Cosmopolitan Blog Awards - PLEASE NOMINATE

Please nominate my blog / vote for it in the Cosmopolitan blog award (see link below).. the more people that know about the reality behind eating disorders and the TRUTH, the more lives can be saved.


http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/blogs/cosmo-blog-awards-2012/cosmo-blog-awards-2012_nominate


Thank you,


Love and warmth,


Anna-Katharina

When to think and when to feel...

When I was ill I couldn’t think. My body was so malnourished that it didn’t have the energy: think of your body like a load of switches (e.g. thinking / keeping warm / fertility)…as food declines these switches become switched off one by one to preserve energy until you are left simply breathing, so just about staying alive.

The only way I can describe not being able to think is like when you are struggling over a really hard maths question and your brain freezes… its like this only a thousand times worse. So because of this, I couldn’t recover by thinking – I had to recover by feeling as that’s all I had to go on. I had to learn (for the first time in my life) how to really tune in to what I was feeling, and this meant acknowledging parts of me which I had ignored and suppressed for so, so long. It sounds blind – it felt blind, but it got me to where I am today.

Recovering from anorexia through years and years of therapy and finally being happy does not mean happiness every day – I get as angry / depressed /jealous / miserable as anybody… but I never ever suppress what I am feeling any more, I acknowledge everything and know that all feelings are ok. This means I have a fundamental assurance in myself and I am not afraid of myself. I am not afraid of sadness  / anger / grief, horrid though they are, and this really is an incredible reality.

I lived by feeling, I recovered by feeling, and I make decisions by feeling… and trust me life is so much better this way. Don’t go against everything you feel because of what your head is telling you… as soon as you hear a ‘but’ that’s a sure sign your head is intervening. Always go by what you really feel… what is right one day may be wrong another, but don’t live one wrong day in the hope that two wrongs will eventually make a right. If you always go with what you feel is right, then everything will always work I promise.

You wouldn’t take put your jumper on if you felt hot because you thought the sun was going to go in…wait until the sun has gone in and then put it on.

Love and warmth

Anna-Katharina

I starved, but not because of the media

Last week Vogue announced that they would no longer use ‘too skinny’ models. Being someone who suffered from anorexia for five years I should perhaps have been delighted with this…but was I? No: quite frankly I was livid and I was hurt. No matter how many pictures they removed from their magazines, they could not give me back all those years I lost to the cruel illness. In fact, even if those pictures had not even been published in the first place I still would not have had my adolescence.Because anorexia is not caused by the media.No – it is the media who starves the world of the truth of anorexia.At 16 I was in hospital: I was critically underweight, severely malnourished and terrified… and not once in my life had I even bought a glossy mag. Yet I walked through school and hospital, blinded by the anorexia and surrounded by people who assumed I simply had a desire to be as thin as the models in magazines. How can she want to be that skinny? She’s being ridiculous she should just eat. Doesn’t she know all those pictures are airbrushed anyway?
My brother died when I was two and a half years old.I was severely bullied for 14 years.I was living with 16 years of suppressed grief, anxiety, confusion and a scuppered emotional development. I had no self-esteem, I was filled with self-loathing, I felt worthless, I believed I was a mistake – not as good as everybody else. All I wanted was to be happy, so I decided to be thin because I believed it would make everything ok. Almost overnight, food became associated in my mind with worthlessness, guilt and depression, whilst losing weight gave me a kick as I believed every pound lost brought me one step closer to that happiness. As I lost weight, my body began to shut down and thinking required too much energy, so it was abandoned. My brain sealed all meanings into what it could last remember: food was bad, no food was good. As clear as black and white. I did not have the energy to reason against it; I knew my goal: to be happy and to leave the worthlessness behind.That is why I was ill, that is why I was infertile for so long: not because I was envious of Victoria Beckham, but because I had a lifetime of trauma to acknowledge and feel.I have found this article difficult to write, as while on the one hand I want to stress that it is not the media which causes anorexia, I am not for one moment excusing them. Of course it is wrong that they are using underweight models, but isn’t that just common sense? Shouldn’t it be obvious that the beauty industry of a first world country should be promoting healthy models rather than those who are suffering from hair loss, memory loss, infertility, osteoporosis, chronic fatigue and heart failure because of their low weight?So where does the media come in?Even though I had not touched a glossy mag in my life, the legacy from the magazines penetrates girls, women and guys everywhere. I may not have seen the most recent Vogue, but I was attending school every day where society’s belief that thinness equates to happiness penetrated the very seams. So when I yearned to be free of the trauma and grief that had been my life ever since I could remember, I chose thinness.My therapist once presented me with lots of cut outs of women from magazines and asked me to sort them into two piles: underweight and healthy. With ease I quickly sorted the piles… 46: 4 – healthy: underweight. My therapist then re-sorted them: 3: 47 – healthy: underweight. How wrong I was. She taught me how to recognise if someone was underweight: a gap between the tops of their legs where flesh should be, arms like twigs in winter, hip bones visible. Pretty much all the women illustrated then. How is this beautiful??! Magazines are effectively brochures of infertile women with osteoporosis who would collapse if made to walk anywhere. The media does not cause anorexia, it illustrates it.Believing that thin models cause eating disorders is like believing that reducing the price of fruit and veg cures cancer. It may make one life one percent easier but it’s not going to solve anything. I starved because I believed it would take away my pain, not because I wanted to be stick thin. So let’s just use our common sense: only use healthy models, and work to understand the truth of eating disorders: the abuse, hurt and grief behind the starving eyes. They are hungry for a life they can call their own, not to headline Vogue. 

