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Q&A Series: Emmy

Writer's picture: Amy HanleyAmy Hanley


Name: Emmy 

Age: 29 

Gender: Female 


Can you please tell me a little bit about yourself, and about the eating disorder you have?


Hello❤️My name is Emmy. I’m a twenty-nine year old Laois girl living in County Meath. 

I’m a nature lover, an avid baker; a proud and doting guinea pig mammy - my clan now consists of four extremely noisy and equally lovable little furries. I’m a hiker and a mountain walker, feeling never the more at home than when surrounded by soaring heather strewn heights, with the cry of buzzards in my ears and the wind teasing my unruly, dark blonde hair free from its plait. A writer still searching for the way around the rocks strewn about by doubt, and a dreamer who frequently traverses the realm between the real and the imaginary. And of course - the most loyal customer of Butlers Chocolates Ireland, and self-confessed, and proud of it, hot chocaholic��. These are just some of the things that make me who I am. 


But I'm also a survivor, a warrior. I was once locked in a gruelling and seemingly endless battle with a foe that for one time seemed to bring me life; while yet, simultaneously and furtively, drew me so close towards death. 


I was locked in a battle with anorexia nervosa for half my 29 years, but I was the one who survived. 


More than that. I didn't emerge from the battleground a mere shadow of what I once was and how I was supposed to be - I emerged from this battle triumphant. I was the one who shook her head and shouted defiance when my anorexia tried to call parley. There's no such thing as meeting an eating disorder halfway; to call a truce that would benefit you both. I finally refused to be drawn into its deceptions, and cried for the battle to rage on. I knew in this fight only one of us could win. I knew, in this fight, for one of us to truly live; the other had to die. 


And It was not going to be me.



The tallest mountains lay ahead of me, 

But I knew that I had to climb. 

Climb to regain my freedom, my life. 

Climb to find myself. 

Climb to reclaim the person who was me. 

Climb, to finally know what it means to be truly, truly alive. 


When did you realise you had issues with eating, and what did you do to seek help? 


It still baffles me as to how oblivious I was. An eating disorder sure knows how to make a fine pair of blinkers. You only see what it wants you to see. 


I developed my eating disorder at the age of twelve, but kept it hidden through the entirety of my adolescence. It was only, in my second year of university, that it gradually started to occur to me that something was fundamentally wrong in the way I lived my life.


By then, of course, a significant amount of mental and physical damage has already been wrought by the illness. My bones were already osteoporotic, despite the fact I was only twenty one years of age. My liver was close to shutting down and my blood pressure was dangerously low. And, of course, the eating disorder was so firmly established by this stage that it had well and truly become my way of life. I didn't know, or didn't want to know, anything remotely different. 


I half-heartedly made some changes to my eating; completely heedless to the fact that the tiny actions of adding a single potato slice to my evening meal and eating a single cookie for snack were mere drops in the ocean that I was trying to swim through. It was purely by accident that my illness was actually diagnosed. In my third year of college, I injured my foot and, given my lameness interfered with my daily exercise, I reluctantly limped off to be seen by the college GP. He immediately referred me to a Dubln mental health service, and I was hospitalised a few months later. 


Years on from my diagnosis, and having been through a very difficult time as an impatient and outpatient, I wasn't exactly doing great, let alone better. Hospital didn't help me at all, and I relapsed shortly after being discharged. Fear of being hospitalised for a second time forced me to try and maintain some level of physical stability, and I managed to pull myself through the final years of my degree. 


All this time I felt like I was merely drifting through life: going through the motions of every day without really feeling, or experiencing, anything. On the outside, I no longer was the atypical skinny, anorexic girl: people looked at me and assumed I was “better”. On the inside, however, my eating disorder still pretty much reigned supreme. I was still hopelessly enmeshed in a web of rigidity and compulsion and fear, with the anorexia controlling and influencing everything I thought, said, and did. I was hopelessly lost within the limbo land of half recovery. I had no idea of how to set myself free; had not the faintest clue of how to navigate my way out. 


It was only two years ago, really, when a gradual and fundamental realisation came to me. It was sunlight trickling through the bar slits of my prison cell; illuminating the dust and desolation residing with me there; causing me to look up towards the light and the beautiful blue sky that awaited beyond. 


I realised there was more to life than half recovery. I realised that I had the power and the strength to go the full way. I realised I could no longer remain anorexia's powerless and helpless victim - I wanted to break free and to break free, wholly and completely. To not allow one single chain remaining upon my wings; to not permit one single trace of anorexia’s taint to remain upon my mind. No, I wanted to be completely and entirely free. I wanted to be a writer, a teacher; a mother, a partner, a sister. I wanted to be all who I could be. I wanted to be the girl who recovered. Most of all, I wanted back my life. I wanted to reclaim all that was me, and prove to the world that true recovery is possible. 


