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Content warning: this podcast contains information about eating disorders, experiences of mental health difficulties and sex and sexual experiences. There is some language that may offend.
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Hi there, just a reminder that this podcast does contain content that listeners may find distressing or uncomfortable, such as eating disorders, self-harm and suicide, sexual references and language that may offend.
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Dr Amy Harrison
Thank you so much for joining us for this discussion on eating disorders and men. I am Dr Amy Harrison an associate professor at UCL and a clinical psychologist. I've worked with people with eating disorders for the entirety of my career and my research looks at the cognitive social and emotional factors that can make us more vulnerable to eating disorders and keep us stuck in the illness. I'd like to thank our funder the UCL Institute of mental health who awarded me a public engagement grant to support this work. I'm here today with James Downs who is a mental health campaigner peer researcher and expert by experience in eating disorders. James works with the royal college of psychiatrists and NHS England and a number of universities and charities, and he is also a yoga teacher. He is a talented researcher and I've had the privilege of working with him on a project looking at co-designing new self-care tools to help people with eating disorders and their supporters hence this discussion.
I'm also joined by Dave Chawner who is a best-selling author award-winning stand-up comedian presenter and mental health campaigner who has generously shared his lived experiences to support research projects in the field. Dave has written eloquently about his personal experiences with anorexia nervosa in his book ‘Weight Expectations: One Man's Recovery from Anorexia’ - a must read and I've had the privilege of seeing his hilarious and poignant shows several times as well as sharing a few drinks while putting the world to rights at the Edinburgh fringe festival. We have assembled this dream team together today to reach members of the public with the aim of increasing understanding around eating disorders in men. Thank you so much for joining me. James and Dave.
James Downs
Thanks for having us.
Dave Chawner
Thank you.
Dr Amy Harrison
So I thought we'd start by thinking about what some of the key misunderstandings are that you've encountered around eating disorders in men. Why don't you start? Dave.
Dave Chawner
Oh The pressure! Well Firstly thank you for very lovely intro and I don't know if this is sort of gendered or not but I think the main misunderstanding for me is that it would be to do with food - like I'll never forget actually at the Edinburgh Fringe as a mate of mine who'd had a sort of really rough show and he was coming home one day and he was like he was having a he was eating like a bab. And he got through the door and I was like how are you and it's like oh really rough day I'm going to order a pizza. Do you mind if I get pizza? I'm like no, he's like you want one? I thought I'm all right? and then as the pizza was on the way then he ordered a curry and I remember saying to him like let me I'm genuinely not having to go at all… That's quite a lot of food in quite short space of time you all right? and he was like just eating my feelings and I was like none of this is about the food. This seems to me to be like you're trying to cope with a really rough day and I think there's a sort of misunderstanding that like you have to be either A) extreme to have an eating disorder and that B) is just solely to do with the food and of course there's a whole range of different disorders as Well. It's not just Anorexia. It's not just bulimia. You know it can manifest in a whole different way but I think people feel that if they're not extreme then they are not someone who has an eat disorder.
Dr Amy Harrison
Thanks Dave and how about you James what are some of the key misunderstandings that you've encountered.
James Downs
So I think I really relate to what Dave said already. But I think it's quite difficult to separate the misunderstandings about men and eating disorders from this general backdrop of that there are lots of misunderstandings about eating disorders in society anyway. And so I think some of those are that it's all about food and I think Dave's points are really important or that it's all about weight and that eating disorders mean that you're underweight and actually the majority of people with eating disorders are a normal weight or above a normal weight. Other stereotypes including that it's always the parent's fault or something bad happened in your childhood that it's about not eating when actually binge eating in bulimia binge eating disorder or other eating disorders. It's maybe a bit more about eating too much and I think we have these very fixed stereotypes about who might get an eating disorder and what they actually are in the first place but when it comes to men specifically I think I can speak only really from my own experience and as a gay man I think there've been lots of misunderstandings for people like me. It must be about sexuality. It must be that you've not come to terms with your sexuality or even the male ideal is the same for everybody like I've had a doctor tell me why you want to look like that when I was anorexic because men want to look buff men want to be bigger, not smaller and I think men aren't all the same eating disorders aren't all the same… and so we have to think about you know what are the stereotypes that we have and are they getting in the way from really understanding people's lived experiences of eating disorders whether they're male, be male, whatever gender, whatever background.
