Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This podcast has conversations around different mental health experiences that may be distressing for some people. If that doesn't feel like something you want to explore today, you might want to visit another podcast and come back to us another time.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Discovery College acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia and recognises their continuing connection to lands, waters and community. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to the elders, past and present. They have never ceded sovereignty.
[00:00:32] Speaker C: You kind of just are searching and searching for this rush of approval and you don't even realize that you're never going to get it because its ultimate goal is to kill you. You think, oh, I'll just get to what's called an ultimate goal weight. That's like the lowest I really want to go and I'm going to be so happy if I get there. And you don't even realize that if you do get there, it's just going to get lower. And that's like the really scary realization to have. If I don't stop, I am going to die.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: I'm Lucy.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: And I'm Rachel and we're the hosts of the Extremely Human podcast.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Sometimes we move through big human experiences that others might not understand, like psychosis, grief, addiction, euphoria, or moments that feel completely unreal.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: On Extremely Human, we hear from people who've been there and share what they've learnt along the way. Together, we ask, how can we meet the full range of human experience? With kindness and compassion.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: Katiya shares what it's like to live with an eating disorder, like having two brains, one that loves pasta and ice cream, and one that only wants control. She reflects on how it all began, the role social media played, and why recovery feels like trying to grow a seed in winter until you find your garden.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: I'm so looking forward to this conversation with Katya. I think some of our guests might have heard our last episode with Katya's mum, Michelle. But this is a bit of a follow up. But it's also also an exciting moment on its own because Katya's got a great deal of wisdom to share. So welcome.
[00:02:31] Speaker C: Thank you. Hello.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Hello. I wonder, Katya, if you can say something about yourself.
[00:02:35] Speaker C: My name's Katya. I am 18 years old. Yeah, I've been in the Alfred family for a while, so to speak, through my journey with anorexia and afterwards as part of some of my advocacy things that I've done.
Um, so it's kind of nice to see that it's really come full circle.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: It really is a full circle.
[00:02:59] Speaker C: I know, it's crazy.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: How nice.
[00:03:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Okay, Katya. Well, the question we ask people on the podcast is a bit of a warm up question.
Have you ever had a disproportionate reaction to anything, sort of when your reaction to a moment hasn't quite matched the situation?
[00:03:16] Speaker C: The first thing that sort of comes to mind when I was sort of deep in my eating disorder, pretty much every reaction was disproportionate. But the one that stands out to me is when my mum was trying to get me to eat a punnet of raspberries. That was the goal.
Which is laughable to me now because I can eat a punnet of raspberries in about two minutes flat. But I ended up having such a major meltdown over this punnett of raspberries that I did not go to school for the next week. It was just the biggest meltdown you could ever imagine.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: How long was it before you realized that it was a bit of a overreaction to the raspberries?
[00:04:05] Speaker C: Those years I did, it didn't even occur to me how stupid that was until probably well after I'd recovered.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Yeah, but it can be the smallest things.
[00:04:17] Speaker C: Exactly.
Thing that I don't know why it was the raspberries that sprayed.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: It was just the raspberries.
Do you look at raspberries the same now?
[00:04:25] Speaker C: Oh, I. I look at raspberries with fond memories.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: So you spoke a little bit about having an eating disorder. Can you tell us what that experience was like for you?
[00:04:37] Speaker C: Yeah, of course. Well, I was diagnosed with my eating disorder in.
What was it? October of 2020.
So that was sort of lockdown. Had just started easing up by that point a little bit, I think.
And I sort of really struggled with my anorexia for a couple of years after that. You know, in and out of hospital through that cycle. I eventually made the firm decision to commit to recovery by the end of 2022.
And yeah, and as I said, it's really come full circle from being treated at Kim's to then starting to work with some of those people like you.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: That's amazing, Katya.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: I hope it's okay. I say this, but I think for someone who's not lived the experience of an eating disorder or anorex here, it's incredibly hard to understand what that's like. Have you got any way of helping us understand that experience from the inside?
[00:05:51] Speaker C: It's definitely very difficult to try to explain to people that haven't gone through it, especially when you try to explain that it's not at all about vanity or how you look for me. And obviously this isn't the case for everybody. But my eating disorder was a way to maintain some sort of control in my life in a world that was very much out of control and chaotic. So by being able to control every single aspect of my intake, my weight measurements, you know, etc. I was able to sort of have that complete control over myself, even though, you know, like it wasn't actually me controlling those behaviors. You know, it gives you a false sense of security in yourself, I guess, and you're able to be distracted from any outside stresses or troubles that you might be having because you just can become completely consumed with your eating disorder. In a way, it's very much self sabotage and it is a form of self harm or trying to punish yourself in some way, which, yeah, is so hard for people to understand when they haven't gone through that need to sort of hurt yourself in that kind of way.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: You mentioned before that it wasn't really you that was sort of gaining control.
