Family Week Speech - caution: long read

This is what I shared at Family Week in tulsa to a degree. I used this as a guide but really just talked from my heart. But this is it :)

My struggle with an eating disorder began when I was 9 years old as a means of coping with a world that no longer made sense to me. I became a victim of childhood sexual abuse starting at age 6. My sense of safety and security and my idea of love had all been shattered, leaving me feeling lost, alone, and very, very confused. I was too afraid to tell anyone and held onto that secret until I was in my early 20’s, letting it fester and grow and eat away at my spirit and my life. I started restricting gradually, and it went unnoticed by my parents. You see, I had been a picky eater from birth, so my parents were not alarmed when I began to refuse certain things. Instead of losing weight, I simply wasn’t making the normal gains that a healthy 9 to 10 year old should have been making. Again, I think this went largely unnoticed by my parents because I was such an active child, dancing, swimming, playing, and I was also a very anxious child with a short attention span that fidgeted constantly. It wasn’t until I was eleven, after my dad had two major heart attacks that nearly cost him his life did my parents begin to notice that something wasn’t quite right. Friends began to ask what was up, as well as some of my parent’s friends. I managed to keep everything at bay until the 7th grade, when the pressure of keeping up appearances while dying inside became too much to handle. I confided in my youth pastor about my eating disorder. He encouraged me to tell my parents and I decided I would tell them, eventually. I went on a youth trip to the beach and collapsed. When I arrived back home, my parents were informed and it seemed as good a time as any to let them know what was really going on. They immediately got me into counseling with a counselor at my church, and I went willingly. After 6 weeks worth of sessions, this counselor declared me cured, and told me it was simply a phase in life that most teenage girls went through, and I would be perfectly fine. It was no surprise when I relapsed shortly after discontinuing counseling. I also began my struggle with self-harm during this time period and was able to tell my parents, with the help of my youth pastor. My parents, wanting to do everything in their power to help me, found me a different counselor, who had a very different approach. I began seeing her weekly, and though I tried the best I could, I just wasn’t making any progress. I was also struggling with depression, and started seeing a psychiatrist. It took a long time to find a medication that worked, and in the process I ended up overmedicated, too tired to function let alone enjoy the things I used to enjoy. By the winter of 9th grade I felt I could no longer deal with the pain of an eating disorder and depression and attempted suicide. I was lucky enough to have someone intervene and get me the proper medical care. I think this was the big wake up call for my family, and for myself. I knew I needed to turn things around, and fast. I upped my sessions with my therapist to twice a week, and started going to an outpatient support group. Around this time, our church hired a new associate pastor, who happened to have a daughter my age. We became close, and also had similar interests. I stayed at her house for a weekend because we had all-state choral auditions to prepare for. After a night of fun and food, she went into the bathroom with the door open and proceeded to purge, showing me how it was done, which eventually led to a vicious cycle of bulimia. At 14, bulimia took over my life more than I ever imagined possible, and I became even more depressed, moody, and suicidal. My therapist strongly recommended that we look into residential care, which I wasn’t opposed to because I was so completely miserable. After looking at several different facilities, we decided on Renfrew Florida, because it was only 3 hours away from my home. Scared and reluctant but willing, I made a commitment to stay for at least 21 days. My first experience with treatment was not a pleasant one, and I left on my 21st day. Even though I vowed never to go back to any kind of treatment facility because I had such a bad experience, it did manage to keep me stable for my sophomore and junior year of high school. I was still on heavy medications and actually ended up sleeping through my algebra and history classes, having to repeat them during the summer. With the help of my mother, I pushed myself to get more involved with friends and school activities. I was cheerleading, still dancing, got inducted into Beta club, and got elected to our SGA. I was finally beginning to feel better, both mentally and physically, and even developed more of a social life. Things were looking up. My senior year seemed to fly by and I was getting excited about going to college. I signed up to go on a mission trip to Germany with my youth group over spring break. My mother also went on the trip with us. The night before we were scheduled to come back to the states, we got a call from our pastor that my dad had been rushed to the hospital where he had two more major heart attacks. I was scared to death, and could do nothing about it as I was residing on another continent. We flew back and went straight to the hospital where we were informed that my dad was going in for quadruple bypass heart surgery. I stayed up all night worrying about him. He pulled through, but for the next several weeks both of my parents were occupied, and with the stress of getting ready to graduate and my parents being so busy and the general stress I felt, I relapsed back into anorexia. When it came time for me to gear up and move out of state to college, my parents and my dietitian were concerned about whether it was the right decision for me at the time. We talked, set up a plan, and with that I left home and moved off to college in Mississippi. I knew no one and was paired with a random roommate. I had to make friends quickly, while acclimate to college life, college classes, and a whole new way of life. I got connected with a therapist in town who referred me to a dietitian that I also began working with. The stress of school and taking 21 hours my first semester put a lot of strain on me both physically and mentally. I went in as a nursing major therefore my class progression was basically determined for me. I had the bulk of my difficult science courses all in the first year. I went from making A’s to making B’s and C’s and began to place undue pressure on myself to perform better. I also joined a tribe (sorority) so I was involved in a lot of extracurricular events and activities. I also experienced a tremendous amount of homesickness and loneliness. Though I was working with a very competent team that I respected, I couldn’t seem to stop the spiral. 