How To Save Your Own Life: A Guide to Recovering from an Eating Disorder as an Autistic Person.

I didn’t set out to be an author, I set out to end my own life. Here’s why:

I grew up being acutely aware I was different and believing I was inherently broken because of it. Growing up in a world not designed for me and in environments that measured success on your ability to conform to neurotypical standards or expectations, like school, I felt like I was constantly failing. As a high masking, undiagnosed autistic female, I strived for that success and it broke me. I got the high grades, the A*s, the Grade 8 in music, but it meant nothing.

I have struggled with my mental health for as long as I can remember. But every time I accessed mental health services, I was treated for the surface level issue / presenting symptom (like obsessive handwashing for OCD) and never the root cause (struggling to survive in environments not designed for me). These cycles repeated again and again, yet it was only when my largely invisible struggles with mental illnesses also impacted my physical health, was I truly seen and believed to be struggling.

I was 15 when I was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa and spent the next many years fighting for my life and fighting for a future I didn’t believe in.

You should not have to get to the brink of death to finally be heard and seen as an individual.

When treatment for my eating disorder didn’t work for me, not only did I feel I had failed at fitting in and achieving what others called ‘success’, but I felt I had failed at recovery too. I became situational mute and I truly believed I was broken in every way. There was no hope for me. That my only choice was to take my own life.

But the reason my book exists, and I was alive to write it at 17, was through the power of hope. In just 10 minutes, a stranger, who became my incredible nurse, saved my life through lighting within me the spark of hope, through showing me such life-saving empathy in my darkest years and sitting with me in the dark. My nurse gave me a reason to stay: One reason is all it takes to save a life. And that is what allowed me to Save my Own life, and continue saving it.

Another important part of my journey, was finding out I am autistic! Holistic care is absolutely essential, in fact exploring an autism diagnosis is not a barrier or distraction in treatment, it can actually simplify things. In early treatment it wasn’t a conversation we were encouraged to explore due to the focus on the eating disorder. But I feel, this contributes to people getting stuck like I did. We are multi-layered human beings and recovery can only be achieved through seeing someone as the individual they are and not solely through the lens of the illness they have. For me, that was learning I was autistic. So as soon as we were able to explore this, when my care and treatment changed, finding out I am autistic became such a turning point in my recovery.