Day 8: Shauna Reid
It would be too narratively tidy to call it my rock bottom moment, because there’d been many such moments before. But this was certainly one of the rockiest of bottoms.
It was the morning after a severe episode of binge eating. I was on the couch, blinking up at the ceiling. My usual post-binge process was to cycle through confusion, shock and shame. Then I’d scurry to hide the evidence in the recycling bin, before vowing to start over.
This time... I just felt hopeless and numb.
My joints burned. My stomach ached. My skull throbbed with pain. I had an important deadline at noon for a beloved client, but I simply could not function.
Food had been my comfort, my companion, my nemesis since the age of ten, when I first sneaked cookies from the freezer at nighttime. What started as an attempt to tune out a chaotic childhood evolved into a lifelong pattern. I hid away with food in times of high stress, loneliness, fear, grief, depression, or sometimes even joy.
For every secret binge, there was a corresponding diet. Like so many people, the first was instigated by well-meaning parents. I carried on dieting into my teens, and so began decades on the restrict > binge treadmill. I didn’t understand until many years later, that the struggle I viewed as my greatest failing was an eating disorder.
There’d been times I thought I was handling things. I once lost enough weight to fit in one leg of my old jeans; the ultimate “success story” cliche. I’d blogged about that journey, which turned into a book deal. I went on TV. When people told me I was an inspiration I felt like a fraud, barely clinging on inside. Whenever life got tricky, I found myself turning back to those familiar behaviors, my shame levels spiraling as I “failed” to live up to the After photo.
It had idly crossed my mind over the years to ask for help, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Binge eating was a difficult and unglamorous thing to admit, let alone talk about with my nearest and dearest. And it had been happening for so long, I was convinced I was beyond help.
But on this one particular day, something inside me felt compelled to reach out.
I thought of my old friend B from the interwebs. She was one of the few people I knew who truly understood the binge eating rollercoaster. I recalled she’d been doing really well over the past year.
What if I reached out to her?
Maybe she could tell me how she managed to find a way forward?
It took me a day to work up to the ask.
First I had to ponder if it was appropriate to even ask someone about such personal things.
Then I had to craft a lengthy preamble (“Sorry to bother you… if it’s not too much trouble…”) because I'm a British citizen after all.
Finally, I got down to business...
I've trawled the internet for binge eating help on and off (as the cycle of OK/Not OK goes round and round) but am now at a total loss.
I’m at the point of admitting 1) this has become a big f*cking mess 2) I've been doing a terrible job of fixing this on my own for the past 20 years or so. I feel like I’m on the verge of imploding completely. If you had any thoughts or ideas or resources - I'm all ears!
Sorry this is such a blurty out of the blue message!
I didn’t even have a chance to worry if I’d used too many exclamation points before her reply pinged into my inbox. It included these words that cracked me right open:
I am so SO sorry you're struggling. It will get better -- just looking for help is the first step...
We later spoke on the phone for two hours. B helped me understand that I was not alone and that there was help available. She listened kindly to my desperate rambling. She shared what had been helpful for her and some ideas for next steps.
I burst into tears after we hung up, overwhelmed by her kindness. I felt a tiny kernel of hope.
That first impossible ask turned out to be the spark I needed to do a whole lot more impossible asking.
… I went to the doctor to ask if there was help available via the National Health Service. There was, but the waiting lists were super long, so this led me to...
… asking a dietitian with a disordered eating specialty if she’d consider taking on a long-distance client. She was!
… asking a client of mine who’s a helping professional if she knew of any residential options, which led to...
… pitching a partnership idea to a facility that helped women with eating issues, which resulted in receiving a three-week stay in exchange for writing about my visit. It was my first ever partnership pitch so asking felt really bloody awkward… but it proved to be a life changer!
Two years on, I’m so grateful to B and all that unfolded from that seemingly-impossible ask.
I’ve learned fascinating stuff about the human brain and the physiological and psychological reasons for why binges happen. I’ve learned to talk about my secret struggles with my loved ones, and it’s brought us closer. I’ve learned to be kinder to myself while taking responsibility for my stuff. I’m practicing new coping strategies. I’ve connected with other folks on the same path, and get huge joy from supporting their journey as B did for me.
Recovery is a wild and winding path that requires waking up and recommitting each day, but I’m never alone.
Asking for the impossible may feel like the squirmiest thing ever, but it can lead to connection... which leads to hope... which leads to action. Then slowly, the impossible becomes possible.
Asking for Impossible Things
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