My 15-Year Eating Disorder

Years ago, I was asked to speak at a National Eating Disorder Awareness event about my story. It was the first time I publicly shared my story, and I was terrified. 

When writing my speech, I asked myself what I wish I could have heard as a young girl struggling with an eating disorder.

What I wish my mother could have heard so that she would know how to help me.

What I wish strangers could have heard so that maybe they could understand the complexity of my struggles. 

I would have wanted to hear the truth, which terrified me because the idea of talking honestly about eating disorders meant I might not be giving people what they were looking for: hope. 

This is the tricky part about healing--it gets worse before it gets better.

Trauma, grief, and inner child wounds are like a parasite: their presence alone is painful and uncomfortable, and once we start to examine them, unpack them, and witness them, the pain becomes worse--almost unbearable--until our whole systems are cleared and nothing is left--not even the parts of our insides we need in order to be well.

A whole rebuilding process begins from scratch, and it’s messy and wrought with setbacks, relapse, and discovery.

Healing is not a linear process. 

So when I thought about writing my speech, I knew that by simply telling the story of my recovery, I would be robbing my community of the truth, and that would be doing my younger self--my inner child--a disservice.

What did my Inner Child need to hear? What could I have said to her, to comfort her, to protect her, so that she could maybe have avoided all this pain and suffering?

My Inner Child needed to hear that she wasn’t alone.

That it was ok to fuck up.

That if she tried to recover and it didn’t go well the first time, she was not a failure.

That she was perfect, right, and good, in every facet of her life.

Because as powerful as hope is, I realized that if I used my 5 minutes to speak about my experience, offering hope without the messy, dirty details of how I succeeded would leave the listening youth and their families with the confusing and inaccurate message that the goal of recovery is perfection.

The goal of recovery, healing, and wellness is never perfection.

The goal of healing is not success.

The goal of wellness is not to end somewhere or meet a finish line.

When we frame recovery and healing through a lens of "succeeding" or "finishing" or even being "recovered," we perpetuate a culture of accomplishment over satisfaction, of completion over experience, of hard work over rest.

This toxic way of life has permeated even our healing world, and perpetuates the already existing perfectionistic tendencies of those of us with old wounds, and reinforces the fear and belief that we will never be good enough, perfect enough, or right enough. 


Looking back, I know that changing my body was a way for me to physically display my pain.

If I looked sick, wouldn’t someone notice?

Wouldn’t they realize I wasn’t ok, without me having to say it? 

For years this became a pattern:

If I was struggling with fears of inadequacy, lack of self-worth, or crippling depression and anxiety, I would turn to my eating disorder.

I never asked for help.

I was too afraid that someone would think my "problems" weren’t that bad or that I was overreacting.

I had internalized gaslighting so deeply that I believed my wounds around safety, worth, and needs were "too much." So instead, I made myself physically sick, because maybe then someone might take my pain seriously. 

I also believed that unless I was sick enough, I didn’t need treatment. I believed that if I wasn’t underweight, fed by a tube, or forced to go to treatment by concerned family members, I must not be disordered enough. 

This twisted logic followed me for ten years, until I finally entered treatment in 2016.

When I admitted myself, I was not underweight, no one except my husband had expressed concern, and the only feeding support I needed was on how the hell to know what a regular day of food looked like. To me, this was still not desperate enough--not bad enough--not worthy enough of seeking help. 

What I learned in my time at treatment was that I am enough.

I am enough.

I am worthy of help, support, and love, no matter what weight, shape, or size I am.

I learned not to compare my struggles to anyone else’s.

I learned to speak up for myself and ask for my needs.

I learned skills that I desperately needed.

This was step one in my recovery.  

There have been more steps than I can count on both hands in my healing journey that followed.

Re-wiring the part of my brain that believed I had worth was step one, and it took over a year to shift, change, and solidify that belief.

Since treatment, I have uncovered a lot of harsh truths around my eating disorder.

About why my eating disorder developed in the first place.

About what my eating disorder covered up or protected me from.

About what it took from me and the grieving of those losses.

My eating disorder showed up as a survival mechanism.

Before the birth of my eating disorder, I was already suffering. I already hated myself. I was already wrapped in a heavy blanket of anxiety and insecurity.

My eating disorder showed up in an attempt to protect me.

To try and help me the only way it knew how: she made strict regimens in an attempt to soothe me from the chaos in my heart and mind. She thought encouraging me to change my body would coax me out of feeling worthless. 

And because I had no better methods, I let her try and help. 

Because I didn’t have language or examples of how to express my insecurity, my anxiety, and self-loathing, I adopted her language and followed her example. 

I used the tools and rules she gave me to cope with the turmoil in my internal structure.

I didn’t know these methods would hurt me more than help me, because at first they didn’t hurt.

At first, I felt a wave of relief. This relief lasted a few months, but the resulting pain lasted 15 years.

Even so, time and time again, when I fell deeply depressed in college, when insurmountable insecurity arose from rejection, or when I felt paralyzing anxiety in grad school, my eating disorder came to offer her services.

Sometimes I still let her, because she was the first lesson I learned in how to ease panic or self-soothe, and in many ways that makes her the easiest tool in the box—but the short-lived relief does not outweigh the damage our relationship has had on my life.

Five years have gone by since I entered treatment, and the invaluable lessons I learned in treatment have not left me.

But more life has happened.

More stressors have arisen, and again, my eating disorder has asked for a place at the table.

I have absolutely relapsed.

I have absolutely had disordered thoughts, behaviors, and urges since treatment.

But oh so much else has happened. 

I have generated courage.

Courage to talk about my eating disorder.

Courage to educate others.

Courage to be vulnerable and say, “no, everything is not okay right now.”

Courage to tell my story and acknowledge that when we aren't taught our worth, when we aren't provided safety, and when our success in the material world is prioritized over our joy and peace, our minds and bodies will do almost anything to cope with that suffering.

We owe it to those who struggled in silence before us to start speaking up and sharing our stories.

To heal and do the inner work so we can start educating our younger generations.

To give those that come after us the opportunity to develop a sense of worth, freedom, and right to exist as humans on this planet.

This is the trajectory of my hope. It is grounded in resilience.

It is about trying, failing, and channeling all the courage I can muster to get back up.

To look back at where I’ve fallen, and to see that I am still standing.

To see how much I’ve learned and how brave I was for trying to get well in the first place.

To see my setbacks and relapses as growth points, as learning opportunities--while remembering and honoring that growing hurts.

To know that I am right, good, and perfect, and there is nothing I have to do to make that true.

It already is.

This is my hope.

XX
Rachel

>Learn more about Rachel’s journey with Eating Disorder recovery, depression, divorce, & finding comfort in the discomfort of living in her memoir, Where the River Flows.

>>Subscribe to Rachel’s Substack publication, The Messy Middle to read honest stories of living with uncertainty, mental illness, & life in the messy middle.

>>Follow Rachel’s daily life on instagram, and get inspired daily with reminders to dance & embrace being a messy human.