As Marnie Goodfriend tells.
February 24 – March 3, 2025, is the awareness week for eating disorders.
I remember the first time when it happened – my first Bulimic episode. I was in Cape Town for the summer and worked for a legal organization after I ended my first year of the legal faculty. I didn’t think much about it. Binging and cleaning occurred occasionally, so it was easy to lock this dysfunction away in a box, similar to me in an unpredictable home that was happy, but also full of fighting, screaming and sadness.
After leaving the house at the age of 22, my life became more peaceful, but I always expected that a monster around the corner would appear. A year later, I didn’t know how to work without the chaos I was used to, and my thoughts reproduced it in other ways. I had not yet recognized the profound influence that my family dysfunction had on me. And since I was at the legal faculty, I was also in an atmosphere in which people constantly judged themselves and others. I was a high -flyer who switched my feelings down, so there were trauma in me for years. Binging and rinsing were somehow self -federation and a discharge from all these stress factors.
I also started to watch what I looked and constantly criticized my body. I thought the world would end if I ate a tiny bag of chocolate almonds. How could I possibly allow myself to do that? I have exceeded any detection. That was my thought pattern. The voice in my head was so negative and valuable. I never liked what I saw in the mirror. Even if I didn’t bing and cleaned, I had omnipresent thoughts of restrictive and hyperfixing on my body.
My eating disorder was a shameful thing that I hidden from the world. From the outside, my life looked very composed, which made it more difficult to admit what was really going on. As an accomplished, clever and successful woman, I thought: “I have that. I can solve this problem alone. ”
That is the challenge of having an invisible disorder – nobody knows. I continued to beat myself up and wondered why bulimia had such a choke pit about me. And after every episode I experienced depression fights.
When I was looking for a possibility to “solve” bulimia online, everything pointed out to get help. But I couldn’t get myself to do it for years. It was embarrassing to me and was ashamed.
It was easy to convince myself that I could solve this problem alone because I had a long time without binging and cleaning. Then the pandemic hit and the world became quiet. My episodes started more often and I had more time to step back and think about my life. Then I finally connected to my first therapist. They asked me to write a list of things that I said to myself when I looked in the mirror. It was a painful experience that I will never forget.
At that time my friends and my family knew about my disorder, but I played them down and told them that it was under control. My parents even had an intervention, but I told them I would get the help I needed, so they left them alone. After only six sessions with my first therapist, my symptoms stopped. I thought quickly, I was healed and my eating disorder was behind me. I now know that we only scratched the surface of the work that had to be done. I drove several other therapists for a short time.
Then I got into a new relationship that promoted my wrong belief that I was “healed”. My symptoms only appeared when he was gone. We were two broken people who held each other, so I felt like I had support, but it was a plaster about all of the other pain that I had not yet passed through. I now know that this person was never healthy, but I found short -term relief in being with him.
Our painful separation was a big turning point for me. I found a therapist who also had an eating disorder and experience with bulimia. I felt seen and not judged by her. She came home to me and sat on my couch to create the security level that I had to open. I learned how to escape food from negative thought patterns. In contrast to sobriety from alcohol or substances, you still have to deal with food, which requires constant awareness and catches your problematic thoughts before taking over the takeover. The therapist’s nutritional approach has revived my love for cooking. I became creative in the kitchen and enjoyed preparing meals for me and others again. She also connected me with a breath catcher, and these sessions enabled me to move my attitude and let go of past trauma.
I am very grateful where I am today, as there were many times in which I would never have thought that I would get to a place where I have a healthy relationship to eat. As part of my healing trip, I started working with national eating disorders to help others experience what I did. As a member of the board, I support your mission to change the way in which eating disorders are recognized, understood and treated so that those affected can recover and achieve permanent well -being.
I think there is a reason for everything. For me, my eating disorder led me to deep soul work, more self -image, compassion, a flourishing relationship with me and my family and the opportunity to make a difference in the world. There is always a way forward, starting with others in the one that you see and support.
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Our real women, real stories are the authentic experiences of women in real life. The views, opinions and experiences that are shared in these stories are not supported by healthwomen and do not necessarily reflect the official politics or position of healthwomen.
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