Alison’s Story
In elementary school, I was one of those kids who seemed to have it all together – I was respectful to everyone, responsible, got good grades, and never turned down an opportunity to be creative. I loved participating in theater productions, writing, playing the flute, and doing craft projects. According to my report cards, I was “a pleasure to have in class,” and “an attentive learner.” I loved the praise I received for doing these things. In retrospect, my self-worth was based on what other people thought of me. I wanted this validation so that I could hide how I truly felt about myself. I could hide the internal shame I felt. In my mind, if I was not perfect and other people didn’t like me, nothing mattered.
As a twin, I never truly felt like I had my own identity. When I got recognized for my own achievements, I felt like I was finally seen as an individual. To keep this recognition going, I began to set unattainable standards for myself and beat myself up when I didn’t achieve them. My shy and anxious personality only elevated these feelings. To compensate for this insecurity and self-loathing, I put my energy into being perfect in other areas of my life. I needed to please people, and put other people’s needs in front of my own. I felt that I had to live up to astronomically high expectations I set for myself.
My mind had the ability to turn any situation into a criticism. If I answered a question correctly in class, I was a teacher’s pet. If I was quietly listening to someone, they thought that I didn’t care about what they were saying. If someone complimented me, they didn’t mean it. I began to withdraw from my peers, and I felt safer just keeping to myself and avoiding social interactions. My body image was so negative, and I would always compare myself to my peers, who all seemed to have smaller bodies than mine. They seemed happy, and I was desperate to obtain this happiness. I had heard about dieting but wasn’t really sure how to do it. Then came a health class with the information I needed.
In second grade, we had a health class focused on nutrition, and the main message conveyed to me was that I had to be thin to be healthy. I learned what calories were. Emphasis was placed on the importance of exercise, and we looked at the food pyramid. We were told about so-called “good foods and bad foods,” which got my perfectionist brain really excited. My mind told me that I could cut out some foods in the name of health. I vowed to myself that I would lose weight.
I hit puberty at age 9, well before any of my peers. My body seemed to change overnight. The changes were very painful, physically and emotionally, and the lack of control I had over my own body was terrifying. I needed a way to take back control over my body, and I thought, “Well, at least I can control what I eat.”
To recap, I was an anxious, insecure perfectionist with identity and body image issues, and dealing with undiagnosed anxiety and depression. I called myself stupid when I couldn’t grasp certain concepts in school or had trouble focusing. I had this feeling that there was something different about me that I didn’t know how to put into words. Because these feelings didn’t have words, and I was too young to process them, I subconsciously used my body to talk for me.
I committed to dieting in 5th grade. This dieting behavior changed my mindset around food and weight – I classified foods as “good” and “bad,” and I punished myself when I ate “bad” foods. I denied myself foods that I really liked because I was terrified that they would make me gain weight. I didn’t care that I didn’t feel good. I convinced myself that I was being healthy, because, in my mind, losing weight was synonymous with health and happiness. I was anxiously and dreadfully anticipating the change to middle school. At the beginning of 6th grade, once again, I felt like I had no control in my life. I was being thrust into a new school building, with many more peers, new social dynamics, more homework, more rules, multiple teachers, and more pressure to succeed. Suddenly, appearances mattered more – girls began wearing makeup and clothing that showed off their bodies. It felt chaotic and awkward and confusing. I felt like a small fish in a big pond. It was around the summer between 7th and 8th grades that my desire to lose weight turned into a voice in my head saying “You need to lose weight.” This voice told me that it had my best interest in mind. It would help all my insecurity and painful feelings disappear. It promised that it would take care of me. All I had to do was listen to it and do whatever it said. It felt like a security blanket. I pulled this blanket tighter and tighter around me until I could no longer breathe. In October of 2005, at age 14, a trip to my pediatrician’s office confirmed everyone’s growing suspicions in two words. Anorexia nervosa. I learned that the voice controlling my every move was the eating disorder voice, or as I called it, Ed.
My life revolved around acting on eating disorder behaviors and going to appointments. I began therapy and nutrition counseling, and continued seeing my doctor very frequently to monitor my perilous physical health. I would spend hours every week talking about my behaviors, feelings, and food intake, all the while believing that no one could make me stop. And I didn’t want to stop.
As my weight decreased, the compliments increased. People were telling me that I looked good, and asking me how I was losing weight. I felt noticed and admired. As the walls were spinning around me, I was given the message that I was doing the right thing. This praise felt really good, and I continued down this path of self-destruction. I was consistently angry, ornery, and sad, often directing my anger at those who did not deserve it.