6 weeks before the end of my freshman year, my therapist told me I needed to receive inpatient care or she could no longer see me, ethically. My parents urged me to stick out the next six weeks, and my mom even moved into one of the guest suites on campus to be with me. I appreciated the effort and wanted to stick it out, but it became clear to everyone that I wasn’t going to be able to do it. With four weeks left in the semester, I withdrew from college and went to treatment in Texas. Though I went voluntarily as an adult, I felt some resentment at being given an ultimatum. Regardless, I worked as hard as I could to do all the work possible while there. I left after completing the inpatient program and the transitional program and returned home to start my sophomore year. Though reluctant and nervous to go back, I did, and managed to have a pretty decent year. I still struggled, but remained stable. At the end of my sophomore year I decided to change my major to psychology so that I didn’t end up falling behind. I began my core psych classes at the start of my junior year. I had finally found my niche. Psychology naturally clicked and I had no problem making A’s. For the first time ever, I made the President’s List. Unknowingly, I had set a bar for myself and could not accept anything less. I continued to push myself and continued to make the President’s List. During my senior year, I was awarded one of the most prestigious awards our college handed out, the Perry Academic Achievement award. I was ecstatic. I also had to decide on a graduate school, which seemed like a monumental task. I am not good at making decisions and tend to procrastinate in order to avoid making them at all. This is exactly what I did with graduate school. I ended up missing most all of the application deadlines, and went to the only school that had rolling admission, the University of Southern Mississippi. Though it was a mental health graduate program, it was in Marriage and Family Therapy, which wasn’t my first choice. But my best friend from college was going, so I knew it would be okay. We made the decision to live together, with another friend, in a 3 bedroom townhome. I went home for the summer, and then moved to Hattiesburg in 2007. My graduate school experience started off great. I made friends quickly, started to go out on the weekends and be social, something I had missed in college. Though I was having fun, moving and living independently while starting grad school was a big change for me, and I began to feel stressed out with the workload and financial responsibilities. I used self-harm to cope with the stress and had an accident one night while hanging out with my roommates. They took me to the emergency room, where I was kept for observation. My roommate informed my professors of the event, and they told me I had to seek therapy. I found a therapist in the area who supposedly specialized in eating disorders, but ultimately turned out to be less than helpful. After the self-harm accident I began to feel uncomfortable in my home, and embarrassed when at school. I felt awkward and ashamed of what I had done. The eating disorder began to creep in again, and by the end of November my professors and I met to discuss their concerns. They told me I needed to get inpatient treatment over the Christmas break I agreed to go, and decided to go back to Renfrew Fl because it was close to home and tended to have short stays. I ended up staying at Renfrew for 8 weeks, then returned to school two weeks after the spring semester started. I moved into my own apartment, and I jumped right back into the busy and stressful life I had just left, and quickly found that nothing in my environment had changed. I knew it was going to be difficult to continue the recovery I had started, especially living on my own, but managed to do so until the middle of August. In August of my first year in grad school we got our practicum placements, and started getting clients at our clinic, as well. I was the last to be assigned a client and ended up getting three no-show intakes before I finally got to see my first client. This put me a month and a half behind in client contact hours, which left me stressing out about how I was going to make up the time. I began to use behaviors again as a means of coping with all the stress, yet being honest with my professors about all of it. They made me an appointment with a former student of the program who was now a practicing therapist, and had a story very similar to mine. I began seeing Katie around September, and really liked her. She was a recovered anorexic, and was incredibly relatable. I began doing some good, hard work with her, but continued to spiral. By November, I was having to look into inpatient treatment again. My professors wouldn’t let me come back for the spring semester unless I went back inpatient. My parents were frustrated, I was frustrated, my friends were frustrated, and my professors were frustrated. I felt ashamed and disappointed that I found myself back in the same position of needing treatment less than a year after leaving Renfrew. I looked into several facilities and ended up choosing to go to Remuda VA. I admitted at the very beginning of December 2008, and stayed until the end of February 2009. I had my fair share of ups and downs at Remuda, and though I made a good bit of progress, this was the first time I had ever had a professional tell me that I was chronic. Chronic. I couldn’t believe what I had heard. From that point on, every time I tried to fight a behavior I heard the word chronic and just couldn’t see the point in fighting so hard for recovery if there was never really a chance anyway. My depression intensified to the point that I just couldn’t see myself with a