Q&A Series: Luna

Name: Luna

Age: 19

Gender: Genderfluid 

Assigned female at birth

Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed for my blog. The goal is to raise awareness about what eating disorders are and what sufferers go through. 

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

A: My name is Luna I'm a 19 year old college student from Cork. I've struggled with my mental health for most of my life and I also found out I am autistic when I was 17. Promoting awareness about mental health and neurodiversity is something I'm passionate about!

My eating disorder began when I was 12 years old due to being groomed online. It started with occasionally restricting my food, but this later spiralled into me doing this everyday, running and walking loads everyday and engaging in online pro-anorexia content. I went through many periods of recovery and relapse over the years but I didn't tell my parents until I was 16 when I was going through a serious mental health crisis which lead to me leaving school for a few months and later joining Youthreach (an alternative to mainstream education).

After being taught by a peer how to "purge", I also developed bulimic tendencies. So I would do a mix of restricting and purging. Though never officially diagnosed, I was told my eating disorder was classified as EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified). Even when I was honest with mental health teams and my parents, I struggled to be taken seriously due to still maintaining a weight classified as "overweight".

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

A: I first realised I had these issues when I was 12 or 13, but like many individuals with eating disorders, I was in love with my disorder. I didn't try to seek help outside of my friends until I was 16 when I told a therapist I was seeing who referred me to CAMHS.

Q: Did you encounter any difficulties when seeking treatment?

A: A lot! People within my mental health team were very ignorant at times. They at times even denied I had an eating disorder. Once reaching adult services, I was denied in a cry for help for inpatient care during a very hard time in my eating disorder, because the treatment wasn't suitable for someone with "binge eating disorder".

I did not have binge eating disorder nor had I ever described having those symptoms. My assumption is that this team hadn't taken sufficient notes and after weighing me assumed I must have had an eating disorder that can cause weight gain. This was deeply deeply upsetting to me as you may know people with restrictive eating disorders become very distressed when they think someone views them as eating too much.

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

A: More public inpatient and outpatient services. There is only one public outpatient service in the country, and this is in Dublin, and this is incredibly hard to get into. The inpatient services countrywide consist of less than 100 beds dedicated to eating disorder care. This is unacceptable when you consider how many people struggle with eating disorders. I would also like the services to accommodate people who are healthy weight or overweight as an eating disorder can still be dangerous when not overweight. The services also need to stop stereotyping eating disorders as this harms groups who we don't typically think as people who would have eating disorders, such as men.

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

A: There is no body type that represents people with eating disorders. People with eating disorders can be underweight, "healthy" weight, overweight, obese, skinny, muscly, tall, short, any gender, any age etc.

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

A: Delete any apps or content that may trigger you. Look into eating disorder specific therapy if you can afford it. Talk to your loved ones. If you think it would help, there is also a Bodywhys helpline that operates a few days a week. Don't be too hard on yourself. Recovery isn't always linear.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?

A: Every body is a beautiful body.