287: Death And Eating Disorders

Chris Sandel: Welcome to Episode 287 of Real Health Radio. You can find the show notes and the links talked about as part of this episode at www.seven-health.com/287.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist and a coach, and I help clients to fully recover.

I’m recording this in December, but at the time that this is going to be released and is going to be in your ears, I will be away. I am very lucky; I’m going away to Fiji for my mum’s 70th. She turned 70 in October time and wanted to do something big for her birthday, so all of the family is going to Fiji. My family all live out in Australia. Australia to Fiji is a pretty easy trip. From Scotland to Fiji is a different thing altogether. We’ve got to get from Aberdeen to London, and then from London to Hong Kong is 12 hours, and then we have a day in Hong Kong, and then from Hong Kong to Fiji is another 12 hours. So it’s quite the journey, and I think everyone else in the family is just out for a week, but considering how far it is to get out there and the jetlag and all of that, we are going to be out there for two weeks, and then we have a couple of days in Hong Kong on the way back.

So it’s a really nice holiday; I’m very much looking forward to it. It’s been a very busy year, so I can’t wait to get away and have some time off. It will also be a nice break from the rain and the wind and the darkness of Scotland at this time of year. It’s been particularly wet. I think in October there was four times the average rainfall, in November double the average rainfall, and then December double the average rainfall. So it has been wet and dark, so I’m very much looking forward to being in Fiji, where it’s a very different weather and climate, and getting some nice winter sunshine.

00:02:06

The recent death of a past client + the fear of change

Today’s episode is a heavy one. As the title suggests, I want to talk about death and eating disorders. Rather than talking about this generally – and I think there can be a lot said about the relationship between death and eating disorders – I’m going to be sharing some personal experiences with this connected to clients. The reason that I’m making this episode and this is front of mind is because of a recent death of a client.

In November, I found out that a past client had passed away. At this stage, I don’t know the cause of death, but she was found dead on a hiking trail. I had worked with her about a year ago, and sadly, we hadn’t made a huge amount of progress, but she had continued to be in contact rather sporadically. She would send me messages every now and again and we’d message back, and she’d actually sent me a message maybe a week or so before it happened, and we’d had a bit of a message exchange.

There are two distinct memories that I have about this client. One is her true nature. She was smart, she was witty, she was funny, she was big-hearted, she was sensitive. English was not her first language, but she had a better grasp of English than I did. She was a real wordsmith. These features of hers were often hidden by the eating disorder, but I saw them often enough, and I knew that this was her true nature and that all the other stuff was just the impact of the eating disorder on her psychology and on her body and on her way of seeing the world at that time.

She actually sent me a book after we’d finished up working together, and the book is called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. It is an absolutely beautiful book. The best way I can describe it, and I think the way that it tries to describe itself, is coming up with new words for emotions. Coming up with emotional states that feel like they would never have a word to be able to associate with them, or that they’re indescribable, and yet the book does a really great job of describing them.

Then as part of labelling them or what the name is for each of the emotions, it’s normally pulled from half of it is a Latin word and then the other half is some old Arabic word. It’s really beautiful how he’s come up with the names for all of these. It’s like reading poetry, but poetry that I can understand, and I will always treasure this book and I will think of her whenever I pull it out.

When I have read it – and I was reading it before this all happened – there would be times where I was nearly crying just reading it. It’s a really beautiful book. There’d be other times where I’d be laughing. It’s an incredible book, so I highly recommend getting it. It’s called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

So that is the first thing I remember when I think about her: just how smart and funny and witty and sensitive and big-hearted she was, and unfortunately, this was clouded a lot by the eating disorder.

But the second thing I remember about her was just how deeply afraid she was – afraid to make a change and for that change to be the wrong thing. She desperately wanted to know how everything in recovery would turn out before she would change anything. From my perspective, she was trying to solve this impossible riddle. She was wanting to know all of the different variables, and “If I change this one, what’s going to happen here? If I change that thing, what’s going to happen there?” It was this impossible riddle that she was trying to solve as a way of saying “And then I will be ready. Once I have solved this and I know exactly what’s going to happen, then I will start to make some changes.”

The sad irony with this is that she was so scared about making a change for fear of something bad happening, and then no change occurred, and she’s passed away.

The human body is incredibly resilient. It can put up with a lot, and I’m always baffled at its capacity to do this. But at some point it can’t keep going, and while I don’t ultimately know why she passed away, I am certain that the longstanding eating disorder didn’t help and was connected in this tragic death.

What I see so often with eating disorders is it makes people fear change but be okay with the status quo. You normalise to all of the stuff that is going on that you don’t recognise how much of an impact it is having on your life and what has changed as part of this.

I once had a client tell me that she was afraid to recover in case her life fell apart. I rather bluntly responded that her life had already fallen apart. She was no longer able to work; she had no partner; she was almost completely isolated. She spent her day pretty much exercising all day. She was at the complete mercy of the eating disorder. Her fear wasn’t about what was going on in her current life; it was what could possibly happen if she made the wrong change.

I see this happening so often with eating disorders. There’s this really big fear of change, but not noticing how much is being affected in the current status quo.

The reality is that eating disorders kill. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental health illness, and as I said a moment ago, the body is resilient, but only for so long. Sadly, I think it’s because of the resilience that people get lulled into this false belief. “I’ve been able to do this for decades, so it just feels like it will continue on and the body will continue to be resilient and continue to show up day after day.” And it does, until it doesn’t.