The human body can only handle so much stress, and despite my thoughts of invincibility, it was reaching the tipping point. I was at jazz band rehearsal one day after school when I stood up and everything went dark. The next thing I remember is coming-to in the nurse’s office. I opened my eyes to a bunch of people standing over me telling me that I had passed out. I really, truly did not believe that I had passed out, because I had to be sick to pass out, right? And I was brainwashed by my eating disorder into thinking that I was not sick.
My eating disorder did not only wreak havoc on my day-to-day life. Any event where food was present was avoided, so I missed birthday parties, eating out with friends and family, and there were many Thanksgiving dinners with my extended family that I missed out on. I don’t remember much about those Thanksgivings, but I do remember not sitting at the table with my family, eating food that I had brought alone in an unused bedroom in my aunt’s house, and being in a constant state of anxiety because food took precedence over everything. I was engaging in the eating disorder to drown out the pain I felt in my life. In the end, though, the pain that my eating disorder caused me is all I remember about those Thanksgivings. I was so embarrassed and ashamed to have this illness that made me stick out like a sore thumb. I felt like no one understood what was going on, and it was awful to suffer through those times alone, even when I was surrounded by family.
I continued to struggle during my high school years, and I nearly got kicked out of National Honor Society because my grades dropped. I was forced to leave a Spanish immersion camp that I was excited about. I had to leave jobs. I had to drop out of the school marching band, which had been a lifelong dream of mine, because my body couldn’t handle the long, intense practices and performances. Shopping for a prom dress was miserable, because I bawled my eyes out in the dressing room, so disgusted with my body.
In my junior year, I remember coming out of an appointment with my dietician, who had given me a list of foods to eat for the coming week. I sobbed out of fear and frustration. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to eat all of that food – I couldn’t eat all of that food. With the support of my therapist, I made the phone call to a local treatment facility. Not too long after that day, I was admitted to residential treatment. I was overwhelmed and anxious, and kept asking myself, “How did things get so bad so quickly?”
Treatment was the hardest and best choice I made for my recovery. Being forced to stare down my eating disorder helped me dig deeper into the things that perpetuated it. My eyes were opened to just how sick I really was. Getting that wake-up call lit a fire in me to turn things around. I became aware of the importance of eating the amount I was told to. If awareness was the key, eating was the lock. I could try many keys as I wanted, over and over, but there was no way around the fact that I had to eat. Meals often resulted in tears of frustration and fear. It was incredibly painful, and necessary. That frustration meant that I was able to separate my voice from Ed’s voice, and this was the first step towards my recovery. It was helpful to talk to the other clients in the program that were struggling with the same sort of issues I was, because they truly understood it.
I had to miss school during this time, and I was extremely self-conscious about what people would say and how they would treat me when I returned. What if they asked me where I was? What would I say if they asked what was wrong with me? Would they figure out where I was? What if someone commented on my appearance? My high school guidance counselor was helpful in writing notes to my teachers explaining the situation and helping me figure out a plan to make up the work I missed. My therapist helped me come up with a plan to navigate these things before I returned. She mentioned the possibility of saying that I’d rather not talk about it, but I felt like that would lead to suspicion. I told people that I was sick and left it at that. Most people got the hint and let it go. I was generally appreciative that people cared enough to ask, and I also knew that I didn’t owe anyone any information. I did end up being open with some trusted friends that I felt safe talking to, and it was helpful to have additional support at school when eating lunch, or just wanting to feel like a “normal” student.
Treatment and having extra support were helpful, and it also didn’t mean that my eating disorder magically vanished. I was still very insecure and had all those same feelings from my childhood, and I used behaviors to manage this discomfort.
As I nourished myself consistently, I began to face the issues that I had subconsciously blocked out with my eating disorder. I did a lot of journaling. I cried. I learned more about myself than I ever thought possible. I learned that the further I spiraled down the path of my eating disorder, the harder it would become for me to get to the issues behind it. I realized that my thoughts were just as sick as my body was. I had lost touch with my entire being – mind, body, and soul – when I was consumed by eating disordered thoughts and behaviors. My illness tricked me into thinking that it would provide things for me that I felt were missing in my life.
When I began experiencing my emotions that I had numbed out with my eating disorder, it was overwhelming and I felt so raw. I realized what my treatment team had been trying to tell me: emotions can be uncomfortable and tough to deal with, but they cannot hurt me – my eating disorder can, and did, hurt me.
