Bulimia Nervosa

#borderlinepersonality #PTSD #MajorDepressiveDisorder #BulimiaNervosa #Anxiety #DissociationDisorders

Hi, my name is Emz and I am here because I am recovering from addiction, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa I suffer with extreme anxiety, depression and complex PTSD. looking for people to relate to with any of these disorders. thank you

Writing in this safe space to vent. I work 2 jobs as a nurse, between me and my partner we have 7 children, I lost my insurance due to a big move almost 1000 miles away and it is unclear when I will be able to get reestablised with a therapist and a psychiatrist to start medication again. I am going without meds and I just feel like I am losing myself. What are some tips the people who don’t need meds could give a struggling person like me?
#Anxiety
#BipolarDisorder #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #sasurvivor #PTSD #Nurse #BulimiaNervosa

#BulimiaNervosa #Vomiting #Fasting #BingeEatingDisorder #BINGE #EatingDisorders

Part 1 of 2 Trigger Warning – mentions of #EatingDisorders behaviours, possible trigger for Emetophobia.

Irony. It’s a fickle thing, and (ironically) it only seems to show up in our lives at the most inconvenient of times.

I have battled an eating disorder actively since I was 11. I’m now 24. I’ve been diagnosed at various stages with #BulimiaNervosa , #AnorexiaNervosa  and Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified – in short, I have displayed a mishmash of every eating disorder trick and behaviour there is. Seriously – you name it, I’ve done it in an effort to numb myself, hurt myself, lose weight, and altogether disappear. 13 years of restricting, binging, purging,

laxatives, diuretics, exercising, fasting, eating super “healthy”, dehydrating, over-hydrating, eating nothing but chocolate, ordering my salads with dressing on the side or spending hours in the food court cycling between restaurants and the bathrooms. My bank account has taken massive hits, my weight has fluctuated wildly, I’ve legitimately lost count of the number of hospital admissions I’ve had. My health though? That’s been destroyed.

When I was 19 I was diagnosed with POTS – postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome – which makes me dizzy, my heart beats too fast when I stand, my blood pressure is too low, I often faint. This chronic illness which affects millions of people worldwide was the first real and permanent hit my health took as a result of my eating disorder. The cardiologist who diagnosed me said “you know, if you hadn’t put so much strain on your heart by vomiting so much, this never would have happened.” I don’t know if it’s entirely true, but considering the time I spent on the cardiac wards in children’s and adult’s hospitals, I know I’ve done permanent damage to my heart. POTS forced me to take a semester off university after the fifth time I fainted trying to tackle the hills on campus. I now live in a state of constant awareness – don’t stand up too quickly, don’t crouch for too long, eat lots of salt, take medication to slow your heart rate, when that looming blackness of a faint comes, get to safety, try to look at your watch before and after you faint so you can see how long you were out for, call the hospital if you hit your head. I am fatigued from my heart constantly thinking I’m running a marathon when I’m sitting at my desk at work, but I’m used to it. I can cope with it.

When I was 23 I had cameras stuck up both ends of me (tell me, during an endoscopy-colonoscopy, do the cameras meet in the middle and say hello?) to try to figure out why my intestinal tract was failing me. I was told I have IBS, we tested for many intolerances and allergies… I had none. And this time I was told I just had to cope with the symptoms of debilitating bloating and diarrhoea every day. Nothing could be done, between starving and purging and abusing laxatives I had, as my doctor so eloquently put it, “fucked my guts”.

But over the next 6 months, something magical happened. I began to wholeheartedly recover from my eating disorder. After 13 years of hell, I was finally eating freely, rarely binging or purging and I genuinely wanted to eat.

By January of 2022, I was better than I had been since my ED began. My weight had finally stabilised and my exhausted body was craving food it wanted and needed in appropriate and health-promoting amounts. It was glorious. Going out to eat wasn’t scary, the scales no longer ruled my every waking moment and (as per my previous article) I was working full time, living on my own, and finally making headway in therapy. It turns out, when your mind isn’t clouded by malnutrition and disordered thinking, you can really tackle your trauma and depression, and get to the roots of why you feel compelled to use maladaptive behaviours like eating disorders or self harm or substance abuse.

Unfortunately, my euphoria at my recovery was short-lived. By the end of January, I was (unintentionally) throwing up almost every solid food I ate, living with endless nausea and stomach pain and was beginning to lose weight rapidly. During February I ended up in hospital twice, desperately dehydrated from days of not being able to keep down food or water or any of my life-giving medication. My kidneys were failing and my inflammation markers and liver enzymes were off the charts because my body had become deficient in everything. I was diagnosed with #Gastroparesis , and not long after my depression had consumed me again, so badly I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for yet another round of electro-convulsive therapy.

So h

Part 2 of 2 ere is the cruel irony – I finally wanted to eat freely and abundantly… and my body refused to let me. Gastroparesis means my stomach empties much more slowly than is normal. Food will sit in a ball (an aching, agonising ball) in my stomach for hours on end, not moving through, not nourishing me, just sitting there until eventually it’s rejected and vomited back up.

With the help of the hospital dietician, and my own private one, I was started on naso-gastric feeding (a slow drip of liquid nutrition into my stomach that is gradually digested over many hours). It saved my life. My weight loss slowed and my blood test results improved. My fatigue lessened, as did my depression. I learnt a horrible lesson – the starvation that used to make me feel high on adrenaline when it was self-induced, now just made me sick, tired, depressed, anxious… my memories of self-imposed starvation were of euphoria and control. My knowledge of uncontrollable starvation is of pain. So much pain. And I feel for my past disordered self, knowing how much pain she was masking behind a guise of “purity” and “self-control”. That sad, sick girl

fooled herself into thinking starvation was a happy thing. Knowing what I know now, I could never go back.

I am now eating some of my food gradually over the course of the day, the rest I’m still receiving through a feeding tube overnight. But I’m well enough to be back at work and living my life (around endless appointments for medical monitoring and planning, psychology, psychiatry… it goes on and on). I’m even in a relationship again! I never dreamed someone could find this body attractive, let alone this body with a tube taped to its face. But, as usual, my disordered brain was wrong. But every day as I lift meagre portions of bland food to my lips, or hunch over the toilet regretting a more “normal” meal, I come face to face with irony in all her glory. I once strived for a life of restrictions, would have been gleeful for an excuse to throw up, would have been joyous at the thought of tiny portions and rapid weight loss. Now that these things are no longer of interest to me, my life is overcome by them.

Irony is fucking cruel.

TW: self harm, bulimia

I’m tired of my head. I’m tired of being me. I’m tired of shoving my fingers down my throat and bringing up the contents of my stomach. I’m tired of reaching for the razor or the knife. I’m tired of going to work every day and pretending I’m happy and doing okay and hiding my arms and tired black eyes.
I’m tired.

#tired #IntrusiveThoughts #ADHD #CheckInWithMe #Depression #BulimiaNervosa

Eating is hard today. Keeping food down is even harder.

#BulimiaNervosa #CheckInWithMe