How I Developed Anorexia So Young

I've been asked this question many a time by you, Dolls, and I've decided to answer this question as an educational post to raise awareness about the early signs of anorexia in young children and young adults.

---

I had a very dysfunctional family setup throughout childhood. My parents were never married, my dad had a long-term girlfriend, my mum was in and out of relationships, and both my parents had longstanding difficulties with their families, meaning I was isolated from experiencing the pleasure of extended family connection. With such a setup, I had many needs unattended to: reliability, expectation, and security. Always being in two different homes, I never felt settled in one place. Being between parents meant that I was caught between both parents fighting and inconsistent rules. Either I felt as though I couldn't keep up, or that I was 'good' on some days and 'bad' on others. Anorexia meant that I only had the one rule book, one that, if played within its realms, I could always be good at something, and that was key to its development. I had an emotionally abusive father whom I never felt safe with. I didn't feel safe when he was towering over me with his finger in my face. I didn't feel safe when he was yelling at the top of his lungs. I didn't feel safe when he left me with little notice on trips to see his girlfriend for months at a time.  I relied on anorexia to feel safe when I felt unsafe, which, when I was with him, was most of the time. The more I listened to anorexia, the easier it was for me to cope with the sadness I experienced from missing the love of my dad, the one person whose love I craved.

---

A family history of mental illness is certainly overlooked as an early warning sign of anorexia in young children. A child's upbringing can be in the most perfect of conditions, and still, if there is an existing family history, it makes a child more susceptible to developing a mental illness themselves. Though my upbringing was rocky in some ways, I also had many reasons not to develop anorexia. These immense positives in my life included an endless motherly love, a stable roof over my head and a middle-class socioeconomic status. I wholeheartedly believe that if I didn't have a steady history of mental illness in my family, my likelihood of developing severe and enduring anorexia, depression and OCD would've been significantly less. My biological father had depression, and my late grandmother had bipolar disorder. I, without a doubt, believe this is linked to the reason I began experiencing suicidal thoughts from a shockingly young age. Even when I started primary school, among my school friends, I felt immensely insecure and out of place. I was never confident in myself, I was sad when my school friends were not, and I felt things significantly more deeply than they did.

---

It spread throughout all of me, consuming me like an infectious disease - comparison.

Comparison is the thief of joy - my mum began to tell me throughout the beginning of my hospitalisation, though I wish she'd known to begin telling me earlier. I can't remember a time in my life when I haven't compared myself, from moment to moment, from year to year, from phase to phase. I've never been secure enough in myself to be secure about my place in the world. I'd compare anything to everything from my body, to my eye colour, to my hand size, and even to the tone of my voice. I couldn't bear the idea of being enough just as I was because I didn't believe for a second that it was possible for me to like who I was, to be confident, or to be enough. Due to these underlying feelings of not knowing how to be myself, it was very easy for me to fall into the trap of anorexia. How? I listened to the advertisements and commercials saying people felt more confident the thinner they were, I watched the lunchboxes of other students copying the ones of the popular or pretty girls, and I modelled the behaviours of adults in my life who looked confident, inspirational or thinner. All of that listening, all of that watching, laid a rock-solid foundation of immense insecurity with myself.

---

The insecurities I have had within myself since birth have been insurmountably painful to say the utmost least. So when the bullying from other children began, my already empty cup became entirely depleted, my heart shattering with every scowl or comment made. My sensitivity exacerbated all of it, internalising, unable to use the 'tools' suggested to me by professionals and parents, such as to 'laugh at it', 'brush it off' or 'not let it get to you'. I don't think the way I'm made up chemically and emotionally has ever allowed me to take a tongue-in-cheek approach to things that are brutally hurting me. As a coping mechanism, I suppressed everything in my life and that included hunger. It allowed me to reach a sense of numbness in a world in which all that I could do was to feel.

---

I wish more than anything that I hadn't developed anorexia so young because much of my childhood memories are tainted with its restriction, isolation and fear. I write this post as a desperate measure, yearning for early detection so that others have the chance of restoring themselves from anorexia's overthrowing before their childhood is over, like mine.

Kisses & Hugs,

COS xo.