[00:07:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: What do you mean by that?
[00:07:29] Speaker C: I personally sort of describe my experience with anorexia as having two brains in a sense.
So I have my healthy brain, which is, you know, that's me. Those are the things that I like. You know, I love pasta and I love chocolate and ice cream and everything in a food perspective. And then I also have my eating disorder brain, which, depending on the state of my mental health, if I'm really sort of struggling with my eating, that sort of fuels that side of my brain to grow bigger and bigger and bigger until this part that's me is really not there at all. And that's why when you're so deep in an eating disorder, it is so hard to try and get that.
It's like a seed that needs to grow in the middle of winter. You know, it's almost impossible because there's no sunlight. There's no way for that seed to sort of grow back. But when there's a whole garden, it's much easier to stomp out those weeds. You know, in a really weird analogy.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: That's an incredible analogy.
[00:08:45] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Visualization I'm getting, it's.
[00:08:47] Speaker C: Yeah. So it just depends. Like, because I'm in a healthy mindset right now, it's very easy for me to control any negative thoughts I have around. You know, maybe I should go weigh myself today or maybe I shouldn't eat this because my healthy brain is so prevalent and so strong. But if I'm really struggling, it's really hard for me to Ignore those urges because they become just second nature.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: If you can think back to, you know, pre October 2020, do you remember what some of your early thoughts or feelings were around that time?
[00:09:26] Speaker C: Oh, definitely. I would say that sort of the first few months of 2020 was when there were lots of trends going around on social media about getting fit during lockdown and losing weight. And as a 13 year old girl who was obviously struggling with friendships like most teenage girls do, at some point that seemed like a way that people might like me more if I lost some weight or I looked different.
Right. So it's kind of started just as a let's get fit, but turned sort of spiraled quite quickly and turned from just running, you know, you know, once a day to sort of practice for cross country or whatever, turned into watching what I'm eating and making sure not to have too much of this and working out multiple times a day to try and lose more weight. That became sort of the sole focus rather than getting stronger and getting healthier. So then by October, you know, I was really restricting my intake and I was obviously very unhappy. And that's sort of when mum was like, all right, this is not cool.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: You mentioned that the lockdowns and Covid were a bit of a catalyst into the beginning of your eating disorder.
Was there any other contributing factors that sort of shaped the way you saw yourself and your self image, your body, your relationship with food?
[00:11:07] Speaker C: Definitely. At the time I had recently shaved my head for cancer. I donated the hair and race money for that. But you know, when you're a girl in year seven, year eight at high school, that does not really fly with your peers and you know, they start making fun of you and saying you look like a boy or calling you an egg and a couple of times it's like, oh yeah, whatever. But when everybody starts to do it, even your friends, because it's like funny, then it, it kind of becomes in the back of your mind just like a voice telling you, you know, like, you should look different. And then also, you know, teenage boys are not really the most pleasant creatures to be around either.
And so an aspect of eating disorders can also be wanting to sort of remove some of that femininity that you have.
Because obviously when you start to lose weight, you, you know, lose your curves, you lose your boobs. And I think that took a long time for me to sort of realize that that's also part of what I was doing to myself. And then, you know, you've got my brother who is autistic and that was sort of a big influence on my childhood as well. And you could talk so many different angles to what might contribute to the development of an eating disorder. But I'd say those were, especially at the time, the main things that I was sort of going through.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: And what part did social media play?
[00:12:49] Speaker C: Yes, social media played a big role as well. As I said, when you're an impressionable girl and you're looking through social media all the time, because what more is there to do in Covid? And, you know, you see these young women who are working out to get fit, and it's coming from a completely innocent perspective. You know, there were a lot of people who did really use lockdown to work on themselves and who they are as a person. But for me, it was kind of, again, in my subconscious a way of thinking that if I did this, then I would be liked. If I did this, I would look different and people would stop making fun of me, essentially. But then my interactions with social media also changed as I developed more and more into my eating disorder. You can find very overtly harmful eating disorder content all over the web. You know, you can find on pretty much any social media app just communities of people that encourage each other to eat less and lose weight. And that completely just spiraled my eating disorder out of control. Because not only do you have people who look thinner than you, which eating disorders can often be a competition of who can look the sickest, who can be the sickest, but you also have those same people encouraging you to do more, to eat less, to be thinner.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: So it's like your idols are encouraging this in you.
