eboyns

[eboyns]

OCD. To be, or not to be?

Sometimes I sleep to get away from it. Sometimes I spend days inside because it makes the outside world too difficult to navigate. That’s why I feel frustrated when people straighten a pen and joke that they have OCD. I straighten my pens too, I move anything and everything that I can into symmetrical or linear or ‘pleasing’ compositions, because I just don’t know how not to. Symmetry, or sometimes something closer to balance, is the main focus of my OCD. My obsessive compulsive disorder. Right now, for me at least, it’s quite bad. People have it worse, sure, but for me personally it hasn’t been this bad since my first year at uni. I remember one time I stayed in my room in halls for days on end, the little rectangular space becoming my safe place where things were less stressful. There were no road markings that I had to avoid or walk over in a certain way, no pavement cracks that I had to step on precisely the same way with each foot, or door handles that I couldn’t touch. My disorder still found things within my room to obsess over; the way my books were ordered, how my essays were written, the arrangement of clothes that I could no longer just discard to one side if I couldn’t be bothered to hang them up. But for the most part, staying in there was easier.

Four years down the line and I recognise all of those compulsions, all the confusing and frankly bizarre actions and thoughts and movements that my mind tells me I need to complete. Why do I listen? Sometimes because something tells me that if I don’t touch a handle with both hands, something will go wrong; this is why these thoughts and compulsions tend to get more frequent and noticeable before a big day - a shoot that means a lot to me, an interview, an anxiety-provoking social event. Keeping physical sensations, such as pain and temperatures, balanced and even helps, somehow, to control the worry that goes on inside my head. And sometimes it’s more of a physical urge, kind of like when you have an itch and you need to scratch it. You can’t not scratch it. Sometimes that’s how it feels when an intrusive thought makes me feel the need to tense my neck; I can’t not do it. I may wake up with neck pain the next morning if it was a prominent compulsion the day before, but I still can’t not do it.

Some of the time, this disorder helps. A lot of the things I do as part of my job as a food photographer require precision and attention to detail, and I can hands down say that my OCD has helped with my work; my styling, my eye for compositions. But occasionally it gets to a point where it starts to hinder with my day to day life and I can feel that starting to happen again now. The tube is becoming a challenge again; if I’m sat down I panic about people passing by me and unintentionally nudging me or brushing up against me. Sometimes it’s the feeling that they leave on me, the fact that I can feel someone other than myself on my skin, people I don’t know or trust. And most of the time it comes back to the need to feel pressure and temperature equally; if someone touches my left knee I need to touch my right knee so that the sensation is balanced. if I’m standing on a train or bus and need to hold onto the rail, I have to alternate hands so that each one feels the same sensation and cooler temperature of the metal. The same with door handles, ovens, freezers, metal surfaces, hot cups…I could go on. I have my own separate cutlery and crockery for bad OCD days, which is every day at the moment, and I carry a straw with me to avoid drinking from pub glasses. Some people say they don’t notice I have this constant, draining battle going on inside my head, and I think that’s because I’ve had it for so long through my adolescence and adulthood that I’ve learnt how to cover things up, do things in a way that makes them look less questionable, more ‘normal.’ But I’m writing this because I think obsessive compulsive disorder is such a misunderstood thing; the small insight into my own experience I’ve shared here doesn’t even cover my own traits, let alone the rest of the people dealing with OCD, in all its shapes and sizes. I just wanted to open up and hopefully give those who didn’t know more of an idea of how this disorder can affect someone’s life, beyond the pencil-straightening cliché. And also to point out, that I’m working. I’m loving my job, enjoying spending time with friends, shooting freelance work; having OCD makes things harder, but it doesn’t make you ‘weird/crazy’ or unable to achieve things in life. So, the next time you say you’re ‘so OCD,’ take a step back and reconsider. And even as someone struggling myself at the moment, I don’t say ‘I’m OCD’ because I’m not, I’m Emma. I simply have OCD, and that’s an important differentiation.

[eboyns]

Today I will start to lose weight…the hard way.