Recovery is different and personal for everyone, but I can identify a number of key components that were essential to my full, true, and complete recovery. 1. Realising and acknowledging a sense of my own self-worth. Building enough self-esteem and respect for myself, and a value of my own life and identity, to actually want to recover and to go through the pain and heartbreak that true recovery involves. 2. Knowing that, both during the weight gain process and long after that - it was perfectly ok and absolutely what I needed, to eat whatever I wanted and in whatever quantities I was craving. 3. A support system that included someone who never stopped assuring me I needed to eat as much as I could, even after I had reached the supposedly “healthy weight”. 4. Tools that helped me get through the manifold challenges and seemingly unmovable obstacles; that helped me navigate through the most difficult parts of the recovery journey. 


What changes would you like to see in eating disorder services? 


Looking back on it all as a recovered young woman, I don't truly think there was anything about treatment that helped me much at all. It was just a period of time in which I was made to eat and gain weight - which is vital, and necessary, for mental and physical recovery; that goes without saying. But, critically, I wasn't supported enough after the target weight was reached. I can honestly say that all the tools, motivation and strength that finally allowed me to recover the past few years did not come from treatment; they were not learned or acquired there. It's so crucial to support patients during the weight maintenance stage and beyond. And not just for a few months - this process takes years.


Support is crucial for underweight sufferers; but not enough emphasis is placed on supporting those who have reached target weights or who are at a supposedly healthy bmi. I also personally, found there was too much focus on returning to "healthy, normal" eating (whatever that is) once maintenance weight was reached. Too much emphasis, and too early; in my opinion - and a one size fits all approach to eating. I recall sitting in a dietician's class being made to listen to a lecture about the food pyramid, and that a portion of cereal is the same size as what you would fit in a disposable plastic cup that a kid would drink out of. I just found that so unhelpful and that it merely served to further engrain eating disorder

fears and beliefs. Eating shouldn't be viewed or presented in this way; what is healthy for one particular individual isn't necessarily the right thing for someone else. 


I struggled a bit to conform with some of the ward's rules. For example - eating outside of the ward's designated meal times! I know it was because of staffing, but it was really hard for us in the sense that lunch and the evening meal were only 3 hours apart - with a snack in between - and then there would be nothing until 10pm at night. Meaning that I was uncomfortably full for the evening meal and then occasionally, would become peckish during the gap between dinner and supper. A few times I asked could I have some food during these gaps, but I was refused. I recall at one point being called out for behaviours which my care team deemed as being driven by my eating disorder - the funniest example being I didn't wear jumpers as the ward was roasting, and my psychiatrist put this down to me trying to burn off energy by being cold. That was untrue, I was simply too warm. I also felt my parents were blamed for my development of my illness - this really angers me, to this day; blaming serves nobody and my poor mam was already burdened with so much guilt and worry as it was. 


I feel that my true recovery progress didn’t really begin during treatment…which testifies towards the scope for improvement in the treatment of eating disorders in Ireland. And I’m not saying this is anyone’s fault, as I understand this illness is one of the hardest things to treat out there. I just don’t really think there was anything about my treatment that truly helped me, in the end. If anything, my recovery only truly began for me when I was able to fully let go of every single one of my long-established eating disorder beliefs, fears, rules. And this was not something I realised or grasped during my treatment. My time in treatment didn’t enable me to find my own strength, motivation and reasons to recover - this was something that I uncovered, myself, years later after leaving treatment. Likewise I found that treatment depicted a very unrealistic and unhelpful version of recovery which I found daunting and off-putting. Essentially, in order to recover I had to deconstruct this and establish my own version of recovery - one which I knew was healthy and right and personal to my life, my values and my beliefs. 


My experience of inpatient treatment I do think left me feeling often humiliated. There were just so many rules - not all of them entirely helpful, in my case anyway - and though I know it’s important to set boundaries, is there not a way to do this without making patients feel like they are prisoners without any agency or choice in their treatment? I wanted to eat more at times; this wasn’t permitted. I wanted to drink hot chocolate instead of milk, eat chocolate bars instead of yoghurt, eat fruit instead of drinking fruit juice.. all of these things were frowned upon. As a recovered individual these are still my actual preferences. It was just so very rigid, the way of eating there. I also felt like that once I reached the weight restored mark I was no longer regarded as someone in need of support. Whereas in reality I was silently crying out for someone to help me, to tell me that I still needed to eat as much as I could every day - as I still felt mentally hungry every day, but being in a bigger body made me feel I still had to cut back. Those assurances never came. 


