Non-Linear

Navigating the undulating path to recovery from eating disorders

STORY BY LIBBY KELLER | PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY TOMMY CALDERON | INFOGRAPHIC BY EVAN DONNELLY

I walk into the bathroom and carefully close the door so I don’t wake up my roommate. I look at the scale on the floor and a jolt of anxiety pulses in my gut.
What did I eat yesterday? Was it too much?
I strip off my clothes and step on the scale.
It was definitely too much. I’m going to have to skip breakfast today.
I count to 10 and look down.
Today is going to be a bad day.

Responsibility

Chloe Roberts is a recent Western graduate who has struggled with bulimia since her senior year of high school.

At the time, her first serious boyfriend had left for college, and the emotional strain of trying to keep in touch while also looking for new relationships began taking its toll on Roberts and her self-esteem.

“All the pressure, and all the emotions just flew out in a really strong, bad way,” Roberts says.

The inability to detach from the relationship made Roberts feel like she needed to improve her looks to eliminate possible competition for whenever her boyfriend visited.

Her depression culminated during the last six months of her senior year before finally Roberts reached her breaking point.

The solution she found was purging.

It began small, Roberts says, as she was only throwing up every other day or so. But after a brief time in therapy, she faced the challenge of moving to Chicago and attending college at the same university as her ex.

It was there that Roberts says she began vomiting after every meal, abusing laxatives and restricting her intake.

But after a family vacation, Roberts received an ultimatum from her parents, seek professional treatment or be taken out of college. Roberts chose to go through a treatment program at the Insight Eating Disorder facility in Chicago.

Three months later, on June 16, 2012, Roberts returned to Washington and began what she describes as her first active push toward recovery. She transferred to Western to stay close to the support system she’d built with her friends and family.

However, the struggle didn’t end there.

“I sometimes feel like it’s just a giant relapse and it’s never going to go away,” Roberts says as she recounted her first major slip back into bulimic tendencies during fall 2014.

For two months, Roberts hid her return to bulimia before thoughts of her deteriorating body resurfaced and she sought help from Western’s dietitian. Since then, she has come to realize that her thoughts of disordered eating may never completely leave her. There may always be days when thoughts of food make her anxious, or when the desire to exercise seems to trump all else. If she’d been asked a year ago, she’d have said she was fully recovered. Now, she’s not so sure there is such a thing.

Recovery is a tricky thing to define. At what point is someone considered to be recovered?

Support

The science of eating disorders is young and inexact at best, according to Dr. Anna Ciao, a professor of abnormal psychology at Western.

Ciao arrived at Western in fall 2014, and has been researching eating disorders since she was first introduced to the concept as an undergraduate.

There is a large variation between the number of people who suffer from eating disorders and the number who seek treatment, Ciao says.

“There is a lot of shame about eating disorders, a lot of resistance to treatment because people are proud of symptoms or feel like they’re culturally pretty normal,” Ciao says.

Beginning at the University of Chicago, Ciao began examining the narratives of people’s individual experiences with eating disorders. By doing so, she hopes to identify trigger sources and work toward improving methods of detection and treatment, she says.

However, when it comes to hard data, Ciao says there just isn’t much about eating disorders that is understood definitively at this point.

Recovery is an especially gray area, Ciao says. (Ciao 5:40)

“It seems like the best predictor of being recovered in the long term is the motivation to not have the eating disorder anymore,” Ciao says. “That construct is variable between people in treatment — whether or not they’re ready to let go of the eating disorder or they feel like it still is something that they value.”

Ciao likens the recovery process somewhat to that of an Alcoholics Anonymous program — in that a vulnerability to relapse always exists with a person after they’ve experienced an eating disorder. That said, Ciao believes many people look at their recoveries as an ongoing process that needs to be protected and nurtured, she says.

In addition, one of the 10 fundamental components and characteristics of recovery defined by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration describes recovery as a non-linear process. The rates of improvement and setbacks are indeterminable, and vary for each person.