Trigger Warning------Eating Disorder Content (no numbers mentioned)

The thing about having a history of eating disorders is that any relationship with food seems to be volatile, at best. At worst, food is both the love of my life and my worst enemy. Thoughts about it plague me constantly and over-analysing every mouthful and picking apart any conversations about food takes it toll on everyone involved, not just myself. But now I have been recovered for a year. What does this mean? It means that I have my life back. That I can go out with friends and enjoy a meal, can have a date in a restaurant with my boyfriend and can enjoy my Mum’s cooking regardless of carbs and calories. The problem is I think I’ve been enjoying this freedom a little too much. Eight years of restriction, counting, measuring and purging, leaves Emma a hungry girl, however much it hurts me to admit it. It has got to the point where the disordered eating is beginning to take on a new form, have a new lease of life inside the kitchen cupboards, behind the fridge door. Don’t worry, this isn’t me making excuses to relapse, to restrict again and end up a year back at square one. This is instead me listening to my boyfriend telling me that I’m contradicting myself by hating my body yet continuing to overeat (and yes that last word is incredibly hard for me to type). This is me acknowledging that a couple of kilos more will teeter my BMI from the comfy, relaxing ‘healthy’ into the terrifying and unknown abyss of ‘overweight’ – at least these are my perceptions of the chart that I used to study far too much on the back Biology lab wall. I am, in fact, doing this to save myself; disordered eating is not healthy or OK in any form. Eating disorders do not only affect the severely underweight as the media seems to want us to believe, but instead can hassle a whole range of people, whether they are ‘too skinny,’ obese or supposedly ‘just perfect.’ Eating disorders really are about so much more than the little red numbers that the scales throw at us.

 So today I will start my mission to be a healthier, happier and all-round more comfortable twenty-two year-old. But this time I’m doing it the hard way, by eating healthily and exercising moderately – no purging, no fasting, nothing to drag me back into that dark world of calories and restriction. Today I found a photograph of me from when I was getting ill again and I won’t lie, it was incredibly triggering. But it made me want to lose weight properly and not go back to that place. I will not weigh myself five times a day; I will not do sit-ups until my back bleeds. I will not let myself go that far again. Instead I will turn my passion for good food into a love of health and nourishment for my body and my mind, however hippie-crack-pot that sounds.

[eboyns]

Today I reached my healthy weight. Today I also went for a bike ride, met my brilliant Grandma for lunch and took some photos of fruit. Why is all this important? Because today I realised that my weight is no longer in control of me. The number that the scale reads no longer reflects my mood or balances my feelings upon it. It no longer restricts my intake or outlook on the world. Because I've realised that it really is just a number, nothing more. Instead of being obsessed with teetering on the edge of starvation, my life has become full of other things; my happiness is now driven by the people I choose to fill my life with and the activities that I choose to do each day. 

 Last week I spent seven days volunteering with a super great and friendly charity called Kith and Kids, who help people of all ages with learning disabilities and autism. I chose to spend my time enjoying a residential camp with seventy other people, helping members, cooking, swimming, painting and loads of other activities that I simply was not well enough to do three months ago. 

 I've even booked a skydive for next month (yes you read that right), which you can very kindly support here (https://www.justgiving.com/teams/Emmaboyns), as both charities do truly amazing things for people struggling and going through tough times. At the end of the day I've realised that I am the one in control, and I can do anything that I put my mind to.

[eboyns]

Recovery. Eleven weeks sat in pretty much the same room with pretty much the same people discussing pretty much the same things and eating six times a day. Boring? Yes. But also inspiring, challenging and, at times, uplifting. It's been tough, sitting around feeling like I'm doing jack-all, when actually I'm challenging some pretty difficult and stubborn thoughts and feelings that seem to have been engrained inside my head for eight or so years. Some have been fleeting and fairly easy to fix, such as my need to sit in the same chair and position my knife and fork in a certain way. Others, more challenging, and some I know I will have to put up with at least into my the near future until I'm strong enough to crack those on the head too. Being sat on those comfy-looking-but-uncomfortable chairs for three months has changed my life dramatically. I can eat pasta. When I want. I can have a meal at a restaurant. Wherever I want. I can pull my head out of the toilet and realise that there are more important things in life than undoing the lovely meal I have just enjoyed because it had more calories than that of a banana. In fact I have gone over six weeks without purging and it feels brilliant. I've basically re-taught myself how to love my food and cherish my body and all that it requests. Does this mean I am recovered? No. I still have some time left at day treatment and I'm still a little underweight. I know that lapses may happen, even relapses if I'm unlucky or hit unstable ground, but it does mean that, for now at least, I can stop obsessing over starving myself and I can enjoy things that I haven't been able to in years. Like the actual taste of freshly baked bread with lashings of butter, rather than just the smell and torture of me baking it. I am mentally in a better position than I have been since I can remember and I have an agent and a life lined up in London that will help ensure that things stay this way. I have learned to trust my body's instincts as well as notice when my mind is steering me off course and I now have the tools to veer back onto the right track. Honestly? I'm crying a little as I write this. Not because I'm sad or regretful of anything I've written, but because I am overwhelmed with how far I have come and how much I have changed and learned over the past few months. I will never take being warm for granted again, or being able to stand up without nearly passing out, or letting myself be full and satiated and happy. Because I've realised that life really is too short to obsess over such damaging things, and manipulating your own body can only ever end badly. So here's to getting a first in my degree, to having friends and family who love and support me and to being an almost-healthy weight (still working on it), because they're the things that matter; not whether I can see my rib cage through taut, pale skin.

