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Anonymous
July 22, 1998

It's been nearly eight years since I started to deal with my eating disorders. Anorexia turned into Bulimia, and in 1990 I knew that I needed to take a semester off of college and do something. I entered a four week out patient program called Serenity at a hospital in Concord, CA. It was an excellent program and I loved the two women that headed up the program. I really hated the psychiatrist that I had to see once a week there, though. I thought he was an idiot. I have received the best help from psychologists and other therapists rather than psychiatrists.

It's been long and hard, and I've gotten tired along the way, and have had to take breaks before I was ready to move on to the next stage. Prozac helped stop the bingeing. It was the only thing that stopped it, actually. And then I found I didn't need it anymore after about a year. It helped break the cycle of being depressed and eating and then being depressed because you ate, and then eating, etc... I don't need to explain it to all of you.

After a while I found that just stopping the bingeing wasn't enough. (I had hoped it would be.) There were personal issue that I hadn't really dealt with. The self-esteem stuff, abuse, etc... And so I started to work more on that with a really cool therapist. And that was cool, and I could see the patterns that I had established and that weren't so good for me. And then I took a break to let it all sink in.

The last thing that I am dealing with, and it's turning out to be the most scary and the most exciting at the same time is showing emotions. Anger and sadness in particular. I gotten so good at shutting down that it's hard to let out. I've started working with a Reikien therapist, and it's been really cool. I've been working with her for about three months now and I am making the progress that I want. My goal is get angry without being afraid that I'm going to hurt someone, to cry without thinking that I'm ugly, and to just be able to feel this stuff without shutting down.

Just keep working. It won't happen at once, and there will be times when you think you are through, but you discover that you are not. Look back at the progress you make. And after a while, you have to stop defining yourself as someone with an eating disorder. You have to decide at some point that was you then, but this is you now. An intelligent, strong, resilient, beautiful, creative person, that deserves to be heard, deserves attention, and deserves honor and love. I'm finally at this point. And I'm finally really moving on. The ED has changed the way I look at the world, and I will never forget the pain, but going though the work to recover has caused me to grow into a really incredible person. Someone that I like and that other people admire.

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