[00:14:37] Speaker C: Exactly. Yeah. So when that unhealthy brain keeps taking over and taking over, it uses this content online to just keep growing and, like, taking over your mind and your body until, yeah, it's just. You're just a shell of yourself, basically.
And social media was a big, big contributor in that, you know, and especially when you have that really unhealthy side, there's no. There's no voice in you saying, stop, don't do this. You know, that's a lot of people's argument, is if you find social media unhelpful, just get off social media. But you don't want to. Right. So if there was any sort of recognition that I shouldn't be doing this, I wouldn't have done it. But that voice just isn't there anymore.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: You know, especially, like, not even just the fact that you don't have that voice telling you this isn't healthy. But the Algorithms are giving you more and more. Whereas, you know, in previous years, like, you know, 20 years ago, that didn't exist. It's like, here, you like this thing we'll give you. Shove it down your throat.
[00:15:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Were there moments that you kind of realized how the depth of its effect on your life?
[00:16:00] Speaker C: I would say that a lot of my moments of realization didn't come until after I had recovered. You just can't see at all any of the damage that you're doing. You know, people, the doctors are telling you you're hurting your heart, this is not good for you. Like, and you're hooked up to a heart monitor, and you still don't think anything's wrong. You just cannot see anything to do with what's wrong with how you're thinking or even how you're feeling.
You know, you're tired all the time. I could only go to school for three periods a day max, before I'd have to call it quits and come home because I just could not work. My.
My body and my brain just weren't working anymore. But, yeah, I think.
And that goes the same for my habits on social media or my eating disorder rituals. I wasn't able to recognize just how unhealthy they were until after I had recovered and really worked on myself.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Gosh, I'm really curious then, if it was so hard to recognize the impact it was having, where did the turning point come from? Like, why did you choose recovery?
[00:17:21] Speaker C: I honestly could not tell you.
This is probably one of the hardest things to explain to people. For a lot of people, they have to continuously choose recovery every single day. You know, it's. It's very slow slope upwards. But for me, and I remember telling you this, I remember just saying it was like a switch.
It just clicked one morning, and then I was done. I remember that I was done. So then I came in the next day to Kim's, and it's like, yeah, I'm eating this, this, this, this, this, this, this. Instead of, you know, I had. I had my set meal plans, and I eat the same thing every day. And then the next time I came in, it's just done.
I cannot explain that to anybody. I have no idea why or how. There is a lot of work that's done in the subconscious. You know, I was journaling a little bit more, and, you know, I'd created a little board of 100 reasons why I wanted to recover. Not that the. The overarching thought was, not that I'm gonna do this, but just so it's there, you know, Mum, Mum wants me to do it, so I'll get her off my back.
But I think that sort of slowly just turns the cogs until one morning you wake up and you're like, no, I'm not having my bloody All Bran for breakfast anymore. I want some yogurt, I want some berries, you know, some granola. And then I think what's harder than, for me personally than picking recovery is choosing continuously. Every single time something gets tough or something goes wrong is continuing to choose that and to stay healthy rather than just spiraling down. Because it's easy to just go up and down, up and down, up and down, but to stay up is what's really challenging.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: Is that something you still have to negotiate often or is it something that is less of a choice?
[00:19:23] Speaker C: I would say it depends on sort of what's going on in my life. If I'm having a particularly bad week, then it's very similar to an alcoholic, you know, if you're having a really bad week, it's difficult not to pick up a drink and just have one drink, you know, because one drink turns into two and two turns into four, etc. It's the same, same thing. I can't just.
I'm too tired. I'm just gonna not have dinner, right? Because it might seem pretty innocent, you know, you just don't want dinner or want something really small for dinner.
But that thought turns into, oh, you're doing so good by not having dinner. Why don't you just skip breakfast this morning? And then it's skipping lunch as well and that just turns into another thing. And then you're like, hold up, what am I doing?
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Right?
[00:20:17] Speaker C: So it's definitely still always in the back of my mind. And I think little unhealthy brain will always be somewhere in the back of my head for a long, long time. But for the most part, it's harder for that small part of my brain to take over. You know, even if it tries really, really hard. I might have a really bad week of eating and then I'm like, you know, I'm so bored of this, I just want some food again. So that the healthy brain is always able to just take over again, even if it's a bad week or something like that.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: You know, like we have a critical voice and then a. A voice of self compassion at times.
[00:20:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Would the eating disorder fall into the critical voice or is it like a third voice? Is it completely different or is it the same?
