Insight: Support for those with eating disorders is not accessible (BSL)

*Trigger warning – please be aware this anonymous blog mentions eating disorders and self harm.

I want to talk about the lack of support for deaf people who suffer with eating disorders and the little awareness too of what sort of issues are a problem for us.

I am starting this year off feeling much more positive about myself but a few years ago I was in a completely different place, I probably reached rock bottom back then.

When I was a teenager for some reason I put a lot of weight on in a short space of time. My Mum said it was down to my hormones as I ate quite well and was fairly active, playing sports and I was always on my bike too. However, children at school picked up on my weight gain really quickly and started teasing me about it.

I pretended it didn’t bother me, but inside I hated it. The name calling got worse and it was constant, every day they would make jokes or do things to suggest I would steal their food.

I quicky realised that if I only ate one meal a day I would lose weight really easily and through the school day I would chew on gum and drink water to stop me from having an appetite.

When I got home I used to be so hungry and then I’d eat more than I should do, feeling really bad about it after. My mental health spiralled and I stopped playing football which I loved and hardly went out with friends on our bike rides.

Again, my family put it down to me being a teenager in a difficult point of life and as they never saw me starve myself or binge eat, they didn’t know anything was going on with me.

I had lost so much weight but I still felt really bad about myself. To put it bluntly I think I hated myself and nothing would satisfy me, however I looked. My Mum realised I had a mental health problem when my brother caught me trying to self harm in the bathroom. I just wanted something to stop me feeling bad. I didn’t want to be in this body.

My Mum took me to the doctors and then I started counselling. As I was a student it was quite quick to get the counselling course but I don’t think I was ready to open up, I just pretended to go along with whatever they said. I thought it was a waste of time.

Years went by and I went off to Uni. To be honest I wanted a fresh start away from people at home that knew me as the fat deaf girl. I have cochlear implants and can speak and understand others but they still always looked at me as being different.

At Uni I started to feel a bit better in myself. My new friends were great and I really enjoyed the course I was in. I met someone and I had my first proper relationship too. However when that relationship broke down I spiralled again and went back to old habits, controlling what I ate, starving myself then eating too much.

I eventually told my room mate about it who was really supportive and she recommended some organisations to contact to get help. It was harder this time because I was no longer a school kid. There was a 12 week waiting list to even get seen for an assessment – this is really bad! I waited and when I did get appointed to a therapist I found it exhausting as she had an accent that made it harder to work out what she was saying.

I don’t use sign language so I asked for something to transcribe what was said in the meetings, surely there must be some technology that does this quickly and well?! I was told there was no budget for that and I could just bring someone to ‘help’ me.  I didn’t feel comfortable doing this so I struggled on in my sessions, always exhausted afterwards because of the double effort of working out what was said.

I felt it was unfair that I had to do twice the work and my room mate was really kind and bought me some books that she thought would help. Fortunately I am a good reader and I really benefitted from this but what about deaf people who don’t use english like I do – how would they access anything?

For over a year now I’ve been doing all sorts of things to help my mental health and to try and release the control that those fears have on me. It is an ongoing process but I’m aware of the patterns I have and of the triggers. My family still don’t know the full detail of what I go through but I don’t feel comfortable sharing anyway knowing they would just brush it off.

I wondered if anyone else like me, a deaf person who didnt use BSL, has found a system that works for them for full recovery?

This blog has been written anonymously as part of the Insight series – where readers are invited to share their story or news about their interesting job with The Limping Chicken. If you have a story to share please email rebecca@rawithey.com 

Image courtesy of i-stock photos.