I wrote this speech for my team. I felt the need to share my story as a way to open up the conversation to eating disorders and to help others who might be struggling as well. Much of it is written in terms of how I would speak and not really grammatically correct, so just bear with me a little bit....... Everyone pretty much understands that track is a just as much, maybe even more of a mentally demanding sport as it is physical. You can train all you want, be in the best shape of your life, but if your mind isn’t at the same level, you won’t get very far. Many people don’t like to focus on this aspect, they think of it as secondary or not an important component to training whatsoever, but facing it is the real challenge and once you do your limitations become endless. Your mental wellness as an athlete should be taken equally as seriously as any other part of your training. Now this can refer to a very broad range of areas. It can refer to your attitude at practice (how you feel/view your training, how you show up to practice each day), it can refer to your confidence in your skillset (how much self-esteem do you hold) etc, and how you view yourself and your abilities, both as a runner and an individual. So this is where I’m going to jump into my story a little bit. I was always a very goal driven person. I knew what I wanted and I went after it. My parents and coaches would too often have to tell me that I set impossible standards for myself but up until my senior year of high school it had never caused a problem for me, because I had pretty much attained whatever I set myself after. Running D1 had been a dream of mine for some time. To me, it meant that I succeeded, not only as a runner but basically just at life. So as soon as I started showing potential as a freshman in high school, I had it set in my head that this was exactly what I was going to do and I was not going to take no for an answer. Fast forward to the summer going into senior year of high school, I hadn’t really met what I thought was my potential yet. It felt like every season something had gone wrong, which caused me to miss my target goals and times that I believed I should be hitting. However, now I was almost out of time, college coaches were making their decisions, and I had to catch their attention. I basically only had one maybe two at the most seasons to prove that I could still make it to D1 and meet my standards of successful. That summer I went hard. I worked my butt off. I knew I had to get in perfect shape for that. I had the perfect image of the D1 runner in my head and told myself I needed to look exactly like that in order to achieve what I wanted. I compared myself to others around me, picking out every single aspect or flaw of myself that was holding me back from reaching this goal. I wasn’t going to let anything stop me. Even though I had many other distractions and stresses of senior year classes, home life, relationships, I set everything aside and poured all my energy and focus into my running because at that point, that was what mattered most to me. And you know what, it worked, (at least for a little while. ) I had the most successful cross country season in school history. I broke every single record that I ran, I basically PRd every race, and on one of the happiest days of my life, I got offered a scholarship to run at a D1 in Florida, everything I could have every asked for. I got to live the remainder of my senior year with the sense that I had made it, I had done everything right, my life was complete. Unfortunately, that success was very short lived. Although I had reached my goals, I hadn’t necessarily reached them the healthiest/safest/proper way. All the unrealistic and unattainable standards that I had set for myself eventually came crashing down on me. Without understanding why, my performance levels in practice were not where they used to be. Workouts that used to be easy for me, I’d end up having to sit out on because I couldn’t complete them. My body was sore and ached all the time. I was angry and irritable all the time and would lash out, exhaustion became my best friend, walking to classes proved to be much more of an effort than it should have. I used every excuse in the book to try to explain to myself why this was happening to me, except for confronting the obvious one that was staring me in the face. However, I could no longer hide behind my excuses…. In March of 2016, I was diagnosed with an eating disorder. Now although this might sound a little stupid, I did not see this coming at all. I was diagnosed with the eating disorder bulimia non-purging type. Now what exactly that means is I would severely restrict my caloric intake, often to only 700 calories per day, while running 7+ miles per day, but then I would get so hungry that my body went into starvation mode because it didn’t know when I would be getting food again. I would binge and eat uncontrollably until it hurt and even then I couldn’t get myself to stop eating. The best way I can describe this is, I’d go into this trance, where my mind would shut down and my body took over, basically trying to survive. I know it’s hard to understand if you’ve never experienced it and seems kind of trivial or silly but it was something I just couldn’t control and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t control it, which caused me to hate myself even more. But in the end it was just my instincts were kicking in, in order to keep me alive. And you may be wondering, Caitlin how could you have not realized that this was messed up, clearly something is wrong there. You were only eating 700 calories obviously that’s a red flag. And I could go on and on about how messed up and fogged my mind had become from lack of nutrition, but I also had never heard of this disorder. Much like everyone else I thought that there was just the two basic eating disorders that everyone knows, anorexia where you starve yourself and don’t eat, and bulimia where you throw up or purge. Now since I defiantly was eating at