as they arise rather than focusing on the end goal all of the time.

Photographs by Lizzie @elizabeebeebee

Something that did help me was thinking about an obtainable goal that I could achieve at the end, post discharge *if* I made the decision to stay well, my carrot on the stick (ironic again I know) was to aim to be able to get back in the saddle and riding again. Animals have always been such a big part of my life, from working in the veterinary work to having a whole heap of lovely pets. Horse riding was an obvious goal, something I adore and have done in the past and something that absolutely requires health, concentration, strength, stamina... all the things that I could gain from a healthy body as opposed to an unhealthy one. Riding is also a time where I'm completely unaware of my body, ok obviously I have to be aware of my position, posture and what my body is doing as opposed to how it feels in an ED way. There's absolutely no time available to bodycheck or think about what other people may be thinking about my appearance when you're riding without stirrups and concentrating on where your leg should be to ensure you're not going to fall off!

When I started as an inpatient on Naomi, I was so physically unwell. My body was exhausted from all of the damage I had done to it over the years of my eating disorder. I was then put on modified bed rest because of the unhealthy relationship I had with activity. When I eventually got to go for my first walk around the grounds with staff, I struggled to keep up and nearly didn't make it the whole way round. I didn't really imagine how much different life could be, what it would be like to regain my health and fitness and get back to being able to enjoy activity in a non-driven way. I'm also mindfully running the race for life... insert shameless bid of sponsorship here!

My plans to horse ride really helped my to think about recovery in a more mechanical way. I needed to eat a certain amount to enable my body to repair which would then allow me to ride again. It helped me to have a really SMART goal to work towards.

Photographs by Lizzie @elizabeebeebee

I'm so happy to have been able to go for my second riding lesson today and I've actually improved a bit. My body is doing what I want it to, I'm getting stronger in different ways and it's allowing me to build a bond with a wonderful, if cheeky pony!

So what's my kind of take home message of today. Think about something you'd like to achieve, it could be something you used to do or something new. Try and think about something that's achievable, picking running the London Marathon if you've never run before might be a little bit of a step too far, but think about something that you could do if you really focused on your recovery. It doesn't have to be recovery from an eating disorder, it could be any mental health condition that has prevented you from being able to do something that you adore and love in your life. Once you've decided on your goal, tell people about it, get excited, get pictures all over the walls and keep that carrot on the stick firmly in your sights so you can grab it when the time is right. And once you reach your goal, mark it and celebrate it, then get working on the next one. Mine is clearly to move up from my 1 foot jumps to something a little bigger or maybe a few in a row!

Please follow me by clicking on the bloglovin button to the right, and feel free to comment and share your carrot or get in touch with me to talk about my blog/ideas/feedback/suggestions.

Stay strong wonderful people xx

Here's why I've spent the day throwing stuff out...

I've had some amazing blog requests which I will get started on tomorrow. Please click on the contact me box to the right hand side if you're got any suggestions for a blog topic. Anyway, as it's only just still Thursday (I'm sure it will be Friday by the time I'm finished... I thought I ought to sneak in a quick blog so I'm vaguely keeping up with my promised blog a day for #MHAW2015. The reason for my lack of blog any earlier than now is that I've been having a major spring clean.

I have way too much stuff, something that has become apparent over the time of living away from home and then being in hospital for 9 months, my piles of stuff have accumulated and there's definitely bits I really don't need that could be donated to charity or sold on ebay. This part was the simple part, have I used this in the last year- if not in the charity bag, simple!

Then came the tricky part, the clothes. Now, having been unwell for a number of years and having lost weight, restored weight and repeat; I have clothes in a range of sizes for different stages of illness. Now, some of these clothes are definitely not clothes that I can wear if I am well or healthy, some of them are absolutely relapse clothes. It was a difficult decision to make to get rid of them all, I wanted to but I only part committed, throwing out the worst ones but not fully wanting to accept the fact that if I am going to continue with my stab at recovered life, there are just some items I won't be wearing again.

