BREAKING THE SILENCE
ANOREXIA SURVIVOR MICHELLE O’GORMAN SHARES HER HARROWING STORY WITH DAVID LOOBY.
FOR Wexford woman Michelle O’Gorman, anorexia started after she and a friend experimented with binge eating - but the disorder came to define her teenage years and wreaked chaos in her life well into her early twenties.
‘Mine started when I started secondary school when I was 15 and it went on until I was 21 and I was anorexic/purging.’
Michelle, who is now a qualified counsellor to people suffering from eating disorders, recalled starting secondary school and the pressures that came with becoming a young woman.
‘I started secondary school and things started to change: relationships, guys. I wouldn’t have had good self esteem and myself and a friend started binge eating. The two of us decided to binge together and purge (make ourselves sick) and I ended up following through and kept doing it and it turned into a very bad cycle.’
Michelle started losing weight. ‘People started making comments about it so I thought, OK great, so I built my self esteem on my body image and the more weight I lost – but really what happened is that people – even though they didn’t know – weren’t doing me a service and I wasn’t doing myself a service. What happened was I wasn’t eating at all – maybe a bottle of Lucozade and I became addicted to laxatives.
‘My parents noticed a few years into it and they tried to get me help but the eating disorder was very headstrong. It gives you a sense of power and control. It really makes you feel special but it’s not real. It’s destroying your life. It gives you a sense of power and self esteem but it’s false self-esteem.’
Michelle said she was miserable all of the time. ‘I was very underweight. I was starving myself. I really did feel like I was the size of an elephant. People can’t understand how people with anorexia feel fat when they look like a skeleton. But you do because you are under eating and your brain is starved so you are having distorted thoughts so you are looking in the mirror and you are not seeing yourself.’
Michelle tried to run away from her problems in her early twenties, moving to Australia for a year. It was while working in a restaurant there that she started to realise she had a problem and needed help.
‘A woman I worked with in a restaurant in Australia came to me and said: “I’m praying for you Michelle” and Irish people would come to me and ask me if I was OK. After three months I got on the phone to my parents and was crying. I got on a plane and when I arrived in Dublin Airport my parent’s faces dropped in front of me; they were so upset. When I came back from Australia I was having massive heart troubles.’
This began Michelle’s journey of recovery during which she met people who helped and supported her as she wasn’t able to access support services and was finding it very difficult to support herself. ‘I started my own recovery when
I was 21 and I saw my therapist for around ten years which got me on the road to recovery. I still had a lot of struggles over the years: under-eating, purging, my weight changing a lot. It wasn’t until I was into my late twenties, early thirties that I was actually OK with my body. It was body image, low self esteem, negative thought patterns and I was just in a vicious circle. At the time, around 18 years ago, when I went to get help in the Wexford area my doctor was very supportive but there wasn’t anyone who specialised in this or anyone who could understand me or the whole mindset of the eating disorder or distress so I didn’t know myself.’
Over the course of a year she worked on herself. ‘Googling, going to workshops, anything about healing your body and your mind and you relationship with food I was at. There wasn’t much (support services) again so I kept digging at it and then I met Suzanne Horgan who worked with the National Centre for Eating Disorders in the UK so she became my counsellor and really helped me to get a good grip on it.’
Michelle trained in counselling in 2006 and while travelling in India she met Derek O’Neill of Creacon Wellness Retreat and his wife Linda. ‘They helped me get to the root of it and to overcome my eating disorders. Jo Flood (formerly of Creacon) helped me a lot as well over the years. I did workshops, Bodywhys were great. There were so many levels: people say “just eat” but there’s self esteem, you are in recovery. I was dieting which leads to binge eating. I was in a vicious circle. Having clinical perfectionism leads to eating disorders and also maintains one. I was trying to break loads of layers. An eating disorder can leave you very isolated so I wasn’t going out. Socially with other people I was very self conscious and depression was probably part of it as well. I made a full recovery, thank God to those people who I met.’
Michelle said she was amazed when she started her recovery.
‘I was amazed when I started eating about how great I felt. I had gained weight which is your worst fear because you feel like you’re losing a sense of control, which is a coping mechanism. You are trying to control your environment because you can’t control school or your studies. I thought everything was perfect if my food and my body was perfect – so I was projecting all of my anxieties and fears onto food. When your body is changing as a teenager you don’t have a sense about it. To me it was new and I didn’t talk about my feelings. I wasn’t a very open person then. I was very introverted and everything bubbled up.’
She said an eating distress is a coping mechanism. ‘In my job I try to teach people how to build emotional resilience and engage with your feelings. You are basically trying to teach the person new tools to cope with life; wellbeing tools to deal with life’s pressures. I was starving my feelings.’
She looks back on those days now as if they were in a haze. ‘You are just getting out of bed and you are existing and surviving. All I was doing was going to work earning money to pay for my counsellors and going back home. During recovery I was building a new life for myself, family, friends. I didn’t realise I was going to go down this route (being a counsellor); it just actually happened.’
Today Michelle is in a very good place in relation to food, her body image and her weight. ‘You have to learn to re-wire your brain now as well. Eating distress is just not a part of my life anymore for which I feel really lucky.’
In early 2017 Michelle did training in counselling for eating disorders as people were coming to her looking for advice. After a two year Masters which she did through the National Centre for Eating Disorders in the UK in Belfast, Michelle became a Master Practitioner in Eating Disorders and Obesity.
She opened up her own practise and works three days a week from St Bridget’s Centre on Roche’s Road and from the Rising Tide Centre in New Ross two days a week, counselling people with eating disorders.