I felt everyone stopped caring, stopped checking in with me, when I looked “healthy, normal” and my weight was “fine”. But yet despite that outward appearance of someone much healthier than what I used to be, was a girl fighting a gruesome inner battle every single hour of every single day. And slowly as the months went on, it was a battle that I started to lose. Treatment was unhelpful in the sense that it actually imposed more rules and insecurities on top of the ones I was already struggling with. And for me it wasn’t until I overcame all of these rules that I was able to truly recover. 


It’s quite striking to me here how, crucially, none of the tools and coping techniques acquired by me which proved fundamental in my recovery - nor, might I add; the motivation and strength that finally enabled me to recover - came from treatment. It was long after I left treatment - years after, in fact - that all these things came together for me, and that I was able to fully start the really hardcore, intense, often torturous, gritty work which is demanded by true recovery. Through a book I ordered off Amazon, a love of chocolate (particularly Butlers hot chocolate!!!), and the enduring and consistent support of a boy who truly loved me. And, I suppose…a good bit of inner strength and resilience too, that had been there all along, but which treatment hadn’t for some reason enabled me to uncover and utilise. 

And it’s just none of these things I developed or acquired during treatment, which to me is troubling. At the very least you would expect treatment would set the foundations for a healthy and strong recovery. But for some reason this did not happen. 


I can testify to the truth of a commonly used explanation accounting for an anorexic’s fear of food and weight gain, delivered by consultants and treatment teams to patients who are finding the weight gain process particularly hard. That your brain can’t function properly in a malnourished and starved state; when you are weight restored, your brain will be able to think more rationally, meaning that fears related to food and eating will be easier to overcome. And do you know what, it is hard to believe this when you are entangled in the depths of anorexia…but looking back now I know that it is actually very true. BUT…and this is a big, big but. This only happens after months (and in my case, a year and a half) of being over the minimum healthy weight range (a good bit over, in my case!) and still eating as much, without rules and limits and restrictions…the same way as you were, or were supposed to be, eating when you were gaining weight. Yes! I can attest to the fact that this is true.


And where my treatment team failed me was that they did not support me during that crucial transition period between hospitalisation and returning to the world of reality; when I was at an acceptable “healthier” weight but still housing a raging eating disorder; when the number on the scale declared me as physically stable but my mind and spirit felt anything but. I was no longer assured that it was still ok to eat as much and as frequently as I could. Instead, that’s when those annoying talks with the dietician started and I got it fixed in my head that anything above 30g of cereal was way too much, and that 150ml of milk on that cereal was really splashing out. And I was shown the weight maintenance meal plan…I remember looking at that and freaking out.


The message taken from both being shown and seeing that was, to my still malnourished brain (yes, my body was healthier, but my brain still had miles to go in terms of recovering!) that if these people of authority were already showing this to me, it meant that I was very close to the dreaded normal weight..and that bit closer to being overweight..and that I needed to exercise caution, with everything I ate, from that point onwards. And as a result I found it all too easy to slip back into my old default way of thinking as regards food, weight and exercise: that one that had been my way of life since I was 12 years old; that way which was dictated by my eating disorder. 


Something needs to change, alright. I hope that by recording my own experiences of treatment and how it didn’t help me, I might help to pinpoint exactly where treatment teams are going wrong. And to perhaps help bring about the change that will enable eating disorder treatment in Ireland to cease wasting time and resources, and do what it really is there for. To save recoveries. To save lives. 


What is one thing you would like people to know about eating disorders? 


I would say, please don’t judge the seriousness of someone’s eating disorder based on their weight or external appearance.


Your loved one might look “ok” on the outside, might have gained some weight; might have reached the minimum healthy bmi. Perhaps they even look better, healthier. But please don’t assume that they are now “ok”. Please don't assume they feel fine. Now more than ever they need your support. It is likely that inside their head they are fighting a gruelling and vicious battle with their ED, who is doing everything in its power to pull your loved one back into its depths. 


One thing I think it's really worth remembering is that physical and mental healing from an eating disorder, while being intrinsically linked, do not occur at the same rate. The brain takes a lot more time to heal than the body. That is why I think it is so crucial to be consistently checking in and looking out for someone once target weight has been reached or they have the semblance of a “healthier” body. Recovery is NOT over once someone has reached a physical appearance of health! Not even half the battle has been fought and your loved one continues to need your support. Please don’t stop asking them how you can help. Please don’t stop encouraging them to eat, and to eat as much and as frequently as they can. Please dont stop asking them how they feel, do they need to talk, are they feeling vulnerable and afraid. Please don't stop reminding them they need to eat as much as they can, and that you are here for them. Be there with them and help them reach FULL recovery, not some superficial or half version of it. 


