Bulimia Nervosa is a long term disease. Recovery is often a hard and a long process with its ups and downs. That is why bulimia nervosa testimonials of recovery stories are good to read. You can always learn something interesting about how other people managed to beat this distorting body and soul disease. There are always a few very interesting stories about this.
I will tell you mine…I always say that my story is not that bad as some others, who have developed an eating disorder, but I can tell you for a child as I was at the time, it was very traumatic.
You see I was forced to study for hours after school with no contacts outside the house, during school days and on most weekends. Her friends soon learned not to call her or drop around after school or on the weekends as they would be chased away. As we know today children need recreation to develop skills and they get these from playing with other children so I was at a disadvantage.
I soon developed bad eating habits as a kind of escape mechanism; it was more like binge eating (I ate just to make myself feel better, not because I was hungry). Soon my mother started to tell me I was getting big and I should stop eating so much. I don't believe I was getting bigger it was simply a matter that when I was 13, I was more developed than most of my piers.
The problem was that I could not stop eating, as it had become the escape I needed to handle my situation. But because of the pressure I was under I soon worked out that I could eat heaps as long as I purged it up. This simply became a way of life for me and my bulimia was born.
But don't get me wrong, I do not blame my parents as they thought they were doing the best for me and making sure I had the top grades that I needed to get into university as I had always wanted to be a doctor and help people.
I think my parents were proud of the fact their daughter was an A grade student, it was prestigious to be so in the place I grow up in. I won all the regional schools events, like best science student, best Math student, regional champion etc. While other kids were doing their stuff on the sporting field, I was tied to my books: virtually 7 days a week.
Did it deprive me of a childhood? Sure it did. But am I angry now? No, I am not because in away it has given me an insight into how eating disorders can get a hold of you and change you into somebody else.
It was only when I realized through my studies at medical school that I was doing a lot of harm to myself so I decided to seek help.
I started to approach my lecturers as I thought that they would know exactly what I should do to get rid of my problems: but it soon became apparent to me that the only help they could provide was to send me to counselors.
You see when you are young and impressionable you tend to believe people in higher positions like I thought my lecturers were. I thought they would know all about things, after all they were doctors and they were teaching me all about medicine: but they didn’t.
I struggled through the normal round of therapists, councilors and visiting the clinics. I did feel better when I was talking to them but slipped back to my old eating habits when I was at home.
It also became apparent to me after awhile that I was not getting any real help from them either; I decided that the only person who could help me was me.
But deep inside I thought if I stopped my bulimia how would I get through the day and cope with everyday stresses, I was actually scared to let it go. By this time the bulimia had become a habit and so addictive, being without it was incomprehensible to me.
I often think now, how other sufferers must feel? After all I was being trained as a doctor, so I had a little bit more knowledge about how the body works than the average person and here I was trapped by this terrible affliction: what must they be going through?
But you see I knew nothing about the real implications of emotions or emotional blockages and the role they play in an eating disorder. Sure I knew that my problem was emotional in nature: but not one of the specialists, councilors or my lecturers really knew how to remove these emotional blockages and they knew absolutely nothing about emotional strengthening: that in the end became the way I managed to recover.
It was here that I found real help and soon started to formulate alternative methods for myself and finally I came up with a system that worked for me and I was finally free from my affliction.
Now, I understand that it does not matter how much you as a sufferer want to stop your eating disorder: unless you can break the mental conditioning and the mental blockages you will always fail: no exceptions.
Here is why: When it comes to getting results, your self-belief (programming) will always win out over your conscious desire.
Why is this, why does this always happen? It happens because the mental blockages from the past are still there controlling your every move. It is those little voices that keep telling you:” You should go on binge.” These are the same voices I had that told me I could not get through the stresses of the day without my bulimia, but they are wrong, very wrong.
You can be free if you really want.
Dr Irina Webster