Although not true of everyone, there are a lot of people with eating disorders who grapple with the concept that being unwell is an achievement.

I was certainly one of these people. I have always been very goal driven and achievement focused, which, when channelled in the wrong direction, has very much been my downfall. If there are any of you who relate to this, I hope you might find this post helpful.

Although it is a stereotype that people with eating disorders struggle with perfectionism, for a lot of us that is our reality. I personally had enormous struggles with conflating being ill with achievement, and being small with being perfect. I wanted everything to be utterly perfect all the time, but of course that isn’t possible. I learnt in therapy that a lot of people who have these traits alongside their eating disorder struggle so much with their self esteem because they are chasing something that doesn’t exist. I could never be as good at anorexia as I wanted to be, because I wanted to be perfect at it and that’s impossible. I wanted to be the sickest, smallest, thinnest person alive, but of course, there was always someone sicker than me. And I wouldn’t have been satisfied until I was on my deathbed (and probably not even then). This meant that my self esteem was constantly deteriorating, because I was never good enough at the one thing that was most important to me in the world. This is one reason why perfectionism and low self esteem are such a potent combination.

I was able to reconcile some of this by saying things like “lots of people feel bad about themselves, but at least you only ate x number of calories today”. I would use this to justify being unhappy. Diet culture makes us believe that these things are achievements, and trick people into thinking they are more okay than they are. “I’m not sick, I just have a lot of willpower”. And the difficulty with this is, this thinking is enforced by the world around us. Society is constantly conflating anorexia with willpower and not recognising it as a severe mental illness. How are we, as sufferers, supposed to acknowledge that what we are doing is unhealthy, when the world claps from the sidelines? Until the point you get ‘too thin’ of course. That’s also a problem.

So, to bring me to my original point. Something that can be very very helpful in recovery is finding achievements that exist outside of your eating disorder. I initially started doing this by listing awards and qualifications, which was important for me to realise I had skills outside of starving myself, but equally was only one part of the puzzle. A real turning point for me in therapy was a discussion around achievements not always needing to be tangible. I was always chasing the next accolade, which I have since realised is not a healthy way to live.

What turned out to be really pivotal to me in my recovery journey was noticing other ways I achieve things in my life. Things like having rich friendships, travelling, making people happy. I focused on my positive characteristics and not my certificates, which helped me to learn that just existing as the person I am is an achievement in and of itself, and that maybe all the trophies and qualifications are secondary to being a good person who cares about the people around them.

For me, tangible achievements will always be important – that’s just who I am. But recognising they aren’t the only thing that matters has been life changing for me, and I hope might help you to change the way you think about yourself too.