I stopped because I am not sure, yet, what I’d like to say.

That, of all psychiatric disorders, Anorexia Nervosa has the highest premature mortality rate. That the mortality rates for Bulimia and eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS) are equally terrifying.

That part of the complexity of eating disorders lies in the fact that no experience is exactly the same. That there are resonances and similarities, but each person’s experience is unique.

That I am deeply worried by the closures of units that I keep hearing about, especially those that I have known. That I am also scared by the growing number of sufferers and, particularly, of younger – and older – and male sufferers.

That it is as important to focus on awareness of recovery as it is to focus on awareness of being ill.

I don’t know.

All of these – and nothing. A large part of my life has been stolen by an eating disorder and I do not want to give it anymore time –

No. This is not quite true. Part of the taking back is choosing to give it time. It’s just that the time is spent in a different way.

I have had a rough few months. I try and skim over it because it is easier that way. Because there is less room, now, between me and my blog, and it is therefore much harder to hide. Because the time has been golden, too, and it’s hard to reconcile the magic and the struggle. Because even with 18 years of experience and a good whack of intensive treatment, an eating disorder can still ambush, ensnare and baffle. Can re-emerge, when you think you’re on the straight and narrow; or slip in when the routines that you’ve built to keep it out get perturbed –

And so this is my message.

Not that an eating disorder haunts forever – but that it is a difficult battle to win.

That it needs to be talked about for these reasons. Because it is a difficult battle to win and a difficult experience to talk about; and because the complexity of eating disorders means that they are difficult to understand. Because we’re not winning yet and we need to work together. Because recovery is very possible, and it’s important to tell that story as well.

There’s lots of stuff going on this week. beat have released a much needed report on the use of images in the reporting of eating disorders; there’s a busy schedule of online and offline events; Men Get Eating Disorders Too have launched a new membership scheme; we’ve got a cool Facebook page focusing on the positives of recovery –

And I’m using the time to touch base with myself and think a little bit about how I’m going to move things forward in the coming months. How I can make sure that I win my battle, and continue enjoying the amazing things that recovery can bring.

In all the hype, and indecision, and shall-I-shan’t-I-ing, I have forgotten that everything starts here.

And so, to connect the dots, I want to include this video, even though some readers may have stumbled across it on other mediums. And, because it’s part of the story, whether I am proud, or embarrassed, or just a little red-faced about my nervous twitching around, I feel that, albeit belatedly, it belongs here.

The whole size zero issue wasn’t something I anticipated exploring and only tinged my eating disorder experience; however, you can’t change the debate if you’re not part of the discussion; and, whilst I certainly never saw myself doing this kind of thing 6 months ago, I wouldn’t have realised how rewarding it would be if I hadn’t given it a go.

This is only part of a wider talk, including some really important information from Professor Janet Treasure, that can be accessed at Gresham College’s site. I have also spoken on ‘Moving Maintaining Factors’, although it wasn’t (to the best of my knowledge!) filmed; and hope to do many many more.

The questions and discussion time has been the most rewarding aspect and, unfortunately, these aren’t captured here; but they did inspire this post on the ‘How do I Help? Question’ and informed some of the issues I have blogged about. Most importantly for me, they have helped to salvage some value or meaning from my experiences, and made me feel that I might be able to start using the past more positively.

I have been sensitive with the subject – and with the audience.

I have stuck to my ‘only say something if it is actually helpful’ rule – as much as is humanly possible -

But the escalation of pro-anorexia websites – in comparison to the impossibility of getting anyone to promote an anti pro-anorexia site – has pushed me over the edge.

It’s utter madness – and I’m fuming.

We’re so scared of saying the wrong thing that we’re saying nothing at all.

We’re so worried about being seen as promoting or contributing to the rise in eating disorders that it’s safer to sanitise – or silence – anything that’s a little risqué, a little too frank.

An online reference to anorexia or bulimia provokes a flurry of nervous energy; the request for a website link is lost in a bundle of bureaucratic tape; even some very tasteful postcards provoke a sense of panic that ‘it might be taken the wrong way’ -

No wonder that the pro-anorexia message reigns victorious.

Are we really surprised that teachers don’t know how to broach the subject – or parents are terrified of saying the wrong thing?

Is it really that strange that the causes, experiences, and escape from eating disorders remain so mysterious and misunderstood?

So, I’ll keep talking about it, even if the reception’s a little hushed; because, the silence just plays into the disorder and adds to the fear.

And I’ll keep sending out my links, even though people are too scared to reciprocate; because, finding out that my feelings weren’t unique was key to my recovery and helped me make sense of the things I couldn’t understand alone.