[00:21:05] Speaker C: I would say it's Completely different. Like if. If you screw up, like, say you accidentally eat an extra thing for the day, then it turns quite critical. Or, you know, if you don't lose as much weight as your planning to, then it becomes quite critical. You know, you need to try harder, you need to do better. You're not doing good enough. But it can also be, you know, very kind. And, you know, it's a celebration if you do hit that marker, but then that very quickly goes away to, all right, the next thing let's. You've hit this weight, now let's go to the next one because. And then all of a sudden, that weight doesn't really seem like good enough anymore anymore. So it's very complicated. It seems you kind of just are searching and searching for this rush of approval, and you don't even realize that you're never going to get it because its ultimate goal is to kill you. Right?
You think, oh, I'll just get to. This is my.
This is my. What's called an ultimate goal weight. That's like the lowest. I really want to go, and I'm going to be so happy if I get there.
And you don't even realize that if you do get there, it's just gonna get lower. You know, you're not gonna stop until you're dead. And that's like the really, just really scary realization to have. It's like, gosh, like, if I don't stop, I am going to die.
And it's. Yeah, that's just. It's so frightening. You know.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: Katiera, we. You know, we did have a little bit of a chat with your mum last episode, so we learned a lot from her about her experience. But from your point of view, how did anorexia affect your relationships, you know, with friends, family, maybe even with yourself?
[00:23:07] Speaker C: I would say really impacted pretty much all of my relationships. Obviously, my relationship with my mum became really strained.
We were fighting all the time.
Every single conversation we had was about meals or the eating disorder or something else to do with me being unwell, you know, so it became just a chore almost to have to talk to her because obviously I don't want to hear any of it. Right? Like, that's just. I'm not interested in hearing about this.
So I never wanted to talk to her. And that was a really big change because we were always, you know, so close. And we are again now that sort of everything has been repaired with time.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: Did you think it would be.
Did you think you would get back.
[00:24:02] Speaker C: To where you are now? I Don't think so. No. It was for so long. We were so strained. Yeah, it was a really difficult time for both of us, I'd say. But then also, you know, it was hard losing all of my friends because it's really, really difficult to be friends with someone when you can see just how badly they're hurting themselves and you can't do anything about it. That's. I think the thing for a lot of people is they grow a lot of resentment towards you, which is completely understandable, because if you really just want to help that person because, you know, they're a good friend, but they will not accept any help and continue to get worse, that becomes too much for a lot of people, and, you know, rightfully so. Like. And when I'm in hospital most of the time anyway, I don't see them much. I don't talk to them much.
It. It just. Everybody gets really distant because, yeah, there's just not much of an opportunity to talk. And it becomes too hard for them to talk to me because just whenever somebody would talk to me, you could kind of just see in their eyes that they were hurting by talking to me because, you know, it is really distressing to see somebody who is so unwell with themselves and in that state. It's really, really tricky.
So, yeah, I did end up losing, you know, most of my friends, and a lot of those relationships I never got back. So that is. Has always been a really big, you know, regret for me is that I lost so many friends and I made new ones. And, you know, everything is spinet dandy now, but, you know, it is really. And it's just makes the eating disorder so much worse because at that point, you've just got nothing left to lose, right? Like, yeah, I haven't got a great relationship with my mom. I've got no friends anymore. So what's the point, right? Just fuels that voice even more. And I think that also contributes to the fact that I had no friends because the eating disorder wants to push everybody away in order to close you off more, keep you just for itself. Right.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: It's so sad, though, because you said that you wanted to change the way you look so that more people would like you and have more friends.
[00:26:37] Speaker C: And then it's a bit of a paradox.
Nobody looks at somebody who is very overtly struggling with anorexia and goes, yeah, I want to be friends. I want to be friends with that girl. She looks really good. Like, no, I looked dead.
I was so miserable. You know, I was always tired at that Point, you don't even know. You can't tell that you look so dead because. Or that you see in a mirror. You don't even look at how your eyes are just so tired. You just look, where can I lose some more weight? You know, it's very. It. It seems so vain when I think about it. But like, if you, if you're an. Coming from an outside perspective and you think this person is just so obsessed with losing weight, it just seems like a vanity competition. But it. It's like a shell of something else that is going on for that person.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: It's often misunderstood as, yeah, a quest around vanity, isn't it? Yeah, it's actually the. In my opinion, I feel like it's often quite the opposite.
[00:27:44] Speaker C: It's the complete opposite. Like, you know, your subconscious knows just how awful you look. But that's the point, you know, but.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: It'S more of a rejection of self, really.
