My Journey With Anorexia
I’ve always been a highly sensitive person. As a child, I could feel things most people around me didn’t seem to notice—tension in a room, unspoken pain, the quiet sadness behind someone’s smile. I sensed dysfunction, dis‑ease, love, fear, and energy at a depth that, for a long time, I thought meant something was wrong with me.
The world around me, often unintentionally, confirmed that belief. I was told I was “too sensitive,” that I was “making things up,” that I shouldn’t feel so much or so deeply. My emotions were labeled as messy, dramatic, or inconvenient. Over time, I internalized a story: if I was the only one who could feel the dysfunction, then I must be the cause of it—and it must be my job to fix it.
That is an impossible job for anyone, let alone a child.
Because I didn’t know that at the time, I kept absorbing the pain around me and turning it inward. I believed that if I couldn’t solve the world’s pain, then I must be the problem. And if I was the problem, maybe the world would be better off without me.
I remember the day that belief crystallized into a decision. I was in Costa Rica, on summer vacation before 8th grade, standing in a second‑floor guest bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror. In that moment, I chose anorexia as my way out of the world. It felt like a solution, a way to disappear slowly and quietly. My mind, already wired to see myself as the source of the problem, gathered “evidence” everywhere to support that choice.
That decision led me to an in‑patient treatment center in Florida at age 13.
The program was designed primarily for adult addicts withdrawing from substances, many of whom were court‑ordered to be there. It was an “eat your way out” model for eating disorders, focused heavily on weight and compliance, with very little attention to the deeper reasons someone might choose self‑destruction in the first place.
As a 13‑year‑old from a private school, with no previous exposure to addiction or abuse that I was aware of, I was suddenly immersed in a world that felt like chaos. I had no rights. I couldn’t speak to my parents until I reached a certain weight. I wasn’t allowed outside until I hit another number on the scale, which meant I didn’t see sunlight, grass, or fresh air for over a month.
I was put on medication that caused me to black out at night and wake up in a wet bed, not knowing if it was sweat or urine. I watched people line up in the hallway for their meds, screaming at their coffee because they were hallucinating blue worms. I saw people get raided by the police. I watched people cycle in and out of the same 28‑day program, relapsing over and over again.
I experienced refeeding syndrome my first night there because, after losing over 30 pounds in six weeks, I was forced to eat a full turkey dinner. I watched an overweight nutritionist give me advice about food and health while the program charged tens of thousands of dollars a month for “treatment” that clearly wasn’t working for many of the people there.
I stayed in that center for a total of seven months during my 8th‑grade year—four months at first, then three more after a brief attempt at returning to “normal life.” When I was discharged the first time, I was given a strict outpatient plan: therapy sessions, daily weigh‑ins, calorie tracking, and a clear message that my job was to comply. But my thought patterns hadn’t changed. I still didn’t know how to stop absorbing everyone else’s pain. I still believed it was my responsibility to fix the world. I still believed, on some level, that I was the problem.
So I did what many people in survival mode do: I found a way to appear “better” without actually healing. I consumed a dangerous amount of salt and water every day to manipulate the scale and avoid being sent back. Eventually, of course, I ended up right back in the same treatment center for another three months.
Looking back now, I can see that this experience, as traumatic and dysfunctional as it was, gave me two powerful gifts.
First, it showed me—very clearly—what does not work in healing. I saw the harm of treating people as problems to be fixed instead of humans to be understood. I saw the damage of focusing only on behavior and weight, without addressing the beliefs, nervous system patterns, and emotional realities underneath. I saw what happens when there is no real integration back into everyday life—when someone goes from a highly controlled, isolated environment straight back into school, work, or family systems with no bridge in between.
Second, it deepened my compassion. Being surrounded by people at the depths of their own pain—people whose lives had been shaped by addiction, trauma, and systems that failed them—opened my heart in a way nothing else could have. I began to see how many men, in particular, suffer in silence because they lack true brotherhood, emotional language, and spaces where their wildness and vulnerability are both welcome. I saw how suppression leads to depression, regression, and eventually explosive expression.
Through all of this, a theme emerged: I have a gift for seeing dysfunction. I can see where systems, relationships, and inner worlds are out of alignment. I can see where something is off, even when everyone else is pretending it’s fine. For a long time, that gift felt like a curse. It made me feel like the problem. Now, it’s one of the core strengths I bring to my work.
My recovery didn’t happen because a program “fixed” me. It happened slowly, over years, as I learned to:
- Question the belief that I was the cause of everyone’s pain.
- Understand why I chose anorexia in the first place.
- Listen to my nervous system and recognize when I was overwhelmed, over‑giving, or shutting down.
- Rebuild a relationship with my body that wasn’t based on punishment or control.
- Decide who I wanted to become beyond the identity of “someone with an eating disorder.”
I also learned that true healing is not about becoming “the recovered anorexic.” That still keeps the disorder at the center of your identity. For me, real freedom meant becoming someone entirely new—someone who no longer needed anorexia to survive, someone who could use her sensitivity and awareness as tools for healing instead of weapons against herself.
That journey is what led me to the work I do now: helping others reclaim their story, redefine their life, and step into a version of themselves that feels fully alive.