Even with this change of mindset, I truly believed that I was the “exception” to those recovery stories I often read online that said things like “recovery is possible,” and “life is better after recovery,” but couldn’t grasp that possibility for myself. Over the course of treatment, my sense of hope fluctuated. I was fearful of having to eat and face my eating disorder, and I also felt a sense of relief that I was getting the help I knew I needed. I regularly questioned my decision to be there. I was constantly thinking “I can’t do this,” and “this is too hard.” Over time, I started to think that, just maybe, I could get better.
My motivation to recover started as a teeny, tiny light inside my heart and the thought that maybe life didn’t have to be like this. I was tired of fighting with myself, with my eating disorder, and with those around me. Tired of food ruling my life. Tired of feeling weak and lying to everyone. It was time for me to be honest. I was so tired of living a double-life of sorts – one life as a perfectionistic, slapping a smile on my face to feign happiness and please everyone; and a second life where I was pessimistic, angry, and defiant human. I lived in a shell of myself.
I was fearful of the loss of control I thought I would experience if I did not listen to my eating disorder. Ironically, fear began to work in my favor. As time went on, living with my eating disorder made me scared. I was afraid of what could happen as a result of my declining health. I was afraid that I would never get to do the things I had dreamed about. I went from fearing life without my eating disorder to being afraid of what my life would be like if I kept listening to my eating disorder. I was scared of what my future would look like if I continued down this road of destructiveness.
The first step I took to finding motivation was to get better for other people in my life that wanted me to recover. Although the ultimate goal, according to my clinicians, was for me to find intrinsic motivation, I could not yet do that. The desire to get better was there, but the reasoning was not. I knew that I didn’t want to go on living like this, but I was extremely fearful of letting go of my eating disorder. I thought about how my family was affected by this, and realized that I didn’t want to be a cause for their constant worry. After I felt confident in believing this, I began to think about the positive things that could happen in recovery. I could go to college, get a job, go out with my friends for ice cream (and reclaim my love for it), travel to Spain, and maybe even write a book.
Even though I wasn’t totally sold on giving up my eating disorder, I had the motivation from others around me to fully commit to recovery and make it a priority. I knew if I went by my own timeline I would hem and haw and debate. In the process of getting motivation from others around me, I gained a little more motivation for myself, too.
I learned that, like it or not, engaging in the recovery process meant making sacrifices. There were times I had to attend treatment instead of doing fun things with my friends. I missed family gatherings, school events, and parties, and I often had to do my homework in the car when my family would drive me back and forth from treatment. Making these sacrifices helped me realize how important recovery was to me. I wouldn’t sacrifice all of these things if I didn’t want to get better. That’s when I realized I had intrinsic motivation to get better. It took a very long time. It wasn’t a situation where I just woke up one day and my mindset changed. Rather, after such a long struggle, I finally came to realize that my eating disorder was not helping me anymore.
I often think about the paradox of the way I rearranged everything in my life to accommodate Ed, and in recovery, I had to rearrange my life once again to kick him to the curb. It wasn’t easy to take time away from these other things in my life. It involved a lot of anger, tears, and guilt. Looking back, putting recovery first allowed me to enjoy many more things once I got better.
I realized that the relief and comfort I felt when obeying Ed’s rules was only temporary. All the stress and pain that I’d been numbing out came right back when I would feel guilty about my behavior, and the eating disorder voice would become louder. The more dependent I became on these thoughts and behaviors, the farther I was from a long-lasting resolution of the emotion or situation that led to them in the first place. My stress level remained the same and I hadn’t done anything effective to resolve it. I didn’t want to live in this never-ending cycle of torture.
In my heart, I was not elated by using eating-disordered behaviors – my eating disorder was the one who was elated. I learned to be angry at my illness, not myself. I realized that I was not selfish for having this problem – my eating disorder was the selfish one. Ed didn’t care about me or how I felt or what I wanted. He didn’t care if I was incredibly stressed or sad or exhausted. He wanted me to be alone. Ed promised me that he would help me achieve my goals, and that if I listened to him, I would be successful. Ed’s goals and values are not the same as my goals and values. The only goal Ed had was to make me miserable. He wanted me to base my self-esteem on staying ill. I realized that I wanted to chase my aspirations in life more than I wanted to chase the false sense of comfort that my eating disorder gave me.