[00:27:57] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Is there anything else that you wish people understood about eating disorders that they often don't?
[00:28:05] Speaker C: I think obviously eating disorders are very complex in nature.
One of the big things that stands out to me is that anorexia is not the only eating disorder. I think a lot of people use the terms interchangeably, but, you know, that's not true. And a person can also have many different types of eating disorders, even all at once, you know, so especially when I was in lockdown and, you know, I was more than struggling with just anorexia, you know, I'd have binging episodes and it definitely was not a linear sort of trend downwards. A lot of people sort of overlook other eating disorders because, you know, they're not as serious. And then I'd also say sort of the essence around not wanting help is a big thing. You know, it feels really disheartening for people, especially like your loved ones, when you keep constantly refusing help. As I've said, the way that I like to explain it is that there's two different parts in my brain. And even though I'm really just an awful person on the outside, it's really not me who's saying these awful things or refusing the help. You know, like, if that little part of my healthy brain could talk, it would say, no, please, I really need some help.
But, you know, people are so quick to blame the individual and get mad at that person, which is fair enough because there's not really anybody else that you can blame because all of these things are coming from them, but it's not them, you know. So I think, like, yeah, a lot of people, you know, they'd get so frustrated with me and they'd be telling me all these things, but I was not able to comprehend what they were saying because it was like talking to a wall. It literally was just talking to a wall. You could be pleading, crying at me, please.
And I would have a straight face, you know, like, I was a really terrible person at times because just it was not. It was in one ear, out the other, you know, so it's important to remember that that person isn't really there.
Just because they sound like and talk like and often will act like their normal self, that does not mean that they're in control at all.
Especially when it comes to food conversations and conversations around, you know, more difficult subjects. That's when you. If you bring up food or say, eat this, there will just be a rage of fire coming out. And, you know, my mum would be like, all right, we're not going to have this conversation because eating disorder's out. And that would just make me even more mad because I don't recognize that there's an eating disorder component. I'd be like, it's not an eating disorder. This is me talking. This is Katya. And she'd be like, nope, nope, nope. And I. Oh, it would just make me so mad because I couldn't understand the concept that that wasn't me talking.
It's really, really complicated.
[00:31:38] Speaker A: No, it almost sounds like it's a completely different entity.
[00:31:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
That's the way I like to describe it, is that it's like a parasite that's just taken over your brain. You don't, but you're not able to comprehend the fact that that's not you.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:56] Speaker C: But then other people also forget that that's not you.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:00] Speaker C: But then you just seem like a real dick.
[00:32:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:03] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Did you have a name for the eating disorder?
[00:32:07] Speaker C: I didn't.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:32:08] Speaker C: But I know a lot of people do like to name it. I would just say the eating disorder voice or the eating disorder. Or if, you know, I was really in depth. It was me. It was Katya.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:20] Speaker C: I do know some people do like to describe it.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:24] Speaker C: That the eating disorder is part of them.
But, yeah, for me, it's especially coming from a place of recovery. It's much easier to explain it. Like a little. Little bug in your brain.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:32:37] Speaker C: Just telling you what to do.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: Earlier on, you talked a lot about how important it was to choose recovery and that sometimes you have to choose it. Often I wonder if that leaves listeners thinking that the eating disorder Is also a choice.
[00:32:52] Speaker C: Oh, I really hate that misconception.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Me too.
[00:32:56] Speaker C: That you are choosing to have an eating disorder. Yeah, definitely not.
An eating disorder is not a choice. Like I said, you. It might seem like a choice in your brain as somebody with an eating disorder, because the unhealthy side of your brain has just taken over.
So obviously you're choosing to continue to, like, restrict and lose weight. But that's not really a choice.
It just means that that sort of unhealthy part of your brain is just completely taken over. Whereas recovery, it's easy to just let go. You know, if you're climbing up a wall with a rope and it's getting really, really tiring, it's easier just to let go than it is to keep climbing up. But it's also like there's some sort of force pulling you down. So it's easy to just go, all right, just take me. All right. Than it is to go, nope, nope, nope. I'm not listening to you. The initial stages of getting an eating disorder, sometimes that can be a choice, Especially when you're in a relapse or sort of just experiencing some symptoms of an eating disorder. I would say that some of those could be a choice. You know, I do have a choice, especially when I do have my healthy brain still really in charge. If I'm not doing well, sometimes I can be like, all right. No, like, I. I want to sort of give in to this a little bit because I'm able to make the distinction still that I'm wanting to sabotage myself in a way. But then you could look at it from the perspective of a. Well, is that really your choice, or is that actually just your eating disorder brain taking over again? So it's. It's really like, at the end of the day, no, it's not a choice.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: Thank you for those comments.