times, and wasn’t throwing up, I told myself that I didn’t fit into either one of these categories so what I was doing must not be that bad. And up until very late in the game, I didn’t even believe in eating disorders, because I was just plain naiive and uneducated. I considered people who had them as weak. Now the most important thing I want you all to understand is, my eating disorder was not all about the food. Yes, it started out that way, and on the outside looking in, that’s what it seems but the real root of the problem manifested itself far deeper. My cycles of restricting and binging, and over exercising would be majorly fueled by poor self-esteem, poor body image, and extremely low self-worth. I would tell myself that “I was too fat to be a runner”, “that my running failures would be caused by any perceived weight-gain”, that “I was trash, worthless, and disgusting, for eating what I did and some of the things I was engaging in during this period. The pain that I was feeling from starving, I convinced myself that I deserved because I was too fat or not worthy to be a runner. I would tell myself that this pain I was feeling now was because I deserved it. My college coach at my last school, would often make comments regarding our caloric intake per day, he would not allow us to consume too many carbs, like having the bread at the dinner table. He would walk over our plates at meals to make sure what we were eating met his criteria of “healthy”. He made comments to myself and others about our weights and was a strong believer and promoter of the frail and skinny distance runner. Now since I was already previously struggling with my mental health and body image it only added on the extreme pressure and impossible standards that I was holding for myself. On top of all this, I was living in a broken home, inside a mentally abusive relationship, and fighting depression. All of these were the most influencing factors fueling my bulimic cycle. However, up until this point I had been putting all these emotions on the back burner. I was able to avoid these emotions during my senior year and hide behind the success of my running. I chose not to face any of these problems, convincing myself that I had it all together because I was running so well. However, once I got to college and my body could no longer take on the stress that I was putting on myself it began to deteriorate and with that my success in running began to deteriorate as well. Now I could no longer hide behind my running and was forced to face all these issues at once that I had been avoiding for so long. And I couldn’t handle it. They completely broke me. I was feeling so overwhelmed by all the pressures I was putting on myself, and all the brokenness, loneliness around me that I couldn’t properly handle or face the emotions that were in front of me. I used my eating disorder as a coping mechanism to hide behind fact that my life was falling apart. I used my bulimic cycle to fill in the emptiness that I was feeling inside. What might have started out as an obsession with weight and food turned into something much more powerful, that not even I could understand yet. In march of 2016, during one of my worst breakdowns, I called my mom, finally told her the truth, and decided to pack all my bags, leave school a month before finals, and seek the treatment I needed while also not telling a single soul because I was too embarrassed. I finally came to terms with what I was doing wasn’t healthy and I didn’t want to live this way anymore. I admitted myself into a rehab facility and then went under heavy treatment for the next 3 months. When I was released, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I loved running but it was also one of the factors that was heavily contributing to my illness. I was scared if I started running again what would happen. I didn’t want to fall back into old habits and undergo everything all over again. Running had always been what I centered my life around, and how I described myself as a person. Now that I was considering moving away from it, who was I without it? I found myself really lost and without an identity. I didn’t know who I was without it because I had never separated myself from it. I chose to put running before my mental health and ignore problems that needed to be faced and because of that, I suffered even more. I spent the next few weeks throwing one giant pity party for myself before finally waking up and realizing that this wasn’t getting me anywhere. I decided that I didn’t want running to be fueled by my eating disorder anymore but for others. I started using my motivation for others that could no longer run, either due to permanent injury or their passing. Whatever the reason, I would blog about it and use it as my reason to get out the door each day, not to lose weight or burn calories. I feel that it is very important to understand this. Running should not be the be all and end all of your being. It’s perfectly okay to love the sport and everything that it adds to your life, but at the end of the day you should be able to separate yourself from your running identity and recognize who you are without it. At the end of this I don’t want any of you to look at me or treat me any differently or feel that I came up here to ask for your pity or gain attention. I came up here to share my story because I know for a fact that there are others who are struggling too and some of them are right under your nose. You really have no idea what people are going through behind closed doors. So if you all can take something away from today is just take care of each other.
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How did the click of a button become one of our generation’s most powerful weapons? Validation is a funny thing. We live in a century that’s built from it; “The Validation Generation” as some call it. You see it everywhere you look, lurking in the dark corners of the room, creeping its way through crowds, and finally finding it seeping into your soul.