I knew that I couldn’t do this alone. Even though I was in therapy and nutrition counseling, and seeing my doctor regularly, I began to seek out more support to help me in my everyday life.
In all honesty, my family did not always understand how to help me. Even when they did not know what to do, they did not give up on me and were always there for me when I needed them. I could not have gotten through this without their support. They put a lot of time and energy into helping me. They rearranged their work schedules, spent a lot of time in therapists’ and medical providers’ offices, and spent countless hours talking with the insurance company. They sacrificed a lot of their plans. They visited me in treatment, and made my meals when I was too deep into my eating disorder to make them myself. They put up with a lot of stress, anger, arguing, frustration, and emotional meltdowns. Most of all, they believed in me and loved me through the worst of times and in better times.
My middle school guidance counselor was the very first person to know about my eating disorder outside of my family. She was responsible for helping approximately 100 eighth graders succeed in school, and I never felt like I was “another student in her caseload.” When I was unable to eat lunch in the cafeteria. she got me permission to eat lunch in a vacant, quiet office near hers, and came in to check on me whenever she could. After I got a lot of questions from other students about where I disappeared to at lunch, she helped me figure out what to say. There were a lot of times where I went into her office crying, and every single time I left smiling, because she always knew what to say to make me feel better. No matter how busy she was, she always made time for me and offered encouragement. She saw beyond my eating disorder when I couldn’t, and that is something I cherish to this day.
Ed kept me trapped and tried to confine me to an identity. He promised me that he could give me a unique identity, but that identity was not actually as unique as I thought, given the number of people who struggle with eating disorders. The recovery process freed me to explore my identity, and I could fill my time with things that mattered to me. I learned more about my passions, and I did some deep digging in therapy to find my sense of self that was suffocated by my eating disorder. This was exciting and painful at the same time. One of the deeper things that came up in therapy was reflecting on that sense of feeling different than my peers but not knowing exactly why.
As I sat in the chair across from my therapist each week, I discovered more information about myself and finally started to understand what clinicians had been telling me all along – eating disorders are not about the food. Food is the coping mechanism to deal with pain. I did a lot of work around finding my identity as an individual. We talked about skills, hobbies, interests, and other aspects of my unique identity. We gradually moved to deeper aspects. When I was 17, my therapist asked me if I had ever thought about my sexual orientation. I was so caught off-guard and I don’t remember what I said. My heart began to race and I felt really anxious, because I had never thought about it and was at a loss for words. Over the course of many more therapy sessions, I came to the realization that I was a lesbian. And that was that feeling of being different than others. Suddenly, everything made sense – this feeling was related to the fact that I was a lesbian, and I was never able to identify it because my eating disorder repressed it.
Initially, I felt uncomfortable about my sexual orientation. It wasn’t so much about being attracted to girls. It was about how I would be treated if others knew that about me. My anxiety kicked in and posed all kinds of questions: Would people judge me? Would I lose friends? Would I be looked at differently? What would my friends and family think? Did I want to be in a relationship? How was I supposed to know who was a lesbian and who wasn’t? Would people be supportive? These thoughts consumed me for a long time, and I relied on my eating disorder to suppress these anxious thoughts. I was scared to come out because I thought people would judge me, and maybe treat me differently.
When I was in my eating disorder, I felt so much shame and guilt around the behaviors I used and how these behaviors impacted others. I wish I had someone to look up to that lived through an eating disorder, someone to tell me that recovery really is possible. Writing and sharing my story has given me the opportunity to be that person for someone else. I don’t have all the answers by any means, and what worked for me won’t necessarily work for someone else. I always encourage people to take what works and leave the rest. Explore what options are available to you.
My family would get frustrated a lot, and that was absolutely valid. With the help of my treatment team, they learned to vocalize that they were frustrated with the eating disorder, not me. It really helped when people asked what I needed. Making a choice of what I needed gave me a sense of autonomy – in recovery, we are not often given opportunities to choose. Sometimes I didn’t know what I needed, and people offered options. Did I want to eat lunch in the cafeteria or in a private space? Did I want to work on a puzzle or watch tv after a meal to distract myself?
On the other hand, I mentioned earlier that people complimented me on weight-loss. This is not something to be celebrated, despite the messaging we are given from society. I was encouraged to continue down a dangerous path. If you want to compliment somebody, use a non-appearance based one.
Recovery taught me a lot of lessons about myself. For so long, an eating disorder defined my value, self-worth, self-esteem, and character. Now I define these things, and I can grow and learn every day. My self-worth is no longer defined by food – and it is not based on any one thing.