[eboyns]

My summer isn't like everyone else's...

I won't be jetting off around the world or spending endless days in the sun with friends. Why? Because I've decided that seven or eight years of anorexia is enough and it's time to try and battle against the part of my brain that so desperately wants to starve. So I've said yes to day treatment. It's probably the hardest thing I've done and I know it will be extremely difficult and challenging and emotional. But I want to be able to live a normal life, go out for meals with friends without worrying, be able to eat in public in a group of people, be able to go out for end-of-degree meals and not have to just drink diet coke. I've achieved a lot over the last year especially and I'm not one to rave about my successes. But when I look back and think about all that I've been through, the part of me that doesn't hate myself can almost give myself a pat on the back and a well done; I've won myself an agent, I've written a dissertation and I'm on the cusp of graduating from uni with a hopefully not-too-bad mark. Recovery for me means being able to celebrate these achievements and, if it suits the occasion, doing so with my love of food. It means not having to stick my fingers down my throat three times a day or punish myself for eating a non-fat-free yoghurt or half a glass of full sugar lemonade. Day treatment terrifies me. It is five days a week for several months that involve sitting and eating meals that have to be finished, that I have no control over, whose portion sizes aren't the smallest. It means talking about my feelings in a group of strangers and being away from my friends and family and staying somewhere I haven't been particularly happy for an extra three months. But I want to recover, or at least a little tiny part of me does. And I think it's time to listen to that part. I may hate it and not be able to stick with it and only last a day or a week, but whatever happens, wish me luck and watch this space.

[eboyns]

#TimeToTalk

So today is #TimeToTalk day in the UK, a day organised by the charity Time To Change to help start the stamping out of mental health stigma. 

I haven't written a post here for a while now. It's not that I've forgotten about this blog, but more that I have been struggling with things lately and I feel that my depression has changed to a place where I don't feel as if I want to be sociable or open anymore. But I've realised that today is the right day to make another post. The thing that kept me writing this blog before was the response that I got from people; friends letting me know they could relate, people I hadn't spoken to in years thanking me for being honest and people saying that I've helped them with their own problems. That latter point meant the most to me. I still can't quite understand how me rambling here can change someone else's perspective, but if this post helps one person to think more positively about mental health, then it's been worth it.

As people close to me have pointed out, the things I write on this blog may push people away from me. Yes, it may scare people off or welcome unwanted stigma from people I would have liked to think of as friends. Perhaps it may indeed be the reason that I am still looking for someone to live with next year. But, to be honest, if people are not willing to be as open minded and understanding as they would be with people suffering from a physical illness, then their friendship is not really a true one to me.

The word suicide is a building block of three syllables that seems to divide society; those who have experienced it understand how dark it is, those who have not may not be able to comprehend this experience. But the people that I respect are those teetering on the edge; the people that are trying to empathise with those experiencing such a hard thing rather than standing back and judging something simply because they cannot imagine feeling that low. The #findmike campaign by Jonny Benjamin may have gone some way to help battle this stigma; a young man, intelligent (pretty good looking too) and the complete opposite of the crazy madman that so many people associate with mental illnesses, especially anything with the term 'schizo.' He has been a brilliant voice for the quarter of the population that have or will experience a mental illness at some point in their life.