Today I made that commitment to get rid of any of the clothes I own that aren't the right size for me. I'm going to give the less sellable ones to charity and put the rest on ebay, the proceeds will be spent on clothes that fit me and my recovered life. I don't think you can properly continue with recovery with the ghosts of illness past in your wardrobe so I urge anyone who has any pre-recovery clothes to work to get rid of them, then you won't be facing a trigger and temptation everyday.

Life is one big transition

Today I'm blogging about a topic chosen by my lovely friend Naomi, you should follow her on twitter @Naomi_Barrow, she talks a lot of sense and is an awesome activist and fabulous lady. Anyway, Naomi suggested I talked about transitions for today's #MHAW2015 post.

Now seems the perfect time to talk about transitions, as I am mid-transition myself between being an inpatient and out in the real world again (12 days free). At the same time I've gone from living in York (student accommodation pre-hospital) and now I'm back to living at home for a while. Transitions are hard, especially for someone who is mental health concerns or needs to think about. I've come up with a list of my top tips for managing transitions.


Top tips for smooth(er) transitions:

• Work out your time scale- think about the time scale before your move/transition and work out the time frame you will have to ensure everything you need is in place. Try not to leave things until the last moment if you can.

• Make sure you have a support network at home who are aware of your mental health e.t.c. Making appointments and having to start afresh with someone new can be really stressful, but if they've already had some information and an idea of the kind of support you will need can be really helpful. It can also be good to have a named person where you will be so you know in advance who you'll need to talk to if you are struggling. 

• Plan ahead- as part of my relapse prevention work, I had a meal plan for the first week of being out in the real world. Having ideas of what you will eat, how you will manage your time and the kind of activities you can do if you are at a loss or struggling can be really helpful. Have some kind of notebook/folder with all of that information in is also really helpful as you will have a go-to emergency guide. I had things like a back to basics meal plan (a week of food), back to basics weekly structure (things I needed to do over the week as a minimum if I was low in mood or motivation), emergency meal plan (for one day) and emergency activities plan. 

• Get yourself a distress tolerance box- I'll do another post about distress tolerance boxes, they really are amazing. But essentially they're a go-to place when you're struggling with things that will soothe you, distract you and generally help you bring intense emotions back down to somewhere more manageable.  Your box could include pictures that make you happy, distraction lists, nice smelly things, touchy feely things and reasons for recovery/to not use a self destructive behaviour. There's scope for them to contain anything really, it's just a place to keep all the helpful things you know work for you together.

• Remember you don't have to do it alone- Talk to friends, professionals and family members. Try and let them know the things you might feel difficult and ways they might be able to help you if you're struggling. Keep letters or notes ready that you can give to people if you're struggling with a guide of how to support you on it. 

These are just a few thoughts, it's not a definitive list but hopefully it's a few things to think about. I suppose life is all one big transition and the key is to think about how you can manage them, once you've got a good set of skills you can use them in a variety of different settings. Transitions are hard but they are possible, keep going my lovely mental health warriors! 

Mental Health Awareness Week 2015

Yesterday was crazy busy so unfortunately I didn't get chance to write my post on the first day of Mental Health Awareness week 2015. Raising awareness for mental health is so important to me, for obvious reasons! I think it's vital that people are aware of mental health and that it becomes less of a taboo subject or area where people feel uncomfortable or uneasy because they just don't really understand or know what to stay. There's such a problem with the *unsaid* and I really feel it's something that, if rectified, could really lead to more people getting support earlier or feeling able to say when they are struggling.

This year, the focus for #MHAW2015 is Mindfulness. Whilst I was an inpatient for my eating disorder, I got to practice a lot of mindfulness and found that it made up a really large part of my recovery journey. Mindfulness enabled me to manage my thoughts and feelings in a different and healthier way. Rather than trying to exert control over everything, I was able to notice, accept and move on from my thoughts; being able to do this was particularly helpful with managing my eating disordered thoughts, noticing them, accepting them for what they are (eating disordered crap) and being able to not give them the time of day that my illness wanted them to have. It enable me to be mindful rather than having a mind that was full of things I didn't want to be there. I was able to just 'be' in the present rather than stuck in my head.