Kate Middleton

Like probably 99.9% of the female population of Britain, Kate Middleton is my new heroine and role model. It is not because she is beautiful, or with the perfect figure, or the most gorgeous smile (although she is and has all of that), but it is because she has a radiance which comes from a beautiful confidence in herself.


Kate knows herself inside out, she is confident in who she is, she is happy about who she is, she loves her family, her husband, and puts 100% into everything she does... and this is shown in her beauty - this is the reason she is so beautiful and why millions of people across the world love her.


When I was in recovery I had my own mantra: 'Eat and be beautiful.' Even now, I refer back to it whenever I'm struggling or down. If I could have the confidence to eat, and felt happy in what I was doing, I knew that it would give me that sort of glow that nothing else can. 


It takes courage to be confident, but all of us can be. We are constantly afraid of what people think of us and how we look and seem to others. Kate has the world watching her, and yet she holds her head high, shoulders back, and is happy with the person she is...the result? I don't think I've ever read a bad word about her.


We can all be like Kate, maybe not royal or Britain's future Queen... but we can all hold that beauty, that pride and that love. 


Every girl wants to be a princess, and every guy wants (at least secretly) to be a prince... or a knight in shining armour! so go on, be one, for just one day - if you believe you're one, you'll look like one :) Go follow Kate :)


Love and warmth,


Anna-Katharina xxx

When I'm old I shall wear Purple...

Possibly one of my (many!) favourite poems... I think there's something in this for everyone :)

Warning - When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

By Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple

with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired

and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

and run my stick along the public railings

and make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

and pick the flowers in other people's gardens

and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

and eat three pounds of sausages at a go

or only bread and pickles for a week

and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

and pay our rent and not swear in the street

and set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Mountain or cave...

I get completely freaked out in small spaces or underground... so travelling around London on the underground,  going though any form of tunnel, being anywhere remotely claustrophobic is immensely traumatic not only for me but also for those around me as I seem to radiate this kind of psychotic terror. Put me on top of a mountain (metaphorically - I haven't climbed one yet!), or on a ski lift, or the top of a yacht mast, and I'm euphoric!


I've never looked into this too much - just assumed it was one of the many crazily wierd parts of me,until earlier today I was thinking... 


As the anorexia worsened, so did my claustrophobia... at the height of my illness I struggled to be in a car / classroom... anywhere I felt I could not get out. Although it lessened with recovery, it did not disappear but remained where it had been before I was ill. A fundamental part of any eating disorder is a terror of being out of control with your own life - and I was. The claustrophobia was terrible. Now I understand myself and am in control of my own life in a healthy way, and the claustrophobia is less, although an element is still there, almost as a warning.


Before today I saw all this as 'abnormally normal' and to an extent unhealthy, but then I thought... actually, is it healthy?


Imagine being on a fast train going through a dark tunnel. You don't know where its going or where you are, or even maybe which direction you're going in. Doesn't this feel a bit like life sometimes? Are you rushing around, pushing yourself to do what you think you should be doing without stopping,just for a moment, and asking yourself if this is what you want to be doing, if what you have is what you want from life?


Maybe its a good thing to have a slight fear of being trapped, of confined, dark spaces... if your life is feeling like this then its time to change.Get yourself to the top of the mountain where you can see - where you can be yourself and you can be free.


When I was in recovery, I was asked so so many times 'What do you want from life?'
And every time, I answered: 'To be happy. and healthy.'


I now have so much more in my life than I did then. But everything I do still abides by what I wanted then: it is what I want now, and it is what I want for my future: to be happy, and to be healthy.


What do you want from your life? Are you feeling free or are you feeling trapped?


Are you who you want to be? Your life isn't anyone elses, so break free of the darkness and climb towards the light and the air.


Love and warmth,


Anna-Katharina

Time to stay...

I remember once reading a book in which the main character (a young woman) read some advice for being with a woman in labour:
When she screams at you to go, that's when she needs you most.


I was reminded of this just now when I was having a 'bleeurrgghh' moment - I am currently having to gain a bit of weight having lost some and I have been having one of those days where the sheer volume of food feels just too much for one person... basically a 'fat' day! 


Interestingly, I wasn't wanting to be on my own and the idea of a couple of days with no lectures and my boyfriend and best friend both away is, frankly, terrifying. But then I thought, why am I so scared of my own company right now? I'm usually OK with it.


Then I realised it was because I was afraid of what I am feeling, afraid of being locked away with myself and feeling bleeurrgh - so I wanted to escape it all. When she screams at you to go, that is when she needs you most.  - when you least want to be around yourself, that is when you need your adult self most to nurture, encourage and soothe. 


Now I'm not saying company is bad - it is the most important element of human life!! But are you sometimes desperately seeking it to avoid yourself? Just ask yourself - are you happy being on your own for a day? Or is that too frightening to contemplate? If it is, then its time to sit down and start to look after yourself, and appreciate yourself.


I've done the whole weight gain before, I know how hard it is for someone with anorexia in their history... but I can't help myself by running away. I will feel a but ming for a while... but it will pass. 


Take a day just for yourself, do you even know yourself at all? Do you like what you know or are you trying to make it something different?


When she screams at you to go, that's when she needs you most,


So stay.


Love and warmth,


Anna-Katharina xxxx