Food for Thought
September 6th 2016
By Katy, 21 - OCD Youth Blogger: Katy battled with OCD and an eating disorder for most of her life. She became reclusive for four years before eventually getting treatment. Now, she writes books and articles that share her story of recovery in the hope she can help others going through the same thing. She’s also training to be a dog specialist and plans to one day own her own rescue centre.
I was obsessed with being thin. I don’t mean I worried about my weight like every other teenage girl on the planet, I mean I was obsessed. Being thin dominated my every thought.
I touched that piece of food. It’s contaminated me. Now I’ll get fat.
Last time I wore that nail varnish colour I didn’t stick to my diet. If I wear that nail varnish again, I’ll get fat.
Did I do all my sit ups? Maybe I missed a set. I should get out of bed and do another 200 just to be safe.
These thoughts and a million others went round and round in my head, tormenting me every day. Even sleep didn’t offer an escape as I’d dream about eating “bad” foods and wake up screaming before I realised it was just a nightmare and I was okay. I wasn’t contaminated.
Because that’s the thing, it wasn’t just that food would make me fat, it would make me bad, dirty and contaminated. So I avoided it all costs.
If I ate something I shouldn’t have, I’d purge it from my system and clean anything I might have touched while the food was in me. The clothes I’d worn had to be washed, sometimes binned and only once I’d completely emptied my body of the food could I begin to calm down and feel okay again. Day by day, more foods were added to the forbidden list until all I could eat was a slice of plain white toast.
When I’d lost two stone my family insisted I got help and I was referred to an NHS eating disorder service. There I was diagnosed with anorexia, which was no big surprise. What shocked me was that I was also diagnosed with OCD and as I progressed with treatment my therapist explained that a lot of my rigid rules around food and eating were actually symptoms of OCD, not an eating disorder.
Hang on, I thought, I’ve been under the assumption my problem was anorexia. I’ve spent the last 4 years reading every eating disorder book I can get my hands on and now you’re telling me it was all for nothing?!
I was so confused. Anorexia was how I defined myself and now I suddenly had this new label to try and process. Then I started remembering things.
I was seven years old and getting dressed for school. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I put my sock on, then took it off. I turned it inside out and put it back on. Then I took it off, turned it the right way out and put it on again. Every day it had to be done in that exact order or I couldn’t leave the house.
Next there was bedtime. I’d say goodnight to my parents in exactly the same way: “See you in the morning, night night, I love you.” It had to be done just so because otherwise they would die in their sleep and I’d spent the rest of my life haunted by the fact that my last words to them weren’t perfect. More and more memories kept pouring in until there was no denying it. I had OCD and it was pretty extreme.
But I had anorexia too. Where did one disorder end and the other begin?
My head was a mess so I turned to the place with all the answers, Google. It soon became apparent that I wasn’t alone in my dual diagnosis. In fact 41% of eating disorder sufferers also have OCD and many more struggle with other conditions like social anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder and Tourette syndrome.
But I was depressed, socially anxious and a million and one other symptoms. Did that mean I had all those disorders as well? Was I a walking mental illness encyclopedia?
Once I calmed down, and stepped away from the Internet, I started to see things more clearly. Yes, I got depressed some times but that was mostly a result of my OCD. In fact, the more I thought about it, everything, including my eating disorder, stemmed from my OCD. That was the fundamental problem and that was what I had to deal with.
Finally I had a proper diagnosis and one I could make sense of, so I committed myself to recovery and something amazing happened. It worked.
I’d tried so many times to recover from anorexia but all my attempts ended with me balled up in the corner, sobbing my guts out. When I started challenging my OCD behaviours I was able to edge out some of my eating rules too. Soon I added a new food to my allowed list, then two new foods until eventually I was eating actual meals again.
I still slip up and revert to my “good” foods and there are times when I get paranoid about gaining weight and want to jump on the treadmill because I’ve breathed in the same air as a pizza but now that I know what the problem is I’m always able to get back on the recovery horse and keep going.
But that wasn’t the best thing about getting a proper diagnosis.
I’d spent a lot of time on eating disorder forums and chat rooms, talking to other people I thought were like me. Only I was different. I didn’t think like they did and I couldn’t understand why. I thought there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t even fit in with other anorexics. Then I met someone who had OCD and it was like coming home. They just got me. Everything they said made so much sense. It was like our brains were wired the same way and I didn’t have to hide the parts of me I thought were crazy. Finally, after years of searching I’d found the people I belonged with.