A common misconception of mindfulness is that it is some weirdy meditative activity, put simply mindfulness is about focusing on the current moment and not letting the past or present get in the way of it. For me, breathing mindfulness exercises are brilliant if I am feeling stressed or anxious, they really help me to clear my head and have one focus rather than lots of different ideas whizzing through my mind.

My plan is to blog as much as possible this week and help raise awareness and stuff for MHAW2015!

It's been one week...

It's been a week on the outside world, a week since finishing my inpatient stay, seven whole days of doing it for myself! I'm not really sure what I anticipated the first week post-discharge would be like but it's been remarkably normal. Of course it's been challenging and I've had to really think about what I'm doing and really work on making the recovery focused decision day-in-day-out, but it feels like that's what I'm doing. It's not easy, I not going to pretend it is, recovery is an upward battle. Sometimes you wonder if the war is worth fighting but then you remember the reasons you're doing it, the wonderful life that's there waiting for you to grab!

I wish there was a secret, a way that would just make it all happen and be possible more quickly. My inpatient consultant frequently said she wished there was a magic wand she could wave to make it all go away. The thing that I've found really helps is getting perspective and distance from your inner demons and remembering what's important in your life. I want to be able to make a difference in the world, I want to help people and do something that means something. I know that the only way I'm going to be able to do that is if I can stay well. I'm not letting some stupid eating disorder get the better of me and stop me from being able to do that. Arguably I'm not really sure how I'm going to take on the world and make a difference but fingers crossed I can start through my writing. I hope there are people out there reading my blog and getting something from it. Fingers crossed I can continue to use the medium of writing to at least keep me on the straight and narrow... if nothing else! The thing is, there's no right way to do recovery, there's no right way to go off and save the world but I'm going to just work out my own way of getting there. Perhaps not immediately but slowly but surely.

So... what now? 

The plan for the moment is to keep going as I'm going at the moment. I'm going to really find the things that make me happy and do more of them; find a yoga class in Suffolk to go to, keep doing exciting things at work, spend more time outside, spend more time with my family, just enjoy living a normal life that doesn't need to involve hospital!

And that ladies and gentlemen is a wrap

So there we go, now is my time to leave the Naomi program and begin the rest of my life. When I arrived on Naomi I was completely under the control of my eating disorder and the lies it told me, I didn’t believe recovery existed and I didn’t believe that I was unwell enough to need to stay longer than my initial plan of six weeks. I’m so glad I have completed the Naomi program, I’m proud of everything I have achieved and I feel like I am definitely now on the road to recovery. I have achieved so much whilst I have been on the program and I’m really proud of the work I have done. I have grown in confidence, really worked on identifying my needs and how I can get them met, challenged unhelpful old system rules and core beliefs and gained so much more of an understanding of myself and my difficulties.

I have really taken a step away from my eating disorder and identified the underlying causes of it and worked on these meaning it has a low weaker grip on me. I can't thank the team and community enough for such amazing support. The last 9 months has consisted of some of the most challenging and difficult points of my life. I have battled against my eating disorder and really got to understand it, faced really difficult and sad times with my family and overall learnt a huge amount about myself. Despite my struggles, I feel I really have a different relationship with my eating disorder now and I've learnt to really be able to fight it.

My life really has changed and I can't thank all of the people who have supported me to get to this stage enough. I'm still the same person as I was at the start of the program, just a different version of myself, hopefully a better version that is less diluted by my illness. It's been a long road and it's not been easy but I feel like I've got what it takes to keep choosing recovery each day. Now the real work begins as I practice doing it independently, the prospect of the rest of my life is a little daunting but I will gradually work on it and become the best version of me that I can. I truly believe everyone can recover and sometimes it just takes the right support; like a seed the time, place and conditions must be right before germination can take place and the seed become a flower. I hope that this was and is my time to bloom.