If you really think about it, that’s all social media is. One big plea for approval. It’s built off likes and followers, quantity over quality. Numbers are everything in the kingdom of Instagram. You are considered a more valued human based off how many likes you can get from your selfies. I feel like it’s turned into one big popularity contest. It can even affect the way people look at themselves in the mirror. How did the click of a button become one of our generation’s most powerful weapons? However, before social media became this big bad wolf ready to blow everyone’s confidence away, it was used to help build relationships. Yes, it does have good traits, it allows us to connect with loved ones and friends that we can no longer see face to face, and it also adds entertainment value and worldly knowledge. Personally, I love Instagram, twitter Facebook etc., I use them all the time and I would be lying if I said I never posted anything without looking for others approval. How could you not?! That’s the thing about validation, it’s extremely satisfying. With each click you can instantly boost yours or someone else’s self-esteem. Let’s admit we do use this to our advantage. Everyone has been in that situation where they’re mad at their friend, so they purposefully don’t give them the gratification of their like on their most current post. It’s a strategic game of war over likes. That’s our way of showing we don’t approve, they don’t get our like = they don’t get our blessing. Why do the number of likes have the power to change the way someone looks at themselves? Everyone wants to be liked no matter how much they deny it. Everyone likes being told they look good in that dress or their new hairstyle looks good on them. Everyone likes the affirmation that they’re doing something right with their life. We go to social media to get this affirmation. The more likes you receive means the more together your life is. However, when we rely on social media to feel these ways, we are placing our self-validation in the viral hands of the internet. Before we know it, we are spun into an never-ending game of imitating perfection. We begin to compare ourselves to our peers, taking note of the amount of likes she got from slurping a margarita in a bikini on Panama City Beach versus your most recent selfie with your dog. We begin to feel this pressure to be socially acceptable. Going out no longer means a night on the town with your friends but rather going out to take the perfect picture that will get us just as many likes as the girl drinking her pretty little margarita. We then lose ourselves in pretending to be someone we’re not. The focus strays from our own individuality to becoming someone were not. We post what we think people want to see. Our profiles become a display of how perfect can we pretend our life is. However, we never realize that no matter how perfect our picture is we will never win this game because there will always be someone skinnier, someone prettier, or someone with more likes than you. As long as we continue to compare ourselves to other’s bikini pictures, we will always lose. Another thing that we often forget about social media is, it’s not real life. Her perfect bikini picture is not an accurate depiction of the reality of the rest of her life. That picture and every other picture she posts is strategically posed to flaunt her best features. There is a mathematical algorithm to every girl’s profile. If paid attention to it’s easy to point out. For every one selfie, there are at least fifty other nearly identical pictures to go along with it, that didn’t fit the quota, and she purposefully chose not share with the rest of the world. Let’s face it, no matter how pretty you think a girl is, to her she has one “bad side” and “one good side”; and it’s usually easy to figure out which one it is because she will post a variety of different poses from that same angle, staging her perfect shot. Obviously no one is going to post an ugly picture of themselves unless you have balls….then respect; but usually all you ever see are the ones that go under extreme examination before being broadcast to the world. So yes, that person you see has 50 other sides that they are choosing not to show. I know this girl I used to be close with. She was always a big social media user but recently her accounts have really blown up. To maintain her perfect image, she erased a majority of her past pictures that received less than 250 likes or that no longer fit her standard of how she wants her life to be portrayed. Now it is clear that she only posts pictures of what she thinks her followers will like. It is clear that she is just another victim of social media’s validation ploy. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want this article to seem like I’m a jealous b**** because I can’t get as many likes as another girl. That is not at all what I meant by this. Personally, I do get frustrated with myself when I catch myself wondering why I didn’t get as many likes on my nearly identical picture as someone else. It’s frustrating and aggravating when someone can literally post a picture of a fork and get 20 retweets 50 likes and 10 comments when you can barely get a retweet your dog selfie. It’s hard not to feel a little less appreciated when you get nearly a hundred less likes on your bikini picture. It’s hard not feeling like that’s a hundred-less people giving their approval on your body. How could you not get caught up in the game of validation?! Why is that person any more special than yourself? I give mad respect to the people who post whatever the f*** they want. Not every picture is perfect and not every picture has to get 500 likes for them to feel like a valuable human being. They post things that are true to themselves and I think that is what social media should be about. Posting pictures for you, pictures that make you happy and show your personality, rather than posting for others and likes. As Selena Gomez said in her VMA speech, “I don’t want to see your bodies, I want to see what’s in here,” as she pointed to her heart. I wish people would feel more free to post what is true to them instead of what they think others might like. So let’s see more selfies with your dog, or silly pictures of your friends, things that are special to you, and know that not every picture has to be perfect for you to be a perfectly valuable human. You don’t need social media to tell you just how beautiful of a human being you are. Body Image is a bitch.