00:08:46

Another death of a past client + the importance of full recovery

This then brings me to the second story of death. This is from a number of years ago. It was another client that I worked with, and again, it had felt fairly unsuccessful as part of our work together. Again, there was so much fear. She was very scared. And again, she was this very beautiful, sensitive, warm person who was in a really bad place.

It was maybe 6 months or maybe 12 months – I can’t remember the timescale – after we stopped working together, but I sent her an email saying, “Hey, I’ve been thinking of you and I just wanted to check in and see how you’re doing.” I got an email back from her sister. Her sister was saying unfortunately she didn’t make it, and that she had taken her own life.

This is unfortunately the other way that eating disorders kill: through suicide. As an outsider looking in, it’s really obvious why this happens. As more of the eating disorder behaviours are followed, the body becomes more depleted. The body becomes more malnourished. You become more isolated and lonely. More of life slips away. All of the eating disorder promises are then lies. You don’t feel better; you feel worse. What happens is, as people continue going down this path, things continue to get worse and worse.

I’ve heard from too many clients that when they are in this state, while they don’t want to actively take their own life, they don’t want to commit suicide, the repetitive thought is “I just want to go to sleep and I don’t want to wake up. This is just all too much.”

There is some good news with this. I’ve had many clients who have been in this place who do make it. They do start to recover and their thoughts change and their perspective changes. I really hold on to the belief that it is never too late. But we need to see the eating disorder and the effect that it is having, and that the state of the body and the mind are being affected, and this is affecting thoughts and feelings and sensations and memories and perceptions and hopes and dreams and fears, and that the state you’re in determines the kinds of things that naturally come to mind.

I am a wholehearted advocate of full recovery. I don’t want people to go down the harm reduction route; I want people to go for full recovery, because from my perspective, what happens with harm reduction is you’re kicking the can down the road. At some point, something happens and things start to slide again because you’re never really getting out of the position you’re in. You’re always in this quasi place of recovery, and it doesn’t take much for the thoughts to get a lot louder again and for things to start to slip – versus someone truly getting to a place of full recovery and having to do the things that are required as part of that that then build up resilience, that build up coping skills, that build up the community that is needed as part of this.

All of the things that go into getting you to a place of full recovery then help to support you and, in a sense, keep you protected from relapse. And that is just not the case when someone is going down the harm reduction route.

From my perspective, in both cases with these clients, their lives were cut short, and massively so. It just didn’t need to happen.

00:12:38

Reflections + how this has changed my outlook for 2024

This experience with the most recent client has definitely had an impact on me, and it’s definitely had me reflecting on my life and how I’ve been living and what I’ve been prioritising and how I’ve been showing up. What it has changed for me is that 2024 is going to be my year of joy, fun, and experiences.

This isn’t to say I’m not going to be working. I am. I have really big visions for The Fundamentals of Full Recovery, the programme that I started this year in 2023, and in 2024, it is going to be a much bigger thing. So there is this real purpose that is driving me towards that and the things I want to be doing with that programme and the people I want to be helping and serving.

I also recognise that for a very long time, I have been working very, very hard. A lot of the things in my life that I used to enjoy and that I used to prioritise have fallen by the wayside. I think this is a natural occurrence for someone in their forties, like I am, who has a child. Life is different at this stage of life than it was when I was in my twenties or in my early thirties, where I had a lot less responsibility. But that doesn’t change the fact that there are lots of things I can be doing differently at this point, and having this experience with the client has really made me reflect on the fact that I want to be having a lot more fun and joy and experiences in my life and for this to be happening on a daily and weekly basis.

00:14:22

How will this episode impact you?

The question that I have for you, then, is: What impact will hearing this episode have on you? My hope is that it is a positive one, even if it feels a little jarring in this moment. I want it to be a wake-up call.

The status quo, which you may be used to, isn’t benign. There are consequences to this. I really think that fear is a poor motivator, so I’m not wanting to have this message be a fear-based one because I just don’t think that it works. But what I do want to have happen is there is less fear connected to making changes and there is more being in touch with reality about the current situation and about the status quo and all of the things that it is having an impact on.

00:15:15

Info on my two courses

The final thing I want to mention as part of this is that The Fundamentals of Full Recovery, the programme that I run, is going to be opening its doors in February time. It is an incredible programme with an incredible community. There is so much support as part of it. So if you want to get on the waitlist for that, I have a link as part of the show notes so that you can do that.

I also have a free course that you can sign up to and start taking immediately. The course is called The First 5 Steps of Recovery, and as the name would suggest, it gives you steps to take as part of your recovery and is looking at different aspects connected to this. The feedback that I’ve got about the course has been incredible, and people are saying “I should be paying money for this.” You don’t have to do that; you don’t have to pay money for it. You can get it for free. Again, the link to be able to sign up to that is in the show notes.

If you go to www.seven-health.com/287, you can get access to that free course, which you can start immediately, and you can also sign up to go on the waiting list to be the first notified when the Fundamentals of Full Recovery programme opens its doors again.

I hope that this episode has been helpful. As I said, I know it’s not a light one. It is definitely a heavy one, and I think there can be some real good that comes out of this tragedy. I hope you have a good week, and I’ll catch you soon.

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