The place of true healing is a fierce place

The reality is, recovery is shit but gradually you get used to that and it becomes more tolerable, eventually you don't even realise you're doing it anymore... well that's the hope anyway.

Once again the timing of my blogging has been quite apt, I seem to have a knack of starting a blog post and then having a conversation of the same theme with someone, or seeing it in real life. This happened again today. Last week I wasn't well and as a result I was under quarantine and 'banned' from the ward. Now so close to my discharge date, a bit of independent practice wasn't a bad thing but it showed me that actually living a 'recovered' life is exhausting and a real challenge. The nice shiny idea I had of leaving the program all better was possibly a bit of an unrealistic expectation because I actually do still have an eating disorder. This realisation, I suppose, has been something I've been coming to over a number of weeks but the time to myself completely independently just brought it to the forefront of my mind.

I have a cartoon on my wall that depicts the road to recovery as two lines, the expectation of a line that goes directly from A to B and the reality of a line that goes backwards and forwards in a form of a scribble, ultimately getting from A to B but not straight away. As long as the general movement is in the right direction then it's ok if it's not exactly the way you would expect, it's ok for it to be good enough. Nb. I've added the cartoon now! Because it made more sense to have it in my blog.

So one night, at the dining table, we were discussing the difficulties we were facing and wondering when it would start to feel easier. At the start of the program, we complied with the boundaries because we had to which became doing it for ourselves because we had worked out our reasons for recovery which often also included recovering for others. The reality was that recovery was and still is hard work, a constant battle and drive to keep on track and make the 'recovery' focused decision multiple times a day. The silver lining, I determined, was that gradually you get more used to how crap recovery is until, hopefully, it would become so routine and mundane that it would be the automatic choice rather than requiring an internal dialogue each time. It all sounds somewhat depressing but actually it feels like real life. The hard things become tolerable, you may not always love doing them but you have an inbuilt understanding of why you need and want to be doing them which then becomes almost innate. And overall, faced with the alternative, recovery sucks a while lot less than life with an eating disorder does! So yes, recovery is a bit shit, but I will be choosing it as it holds the key to the life I want to leave and I'm ok with the fact that it's going to feel uncomfortable until I've got used to it.

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There is always something to be thankful for!

A page from my relapse prevention

It can be really difficult to have any outside perspective on life if you are feeling low. It’s so easy to get really stuck on your failings, how bad you’re feeling or all of the little details with inadvertently keep you really stuck and trapped. If you’re feeling bad physically or emotionally it’s so easy to end up in this trap and the prospect of it ever being any different can be unimaginable.

I’ve recently been doing a lot of work in a couple of areas that I have found really helpful and empowering; gratitude and personal values. I think both of these kind of fit in with this idea and are kind of the antidotes to think internally and getting really stuck in the moment with how you are feeling. In my relapse prevention, I’ve tried to think about all of the things I’m grateful for, and unsurprisingly (…well now I’ve done it!) there’s a hell of a lot I have to be thankful for. The key for me now, is to look at it as a positive and not as another means of beating myself up and thinking… well look at what I’ve got, I need to buck up my ideas and fix the rest of me. I think it has been really helpful to be able to refer back to my list on days where I feel a bit low and hopeless and like everything feels really difficult, these are the things I already have that are amazing and can’t be taken away from me. It’s such an empowering thing to do and once you get started you really can get carried away with all of the different things you have to be thankful for.

