Annie’s Story

I’ve decided I finally want to break down my own barriers and talk about my personal experiences with mental health. For as long as I can remember I’ve struggled with my body image, and this translated into an eating disorder. It felt like a separate mind had manifested itself in mine and I struggled to block out intrusive thoughts that told me stop eating. It felt uncontrollable, obsessive and exhausting.

But to begin this post properly, I think it’s best to share my story:

I’ve always competed in sport nationally, specifically I was a pole vaulter, a highly athletically demanding sport where your physique and peak physical ability was deemed vital to success in the sport.

Alongside this, I’ve always been one to be extremely self critical and strive for perfection. This combination proved quite toxic in the end. 

I experienced a change in coaches at around 15 and my mental health plummeted, as my body image became extremely distorted. My obsessive nature began to heavily translate into my sporting life and that soon became apparent to people around me. I set myself weight goals, I was highly critical of my body and my performance, and I told myself I needed to start eating like an athlete, something I definitely didn’t comprehend as a teenager. Monitoring my eating habits made me feel powerful, strong and in control. As my mental health spiralled, so did my physical health. I felt weak, fatigued, and really quite helpless. 

I started to receive ‘jokey’ comments that I looked like I “really needed a meal”. From this point sheer panic kicked in as I didn’t want any of the attention I was receiving. I just wanted to ‘act like an athlete’ and keep my body in line. I started to eat normally in front of people and then followed this by trying to make myself sick later. Eventually I grew to hate eating in front of people all together, and this is still a problem I secretly deal with. If you ever eat with me you’ll notice just how fast I eat.

By 16 I ate all my meals separately to my family, putting all of the food in the bin and then covering it with waste already in there. I started to decline from any form of peak physical performance, hating my body just as much as I started to hate pole vault.

As my relationship with the sport I loved started to deteriorate, I was consumed with guilt, saddened by my lack of results  after all of the hard work both my family and myself put in. I blamed it on a trough in performance, something that could happen to any athlete, I was in denial that I had any form of problem. I started to crave more control of this situation, so I started counting my calories religiously, weighed myself twice a day. I started to lie about my food habits and restricted my calories on top of 4 hours of exercise each night. I could look at a meal and tell you the exact number of calories instantly.

This all built up to a huge break down in sixth form. I was guilty, I was upset and I was so very anxious. Counselling began shortly after as I tried to find the roots of my extreme anxiety, panic attacks and depression that I was told could no longer be resolved without medication.

I started to feel like I couldn’t cope any longer, I didn’t want to go to university, I didn’t want to be at home, I didn’t want to do anything, I didn’t have the energy to do anything. But I didn’t say a word to anyone, and that was the problem. I was too ashamed of how I felt so I brushed it under the carpet, went off to university and tried to rebuild my relationship with pole vault. But it had gone too far. Every jump I did had to be done perfectly, it had to be done in a certain way, with a certain routine and nothing could change in between jumps because the anxiety I felt was uncontrollable. I had to tie my shoes a certain way, put my chalk on my hands a certain way and count my strides the exact same way each time otherwise I refused to jump. I got to the point where I couldn’t even step onto the runway without being consumed with anxiety, and eventually I quit the sport all together. 

Fast forward to now and I’ve gained some healthy weight, but the mental damage is still insufferable at times. I actually started a bulk last month and I’ve gained 2 strong and healthy kilograms, something I could never have even thought about in the past. I haven’t ever gone back to pole vault, I haven’t even picked up a pole in the last two years and that’s ok. I’ve learnt to find love in other sports but most importantly I’ve learnt to find love in myself and my own body.

Mental illness is exhausting and isolating; recovery always feels unreachable. But it isn’t; the more we talk about it the more that unreachable goal feels closer, less isolating and completely shameless.

Sport is still my route for control, but now in the sense that I can keep myself healthy and have set goals, not so I can lose weight. It’s now an outlet for my problems and not the cause of my problems. A healthy relationship with sport and exercise is something people really underestimate the power of. Learning to love my body and how I can use it is something I’m still in the process of, but I’m miles further on than where I used to be.