Dr Amy Harrison
Yeah, Thanks so much. That's something I've come across quite a bit around what a man with an eating disorder might look like and I think there has started to develop this idea that it's people that want to look very muscular or be a sort of a bodybuilder kind of style and as you both point out so well eating disorders look can look lots of different things and can be very nuanced and so I think what I'm taking from that is we need to be really careful in not assuming um that one eating disorder is going to look like another.
So what are some of the most important features of eating disorders in men, I guess this question is a bit more about what loved ones might want to be on the lookout for what might they notice if there were some concerns that the person might have. Would you like to start with this one James?
James Downs
Yeah I think we need to equip people to think about eating disorders for anybody but including men and that's not just doctors. It's not just medical staff. It's people in society and people who are around men in their day-to-day life. So that if something does become a problem it spotted earlier but I think like you said it's really hard to see an eating disorder and for many people it might be completely invisible and so I go back to what Dave was saying really about sometimes this is about our emotions or about our mental state our emotional state and if anybody notices that a man or a younger man in their life, especially thinking about that this often starts in adolescence but does go across the age range. You know if somebody seems to be struggling emotionally or mentally or doesn't quite see themselves. It's really worth paying attention to them and gently encouraging to perhaps share how they feel or being there to listen to them because it could be an eating disorder somewhere in the mixture. I think that that kind of approach would help men with whatever kind of troubles they might have including men with eating disorders and not having just a fixed view of it will look like this. But just keeping that really open and supportive stance. But then there could be some particular behaviours around food whether you notice somebody being perhaps a bit secretive about food maybe being fairly rigid about what they're eating or when we're thinking about presentations that might involve.
Perhaps this drive towards masculinity or a component that's to do with exercise whether somebody's being very rigid about exercise in a way that if they can't do it. They're really distressed or if the impact on the rest of their life means that the rest of their life suffers. For example, putting the gym first before anything else and missing out on social things are becoming really isolated so there are some specific things. But I think actually people can't necessarily help people in their day-to-day lives as a specialist might be able to and shouldn't be expected to It's being a really good friend that matters or being a really supportive family member. And then that might help somebody get towards that more specialist support if they need it because things can come out into the open a little bit more I know that's kind of quite vague but I want to be careful about when we're talking about this subject not to just reinforce a whole other stereotype about eating disorders that it will always be like this and actually. Helping people who aren't specialists I think it's about those really human relational skills and being a really good listener and being somebody that somebody is not afraid to talk to about something that could be really quite embarrassing or shameful.
Dr Amy Harrison
I suppose Dave just to follow this up, would you say that eating disorders for men could be embarrassing is that something you've encountered?
Dave Chawner
I think the only time that I've ever really thought about my masculinity specifically in relation… I'm very lucky because I've never been a sort of a bloke - like that has never been my description. No one would ever like even at school. I did like a lot of performing artsy stuff, so no one would ever look at you know me and go oh that's Dave he's a man you know it would always be oh, that's Dave he's got silly hair or you know, whatever it is and I think it is really difficult if you have come from a background or that you do yourself that is one of your first signifiers, one of your first identifiers, one of your key things is that - yeah it can be embarrassing. You know if that feels at odds the only time and I do a silly set about this and I will spare you that but it's genuinely true that I was going through a bit of a wobble. I was having a bit of a tough time and I'd just been dumped, and I decided to go to group therapy for anorexia for eating disorders and subsequently it was a) only people who were anorexic that turned up. But B) it was me and 14 girls and like being obviously being in a very vulnerable state and like they were like yeah, I'm single as well and like that obviously the joke kind of goes that it was a bit like speed dating but that was really embarrassing because it was kind of like. I wanted to be honest, but then I also didn't want to see like Andrew Tate and like I was there to try and pick up so I think it is weird the scenarios that can seem embarrassing because I would never have foreseen actually going to group therapy might have been a bit embarrassing for me until those specific circumstances played into my hand.