And some more relapse prevention

Then… values! In our Core CBT group, we looked at KellyWilson’s values worksheet. I’ve attached the link to the worksheet because it’s a really awesome tool to help focus you and work out what you want in your life and think about how successful you are being at fulfilling that value. You start by looking at the value ideas given on the sheet and rating them in their importance to you, I obviously added in pets/animals to the end of my list too. Then you think about the type of person you would like to be in each of the relevant areas, next you think about your success in each relevant area and finally you rank the values in the order of their importance of working on them at the present moment. You end up with a really focused idea of what’s important to you and what you’re neglecting at the moment. My values have really guided my relapse prevention and I’ve gone on to think about what the immediate steps you need to take to be working towards those goals. It’s really interesting because sometimes you have to work on different values before you can get to others, for example a lot of my values need to come second to me sorting out my health and mental health; without a healthy body, I can’t work on my family values and goal to have children.



More relapse prevention

The beauty of these two areas is that they can give you a real focus and kind of grounding to help you get back on track and work out where you want to go next and what that might look like. You can see what you have got and realise how fortunate you are and then think about the values that you want to guide your life and help think about yourself as a person. See recovery really is that simple... well possibly not but I think this definitely could help. I think the next step for me will be to think about my gratitude for my body and then perhaps tie all these into my positive data log and positive qualities work... all for another day!

My self-critical voice is looking at this post with an air of despair at the quality of my writing... and art work at the moment! My anxiety and self-doubt looks at different areas where I could have written better or more coherently or just differently, but my goal for today is to use the ‘good enough’ principle and think… sod it, it’s fine!! My perfectionist nature is trying to stifle me and I want to, for now at least, try and ignore it and post this piece anyway without judgement or regret.

Girl overheard

I went for a swim this afternoon and whilst getting changed I heard a mother and daughter having a conversation. A sibling had stated that the (I presume) youngest needed to learn to float better in order to not have to swim with the aid of arm bands, which she seemed keen to be rid of. Initially it seemed like a fairly inane conversation until the little girl responded. She replied, saying 'My bum's too big for me to float, do I need to lose weight Mummy?'. It really saddened me that a child, so young, was questioning if she needed to lose weight. It made me feel really sad that she had obviously heard conversations about weight that had led her to mimic what she had heard. Arguably, she probably didn't realise what she was saying, but it still made me sad that she had thought of it.

As usual, the timing of my little bit of ear-wigging came soon after I had seen this article from The Huffington Post.

Remind your daughter that the best thing she can do with her body is to use it to mobilize her beautiful soul- Sarah Koppelkam

The basic premise of her video is that body-talk isn't really necessary and that the focus should be on what you can do with your body rather than how it should and shouldn't look. As I've ranted about in previous blogs, there is such a focus on fat-shaming, thin-shaming... you name it, discussions about bodies that really aren't necessary and can do so much damage to young people.

Rant of the day.

Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings

So as usual, I'm a little bit behind the times with my post about International Women's day, which took part on 8th March. For me, IWD is such an important day in terms of feminism and general gender equality. Cheris Kramarae author co-author of the Internation Encyclopedia of Women almost perfectly sums up my view of feminism in that it is:

'...the radical notion that women are human beings.'

I'm proud to be a feminist but yet I feel there's a really bad name for those who choose to identify as one. I think feminism is not only vital to continue to champion rights for women, but it is also essential for men to gain equality too. I think there still lies and great deal of inequality for women in many areas of life such as work and politics. I'm proud to believe in a collective movement that has gained so much for women and really closed in on the gap between the sexes. As Laura Pankhurst, the great great-grand daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst rightly put it when interviewed for the BBC at the London International Women's Day equality march, gaining women the vote was the first step on a long journey towards a real equality between the sexes with education, childcare, parenting the the prevention of violence towards women being but a few of the areas in which injustices still exist.

I think my issue with some aspects of radical feminism isn't the shortsightedness in the view that feminism is a women's issue. Gender inequality is faced by both men and women and I feel that we all need feminism regardless of our gender to help put a stop to inequality for both of the sexes and for individuals who view themselves to fit out of our fairly outdated binary gender system. I think if feminists view the 'cause' as purely for women, they become part of the problem of inequality that sits at the real heart of it all.