I know the people that I can talk to when I feel like that. i know how supportive my family is and the charities that are there to listen when things don't seem worth fighting for anymore. I have these people to thank for the fact that I am still here today. This doesn't mean that feeling like that is behind me. I experience suicidal thoughts on a weekly, sometimes daily basis and sometimes the ways I deal with them are harmful to me, but I know that if I can just get through that time then things will seem better. Perhaps I am writing this for myself, so I can see that the slightly more stable Emma has made that promise in writing.

The hard thing about the disorders or illnesses I experience is the difficulty for other people to understand them. My boyfriend doesn't understand why I need help to get dressed or why leaving the house is so impossible some days. My parents cannot comprehend the anxiety that certain foods cause or the stress that intrusive thoughts or unsymmetrical things provoke.

This post is not meant to be a sob story or a cry for attention; I have written in a previous post how I feel about that latter suggestion, especially with relation to anorexia. This post is to support the brilliant work that mental health charities do. It is to take part in #TimeToTalk day and start a conversation about mental health. Yes, these are my experiences, but I hope that I can help you realise that you do not need to understand what someone is thinking or feeling to help them. You simply need to let them know that you are there for them. Give them a text, invite them for a coffee. Just don't let them think that they are alone.

1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem in any given year (http://www.time-to-change.org.uk), so it's ironic just how isolating this experience can be. That's why conversations like these are so important.

[eboyns]

Three Women talk Body Image...

Friday marked the start of the Cheltenham Literature Festival, a yearly event that features people from all walks of life, from the famous authors that everyone seems familiar with, to comedians, journalists, musicians and many more. However I wanted to use this post today to talk about an event I attended this morning, called Body Image.

This event consisted of a panel of three women; Emma Woolf, journalist and author of An Apple a Day and The Ministry of Thin, Lionel Shriver, author of We Need to Talk About Kevin and ten other great novels, and Susan Ringwood, Chief Executive of Beat, the National Eating Disorders Charity. The discussion bought up a wealth of interesting points as well as research findings from Susan Ringwood. One such example was a study in which Brownies, girls of around the age of seven, were asked to say how they felt about different sized outlines of girls the same age. Responses consistently showed that the slender outline received perceptions such as 'happy, good at sports, nice to play with,' whilst the larger shaped girls were associated with phrases like 'not good to play with, sad and lazy.' I think these findings lead perfectly into Emma Woolf's interesting and honest point about the lack of hope the modern world gives us with regards to body image and eating disorders.

I feel this outlook is one that is too often overlooked or not mentioned, especially when people with authority in the world of healthcare communicate with the public about these topics. There always seems to be a portrayal of hope; people can learn to love their bodies, eating disorders can be beaten. Yes, these points may be a necessary belief for people recovering or the families that have a relative with an eating disorder, or simply a negative perception of their bodies. There are, of course, people who do recover and 'beat' eating disorders; Emma Woolf being one example of someone who is 'as recovered as any woman can be,' as said in her own words.

However how can we move forward as individuals within a society that seems to be delving deeper into the obsession with thinness? The shrinking size of the London Fashion Week models was mentioned today, as was the media's ongoing force-feeding of celebrity weights and calorie intakes. Lionel Shriver made the great point that if she were to describe a character in a novel purely by their appearance, there would be no novel. We want to know what makes that person tick, we need to delve below the surface. So why is it that in reality we are so quick to only take appearances into account? I should make the point here that I feel this applies to people of all sizes, not just those regarded as 'fat' or overweight; I recently heard people talking about how incredibly skinny one girl was, how they just 'wanted to feed her a burger.' Why is it that her personality diminishes to her appearance and why do we suddenly assume that she needs a burger? From an anoretic's point of view, I found this language rather upsetting, as well triggering; to be honest that is all it took to change the perception of myself from 'not too fat this morning' to 'cannot eat for the rest of the day.'

Shriver talked about the impact of the internet and the surge in photographs which mean we face our own image much more often, giving us far more opportunity to be critical when pitching against those viewed as 'beautiful.' She also bought into the discussion the abilities that modern software allows in terms of post production. Being in a relationship with a fashion photographer I know just how easy it is to change reality; stomachs shrink, limbs lengthen and skin smoothes dramatically. Lionel stated with her dry, American humour, 'I mean, as long as you've still got a vertical line, that's a person, right?'