It’s so hard not to look back on old pictures of myself and not think, “I THOUGHT I WAS FAT?!” and then shortly after, “If I was fat then, what am I now?” It’s crazy to me how much a mental illness can have the power to distort my point of view. I go back to old pictures and try to look to where all my “problem areas” used to be but everywhere I used to see a little extra skin, just wasn’t there anymore. And then it’s hard looking at myself today and not noticing the clear differences in the two. It’s even harder telling myself that I’m happy with the skin that I’m in. It feels like a downright lie. I have been told, that in eating disorder recovery, your body image is the last of your obstacles to go. Well, everyone was right. Although, I’ve come a long way from where I started this is the last battle that I am still fighting. It’s hard for anyone to be completely comfortable in their skin, so I know it’s never going to be easy, and I may never fully succeed; however, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying. I guess I can say, I already have the upper hand because I can see just how sick I was. Looking at pictures of my old self, I have a clear vision and can now see myself for what I really was; a beautiful girl who hated herself. Although, my body may have been more aesthetically pleasing, I was not happy. I put on a front to make people believe that I was when I actually felt the opposite. I had so much self-hate and loathing toward myself, it makes me sick to think of the words I used to describe myself. I was my own bully, I stabbed myself in the back, and mentally cut myself down every day. I hated myself so much, it consumed my every thought. It got to a point where I postponed taking showers because I hated the sight of myself naked. I would close my eyes and rush out immediately because I hated my body so much. I wouldn’t look in mirrors. I hated taking pictures, I would edit the shit out of them to transform my body something or someone who I thought I was supposed to be. I would starve myself in anticipation of a big event where I knew I’d have to reveal skin. I convinced myself that I was only worthy of love if I looked a certain way. It took a lot to change this way of thinking. Recovery wasn’t a night and day switch, just like my sickness didn’t begin over night. I didn’t suddenly wake up one morning and decide I would have an eating disorder. It was something that took its time to settle in. Disguising itself in different forms, making it almost impossible to identify. So you can imagine, recovery took its time to settle in as well. I struggled a lot, I’m still struggling. I feel as if my sanity is hanging from a thread ready to snap at any moment. Some days I feel stronger than others. Some days, I’m able to see that love is so much more than an image. Love is laughter and hugs in the airport after time apart. Love is three-hour phone calls, breakfast in bed, it’s home. Love is showing up and being there for someone when they need you. The only size that matters in love, is the size of your heart, and how much you are willing to give it up for someone else. I decided that in order to recover, I have to mourn my old body and celebrate the current one. I have to recognize how unhappy I was with the past body that I now wish I had. It’s like an oxymoron. It’s a bit confusing changing the sole focus of my life. My weight obsessively controlled my thoughts. Now, it feels as if I’m left stranded with no source of identity; but that’s the beautiful part of recovery I guess, rediscovering how you fit into this life. My sole purpose on this earth isn’t actually to be as skinny and aesthetically pleasing as possible, I actually have a bigger responsibility in this world. Amazing. This battle isn’t near over, but I am stronger now. I’m getting there. I found that surrounding myself with the people that love me can help me learn to love myself. For they are the ones that see me beyond how I see myself, they see me for more than what my eating disorder is. I don’t know where I would be without them. I’m learning to love myself for who I am as a person. I know I’m not perfect on the inside either, I still make a crap ton of mistakes. I’m still working on forgiving myself for some of them. It’s all a process, I’m learning and growing, taking my victories where I can. I’ve learned that, we are so much more than what a mirror has the capability to show. Fuck the mirror. Our body doesn’t define us. Loving ourselves and others is the real testament to beauty. Dear My Body, I want to apologize for not loving you the way you loved me. When you kept me alive and allowed me to experience Life, I shamed you and told you that you didn’t deserve happiness. When you showed me joy, I showed you loathing. When all you wanted was freedom and to feel the air on your skin and the wind in your hair, I showed you darkness and kept you isolated from others. I put you through so much pain and misery, pushing you to your breaking point. It wasn’t right of me. So now, I want to thank you for not giving up on me when I was at my worst. Thank you for showing me love and laughter when I didn’t think it was possible. Thank you for letting me feel sand beneath my toes and salt water in my hair. Thank you for carrying me over mountains in the rain and snow; for allowing me to experience life in its truest and most sincere forms; and thank you for staying strong even when I felt I wasn’t. Sincerely, Caitlin Glynn “Just leave”; “Just quit it”; “Just eat”; “Can’t you see he’s hurting you”; “Don’t you see what you’re doing to yourself?, “He’s just playing games with you”; “You’re just lying to yourself.” Thank you for your advice. I’ve never heard or thought of that before on my own. You just solved all my problems. I am now completely healed! Thank you for your help, goodbye.