A key area of concern, I feel, is the inequality in care for those who suffer from eating disorders. The NICE guidelines showed that 1.6 million people in the UK were affected by eating disorders in 2004 and 11% of them were men. in 2007 the NHS Information Centre found that in a snapshot survey of individuals over 16 in the UK, an alarming 6.4% had a problem with food. The problem is that this figure is considered to only be the tip of the iceberg as there are a huge amount of sufferers who are very 'high functioning' and do not receive or seek support for their disorders. The worrying fact is that a majority of eating disorder inpatient services, which are highly oversubscribed already, offer services aimed primarily at women. Men are being missed, and for me that is a real example of gender inequality that is just one example of the problems faced at the moment, something that I feel needs urgent attention. I wish there was a simple and quick fix answer or solution to gender inequality but unfortunately I think it will be an important area of work for a long while yet. I think the key would be to focus on what feminism can do for all individuals rather than adding to the problem by only focusing on women.

I am very lucky to have been surrounded by some wonderful and strong women throughout my life. The women who have loved me, inspired me, supported me and helped me to become the person I am today. I am so incredibly blessed to have had you all in my life and love you all more than I can express. If I can be just a little like you all, then I think I'll be doing fairly well.












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You treat a person, I guarantee you, you'll win, no matter what the outcome

You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you'll win, no matter what the outcome- Patch Adams

I watched Patch Adams today, starring the wonderful Robin Williams. The films is about Hunter Doherty 'Patch' Adams, an American Physician who founded the Gesundheit institute in 1971. The film tells the story of how Adams, whilst an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt, made a link between individuals mood and wellbeing and their recovery from physical illness. The key to treating patients was to do so in a holistic manner, looking at their health in terms of their family, community and the world around them. The film was semi-biographical, Patch Adams a real doctor and activist and generally inspirational man.

The real Patch Adams at the Gesundheit Institute

The story of Patch Adams really interested me as it seemed to have similarities to the history behind The Retreat, where I am currently an inpatient... just many hundreds of years earlier. The Retreat was opened in 1796, pioneering humane and moral treatment for those with mental health problems. It became a model for asylums all over the world and really pioneered the reform of mental health treatment. The Retreat was opened by William Tuke following the death of Leeds Quaker, Hannah Mills, who died in York Asylum in 1790 in appauling conditions. Tuke and his family vowed that never again a Quaker should endure the treatment that Hannah Mills had suffered; gradually the hospital catered for all individuals and retained the essence of the early views of moral treatment for patients.

Robin Williams in 'Patch Adams' 

Holistic treatment for those with mental health problems has always been something I have felt really strongly about. Through my own experiences and seeing the experiences of others, it seemed so glaringly obvious that the only way someone could recover from a mental illness was if they were treated as a whole individual, not just helped by firefighting their symptoms. For me, the real start of my recovery from my eating disorder and first time I have properly made progress with making real changes came from being at The Retreat. 

Interestingly, in this year 's 'Sock it to eating disorders' campaign masterminded by B-eat, a new report into the chose of eating disorders to the UK economy was launched. It indicated how inconsistent treatment was for individuals across the country and the outcome of this was eating disorders costing the national economy tens of billions of pounds. The report outlines B-eat's views on early intervention and focused treatment for individuals and a more holistic treatment of individuals with eating disorders. 

I think a lot of eating disorder treatment focuses on stabilising individuals but doesn't work on the psychological aetiology of their illness or working on making their lives recovery focused to help prevent them from relapsing by giving them real purpose and meaning through the activities that they take part in and do. For me, this has been the key to embarking on the road to recovery, it's been about all of me, not just the illness. 

For those who are recovery in different settings, try and look at the bigger picture and move the focus away from the minute details of your illness. If you can't see your reasons for recovery and the things you can get from recovery, then the focus remains so inward and recovery is so much more challenging.