It's an issue I hear a lot about.
[00:35:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: You know, because recovery is a choice, isn't it?
[00:35:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: You can't. You have to choose to fight and keep climbing up the rope.
[00:35:18] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think especially for parents as well, It's. It's sometimes really hard to understand. There's.
That it's not a choice.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Speaking to you today, you've obviously learned so much from your experiences, but is there things in particular that you've learned from the eating disorder that you'd like to pass on to people who might be struggling with it?
[00:35:40] Speaker C: I think one of the main takeaways is that I really wish that I hadn't got it in my Head when I was sort of fresh to the whole eating disorder thing, is that hospital is not some sort of grand prize. I think that a lot of young girls, especially with the rise of social media, you'll see somebody posting online with an NG tube up their nose and, you know, in hospital and think that they are sicker than you because they've reached that achievement and you haven't done that yet, but it just makes you more miserable, honestly, like, you just. You feel worse. It doesn't help. In fact, it makes you worse. Not in the sense that you get sicker in the way that you hope you will, but you just feel so hopeless and miserable and you get this really sort of weird connection of relationships with people who are also struggling, which seems like a really nice thing to have people who understand how you feel. But in the long run, it's just like a way for the eating disorder to stay attached to you. The main takeaway is that hospital is not this grand thing that it's made up to be, especially online. You know, you're treated like just any other patient who's coming through the doors. Like it's not really all what it's hyped up to be.
[00:37:25] Speaker A: What is the thinking behind ending up in hospital as the. The finish line, as the goal to be attained?
[00:37:34] Speaker C: What.
[00:37:34] Speaker A: What's the thinking behind?
[00:37:35] Speaker C: I guess the thinking is that if you are sick enough to need inpatient treatment, then you are sicker than somebody who doesn't need inpatient treatment. Coming from a competition perspective, which is just untrue, you can be super sick from any sort of perspective, however you want to look at it, and still not be hospitalised. You know, that's just a fact.
Even though it does seem like you really just want to compete with other people, it's just. It just makes everything so much worse. You lose friends because not only do you start competing with people who also have anorexia, you just start looking down the street and if you notice somebody who might be thinner than you, you then start competing with this random person on the street and it's like, what are you. What are you doing? You know, when I think back in hindsight, I'm like, gosh, what, what was I thinking? I look down the street and go, man, I want to. I want to be skinnier than that random person walking down there. The main takeaway that I have that I always like to remind myself and I also like to, you know, tell people whenever they're going through it, is that you always, always, always should choose recovery because the best day you could have when you're struggling with an eating disorder is still a hundred times worse than the worst day you could have without one. That's sort of my little mantra that I tell myself whenever I'm going through sort of a bit of a rough patch or something. And that's the biggest takeaway I've gotten.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: It really puts it into perspective.
[00:39:24] Speaker C: 100% reflection. I wish I'd done that sooner, actually.
Reflecting, even if it's without any intention to recover, a reflection is really, really helpful.
And then just a little side note, it does help the subconscious, just personal experience.
But if you're not interested in recovery, then that's fine too.
You just reflect.
And that just helps sort of put everything into perspective a little bit, I think. And I think I would not have had as difficult of a journey if somebody had told me that sooner. Once you. I think once you start thinking about the root causes of everything, that really helps to, yeah. Frame what is going on for you and then helps sort of kick start that recovery process is what I found to be really helpful for me.
[00:40:21] Speaker B: Kasia, thank you so much for your wisdom and beautiful sharing with us today.
[00:40:29] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:40:30] Speaker B: We like to finish each episode by thinking about what it means to sit with distress. Well, I wonder if there's anything you can share about your experiences of that either being receiving support at difficult times or of giving it. You know, what do you think is important when someone needs some support?
[00:40:50] Speaker C: I think probably one of the most important things is beforehand, like just knowing how to support somebody in a stressful situation or having sort of maybe cues about how to respond. For example, some people. Some people just like having somebody in the room while they're sort of going through it. But that will make me more angry if somebody's just sitting there, because my brain interprets that as they don't care, which is totally different to how somebody else might think and then again, somebody else. So I think learning how to deal with that particular person's preferences is really important beforehand. But then during, just remembering that even though seeing somebody else being distressed can be very distressing on you, two distressed people doesn't solve anything. It just creates more distress.
So staying calm, cool, collected is key to resolving the situation nicely.