Whilst the male perception of strength remains fairly closely related to the primitive features, such as physical body strength and a firm, full muscle structure, the female perception has moved in the opposite direction. Emma stated that as a gender we feel we that to be 'smaller, hungrier and weaker, is to become stronger in the world.'

Surely the fact that society is heading in this direction shows little hope? The thing that worries me is the lack of effort to change this movement from those with authority; the government has nothing in place to encourage positive body image in schools and the fashion world does not seem to be considering using healthier sized models anytime soon. People often claim that the pictures in magazines or from the catwalk cannot cause an eating disorder. Yet, as someone supposedly 'recovering' from this illness, I know that with various Vogue's lying around the house I find less reason to eat; why should I gain weight if they are thinner than me? Why are they beautiful but I am simply worried over and nagged to eat more? I can truthfully say that these models can trigger me enough to lose weight. Why would pro-ana sites be full of them if they had no effect on people's perception of their body and their weight?

Lionel Shriver continued this subject by highlighting the celebration that the modern society and media create around celebrities whose only claim to fame are their looks. It still remains beyond me as to why people known for their lack of intelligence or negative personality are regarded by the media, and too often young people, as role models, heroines, simply because they are 'skinny' or have a pretty face and blonde hair. Shriver finished the event with the claim that it is a 'grotesque mis-channeling of ambition,' and I think I'll leave it there too.

[eboyns]

The Beginning of The Last Four Years

When I was fifteen I was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa. I had been hiding it for over a year.

I remember waking up one morning. It was 7:30am and I remember that because the little red digits from the alarm clock are frozen in my mind. That is when I told myself I'd lose weight. Just a little, just a few pounds. Two stone later and I realised just how deep I'd got myself into something that I no longer felt I had any choice over. The weird thing is, I was never big, I never needed to lose weight. I often think back to that morning when I still weighed eight and a bit stone and wish that I hadn't made that decision.

At this point I had just moved to a small, private all-girls school, but, despite the stereotypes of this environment, my particular experience did not involve a major obsession with weight or calories among my class mates, rather they seemed to me, at least, to eat healthy, normal diets. So I remember starting to look online for other people who had this obsession, this insatiable need for control and perfection and the tight pushing of bones against taught skin. I remember talking to girls who had anorexia and they all said the same thing. They all told me to stop while I still could. They pleaded with me, in the small, black font that arrived illuminated on my computer screen, to love my body, to realise I don't need to lose weight. I told them I would stop soon, I said I was in control and could eat normally whenever I wanted. They said that's what they had thought. 

It must have been less than half a year later that I found myself on the other side. I was the one giving the advice, the one pleading with people telling me that they can stop when they want. I realised how it had felt for those girls to listen to me say the same thing, knowing what was ahead.

In many cases, people with eating disorders will do anything to keep it a secret. I held mine inside of me for over a year, as it slowly ate away at my snacks, my lunch, my breakfast. The only meal I could not skip was dinner because I had to keep my parents oblivious. To this day I am the most amazing liar, when I want to be. 

But one day I decided that I had a problem. I had something inside of me that was making me feel more lonely than I had ever imagined anybody could feel. I remember writing a five hundred word saga for my English coursework about a girl who restricted, purged, hated her body. I remember my English teacher pulling me aside in the courtyard after school one day and asking me if it was autobiographical. I said no, smiled and got on with my summer.

After that moment I knew I had someone who knew and even though I had denied it I still felt as if I wasn't quite so alone. It also made it easier when I finally decided to tell this teacher, because I already had a gateway in. I did not have to mention any scary medical words. I did not have to say the dreaded five-sylabled 'anorexia' that I notice even myself and those close to me struggle to spit out.

I simply went into the English room one day after school and said 'the story..was about me.'

That was it. Easy.

No.

It was the hardest thing I have ever done and, I believe, will have to do for a good few years. I remember it had taken me days to gain the momentum up to say anything. I had spoke  to somebody from Beat, the National eating disorders charity, online and he had told me to tell somebody that day, do not wait until tomorrow. I remember everything about that time, be it less than an hour. I can still hear how loud my heart was pounding and how I was thinking that she must be able to hear it, to see it under my skin, but it was never mentioned. My hands were shaking. My voice cracking.

