Recently I tweeted that I had a bit of a realisation about one of the key motivations fuelling my eating disorder.

I was attempting to explain how my anorexia worked to my boyfriend one night – he met me just as I began recovering and has therefore never seen me seriously unwell in this way. The conversation led into discussion of the pressures women face to be thin, and how comments and stigma from others can lead people to risk their health for this goal.

My boyfriend is naturally slim and acknowledged having a sort of ‘thin priveledge’ where he’s never had to feel the shame that comes with other people looking at his weight negatively.

I wasn’t so lucky. As I teenager, I was bigger than my peers. Again, I try to be responsible when discussing eating disorders so won’t reference sizes but I had a fair amount of puppy fat. I was at times ridiculed, and certainly my appearance (spots, bad hair and being chubby) meant I was never in with the popular kids. Boys didn’t fancy me and I often felt self-conscious.

When I turned 17/18 I suddenly lost weight. To this day I still don’t know why. It just happened. I was actively trying to. I got a lot of compliments but I didn’t think much of it.

When I went to university, I really began to struggle with my mental health. I wasn’t sleeping well, I felt pressure to be someone I wasn’t and I began to experience anxiety and depression. As my university was a sporting uni, I joined a gym. All my friends were doing it and it just felt like I had to. I’ve already blogged about how this spiralled so I won’t do so again, but I rapidly lost more weight.

When I returned home to my summer job I got a lot of compliments. I also found around this time, living the life of this new person, this thin, attractive, socialable girl, meant I was popular for the first time ever. I had a big group of friends, guys started showing interest in me when I went out, and I was getting endless social invites.

Looking back now, I can see this was a symptom of my personality disorder. I was seeking validation for my existence externally. Internally I still felt like the fat ugly duckling, and felt like I was completely worthless, so I used social situations to allow me some peace from this.

I unconsciously associated my social status and the brief periods of self-worth I had with my weight. People were so ‘proud’ of me, and kept telling me I had done ‘amazing’. In my head, I assumed if they thought so highly of me when I was thin, they’d think the opposite if I regained weight. And that terrified me.

As someone who grew up with a stereotypical Jeckyll and Hyde father, I grew up believing my worth had to be earnt. I wasn’t inherently worthy of being on this earth, loved and respected, my worth came from how others saw me. If my dad was nice to me, I was a good daughter and a good person, if he was mad at me and abusive, I’d earnt that to.

This stuck. I’ve always got my sense of who I am and how worthy I am from other people. At school I enjoyed drama for a period because I got instant feedback that I was ‘good’. This then moved in to academic achievement and getting into one of the top universities in the country. These achievements provided me with a sense off worth because they made others ‘proud’ of me. I never felt it. I never felt proud of anything I achieved. But knowing others were was enough.

So, my realisation was how interlinked my BPD and anorexia are. My self worth is inherently unstable as it comes from everyone but me. I’m incredibly sensitive to others moods and blame myself for how everyone else behaves or feels.

Anorexia was, for me, a means to keep myself in a socially acceptable group. A group where I was able to be validated, even at a superficial level, and be made to feel like I was somehow ‘good enough’. My association with being larger and being poorly treated, and what this made me believe about myself, led to a phobia of weight gain. I feared how others would judge me, ridicule me, assume I was a bad person. And I just couldn’t bare that.

All off this was on an unconscious level, I had no idea this was an issue, and it’s taken years to come into consciousness.

To me it also seems uncoincidental that my anorexia began to loosen its grip as I was diagnosed with BPD. As I finally received a diagnosis that made sense. Had a doctor who showed me compassion and understanding. As things finally began to click. Shortly after this, in my early days of recovery, I met my boyfriend. A man who understands me, who helps build me up and feel more stable in who I am. Who has pushed me to see my worth even when no one else can.

I’m hopefully that this new understanding of what fuelled my anorexia will help prevent relapses, or at least help me reocery faster if they ever occur. On those days where that anorexic voice gets louder and louder I have an idea where to look to find her roots. And I know to comfort her, to remind her of her worth and help her to feel safe. And hopefully, this will be sufficient to quieten her.

Lorna

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