Among Western’s student population, this is no different.

Empowerment

Claire Poulos was raised in the microclimate of the San Francisco area where sun remains part of the forecast 66 percent of the year. But when she moved to Bellingham to attend Western, an average 201 annual cloudy days, according to city data reports. This change in environment took its toll on her psyche, Poulos says.

Poulos says she began to suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder and struggled against a dampened mood. This combined with a bit of weight gain Poulos says is what she experienced as a result of her transition to the college lifestyle.

One day before class, Poulos says the unhappiness and discomfort she felt with food in her stomach finally pushed her to purge. She says the relief was immediate, and from there the eating disorder only got worse.

“I remember laying in bed sometimes and just staring down at myself, and I would watch my body get bigger and bigger and bigger,” Poulos says. “When you’re at that point, you just kind of lose control of yourself.”

Poulos began the destructive cycle of restricting and purging what she did manage to eat. She developed terrible anxiety and symptoms of nausea around food, her throat was raw and every ounce of food in her stomach felt painful, Poulos says.

It was after two years away from home when Poulos first returned to California for the summer. It was there that she says the support of friends and family spurred her forward into recovery.

“When you’re told that you’re beautiful every day, and that you’re worth something, that’s really a big step,” Poulos says. “When you have a disorder like this you don’t see that in yourself.”

Poulos says she has since grown accustomed to the climate of the Pacific Northwest and has found a relief from her anxiety about food through the adoption of a vegan diet. It’s a practice she says puts her more in touch with the process of nourishing her body and giving it what it needs.

But even so, she still struggles with purging and other anxieties around food, Poulos says.

“It’s a constant process, it’s a struggle. When you view yourself in a negative light, it can change every day,” Poulos says, adding that the difficult part about recovery is breaking the initial cycle of eating disorders.

When that cycle is broken, she can recognize that she is thankful her health has not been compromised and she is still able to walk and breathe and make the most of her life, Poulos says.

Direction

There is no “right” way to go through an eating disorder. The varying ways Roberts and Poulos have found to pursue their recoveries demonstrate this easily.

Along with the support of family and friends, professional counseling and nutrition advising were helpful for Roberts as she traversed her path through bulimia.

While positive relationships are a common theme between the women, Poulos has enlisted more informal tools in her recovery process. Meditation, yoga and a vegan diet have kept her focused on maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Neither approach is better than the other. Motivation seems to be the vital key to overcoming a disordered eating condition, says Ciao.

Both Roberts and Poulos have found their motivation and will continue to work toward futures not defined by their eating disorders.

For Roberts, this equates to a major in sociology and a minor in psychology, which she says also contributes to her position working at a domestic violence shelter.

“I want to help people who are in these horrible experiences that they can’t help,” Roberts says.

Poulos has chosen to dedicate her studies to a major in communications and a minor in sociology — fields she says are fascinating because it deals with actions people do every single day whether they realize it or not. She hopes to contribute to a world of effective communication and positivity by working in mediation and conflict resolution.

Poulos says she works to channel that positivity into her own life by keeping in mind her daily mantra.

“You are beautiful, you are bountiful, you are blissful.”

It is a message of hope anybody struggling with an eating disorder can keep close to their hearts. The process is difficult and unpredictable, but no one ever has to go through it alone.

In the end, everyone is beautiful, everyone is bountiful and everyone is blissful.

Hope

I walk into the bathroom and close the door.
My eyes don’t leave the scale as I undress. I take a deep breath and lift a foot to step on. But before my skin finds the cold metal, I pause.
I remember laughing, loving and living my life. This thing beneath your feet never gave you any of that.
Then I remember the hospital bed where I almost lost everything. I remember the promise I made to myself to never go back.
I let my foot fall to the floor and get dressed. I don’t look back when I leave the bathroom.
Today is going to be a good day.