Contrary to popular belief, I did realize that what I was doing wasn’t right or wasn’t exactly good for my body, just like people in abusive relationships know what they have isn’t exactly ideal. If it were as simple as “just leave, or just eat”, well by the grace of God, Thank you Mr. President you just cured world hunger and solved world peace! No, it is never “just that simple”, because if it was, believe me, I would’ve left at the first sign of danger. You’re in love. How can you walk away from something that makes you feel so alive but is also slowly killing you? You love him, you can’t leave him, but he’s cruel, he’s selfish, he’s greedy; oh but dear lord, do you love that boy. He wants you, he loves you, he wants to spend the rest of his life with you, but he can’t just settle with you. You’re his world but he has two worlds. He swears there will be a time where you both will be together, just you and him forever. His promises are made up of hearts and flowers, but his actions feel like knives and poison. Your entire relationship is built up of pretty lies and stolen kisses. ED, my eating disorder, is mentally abusive. He likes to tell me things that we both know will never be true. He likes to build me up and then stab me in my back. All his wounds are internal, invisible to the eye. No one understands that he is slowly killing me inside. He uses me; picks me up when it’s convenient and drops me back down when he gets bored. ED lives his life how it is suitable to himself. He has the best of both worlds. “All alone, I watch you watch her. Like she’s the only girl you’ve ever seen. You don't care you never did You don't give a damn about me Yeah all alone I watch you watch her She's the only thing you've ever seen How is it you never notice? That you are slowly killing me.” However, if ED, or your boyfriend, was all bad, it would be “just that easy”. ED is a conman. He knows how to play his cards. He knows what to say to get you to stay. He’s beautiful. He makes you laugh. He knows how to make you feel wanted at just the right moments. “He’s bad but he does it so well,” as my good friend Tswift would say. However, band aids can’t fix bullet holes, he can’t say sorry just for show. If you live like that, you live with ghosts, my friends. Listen to the goddess Tswift (to be honest, if she told me to “just eat” or “just leave” I probably would). The point is, ED is a beautiful lie. The most beautiful lie you will ever hear, or the most beautiful boy you will ever lay eyes on. You both love each other, in some twisted and distorted type of way and no amount of Taylor Swift lyrics is going to make the hole in your heart go away from where he stabbed you. “If love becomes too painful, then it's time to let that love go and save yourself. You have to keep this in mind because you'll be able to find another love but not another self." A common misconception about eating disorders is that they are a choice. By no means would I have wanted to put myself through the pain and suffering that I have endured. I didn’t choose to drop out of school or have to take a leave from running. I did it because I had no choice. My eating disorder consumed me. I like to think of it as a different entity within me. I refer to him as “ED”, ED my eating disorder. ED is a bitch. He’s a loud voice that likes to scream in Caitlin's head and sometimes she can't distinguish ED's thoughts from her own. He's controlling and manipulative and only thinks of himself. ED was jealous and envious, he was a perfectionist. In ED’s eyes Caitlin was a piece of shit and he told her so. So ED thinking he was a hero, was going to do Caitlin a favor and put her out of her misery. Caitlin (aka me lol) suffered with severe anxiety and depression. She hid this from most people because she was embarrassed and didn’t want people to think of her this way. On the outside Caitlin did her best to act as happy as possible and make the world believe everything was going right, when in fact her world was falling apart.
One thing most people don’t know about eating disorders is they act as a coping mechanism. ED did want to help Caitlin, but he did it in all the wrong ways. At one point in Caitlin’s life ED served as a way for Caitlin to deal with her emotions, emotions that were so strong and overwhelming that Caitlin didn’t know what to do with them. Caitlin, like many other victims of eating disorders could no longer deal with the pain that she was experiencing in her life so she transferred the pain in her mind to pain that she conflicted on her body. ED quickly became addicting. The eating disorder was no longer even about the food, but instead about the emotional pain behind it. ED liked to stay isolated. Much of his actions were done in private. Caitlin kept ED a secret. She was embarrassed because she felt as if she was weak because she no longer had control over her mind or body. She didn’t want to believe ED was real; however, ED became too strong. ED was a secret that was slowly killing Caitlin and she hid him with her smile. At one point in a victim’s life their eating disorder served a purpose. They used it as a coping mechanism to “distract” themselves from the emotional pain they were experiencing. Many victims with eating disorders have suffered traumas in their life. They use ED behaviors to try to deal with the overwhelming pain that has been inflicted upon them. Most behaviors are done in private. Some effects are not noticeable to the public while others are more obvious. No matter the case, each person is carrying a heavy burden within themselves that needs to be resolved. Although it may appear so, no one has control over ED. It may last with a person for a few months, a few years, or for the rest of their life. It is simply not something they can “get over”. It is a secret that is killing them. |
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