I'd say.
[00:42:07] Speaker B: Oh, gee, that's again, great advice. I really. I really like what you've said. We're all so different, aren't we?
And as much as possible, try and understand what someone needs.
[00:42:18] Speaker A: Katya, firstly, I cannot believe that you are 18. Like the knowledge and wisdom that pours out of you. This conversation has really been a gift because it's a topic that many of us don't understand.
We don't even know how to begin to understand. So your story really has been very eye opening into what the experience of eating disorders can be.
[00:42:42] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:42:49] Speaker A: What an episode with Katya.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: She's spectacular.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: She is. She's a special human.
[00:42:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:54] Speaker A: I learned so much.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: Really?
[00:42:56] Speaker A: Yes. And I'm still thinking about it, but I actually have a lot of questions for you as well because I know that you've worked closely with people with eating disorders for many years and you.
[00:43:06] Speaker B: Have your own expertise, of course, and, you know, really happy to give my ideas. But, you know, I want to say just at the start, Katya teaches. And people like Katya teach me all the time.
[00:43:18] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: And I'm not an insider.
Well, I'm an insider in a different way, I guess. But I just want to pay acknowledgement, appropriate acknowledgement to those that have really taught me over the years.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: The thing that stood out to me when I was hearing Katya's story is that you could hear that she was doing a few, like, many things in the background to work on herself. But then, you know, she mentioned this light bulb moment where she just sort of felt like things were getting better.
[00:43:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: And to me, that felt almost like a miracle. Is that a common experience for people to just all of a sudden just feel like they're, you know, a little bit clearer?
[00:43:58] Speaker B: It is something I hear often, which is that there's either words like felt like a switch was flicked or a light bulb moment, or, you know, something drastically changed and it felt like it changed overnight.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:44:14] Speaker B: And so it can feel like a bit of a miracle for those around the person too. Like, I think Katya mentioned coming in the next day and telling me how different everything was from the day before. And it did feel like that. But everything that led up to that day has meant that switch is flicked. Be keen to hear what Cardius says about this, but I don't think it's true that you just wake up one day and it's different. I think it only happens because of what's come before that allows that to change. And you know, oftentimes until that moment, it's the people around the person that are kind of, really, kind of trying to cause change.
And then something might happen where they suddenly taking control of their own journey and, you know, kind of finding their way towards recovery for their own reasons.
[00:45:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:09] Speaker B: Instead of other people's. I really want to pay respect to all she and her family and people around her did in the lead up to that moment in time and how great it was for her to suddenly feel like things could be different.
[00:45:25] Speaker A: Thank you so much for explaining that to me, Rach. Another thing that I was thinking about after this conversation with Katya, she mentioned quite a few times, it's not about vanity. And that was a strong message. It was more about having control in a world that felt really chaotic. I wonder if you had any thoughts on what Kardia spoke about.
[00:45:45] Speaker B: Thanks for sharing that about the vanity because it's such an off a common misconception, and I think it's an understandable misconception too, about how eating disorders are often spoken about. There's a big association to body image pressures and you know, kind of the impact of ideal, you know, extreme and unachievable imagery getting given to people about how we should look. And for sure that's really unhealthy for people and in itself that's a problem.
But when we start to think about eating disorders, there's something different that's happening for these people. I would say most teenagers have disturbed body image or at least concerned about their bodies.
And a lot of women and men, adults hold a level of body dissatisfaction as well. So we're all kind of suffering from the toxic body image pressures that are around us. But we all don't develop serious eating disorders. So there's something different about what's happening for someone than not liking how they look.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: So what is the broader issue?
[00:46:57] Speaker B: Well, it's complex, I think, and it's not usually one thing. But if I can really, really grossly summarize, I would say it's a rejection of self.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:47:08] Speaker B: You know, it's an experience that's profoundly related to how someone feels about who they are, how they feel in the world, and whether they feel accepted or acceptable. And I think this whole issue of certainty and uncertainties and control is a really strong element of it.
[00:47:24] Speaker A: What do you mean by that?
[00:47:26] Speaker B: Human life is highly uncertain and complex. And, you know, we're not all. We're not born with skills to manage that level of uncertainty.
And, you know, we develop that over time and over the course of our lives.
And some of us can learn that more quickly than others. But sitting in uncertainty and kind of coping with a world and a life that doesn't feel in control is.
Is very threatening.
You know, it can make the world feel quite unsafe or it can make you feel unable to be in it very easily. So I Think it's. There's lots of things that have taught us or trained us out of sitting with uncertainty. You know, social media, we've kind of a world of instant. I think we're kind of in a world that's getting increasingly uncertain, and we're evolving in a way that's making us less able to tolerate it. And when you're a younger person, in a way, you know, they.
