You are such a sweet person. It's awful, the way we beat ourselves up.

Sometimes, I say to myself, `Purple!` (That's not my real name ) 'Can we just have one ******* day off!'

Yes, I love 'The Power of Now'. It is a great, short, sharp shock to worriers like me.

Eating disorders are seriously difficult to treat, as you know. Even just wanting to change is quite rare. There's so much secrecy and denial around these conditions, isn't there?

With me, looking back, working on this masochistic side of myself was really important.

I had quite a bit of treatment for my ED's, over the many years I had them. Have Hope, one of the leading London hospitals gave me excellent (outpatient) care. They tried very hard. I couldn't fault them at all. But they didn't even come close to curing me.

It's strange, isn't it?

Maybe they were too focused on the anorexia (which later became bulimia), I don't know. They were kind of fooled by what their patients told them: 'It's about food / weight / how I look / my body'.

The poor patients couldn't help it, of course! We were absolutely convinced that peering at the weighing scales and thinking about food every second of the day was normal.

Certainly, there is an element of food-phobia, but this is - although incredibly powerful - almost incidental.

Long story short...

A much less sophisticated CBT therapist, duting one six week course, somehow got it!

She wouldn't be distracted by anything I said, and focused ruthlessly on the self-damaging I was carrying out on myself.

Although there were many relapses, I left her thinking, somehow, that she was right... I didn't deserve to hurt myself...

Months later, I was actually feeling that I didn't WANT to hurt myself...

The stage after that was not enjoying the behaviours around ED's, like bingeing and purging, or eating nothing until I virtually collapsed...

It's a crazy merry-go-round I was on! And for most of my adult life!

I hope this isn't upsetting, dear friend.

I just want to reassure that anything you say will not sound mad or disgusting to me in any way.