She said she finds her job fulfilling. ‘I’m constantly learning from my clients. You meet people from all walks of life. People are coming from word of mouth. I did a Facebook page and Instagram post about my story and people started contacting me.’
Her youngest client is 13 and the oldest is in their late 60s, but children as young as seven have been receiving counselling in Ireland.
Michelle said counselling can last several months and sometimes years.
‘Recovery can take a very long time, depending on how long they have it. The sooner someone notices that a loved one has an eating disorder the better as the person can go down the rabbit-hole very quickly. There is a high mortality rate with anorexia – a lot of suicides. Because of the nature of eating disorders a lot of people will hide in isolation and don’t talk about it especially when there’s purging. There is a lot of shame, pain, guilt, isolation; people not coming out of their room for years. It can be very destructive, not just for the individual, but for family and friends. It seeps into every area of their life.’
She said warning signs for family members that a loved one has an eating disorder include isolating themselves and a dramatic drop or increase in weight.
‘With someone who is purging their eyes may be bloodshot, there may be marks on their hands due to putting their fingers down their throat. Hiding food, hiding laxatives under the bed, going to the toilet a lot, skipping meals and over exercising is a big one.’
She said this happens a lot in athletes. ‘ More and more athletes are coming out talking about the pressure they are under and body image. I definitely don’t believe in FitnessPal App. Constantly counting calories and using apps creates eating disorders.’
Michelle said the causes of eating disorders are many. ‘How is their family environment. Are there weight issues within the family environment because they could be genetically prone because of it? What is their relationship with themselves and school? They could have been bullied and someone has made a comment. It could just be puppy fat that they haven’t grown out of and someone makes a comment and it creates chaos. Clinical perfectionism is a trait that can create an eating disorder and hold it and maintain it.’
She said anorexia sufferers feel special and people are giving them their attention ‘ but obviously the attention can go very negative’.
‘It gives them power as a lot of people with eating distress have low self esteem, but with the eating distress they are losing themselves. People at a young age are running on automatic pilot. They don’t actually stop to deal with their feelings and their could be trauma or abuse.’
Michelle is planning to attend a National Academy of Eating Disorders in Sydney in July. ‘The USA and Australia have really up to date research on eating disorders and recovery.’
Each of her treatment plans are tailored to the individual.
Michelle said doctors and nurses in Wexford have informed her the number of people presenting with disorders is high. The Body Mass Index of some clients presenting to counsellors would be as low as 17.5, when most people’s BMI is between 20 and 25.
‘I am extremely busy with people from Tipperary, Waterford and Kilkenny, along with Wexford people coming to me. You are working with the parents doing motivational therapy and nutritional rehabilitation.
Binge eating is a serious problem. ‘I would have a good few people who are binge eaters. They are literally people of all shapes. Many have been dieting for years and dieting creates an eating disorder and causes people to binge eat. They restrict, restrict, restrict and then they start binging. They feel they have blown it and then they go back to binge eating. Diets are biologically flawed to not work. It’s a massive industry but they don’t care about people. People come into me crying, upset. Their bodies have been wrecked with starvation, low blood sugar. Diabetes is also very rampant.’
She said many people who have come through her doors have tried group dieting, which she says never deal with the psychological part and the mindset. She gives clients a feeling list with pictures of a cartoon character feeling a certain way.
‘They don’t even know what they are feeling so you have to show them so they can express it without turning to food. You have to teach them feelings to help the to get in contact with their body. Eating distress is all in the mind so the person is afraid to get back into their body. They could have trapped trauma or anxiety so it’s a coping mechanism. As a counsellor you give them tools so they feel they have the right to express themselves, whether it is with a partner or a friend.’
She said social media maintains eating disorders. ‘People putting pictures of before and after definitely doesn’t help. Some celebrities say they are going on a sugar free diet. They are selling shakes and fads and come across as having the perfect body, but they are marketing it and are earning money but people who are very vulnerable will take this on board and it will
IT COULD JUST BE PUPPY FAT THAT THEY HAVEN’T GROWN OUT OF AND SOMEONE CAN MAKE A COMMENT AND THEN IT CREATES CHAOS
cause eating distress.’
Michelle teaches clients about the importance of a good diet. ‘It’s about balancing blood sugar levels: six meals which includes three snacks. That helps people with binging and gets them into the routine of eating little and often every three hours. For some people it can be very rigid so you have to start small and introduce it so it depends on the client and where they are at.
‘Diabetes is very high in young adults and children in the last few years in Ireland so it’s about educating them about blood sugar levels because then their weight, body and mood will be stable. It’s about working with them on small stages and then taking it away by setting little goals every week.
People with eating distress are really intelligent and manipulative, she said. Michelle said Bodywhys do fantastic work, adding that people should present at their GP first, who can refer teenagers, for examples to the Child & Adult Mental Health Service. ’Bodywhys do a pillar programme over four weeks for someone supporting parents of a person with an eating distress. At counselling you are also supporting the parent. You have family therapy and then a parent or both might need therapy for something else. As long as they are open. Sometimes guilt and shame come into it. I know from my training that no one is to blame. Unless there is abuse going on in the family, family therapy works great as it has the most success with eating recovering especially for adolescents.’
Michelle said some young teenagers asks to take down their Instagram accounts until they are in a better place or to stop following certain people. She motivates them to follow people who have totally recovered. ‘There are some people out there in Instagram who are still going through it. That can be very triggering for a person.’