Recovery Story: Just Keep Swimming!

Daisy, from Southampton/Lake District, is 21 and a Student Nurse. 

I first began struggling with anorexia around the age of 14/15 while I was at school studying. Looking back, my eating disorder began after putting a lot of pressure on myself educationally, and a loss of control after a life event. I became very manipulative in relation to food and exercising, lying to everyone around me about my struggles with my self-esteem and food.

I found myself being passed from one outpatient service to another, as I was on the threshold of being transferred to adult services by the time I got help, aged 16. This was made worse by moving to the other side of the country for my A-Levels. I had no consistency, and the lack of consistency became a real problem for me and triggered even more disordered eating behaviours. However, I wasn’t underweight enough at this point to get help from specific ED services, so I was stuck with CBT for ‘depression’ and ‘anxiety’ who both refused to cover my eating disorder. This made matters worse, and by the time I finished college, my mental health and physical health were severely struggling.

I started university in 2016 to study nursing, and ironically although I enjoyed looking after other people, and preached about self-care, I was not able to look after myself. I was very good at masking my feelings, so unless you knew me before university, you probably wouldn’t have known I was struggling.

At the end of my first year, I broke. I had to drop out of university and ended up being an inpatient in Cape Town for 4 months, as although I had a diagnosis and my body was struggling, my county didn’t have appropriate ED services, and there were no beds on the NHS available.

After I came back from Cape Town, I slowly started to get my life back on track. I’m not fully recovered; however, I am well on track, and I am soon to be discharged from the outpatient ED services.

Life is so much happier now, and I feel so free!