I’ll get over any self doubt – because I know that what I’ve learnt is important – and I’ll put the shame to one side – because my eating disorder has diminished me enough – and I’ll keep twittering and blogging and writing about it all, in the hope that, one day, someone get a little bit brave –

And realises that Finding Melissa might actually help…

- and that the only way to move beyond the fear – and get past the unknown – is by facing the subject head on.

It has taken me 18 years to get rid of it.

Eating disorders are intimately bound up with social expectations (girl power), psychological characteristics’ (intelligence, perfectionism), cultural trends (24 hours food) and the age old struggle to find your identity –

We’re having a bit of an explosion in the 21st century.

Everything’s coming all at once; and, it’s travelling with the lightening speed of the digital age.

Angst ridden teenage years are nothing new. It’s almost inevitable that the transition from the golden hued days of childhood to the realities – and responsibilities – of adulthood is a little fraught. The problem is, we may by living for longer – but we’re prematurely ageing: the move is happening before we’re ready; and, in a world that is far harder to manage.

In today’s media-ised and publicised society, the standards are a lot higher and the competition’s a lot tougher. We’re no longer just looking around us for inspiration and expectation: the whole world’s a stage – and it’s easy to feel like you’re being sidelined.

It’s unsurprising that we’re not dealing with it all that well –

There’s size zero on the catwalk, and academic ratings across the broadsheets, and school dinners debated on the TV, and a global recession stepping up the competition for jobs…

But an eating disorder is not the answer; and, we seem to be muddling thinness with a whole host of unrelated things….

I have lost my teenage years – and most of my twenties – and, it’s time we started back pedalling on these messages – because youth only comes round once.

This piece is a response to the daily mail’s article here.

This could, of course, be a consequence of 17 years chronic anorexia bulimia, or a simple case IBS– or just further illustration that are bodies and are minds are incredibly connected and it is, perhaps, unsurprising that we struggle so much with food when the division is hard to spot.

Suffering crippling stomach cramps may not have been a particularly pleasant experience in recent months – but it’s taught me a valuable lesson: it is impossible to divorce mind from body, and looking after one will inevitably help the other….

Anorexia makes you selfish.

The ‘you’d eat it if you lived in Africa’ line just got on my nerve.

I’m not sure that the discussion would be any more helpful to other people struggling with eating disorders; but, after reading a piece in last weekend’s Observer, I am trying to make sense of the fact that there are over a billion people out there going hungry – whilst I have struggled between choosing not to eat – or wasting food like there’s no tomorrow.

There’s something very wrong going on.

Are eating disorders a perverse luxury in developed countries – or do health trends evolve as societies and economies change?

Maybe it’s only natural that new struggles emerge when the fight for survival loses its urgency?

Or possibly we’ve gone so far in the other direction that the excess has triggered its own set of problems?

It’s a difficult debate, particularly for someone who has relished the refusal of food that others are desperate for, and made a career out of eating – and then throwing up – as much as she could get her hands on; but, it shows just how much we’re diverging –

It suggests that we are, possibly, developing too fast to actually learn from the process and we’ve got a little way to go before we get the balance between total deprivation or complete overload right-

Or climate change makes the decision for us.

If the predictions are correct, even the developed countries will eventually experience some shortfalls; and, maybe it will be easier to manage food when the perspective changes?

Or, maybe, we need to try and think about these things now, and see if we can avert, or at least reduce, the terrifying prospects for either extreme of the spectrum?…

Lifestyle infers that you’re hoping to stay alive, so we’ve already hit the first snag; and choice infers that you’re in control, which is clearly an illusion as you discover when you try and escape –

So the description’s wrong on all accounts…

It’s just a little worrying that we’re even describing a prolonged suicide in these terms.

Maybe when I was too ill to know that I was ill, then I would have subscribed to the theory. My anorexia was particularly good at justifying and explaining and promoting its cause, and a little social acceptance was always a winning argument: if you believe that society admires anorexia, the impetus to give it up diminishes.

Maybe if I hadn’t fought tooth and nail to extract myself from the grip of anorexia, than I would concede that, yes, eating – or not – is the individuals’ right. I certainly argued the case when people tried to get me to eat. It’s just that the moment the anorexia really hits in, you’re not making any choices.

Perhaps I’m getting too hung up on the terminology – but I’m a little wary of applying loose words to a lethal subject.

Perhaps I’m taking it so seriously because it’s hit me so hard – but then that just reinforces my earlier argument….

That anorexia categorically contradicts the notion of being alive, so it’s not about lifestyles –

And choice infers that you can change your mind at any given time – but in reality it’s not that easy.

I’m not into scape-goating the media and I’ve always believed that anorexia is about what’s going on in someone’s head – and not what’s going on in the pages of Vogue.

I’m a little less sure now.