What piece of advice would you give to someone who is struggling with an eating disorder? 


Oh, a big question, this one. There are so many things I would like to say, but as we all know, its easier to give advice than to take it. 


And so one thing I hope that will remain with any who read this today…is that even if you feel as if you have nothing to recover for or no reason left to fight, please don’t let yourself believe that you can’t or won’t recover. 


I say to you, even if you don't believe in it - please take the first step towards recovery, today, anyway. Even if it feels pointless. Even if it feels like there isn’t one shard of hope left to you. 


Let me tell you something that I only realise looking back on it now. In the beginning, when fear is enormous and our motivation is ragged, a lot of the time recovery is about faking it till you make it.


No, the first time you try to attempt to eat something it probably won't feel great. You might feel helpless and start to think, if this is what is going to be like every time, then there is no way I am ever going to be able to do this. 


But please believe me when I say this. With every conscious act of defiance you take, your courage will build up. You will build momentum. Start with something small but significant; see it through - telling yourself firmly that you WILL do it, no matter how unpleasant, torturous, and difficult it might be - see it through and then do it again and again and again. Know that the first time will be painful and terrifying. Try to tell yourself it won't always be like this. The only way to kill the fear is to look it in the eye and walk straight into it. I know you've probably been told this a hundred times, but please believe me when I say it is true. As a girl who struggled for half her life with anorexia - and recovered - I can attest to the fact that this is the best and only real way to truly beat anxiety. 


You have to commit. To make a promise to yourself to see through the challenges, no matter how hard they are. And with that commitment the fear will begin to wane; with time, persistence, and constant and stubborn repetition of challenges. Your courage and strength will augment. Don't underestimate the extent of your own power. You can do this, oh yes, you can! Once one challenge is completed and repeated don't get stuck on there, though - keep moving up and onwards. Look for the next step you can take towards recovery, the next brick that you can lay of your recovery path. 


You just need to remember this fundamental rule - eat, repeat, eat, repeat. If the first time doesn’t go well please don't give up. Just keep on trying. 


Courage and motivation won’t come straight away. You might be thinking to yourself right now - I can't recover as I have no motivation/no reason to recover. I say to you, that is something that will come, LATER on. But for now you just got to grit your teeth and trust yourself to this scary, terrifying process. 


In the depths of an eating disorder our brains are not working quite as they should. We can't really see beyond the next day, the next hour, the next meal. And so when we are told “you need to find your reasons to recover” often we might think, well, I can't think of any. Leaving us often with a sense of despair and hopelessness. 


I hope you can take some comfort, if this sounds like you, from knowing this was exactly how I felt at the beginning. But crucially, despite this lack of motivation, I decided to take the first

wobbly, tentative first step, anyway. And I kept on stepping despite the roaring fear, the waves of uncertainty that swept over me and soaked me to the bone. 


It was only, with time and commitment to recovery, that my courage and motivation slowly started to build. And a lot of the time, especially at the beginning, recovery is a bit like blind faith. You have to take the leap even if you can't see how deep the water is that you are plunging into. You have to set your feet upon the mountain’s slope no matter how slippy, treacherous or misty it might seem. 


As I approach my thirtieth birthday, there are days when I want to cry till the tears no longer come, for all the years of my youth that I lost to the ED. Years that could have been full of happiness and beauty were just wasted in isolation, depression and deprivation. and I know all too well I will never be able to get them back. 


Eating disorders convince us we are invincible. That we are ok and that nothing truly bad is going to come, of all of this. It's only when something bad happens, that we lost something, that often we are hit with the realisation of what we have lost and by then it is more than often much too late. 


I say to you don’t wait. You will never be able to get back healthy bones once starvation has turned them osteoporotic. You might never be able to reclaim fertility, or healthy organs once they are damaged. And you will never be able to take back the years once ED has stolen them away. 


Don't forget, many things in life which most people deem as so important…can be reclaimed, or redone. There will always be a chance to resit that exam. To earn more money. To continue with that job and get that promotion. But the same cannot always be said for health, once it is irreversibly lost. 


You will get many chances of doing those things or getting those achievements. But, always remember. 

You will only ever get one body, one mind. 

Everything else in life can wait; recovery, should and cannot. 

Don't let one more day of your life be lost to your eating disorder.

Choose recovery and choose it, right here, right now.



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seanblake43
Mar 07, 2024

Thanks for such a detailed story it was really interesting to read. I couldn’t agree more about after support, I’ve been lucky that I have been getting it and I can honestly say if I hadn’t things might be different. When you leave hospital it’s so hard and people need continuity of support. The weeks/months/years after are a lot of work.


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