How I Recovered From My ED On My Own- After Spending Thousands On Therapy
By: Faith Cretella
Tags: Eating Disorders, Bulimia, Anorexia, Eating Disorder Recovery, Self Help

I still remember the minute I became aware of my body because it was the exact time that my eating disorder developed.

I was sitting at lunch with a girlfriend who was eating a salad without dressing, carrots, and an iced black Starbucks coffee, condensation beading off of the small plastic cup. She wasn’t eating as much as she used to and it showed on her body. To me, it seemed healthy, like a diet.

I reached into my lunch box and pulled out my mom’s creation of the day: a whole wheat wrap with peanut butter, strawberry jam, sliced apples, and crushed walnuts.

My friend stared disgustedly at my wrap and said, “Are you really going to eat that?”

It wasn’t my choice to go to therapy any of the times I went.

The first time, I’d already been starving myself for over a year. My diet consisted of green tea, steamed vegetables, and gum. The hunger pains motivated me, made me believe that I was one step closer to my ideal figure.

But I was hungry for texture. So at some point, realized the way to get there was chewing my food, and then spitting it out- all the motions of eating without the calories.

I did this for months — buying bulk candy or dollar snack bags, sneaking them into my room at night, chewing them up, spitting them into empty water bottles, and then throwing the evidence out the next day. It worked for me. I stayed thin while giving my jaw a workout.

Until my mom walked into my room one night in the middle of a “session.” She was horrified at what she saw. There was chocolate everywhere. Chocolate and shame.

Cue my first therapist who helped with absolutely nothing except an embarrassing breakup letter to my eating disorder. Here’s a hint: like most breakups, it didn’t take just a letter.

But I promised I’d stop with any ED behaviors. I insisted that I was fine and didn’t need more therapy. And everyone around me believed it.

Go to therapy, get fixed.

Clearly since I’ve noted my multiple therapists, that wasn’t the end. I slowly started slipping into a pattern that wasn’t ruled by me anymore- it was ruled by the ideal body I couldn’t even visualize. Instagram models, skinny friends, celebrities, the media all pumped out images of tight bodies, hard bodies, beautiful bodies.

And mine was anything but.

My mom started watching what I ate, making sure that I was actually consuming food even if she had to force me to eat it. I resented her. And out of the resentment for my mom, my body, my thoughts, and basically everything around me, my ED took a new form. Bulimia.

By far, this was the worst paralysis I’d ever felt before. I suddenly found myself sneaking off after meals to stand over the toilet bowl with my fingers down my throat. It was yet another high for me. The thrill of knowing I could eject my calories, the thrill of knowing it was wrong, and the thrill of knowing I was one step closer to getting the body I wanted.

This went on for two years, pushing my body to it’s absolute limit to maintain the thin body I’d scultped. But in the back of my mind I thought it would always go away one day- when I finally became happy and had friends and plans on the weekend.

That’s the thing about habits though, they’re hard to break. And before I knew it, bulimia had become a part of my everyday life and it wasn’t willing to leave just because I finally had a social life.

It wasn’t until my mom caught me throwing up that I was forced to go to therapy again. This time, to a bulimia specialist in Canada. So I packed my bags and flew to Canada by myself, hoping this was the cure.

This therapist working intesively with me, doing hypnotherapy, workshops, meditation, personality tests, astrological analysis, and lots of questions. By the end of the three days I was supposed to be cured of my bulimia.

I had made peace with my body (or so I thought), explored some root issues (family drama), and worked out ways to interrupt negative thought patterns. I was supposed to be rewired.

But I thought about throwing up every day, every meal, every second after I returned home. Which led me to believe that something inside of me was broken. Not even a specialist could hypnotize the eating disorder out of me.

And then I had my first slip. Guilt, shame, failure. There was no light and I was drowning. I let it take me. Make me average like everyone else with an ED who relapses after treatment.

And then it started all over again. I couldn’t control my thoughts telling me that everything I ate was making me fat, that no matter how hard I worked out, it wouldn’t make a difference, and I’d never be like one of those effortlessly beautiful Instagram models.

I was trapped in an endless cycle of hate, puking, and lying.

“Yes I’m better now!” I’d say convincingly to anyone who asked me. After about five years of the same behavior, I had become the best liar I knew. I had everyone fooled. Even myself.

I really thought I could compartmentalize that part of me like it wasn’t what ruled every decision I made. I walked around like I didn’t have an anvil hanging over my head waiting to drop and either injur or kill me.

I knew the risks of maintaining such brutality on my body. I knew it could kill me. But I thought, it happens to a small few, but it won’t happen to me.

It wasn’t until my mom suggested that I go to a support group for bulimia that I was snapped back into some kind of reality. A reality I hadn’t known for a while.

I was the youngest member of the group by at least 10 years. The oldest member was in her 60s. All of the women sitting in the group circle around me shared their pain from a relationship with bulimia one after the next.

The pain compounded inside of me every time I heard someone new speak of their lost relationships, lost money, lost jobs, poor health. Then it really hit me; that could be me in my 60s if I didn’t figure out what was wrong and address it. If I was going to be anything, it wouldn’t be a mom, and aunt, a grandma with bulimia.

I wondered how I could ever have a family of my own if I was lying to them every day. How I could be financially stable if I bought food just to throw it up. How I could live with the pressure of all the guilt, shame, and failure every day of my life for another year at least.

And that day, November 20th, 2017, I decided I wasn’t going to throw up ever again. I wasn’t going to feed the void of perfection that was never going to be filled anymore. I needed to find an interest that wasn’t an eating disorder. I’d been given so many raw talents and I was wasting them by throwing up to be “skinny.”

I never wanted to be skinny anyways, I wanted to be a tight body, a hard body. But instead, I was drowning in my own skin. So I started fueling my body so that I could workout and get the tightness that I wanted.

I started eating meals that I loved again without thinking about when I could go to the bathroom to throw them up.

I started to rediscover the person I was, the joyous girl before the eating disorder. The fun girl who loves others more than herself. The girl who enjoys working out for the strength and power of it. The girl who was perfect to begin with.

And then my mind opened to all the things I had and I fell in love with my life again. It was like the lights were turned on after being in the darkness for so long. It was like coming home from an alien planet I’d been living on, alone.

I started seeing a new therapist, one who let me talk without trying to fix me. He listened, questioned, guided, and translated my thoughts so that they made more sense to me. I could finally understand myself again and my thoughts were my own, not some other girls with an eating disorder.

And now, three years later, when people ask me how I’m doing, I can genuinely say “I’m good.” I stopped telling lies and lived the truth. My truth.

My eating disorder wasn’t caused by the need for control or family trauma like a lot of therapists try to throw at patients. My eating disorder grew out of my own inability to recognize that I was already perfect. I was using my eating disorder to chase an ideal that I already was.