I got in the car with my mum afterwards, still weak, still not really understanding how or why I had just confessed the one thing I had put an immense amount of effort in to keeping a secret. My parents had no idea, for a number of months afterwards, of what I had been going through, and of what will probably remain with me for the rest of my life.

I went back to the secrecy and the restricting and the self-punishment. I spoke to the school nurse, counsellor but lost even more weight before the decision to keep my family in the dark was taken out of my hands.

I spent months regretting the day I had walked into that English room. But now I regret not having listened to those girls, to the pleading slivers that were tapped across the internet from a world I had yet to truly enter.

So please, listen to those who say they know, believe their honest words and understand that this disorder has the consistency of quicksand.

[eboyns]

London. The Challenge.

On Monday, my boyfriend and I took a trip to London, as we do every so often, to see a few exhibitions and just generally enjoy the hectic break from a sleepy Sussex village. I've been struggling over the last few weeks to go to my local town, which is pretty small as towns go, and this is mainly due to my OCD, with a little help from my eating disorder and depression. So I knew that London would be a challenge. Was it more of a challenge than I was expecting? Possibly.

We get the train from a station about ten minutes away from my house, so we can get a direct train and also because this guarantees a seat that would usually be taken by the time we reach the next town. So I was fine with the whole journey-to-London part of the day. I knew it would take exactly 1 hour 42 minutes, which I really need to know because I find I struggle considerably at the moment with the feeling of entrapment, which makes simple things like the cinema and journeys-of-an-unknown-length a sudden issue.

The problem was the delay about 10 minutes outside of the capital which meant we were stuck. Outside of a station. With no indication of the time we were to be stuck there. I was silently panicking for the next 20 minutes until the hefty chain of carriages slowly started chugging along again. I did not cry or have a hissy fit. Be proud of me.

The main issue that I had pre-empted was the symmetry issue. I think to claim that it is impossible to walk down any street in London without touching somebody is a fair claim. This freaks me out, by which I suppose I mean it makes me anxious. I cannot stop that person and ask them to touch me on the other side. I cannot remove the feeling of them on me. I just have to somehow manage to brush up against another person on the opposite side of my body with the same pressure in the same place and hope this satisfies my OCD. All whilst avoiding people's shadows and cracks on the pavement because this is a major issue for me at the moment. It's safe to say I must have looked like a complete idiot, but at least it stopped that voice in my head screaming at me about how uneven everything was.

Because my OCD had been better for so long, it's been a while since I've had to deal with some of these obsessions and compulsions, and it's rather strange remembering coping with them a few years ago. I no longer feel able to touch public door handles, hand rails on the tube or let my skin touch any furniture or windows or buttons or anything else on public transport. My hand sanitizer is still feeling rather empty after being promoted from bag to easy-reach pocket for the day.

Yet having said this, and recalling just how prominent my OCD was at every point throughout Monday, I really enjoyed my day. And I think this has to come from my boyfriend dealing with it in such a silent and helpful way; he touched the rails, handles, buttons and every other object or surface that I couldn't. He ignored the fact that having to kiss me on both sides of my face totally ruins any romance. And he let me be a little koala clinging to him on the tube so no hand-rails were needed. You made my Monday slightly less manic.

[eboyns]

Help doesn't always come in the shape of a shrink

Helen Keller once said that 'walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.' Right now I'm feeling more like I'm stumbling around in the dark desperately looking for someone to help and support me and walk with me. 

I guess the thing about leaving school and moving to uni is that people naturally go in different directions. New relationships are forged, friendships change and people drift apart. However I can now say, having returned to the South for the summer after finishing my first year at uni, that this is more the case than I had imagined. I think this is partly why my depression and OCD have become worse over the last few months; even though I never had brilliant professional support when I was at school here, I did have some pretty strong friendships, which were still showing signs of remaining through the first few months of uni, and I think these helped greatly when it came to keeping these problems a little more under control.

I'm not sure whether it's more the depression or the OCD side of me, but something makes it very hard for me to change plans very last minute, especially if that leaves a day when I had planned to do just that one thing, now hauntingly empty for me to be stuck at home finding it hard to get dressed or leave the house, surrounded by a kitchen full of food. I think it is also hard when people cancel meeting up, especially now my time down South is limited, because I get quite paranoid about social relationships; I find it quite difficult to trust people's belief in me and, I suppose because of my own lack of self-confidence, I struggle to believe that people do actually want to be around me. I think I have now got to the point where the only way I can tell if people really want to see me is to leave it to them to contact me. So I've stopped asking those people to meet for a coffee, or go into town, or whatever, because I feel like by doing so I am burdoning them. 