Everything can feel very uncertain. And then you throw Covid and lockdowns and disconnection into the mix, and they're kind of really vulnerabilities for developing an eating disorder.
[00:48:47] Speaker A: I was wondering if there's a certain period in people's lives that you see eating disorders emerge more frequently.
[00:48:55] Speaker B: You know, eating disorders are commonly seen in teenagers.
You know, that's often the time where we see them start and have the most common time of onset. But this isn't a teenage problem.
These eating problems can happen across the life cycle, particularly in life stages that create a lot of shifting identities.
[00:49:17] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:49:17] Speaker B: Relationships or roles in their family or in their community or changed body experiences. So for women, you know, things like childbirth are great times of.
Of vulnerability. Or post, you know, in early childhood, infancy, when they're raising little babies and their relationship with their bodies really changing and under strain.
[00:49:41] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: And then again later in life, things like menopause and life stage changes also change a woman's body. And so they're really peak times of vulnerability.
But for men and women, any time of high levels of uncertainty or change or distress can cause vulnerability around developing an eating problem.
[00:50:05] Speaker A: That makes so much sense. I did have one quote from Kadia that I wanted to read out again, just because I thought it was so beautiful. And I keep thinking about.
[00:50:13] Speaker C: About it.
[00:50:14] Speaker A: She was talking about the struggle of recovering from an eating disorder and how hard that can be. And she said it's like a seed that needs to grow in the middle of winter. It's almost impossible because there's no sunlight. There's no way for the seed to sort of grow back. But when there's a whole garden, it's much easier to stomp out those weeds.
How beautiful is that?
What are some more ways that you see that sort of help people to stomp out more of those weeds and to grow the garden?
[00:50:41] Speaker B: Such a great metaphor. What do I think about when I think about a healthy garden? You know, what are the components? Like, I think about the sunshine that Katya talked about is, you know, is this sense of being really kind of valuing of yourself and feeling like you can shine.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: And, you know, I think about things like feeling accepted and acceptable and, you know, kind of trust, having autonomy and agency in. In the world and feeling positive, positive about the future, feeling like there's a sense of belonging and connection with others.
For me, that makes a healthy garden.
[00:51:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: And weeds would struggle to grow in those. In those conditions.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: But how do you get to the healthy garden when you're in such a place of isolation? How do you make that first step towards those things?
[00:51:38] Speaker B: Well, I think, Katya, you're talking about journaling and the hundred reasons to recover with some of it good examples of building the garden.
But, you know, it's also around recognizing that oftentimes someone with anorexia, particularly, you know, everyone around them, wants some things to be different, but they maybe don't. And, you know, the.
That keeps everyone stuck, you know, and so it's probably not going to be where the change comes is from suddenly waking up one day and saying, I don't want this anymore.
It's about kind of bringing in things that can strengthen the person, the healthy part of the person, and kind of, you know, helping them feel stronger than that eating disorder part of themselves. And I think Katya talked a little bit about the healthy self.
[00:52:31] Speaker A: Yeah, the healthy brain.
[00:52:32] Speaker B: The healthy brain. And then there's the eating disorder brain. And I think you can either get really kind of focused on the eating disorder, really trying to target change there, or you can focus on the healthy self and trying to build up the healthy part of that person's self or sense of self and strengthen it so that it can be bigger and better than the eating disorder part of themselves.
[00:52:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:59] Speaker B: Does that make sense?
[00:53:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
[00:53:01] Speaker B: So it's like giving hope and having belief and trust and being able to promote autonomy and healthy choices and communities, control and giving skills to sit and deal with life's uncertainties. You know, these are the kind of things that I think about when I think about building healthy self. Sometimes the eating disorder becomes so all consuming for not only the person experiencing it, but for those that love them, that the whole experience of life becomes through that. You know, conversations are always about that everything else gets pushed out and how do you not do that when this is happening to someone you love or happening to you? So it's completely understandable. But sometimes it's about a deliberate and intentional attempt to try and shift that and kind of move the focus away from the problem and help create space for growth of the healthy person. And Katya and her story spectacular and thanks for sharing it with the world.
Discovery College acknowledges that the views shared in this podcast reflect personal experiences and are not a substitute for professional mental health advice. They do not represent the views of Alfred Health.
[00:54:35] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to our podcast. If you wanted to stay in touch or learn more about Discovery College, please head to our website. Discovery College.
