Breaking up with Ana

First off, apologies for this going up SO late. I needed to just chill out today and just take some time for myself! On another note - THANK YOU so much for all the support you've been giving me and my friends this week. Although this is the final post in 'this series', and although it is the end of EDAW 2020, awareness is always needed, and people are always suffering, so please keep talking about it.  Supporting a friend with an ED This is one of the tougher topics to approach for me. Friends are so so important in recovery, but with that there needs to be boundaries - to protect both parties. This is something I am still very much still learning about, despite being 2 years into recovery now. It's quite tough. I've been the friend to someone who is struggling, and I've been the one struggling and leaning on a friend, so I understand it from both angles. Libs and Katie - my two BIGGEST supports. Love you x I've spoken to some people in the p

Hola my sweets! My friend Jack has very generously offered to write a blog post on relapse in ED recovery - which may I add is a very normal thing to go through in recovery, and not something to be ashamed of. I'm very proud of this man! Thank you, Jack!  Recovery Is Far From Linear Relapse. It’s a word dripping with subtext. A word that, to the eyes of the public, comes with connotations of failure, regression and backwards steps. This couldn’t be further from the truth, however. ‘ Recovery isn’t linear ’ – it’s a phrase bandied around every other mental health circle like it’s going out of fashion, but it’s done so with very good reason. It’s true . The phrase is grounded in complete truth and objective fact. Having finished treatment for my eating disorder just over half a year ago, I thought, naively it must be said, that that was that. That I’d had this hurdle in my life, but that it was now firmly in my rear-view mirror. Even when my therapist made the poin

Hello Hello! So this is a tough one for me. Initially, I made the decision to not involve people's opinions or thought processes on my own sickness and recovery period because I thought it would be too difficult. However, my beautiful mum has written a piece about what it's like to have a child with an ED and her experiences with my recovery journey. Forever grateful for the incredible support of my family. Love you mum x "Hello, I'm Hayley, Daisy's mum.  I wanted to write a bit about what being a mother of a child with anorexia is like. Daisy started with what we thought was asthma at the age of 11 years old. She daily would come in with her hands cupped over her nose and mouth saying, “I can't breathe" Trips to the GP only resulted in giving her a Ventolin inhaler. I used to feel so helpless. It took until she was 15 years old to work out that this wasn't asthma but panic attacks.  Around that time our family broke a part and we her pare

Disclaimer: I am writing this as someone who lives in the UK, so I cannot comment on treatment options in other countries. Hello! Todays post is focusing on getting help and treatment in the UK. Again, this won't be an overly long post, however I just wanted to be able to signpost people the best that I can! If you want any more information, please look at BEAT's website :) BEAT: BEAT are a UK charity dedicated to helping those suffering with an eating disorder, and those around them too. They have a lot of amazing, disorder specific help and advice on their website , that can really help you understand what you, or someone you know might be going through. They also run online support groups that are tailored to specific age groups, and struggles - these groups got me through a relapse and are so incredible. BEAT also have a help-line(0808 801 0677), a student-line (0808 801 0811) , and a youth-line (0808 801 0711) - I have used all of these lines at some

First off, thank you SO much for your support on yesterday's post - you are all incredible humans! Hello beautiful humans! Today's post is going to be focusing on how to cope with an Eating Disorder or recovery from an ED at university. This is something that personally I have had to tackle with, and still have to do on a daily basis - but when I first started uni, there wasn't much support or advice out there. It's not going to be a very long post, because I don't want people to get bored haha, however I have been able to chat with a number of people about their experiences with an ED at university, and they have all GEMS and provided me with some advice to pass on in this post! University can be a prime time for ED's to develop, or come out of their sneaky hiding places. Most students move away from home, meaning that their ED's are given the opportunity to sneak in. Especially when you are cooking for yourself, and not under the watchful eye of

Hello! So today, I want to focus on something that isn ’ t really looked at within the media – men with eating disorders. Despite eating disorders predominantly being associated with women, men certainly don ’ t escape them. I interviewed a friend of mine recently who has suffered with an eating disorder. He happily agreed to share his journey. I really hope that this can maybe bring comfort to someone.  Ed - Looking Dashing Hello! Do you mind introducing yourself and giving me one cool fact about yourself?  Hi, I’m Ed and I’m a violinist - is that cool? I honestly don’t even know? When did you first develop your eating disorder? I think I probably started just before I turned 17 but I really didn’t realise what was going on until I’d developed some really unhealthy and self-destructive habits. Do you feel there was a particular trigger for your eating disorder? I can definitely pinpoint a couple of key moments during sixth form that acted as catalysts but I