I think the point I am trying to make is that friendships form a huge part in helping to cope with depression and other mental illnesses, and without the support or even contact from the people I have previously confided in hugely, especially about my eating disorder when I first realised I had a problem, the feelings of self-doubt, self-hate and loneliness can become quite overwhelming.

I think I just need to get back to uni, back into routine and see the people who make me happy and helped me so much with my first year, whether they realised it or not.

[eboyns]

My Extreme OCD Camp Revelation

Ok, so I have to confess that I've only just got around to watching BBC's 'Extreme OCD Camp' that was aired as part of their mental health season on TV, which I think is a really great idea by the way. Basically I just wanted to have time to watch it all and be in the right state of mind also.

The thing that surprised me was how emotional watching it made me. I cried quite a bit, sat on my own at my computer like some soppy person which, I like to think, I am not too often, and this reaction really did surprise me.

So I thought I would take the opportunity to share what it was that made me such an emotional wreck and made my boyfriend think I was having a really awful evening when in fact I was crying in an almost happy way, I just couldn't tell him this or the fact that I was watching the program because I would have cried even more.

If you watched the program, which I would totally recommend if you haven't already, you'll know that Josh has 'symmetry' OCD. It will probably sound stupid to anyone reading this, but seeing all of his behaviours and hearing professionals and experts on OCD talking about this particular type of the disorder made me realise that there are other people who feel the need to do exactly the same behaviours that I do, those which can make life incredibly difficult and frustrating. I mean, some of the rituals that Josh felt the need to perform are ones that I also do on a daily basis, especially the issue of walking over the shadow/light on the floor and having to balance it so that both feet touched the same part of the shadow, which I feel is my biggest ritual t the moment, and has become so bad that I am starting to decide against going into town because it is such a struggle to walk down the street, especially with the weather being so sunny and the town being busier now it'a the holidays.

For some reason this was just an overwhelming revelation for me. The treatment I have had for my OCD has been limited. I've tried drug treatment which did not make any difference, and I've had normal talking therapies which also did not seem to ease my compulsions and obsessions. To my knowledge, the main accessible treatment that is regarded as the most effective, is cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT. I use the term 'accessible' loosely, however, as very long waiting lists and lack of qualified practitioners have meant I have never had access to this treatment personally. The help I will have back at uni from September seems to have become based at the eating disorder's unit, which is the one condition I am not yet ready to change, so I am going to try and push for treatment to be moved more towards my OCD and depression, as I believe these are the main aspects limiting my life at the moment.

Because of this lack of professional help and guidance, it was not until watching this program that I was aware different categories of OCD existed. I have always thought I've been totally on my own with feeling the need to make everything in my life symmetrical, and so learning that there are other people out there and, in fact, enough people to make a whole subcategory of OCD, was a strange but relieving lesson. I think it was also so emotional watching it because I do not know anyone, closely at least, who suffers from the same level of OCD that I do, or that it has spiralled into over the last few months. This means that I am constantly surrounded by people who do not understand my need to ritualise or why someone else preventing me from doing so can be very stressful and agitating to me. It also makes it even harder for me to cope with when these people become annoyed or angry with my rituals or tell me to simply 'stop it,' because it creates this very upsetting thought that if even those closest to you cannot handle or try to understand these behaviours, then how are people who don't know you or have even less understanding going to react. It also makes it very easy to forget that there are other OCD sufferers out there, so I think Extreme OCD Camp was a really great way of reminding fellow sufferers of this, as well as raising awareness among the general public.

So I think a huge thank you and well done to everyone who took part in the program is due - it was really incredible to see just how much support they all gave one another and how much the experience changed their lives and helped them to deal with their OCD to a level I don't think any of them imagined possible.

[eboyns]

Realising just how hard it can be for people to understand.

