Hi everyone, I decided to write this article below after thinking religious leaders need more understanding about eating disorders. You will find some very supportive religious leaders, but some still need to be educated on this subject of eating disorders and particularly promoting fasting to its members who are in a vulnerable group and to not do this. I am a Christian, but what I wrote will apply to others also and that is not so important here what faith I am.
Hi, my name is Rachel, I wrote this to write about how society and other people have negatively affected me with an eating disorder. I was born in the United Kingdom to parents who both immigrated to the United Kingdom in the 1960s. They met and married and I was born in the UK. I was born in 1973.
I was a happy child. I grew up in quite a impoverished area in East London. There was poverty when I grew up and I was quite an ill child at times before the age of two with a hospital admission at 2 months and several visits to the doctors for viral issues.
We grew up in the house of damp and but my parents did the best they they could. They were young parents who had young children. I was quite a happy child. Although I was quite a sensory child, I was quite a happy child as well. And I had good parents. Around about 8, we moved to a new area for a better standard of living and to get a bigger house with a growing family.
We went through quite a bit of change at that time. There was a new lifestyle change and more food came into the house and the food was quite unregulated and I was allowed to overeat during this period.
Maybe the transition to a new school was difficult also and I used the food as a coping mechanism and there was also stress in the house as well. Anyway during this period between 8 and half and 10 I gained quite a bit of weight and I started being teased slightly. I am on the autistic spectrum.
Although I could still hold my own at school, it wasn't until about 14 when I decided to go on a diet. I wanted to fit in with my peers around me and just be a normal weight like I used to be.
I also grew up in quite a controlling family. There were ideas for me to have a career that I didn't want and I was controlled and I found that difficult having that control. My personality also was determined and I went about this dieting in a very determined manner.
It didn't help that I was born into a society which had a thinness ideal. Restricting food was seen as a moral virtue and to deprive the body dated predated the existence of the Holy Bible. The idea of food control also stems from ancient philosophies like Stoicism and Platonism. Philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle defined temperance as a core virtue—a state of inner mastery where reason guides the appetite rather than being ruled by it. Asceticism ideals around Early Christians also adopted this idea that to deprive the body of food was to cleanse the soul. And mixing this with the media and diet culture, was the society I was born into.
My father was quite concerned about my dieting at 14 that he told me to eat some food, a few years on I found it difficult to stop doing what I was doing.
I saw a child psychiatrist at 15 for other reasons but we talked about food but then I stopped seeing them. But from 16 to 20, I never saw anyone when I left this psychiatrist, I never had any further help and I still had problems.
Although my weight at that time wasn't critically low, my family knew that something was going on, but we just dealt with it, for an eating disorder It was it was a mental issue and it was a stigma in the society too, especially where my parents originated from. Mental health was a shame and it was a stigma and so things was brushed under the carpet especially with me not being critically thin at that point as well. At 21, I was quite in a poor state of mind. The eating disorder affected me. I didn't get the A levels I wanted and I was distracted at that point. But I wanted to be married by 21.
And I saw my friends go to university. I never did. I chose the wrong A levels and was not motivated to do the course. And I just felt like I didn't achieve much in my life. And I started losing weight. I went to hospital at 20 years old. and my mum before I was admitted to a date for a ward on the hospital for mental issues I was told by my mother someone told her that three men were against me. Somebody in the spirit world must have told her this, but they told her wrong information. because I've explained how my eating disorder started and there wasn't anybody against me and nobody else had done this to me. I spoke to a priest in the hospital who reassured me that nobody was actually against me.
This didn’t help to my mother to truly understand my eating disorder telling her that something spiritual is responsible for it when the roots proved otherwise. It didn’t help my mum to be as informed and compassionate towards me as she could be, although she has always cared for me in her own way and I have accepted that when somebody will not change, you work on the positive things about them.
I went into a specialised eating disorders unit at 21. And at that point, my family was quite worried because my weight was actually critically low. And I was diagnosed with severe anorexia. My parents were quite supportive at that point because my weight was severely low.
At 26 I relapsed again and 27 I went into had to go into inpatient again for anorexia and I was told by my family the mental health are going to make me mad. They're going to give me injections and make me mad and I should not go to inpatient.
But I had to go because I was going to be under a section if I didn't go. So I went and I had to reassure my parents that I needed to go and it was a very strange place to be because I needed support. But instead I was supporting my parents to try and reassure them. But after some time there my father came around and he was supporting them because I was actually in a poor condition. My father was a very big support in my life the year later and I was sent abroad at 28 that there will be a cure for me there and it will be from God a cure. So I went to Nigeria and I nearly died there. I came back and a day later I was admitted to medical hospital. I couldn't walk. I couldn't talk but I just lost much movement in my body. My father carried me to the hospital.
This intervention for me didn't work sending me abroad to recover alone with God at this time as I didn’t want it to at this time. I too have had other things been said to me that people are against me in my life. And I've had things said to me in the past that I should follow Christ too and get over my problems.
My inner relationship with my faith has always been good and faith is a positive thing in my life. But people assume because you are ill, you cannot be a Christian or you are not following it properly. I have always been a Christian and I am a member of the Body of Christ. You can believe in your faith and walk with your faith trusting in it and trying your best and some people will recover and some will not and that does not reflect on them being a good Christian or not. Having a faith helps me to feel less alone and to be motivated. The Body should be glorified looked after, we can have afflictions and life is a journey and we walk in grace and should not judge others but should be compassionate towards them. If you are a Christian we need to guard against idols of the heart and you can have an eating disorder without having an idol of the heart to. I put my faith as first in my life and my identity critically is through Christ.
In Pia Matthew's book God's Wildflowers documents 141 Saints, Blessed and Venerable, who experienced health challenges ranging from mental to physical pain whilst serving God in holiness. As the author states in this book. Illness doesn't prove holiness and neither destroys or causes holiness. Furthermore, although illness may make things challenging at times, illness doesn't cause these Saints, Blessed and Venerable, to be abandoned by God.
People who have psychological issues and who fast are at increased risk. There are vulnerable groups of people who should not do fasting or there should be warnings given to the elderly, pregnant those who are ill and, the very young. This is the advise from the Catholic church. We live in a society that is indoctrinated by this thin ideal and we shouldn't make it worse. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of mental illnesses. I have known people who got involved in dangerous fasting who had eating disorders. Some people have had harmful deliverances to which have made them more unwell.
Fasting can have spiritual reasons to do it, but somebody should be well enough ideally and it should be spiritual and not worldly and it is an individual thing and alternatives should be given. And we know that we're trying to work with the faith, not to make people's problems worse or for them to grow in society. while trying to put positive information out there. Eating disorders best respond to treatment early on, so it is not in good practise to delay treatment for a religious intervention if help is needed.
Today I am doing better with my eating disorder and I walk my journey with my faith and taking it day by day.
Faith and mental health can work together in someone's recovery to support a person recover. Research has shown the two can work together and that faith can be a positive benefactor and it can also be used negatively by someone with an eating disorder. And we should be careful about this.
I also do have a blog on my faith and also my experience with autism and my faith which I will link to below-