It’s not the anorexic appearances on the catwalks that have got me thinking or even the fact that modelling now seems to be a high risk career –

It’s because the trend seems to be spreading.

Thin is no longer just haute couture ‘in’; it seems to have got muddled up with notions of success in a whole host of other, completely unrelated, things.

When the dress size of singers starts being more important than their singing or the latest diet of an actress is higher up in the headlines than their acting, then we’re really getting the message worryingly wrong –

I’m just not sure which way the communication is going…

Is it that the general public, with a whole host of their own body hang ups, are doing a little transference onto those we’re paying to see or hear or watch? That our fixation with size and shape and who weighs what is encouraging a few body dramatics – because they clearly sell?

Or, maybe it’s that, in a culture obsessed with fame and commercialising talent, celebrities are identifying thinness as a competitive edge and, through acting into the whole ‘thin is in’ myth, are not being very responsible with their limelight?

Has the line between talent and appearance has become so blurred that it’s no longer just about what you do, it’s also about how you look when you’re doing it –

- but are we really that superficial?

Do we really prize skinniness over some killer vocals or the ability to bring a character to life? –

Or is this just what some pretty ruthless editors or a little media stirring is encouraging us to think?

They’re questions that I can’t quite answer and its a blame game that I don’t want to get pulled into; but I’d appreciate a little reality checking – because, when thin is synonymous with an eating disorder, it is, most definitely, not in; and when we’re more interested in table habits than talent, then the distortion’s got more out of hand than I imagined.

But I’m ready to contest any pro-ana arguments; and, with 18 years of eating disorder destroyed life behind me, I’ll lay my track record on the line before being accused of not understanding.

A website encouraging anorexia may feel like your friend but it’s really just an extension of your worst enemy.

When you’re in the grips of it, the difference can be hard to spot – but there’s a simple giveaway: You wouldn’t wish an eating disorder on another human being, let alone someone you considered a friend.

Does it sound like I’m being simplistic? No. I get the complexity.

I remember what it feels like to be backed into a corner –

When you’re feeling really desperate, you’ll take whatever solutions you can get.

I can recognise the sense of power –

When you’re used to being prescribed to or treated or made to do things that you don’t want to do, pro-anorexia must feel like a great way of showing the professionals who’s really in control.

I can understand the perverse reassurance –

An eating disorder will use whatever it can get hold of to encourage the Russian roulette approach to life. Things feel better when we’re not doing them on our own and pro-ana’s all about normalising the abnormal; it’s great at giving permission for the things that, deep down, you don’t want to be doing.

I can see where they make the unsafe, safe; I can imagine the illusion of relief –

When you’ve felt like you’re totally alone and misunderstood then, hey, finding a whole community of people who share your concerns and experiences and feelings and fears must feel fabulous –

Until you realise that the only common ground is a death wish.

And that they’re only pulling you further away from the rest of the world.

Sometimes you can’t work out where your allies are when you’re not well.

Sometimes the people who you think are attacking you are actually trying to help you – and those who claim to understand are trying to pull you down – because they’re sinking too –

It’s like listening to the devil – when what you really need is a good friend.

It’s like buying into a fiction – because the reality is too much to bear –

Help Finding Melissa to challenge the pro-anorexia message.

For more on the danger of pro-anorexia sites: BBC News

I’m not surprised.

Campaigning doesn’t touch our fear of mental health. The social judgements have become ingrown; the assumptions; inherent.

If I hadn’t been so ill, I might have been the same.

I wouldn’t have wanted my children to catch a mental illness. I would have erred on the side of caution when mixing with unwell people. I would have understood that mental illness is best approached sensitively and that allowances should be made for mental health sufferers; after all, they’re a bit different -

They’re not like us.

Or are they?

After a number of admissions into a range of mental health units, I’m afraid I can confirm that people with mental health illnesses are just like us.

Some have husbands or wives and children at home; some don’t. Some are religious; some aren’t. Some are professionals; others, creative types; some work in retail; others are office based; some are teachers; others are still learning.

Men, women, young, old, black, white: mental illness is not a discerning customer.

It will take anyone.

I’m not up to date with the statistics; but it’s something like one in four.

Of us.

I’m not familiar with the trends; but I think mental illness is on the up.

Amongst us.

Maybe this is why we get so scared: it’s a little too close for comfort.

It’s the next notch along on the emotional health spectrum: today, I’m feeling a little blue; tomorrow, I might well be over the edge.

I’m not criticising people.

I might have been the same – had I not already learnt that mental illness is not something to be feared.

Had I not already learnt that mental illness is something to be worked with and, if possible, moved on from; something that teaches greater empathy and compassion; something that forces you to examine a few of your prejudices and assumptions –

- because it will take anyone.