I always thought I had to have everything figured out, and that there was some sort of timeline for life. I remember applying to colleges and feeling this self-imposed pressure to make this big decision that would supposedly determine the course of my entire future. With this time of transition and chaos, I once again ran to my eating disorder, because it was familiar and took my mind off the stress I felt. In reality, Ed caused me more stress. Through my experiences in recovery, I became aware that life doesn’t have a timeline. Getting treatment meant that my life was put on hold a few times, and that delayed my perceived timeline. Putting recovery first allowed me to get much more out of everything I did, and that was the important part. There’s no timeline for life experiences or for the recovery process.
In therapy, I learned that my eating disorder was not my fault. I always thought that maybe if I had done something differently, this wouldn’t have happened to me. I blamed myself for all the things that happened to me. I was convinced that it was my fault for everything that happened to me. I blamed myself for being a source of stress for those around me, and it was my fault that I had suffered so much.
When I was in treatment for the first time, I decided to start a binder filled with all the notes of encouragement that I had ever received. It was incredibly helpful, and it was a fun craft project too! I decorated the front with stickers and decided on the layouts of the different pages. I go back to this binder whenever I need encouragement or a pick-me-up, and I still add to it. Encouragement is applicable to life outside of eating disorders too!
The number of times that I have heard the phrase “trust the universe” recently is remarkable. My experience going back to school was definitely meant to be. For a long time, I told my therapist that I wished I could go back to school, and that I wanted to go into social work. The desire was there, but the self-confidence wasn’t. I doubted that I could ever get into grad school and tried to talk myself out of it. I was afraid of rejection. My therapist told me that there was no harm in just applying for a program and seeing what happens. I decided to take her encouragement and go for it. I submitted an application to the Boston College Master of Social Work program, not believing that anything would come from it. When I received an email a few weeks later from the program, I was prepared for another rejection. I clicked on the link and confetti filled my computer screen. A bunch of admissions officers that didn’t even really know me saw in me what I couldn’t see in myself. My dreams were finally coming true, and none of it would even be possible without recovery.
I was over the moon with joy, and in 2020, started my Master of Social Work. When I began classes, I told myself that I was going to separate myself from my personal recovery story and focus on other topics in social work. However, life has a funny way of steering us in directions that we don’t expect. One of my professors talked openly about her experiences with mental health challenges, including an eating disorder, on the very first day of class. It opened the door for us to share our own experiences, and talking about going to our own therapy appointments was completely normalized. I knew right then and there that I couldn’t, and didn’t want to, separate myself from my eating disorder history, and instead, let it shape me. One of the great things about recovery is that I can acknowledge my past, reflect on it, and take the things I learned to help other people.
Through experiences in my life and in school, I learned that I can’t truly show up for other people unless I show up for myself. Self-care is not a luxury – it is a necessity. For me, self-care looks like taking my medication, eating and hydrating regularly, going to therapy and other appointments, getting rest when I need it, and taking a million pictures of my cat doing adorable things. I cope with challenging situations by talking about them instead of holding them in. Sometimes I’ll clean, do some crocheting, or watch something funny to lift my mood.
I am so proud that I graduated a few weeks ago, and I am officially Alison Sabean, MSW! It’s been a wild ride – while completing my Masters, I moved from my childhood home, got diagnosed with endometriosis, and battled other health challenges. I also met incredible lifelong friends, learned more than I ever thought possible, got awesome opportunities, and had professors that changed my life (for the better, of course!). I have lots of ideas of things I want to do – I am eager to help make pet care more affordable and accessible, particularly for people that would benefit from an emotional support animal. I want to help implement eating disorder awareness and education programming in colleges.
Life in recovery is great, and not without its challenges. Today I am navigating chronic illnesses, including fibromyalgia, endometriosis, and GI issues. I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. These conditions make life quite challenging sometimes. Living with an eating disorder on top of all this would make things even harder.
I also find it fitting that this event just so happened to fall during Pride Month. Coming out has helped me celebrate and embrace my identity, instead of trying to fit into an identity based on who I thought other people wanted me to be. When I was struggling, I attended a few Hope and Inspiration events. I told myself that, someday, it would be me up there telling my story. I am so proud of how far I’ve come. Wherever I end up, I know that I have a bright future ahead of me, thanks to recovery. Eating disorders are 24/7/365 illnesses, and recovery is a 24/7//365 possibility.
