WAY OUT OF THE DARKNESS
Gemma Birbeck has struggled with eating disorders for much of her life - now she is sharing her story to show others in the same position recovery is possible. Chris Burn reports.
I have received quite a few messages from people. It was really difficult for me to do it but I hope I can show others you can come away from such a dark place and still survive and live a happy life.
Gemma Birbeck, on speaking publicly about suffering with eating disorders
“I HAVE had a lot of people say you are really brave but I don’t want to be seen as brave – I want to show it is more common than people think it is,” says Gemma Birbeck as she reflects on her recent decision to go public about her long struggle with eating disorders that took hold as a teenager and persisted into her adult life.
Birbeck, 33 and living in Idle to the north of Bradford, has decided to come forward after hearing about the alarming rise in eating disorder cases being reported since the start of lockdown. Specialist charity Beat has reported a 73 per cent increase in calls to its helpline since lockdown began, with double the normal number of people contacting the organisation in crisis.
Birbeck published her own story of struggling with anorexia and bulimia, a binge eating disorder and then depression over the course of more than a decade with American magazine Newsweek last month and is now speaking to The Yorkshire Post as she tries to get the message across to people who may be struggling at the moment that change is possible, even if it will not be easy. Now running her own business as a PR consultant and the company director of Leuly Photography and Public Relations and in a happy relationship, Birbeck says her relationship with food has been much less of an issue in recent years after a long and often very difficult struggle. She says she had been very nervous about sharing her story but has been pleased by the reaction to the Newsweek article. “I received quite a few messages from people saying they had struggled. It was really difficult for me to do it but I hope I can show others you can come away from such a dark place and still survive and live a happy life.”
Birbeck says she was a “prime target for bullies” as a child due to a combination of doing well academically and being, in her words, “an overweight girl with short hair”. She says at her primary school in Shipley there was one particularly hurtful incident where she had sent a love letter to a boy in her year only for him to tell the class that “the beast” had declared her crush on him.
Birbeck says the bullying continued into secondary school and every summer she would attempt to lose weight before the new school year but struggle to do it.
She says her school days are now “a massive blur”. “But I remember all the feelings that I hid from the world and I can’t describe how awful it is.
“It is like living with an abuser – this internal voice telling you all the time you are not worthy of anything. I just always used to think maybe the bullies would stop if I was popular. Every summer, I was trying to come back as this thinner person, thinking that was what made you popular.”
But when she changed schools at 16 to do her A-Levels, her determination for a fresh start saw her put herself on a drastic diet and fitness regime that saw her drop several sizes in a matter of weeks. “I know this sounds awful, but it was great to walk into Sixth Form on that first day and boys started talking to me and people wanted to be my friend. At first, I was quite sociable. I wanted to be that popular person.”
But she says the impact of not eating properly soon began to take a major toll as she obsessed over her weight to the detriment of her new friendships and her studies as she developed what now recognises was anorexia and bulimia. “I would fall asleep in class, I was skipping school as everything just became about not eating.”
She tried a process calling purging in which an individual makes themselves sick or misuse laxatives. “The first time I sat down to purge afterwards it was horrendous to think about what I had just done. One time I had 15 laxatives in one go. I still have issues with my digestive system because of it. I was told I might not be able to have children at one point as my menstrual cycle stopped.”
Matters came to a head when her parents, who’d tried for months to get her to admit a problem, returned home early and found her vomiting surrounded by food wrappers.
Birbeck began seeing a psychiatrist and a nutritionist as part of her treatment and says it took her several months to come to terms with the reality of her eating disorders after being officially diagnosed with anorexia nervosa with bulimic tendencies.
For around a year or so, life was relatively normal and she moved in with her boyfriend; but there were problems in the background. “When a big event was coming up, I would force myself to take laxatives to lose half-a-stone. Any event where I would be meeting new people, I would starve myself a week before.”
But after becoming pregnant when she was 20, Birbeck says she realised she need to eat during the pregnancy for the sake of her unborn child. But 11 weeks after the birth of her son, her relationship ended and she ended up losing four stone. Her weight fluctuated for years at this point as she fell in and out of the eating disorder trap where she got stuck in a “vicious circle of starving and bingeing every day.”
A few years later when she was at Bradford University, Birbeck suffered severe depression due to the binge eating. “I just didn’t want to be here, I couldn’t see there was any way out. During the day I’d put on my mask and
STRUGGLE: act fine for my son but inside, I was tormented and desperate to escape this life that I blamed myself for.”
A turning point came when had to seek professional help and was prescribed antidepressants and referred for therapy sessions. “I said at the time I didn’t want to get help because I was fearful they would take my son away from me. Part of the reason I want to speak out is because there shouldn’t be a stigma and fear about seeking help. The medication helped me cope with my negative feelings in the short-term and to be able to talk about the bad things that had happened to me. If I hadn’t I dread to think what would have happened to me.”
She says over the past five years, she has worked hard to build a healthier relationship with food – helped by being in a loving and supportive relationship with a long-term partner.
“Food to me isn’t the focus of my day anymore, neither is my weight. The fact that somebody loves me for who I am has really helped me. I know that I will never be 100 per cent recovered, but I’ve learnt to recognise disordered thinking and how you cope with it before it takes over.”
Birbeck also founded her own PR business last year after years of work experience, agency employment, online courses and various freelance roles. She has a simple message for those going through a similar journey to hers. “Believe that recovery is possible even in your darkest days when you feel there is no way out
- there is always something worth fighting for. It does take a lot of soulsearching and it is not a quick fix but it will be an eye-opening journey.”