future. I felt extremely hopeless, alone, and discouraged. I ended up attempting suicide again. I was lucky enough that a friend just happened to be coming over, found me, and rushed me to the emergency room. It scared her to death, so she went to class the next day and told my supervision group what had happened. When I was released from the hospital, my supervisor/professor asked me to come in and meet with her and another professor. We sat down and talked about my future in the program. They informed me that I would not be allowed to continue in the program unless I got long term care (4 months or longer). If I abided by this request, I’d be allowed back in the program after completion of long term care. I knew I had no choice but to go, if I wanted to finish up my Master’s degree. My therapist and I looked into programs with decent transition care and decided on Laureate. I called admissions and was able to get in two weeks later. I packed up my apartment and my car and headed out to Oklahoma in May of 2009. I was admitted to the inpatient program for 5 weeks and then transferred upstairs to Mag House, the transitional living program where I stayed from June 17th to December 31st. My time at laureate consisted of several ups and downs. I made a lot of progress in some areas and had setbacks in other areas. I generally did well in the program until the middle of October, when the eating disorder snuck back in, almost unnoticeable. I was experiencing a newfound sense of denial about my behaviors and choices, and became exceptionally good at making excuses for everything and rationalizing any problems away. Though my weight was being monitored weekly, I began to decline both emotionally and physically. By the time I discharged in December I was no longer in my weight range, despite what everyone tried to do for me. I had already decided to move into an apartment in Tulsa and had already signed the lease so there was no turning back. On the night of my discharge, several of us went out to dinner to celebrate discharging and New Years. I left dinner to spend the first night in my apartment, and ended up purging the celebratory dinner. In the course of 4 months, I relapsed harder and faster than I had ever done, and hit my lowest point physically and mentally. I was exhausted, tired of living and fighting, and prepared to give up. My treatment team informed me that they would no longer be able to see me unless I gained weight. I had two weeks to stop the weight loss and if I couldn’t then I would be without a team. Over the course of two weeks I made a trip home right after Easter. I think this trip was eye-opening for my parents. It wasn’t a pleasant trip at all. I went back to Tulsa, got weighed and had been unable to stop the weight loss. By this point in time I was ready to give up completely and move home to basically die. I decided, on a whim, to call admissions just to see how much it would cost for me to come back in. When I found out that it actually would be financially feasible for me to go back in, I knew I had to at least give it a shot. There wasn’t anything to lose in trying. I proceeded with the admissions process and got an admission date 6 days later. I entered treatment at Laureate again in the beginning of May 2010 and stayed until the middle of September. Though I wanted to stay in Tulsa, I knew going home was going to be best for my recovery. I moved back home to Orlando, where I hadn’t lived since I was 17. It was quite the adjustment. It took me a month to get a job, and even longer to establish a social life. I initially felt lonely and uncomfortable with all of the change, and the depression began to sink in again. I missed my friends, missed Tulsa, and part of me still missed the eating disorder. I started seeing a treatment team, but found that I wasn’t really connecting with my therapist. So I tried a new one, and then another new one. I was also involved in an outpatient support group which really seemed to help keep me on track. By March, I had to quit my job because it was a position that had been created by my father, who was now leaving the company. I had hoped to find another job right away but that proved to be difficult. I had to find creative ways to occupy my time. In May of this year, I started summer school which really helped boost my mood. I felt productive, goal oriented, and made some new friends. I started going out and doing things, and began to enjoy my life!


Recovery has not been easy, nor has it been perfect. I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs, and the occasional slip, but I learned all the tools I needed at Laureate and learned how to rebound. Slipping is inevitable in recovery, but staying down is optional. I worked hard on improving my rebound skills so that I spent less time down and more time getting back up. I also had to learn to utilize healthy coping skills. I created a desperate list that consisted of 20 things I was willing to try before using a behavior. By the time I got through with all 20, I was too exhausted to use a behavior anyway! I found things I enjoyed doing like rock climbing, kayaking, crafting, making jewelry and headbands, painting, and writing. I made a red flags list, so that I could recognize when things weren’t quite right. I had to think outside of the box in order to keep myself safe and healthy. I had to really follow my meal plan for almost a year before I felt comfortable enough to try intuitive eating. And I had to learn to trust my body. Though I wasn’t necessarily happy with the way it looked, I knew that I had to give it at least a year of solid recovery before it would normalize out. And it has. I have redistributed the refeeding belly and have gained muscle mass, something I never had. I feel strong for once in my life. I also remind myself frequently that my worst day in recovery is still 100 times better than my best day in the eating disorder. I’ve also been able to mend some broken relationships and reestablish trust with people who felt they could no longer trust me.

Recovery has been one of the most grueling, difficult, next to impossible things I’ve had to do, but it has also been the most rewarding experience of my life. I am so grateful for second, third, and seventy seventh chances because I am now a stronger, more courageous and compassionate individual.