I think I’ve mentioned in a previous post that my OCD and depression have been much worse recently, and my eating disorder seems to be keeping me at the same weight yet still making me pretty down, upset and angry with myself for being so big. I think this is the worst I’ve been overall in the last year or so, which means people I’ve met at uni or within that time don’t really know this side of me to an extent which allows them to accept or understand the way I’ve been acting and feeling recently.

I thought I’d use this post to share how much effect mental illness can have on relationships, whether romantic, family or friends, and how this strain can affect everyone involved.

My eating disorder has been considerably worse than it is now. I remember a time about two years ago when I was weighing myself about six times a day, refusing to eat unless I had watched the foods be weighed out and knew the exact calories, and would not allow myself to eat over three hundred calories. I also became very paranoid that my mum was somehow adding calories to my meals, and remember regularly searching cupboards for any high calorie substance that could be slipped in unnoticed. This, understandably, put so much strain on myself and my parents that several arguments a day were not uncommon and I was self harming everyday to help cope with my upset and struggle in refusing food or eating what I felt was too much, something I’ve managed not to do for several months now. I remember it taking me about half an hour to eat a kiwi in the morning. And I remember reducing my mum to tears on a regular basis which was one of the hardest things to watch, knowing that you’ve put this onto your family and watching your mum blame herself for something that is in no way her fault.

The thing that I think helped me through this time is how supportive my parents remained despite this, especially my mum as I found it easier to talk to her through this time, although even she was still regarded as an enemy because I knew she wanted to make me put on weight.

Since moving away to uni, starting a new relationship and finding new friends, I’ve realised that not everybody is so patient or willing to understand the difficulties I find myself facing. I am not criticising anybody, simply expressing my realisation that some people find things they have not felt themselves more difficult to comprehend and therefore handle, which I think is a totally just and natural way to feel, it’s just taking some time to get used to from my perspective and is more difficult now my OCD and depression is worse anyway.

I think my main worry is that the difficulty of non-sufferers to understand mental illness and how hard it can make seemingly simple things become will keep wearing down at the people close to me and the relationships I care about. I’m worried that I’ll push away those I love, who don’t realise just how hard I’m trying to not purge, to get dressed everyday and to keep my compulsions under control, because these are the main things which I’m finding near on impossible to do, but to the outside eye look pretty pathetic and just simple everyday tasks that should come naturally.

[eboyns]

A Fresh Start. A Clean Page.

It is time to separate the professional from the personal, the insane from the sane, the 'I am desperately trying to appear normal' from the 'I want to celebrate my insanity.'

I have blogged about my mental illness before, however things got too tied on one blog with my photography, so now it is time to untangle, cleanse and refresh.

I also want to protect those who are too close to me to read my every thought.

I have an eating disorder. I have depression. I have OCD. I am what some people may call crazy, mad, insane, weird. But I am 1 in 4. Yes, that is the QUARTER of the population who suffers from mental health problems at some point in their life. Personally, i don't understand the huge stigma that the term 'mental illness' still holds, but I have come to realise that this is perhaps because I know it first hand; it is my ordinary world and therefore I don't see people with schizophrenia as terrifying, or people with bipolar as beyond my understanding. Instead I often feel I have more understanding of people with these conditions than many other groups in society. I know what it is like to fear your own thoughts, to scare your loved ones and to not know how or when to stop hurting yourself.

There are so many myths about mental illnesses that frustrate me. Admittedly some beliefs are applicable to some sufferers, however people don't realise just how harmful sweeping generalisations can be.

One such myth is the claim that people with a mental illness are attention seeking. This seems especially prevalent with anorexia. I am by no means speaking on behalf of all sufferers, and that must be remembered throughout this blog. However, personally, not eating is a way to control things in my life which I feel are beyond my control. Losing weight became a way for me to disappear, to fall off of everybody's radar. At one point it became a way of sinking below the surface of civilisation while I searched for a more permanent way to vanish. Quite the opposite of seeking attention.

I hope to use this blank space as a place to throw down my thoughts; my worries, my concerns, my highs and my lows. I am not aiming to educate everyone about my own life, I simply hope that by telling my story it may make some people realise that mental illness isn't the straight-jacket-institutionalised-dangerous-scary-abnormal thing that people still seem to believe it is.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Now go and do something fun.

[eboyns]

Life is so ironic. It takes sadness to know happiness, noise to appreciate silence, and absence to value presence.

(via ex-peri-ence)