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Category: Mental Health

DIET CULTURE

I follow a lot of eating disorder recovery accounts on Instagram and there’s much talk about diet culture. We live in a diet-cultured society. Before I express my highly uneducated opinion I want to clarify the confusing difference between diet, diet and diet.

WHY I GO TO CHURCH

It is a curious thing that I feel the need to justify my decision to go to church. I have never a written a post called, Why I go to the supermarket. And yet spiritual things are often vilified – be it Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism or even Atheism. Everyone seems to be on a side, pointing fingers at the other team.

I FELL OFF MY PERCH

But simultaneous to all this positivity, I have been triggered. (I am learning to hate that word.) You would think after all this time that I would be used to managing difficult emotions and situations, but a small incident has flipped me on my head and my eating disorder is struggling. Well, let’s be honest here – today it is winning.

THE SADS

I’m on holiday 🙂 This holiday has been in the pipeline for months and then all of a sudden covid was back on attack in Australia and every state started to lockdown and close their borders. We weren’t sure if we were going to get here and once we got here, will we get back?!

WEIGHTING ROOM

I’ve gained weight. I would hazard a guess that most people don’t want to gain weight, but when you’re recovering from an eating disorder it’s especially hard. The eating disorder wasn’t entirely about weight, but it was a big part of it. For me at least. I have an intense fear of gaining weight and being overweight and now both have happened.

HIATUS

I’ve been absent. Absent from so many things in my life. One of the key components of my recovery has been writing. Since 2016 I’ve been writing up a storm. I couldn’t even hazard a guess at the number of words that have dribbled out of these fingers in the past five years. But let’s just say it includes 390 blog posts, 40 insomnia articles, an awful lot of journal entries and one whole book. Amongst other things.

CRACKED

Once upon a time, I was a whole egg. My runny, gooey insides were safely cocooned in a solid, outer shell. I felt whole. Then I fell off my perch and the shell cracked. The soggy, fragile contents spilled out and there was nothing holding me together. I was a mess.

SPOON THEORY

I think when most people think of chronic illness they think of diseases like cancer, arthritis or multiple sclerosis. Or conditions such as fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome. I feel like it’s important to point out that mental illness is also a chronic illness – it occurs again and again for a long time.