Dr Amy Harrison
I think leading on from that I wanted to ask about some of the key impacts that eating disorders can have on men and I was particularly interested in how they do affect and impact relationships. Dave, I don't know if you want to sort of follow up on that based on that experience of kind of being there with lots of single people and, you know, being in a position where you wanted to get some support. How do eating disorders impact men and relationships?
Dave Chawner
I think in a really insidious way, I think the relationship between relationships what a terrible sentence to say the impact on relationships is what I mean is quite difficult and again I think specifically in men you can't talk about mental health in general without talking - without saying the phrase “just talk” and I don't think that suicide is the biggest killer of blokes under the age of 49 because they don't think to open their gobs and I actually came to realize that I used my eating disorder to show that there was something wrong with my brain because I've been trying to tell people that there was something wrong, but I couldn't articulate it I didn't have the words for it. So I actually just started to try and you know there were multiple factors of it, you know, in the short term not to glorify and not to promote - certainly not to encourage. In the very short term when I was doing well at it, it gave me a little win. However, I think this is really really, really, really really important to say is I was constantly chasing that and that became harder and harder to get and I didn't even see the things that it was taking away from me. But in terms specifically of the relationships, it pushed me away from a lot of people because I wanted to be able to talk. I wanted to be able to articulate and put my finger on it's this that is the problem but I couldn't and because I didn't really have the emotional intelligence or the emotional language. It just made me aggressive and angry and acerbic and actually pushed people away which made the whole thing worse because then that made me lonely which sort of sped up that cycle even further.
Dr Amy Harrison
Thanks Dave and you've mentioned quite a bit there about relationships with friends and family and how it gets the eating disorder over time isolated you further even though part of its kind of intended function was to try and reach out for help and communicate. Just the distress that you're experiencing and you also spoke about how the idea of it kind of being a problem with your brain and that's very interesting because it sounds like there's this biological component to it and I guess I was wondering in the context of relationships. How did undereating or eating more intermittently or any of the eating disorder behaviours that you experienced - How did that affect you in relationships perhaps more physically? did it affect your attraction to others? Did it affect your sex drive? What was that like?
Dave Chawner
Now this is really interesting in relation to what James is saying and I would love to pick James's brains on this because I actually did have a huge problem with my sexuality in the sense that I was um I was heterosexual I was attracted to women. But, a lot of my friends were women and I genuinely and I don't want to sound like a libtard about this and this isn't virtue signaling or trying to be woke or whatever but I never got taught and I never understood and I still struggle with this idea of letting someone know. That you find them attractive and you know let's say sexually attractive in a way that doesn't make you a pariah. It doesn't make you a gammon. It doesn't make you someone who is praying on people. And I didn't know how you could flirt in a kind of let's say feminist way because all of the stories that I heard time and time and time again were straight blokes coming up to girls being lecherous only wanting… and that's the phrase isn't it only wanting one thing and it was kind of ironic because I did want physical relations but I also I wanted a relationship and that's what I was craving for and the irony is that ah a lot of the girls that I went on the dates with and stuff were like well you're going so fast, so quickly and they're like this guy's just like weird. Like you know a second date we're going like boating on the serpentine night. He's a freak man like that nobody does that let's just go get drunk and see where it goes but I couldn't do that. So, I think it impacted my kind of sexual relations because I was very ashamed that I wanted them but it also really improve it ah impacted those and so intimate relations without the physical side of it because I was just desperate to find someone to love me.
Dr Amy Harrison
Wow, that's quite an experience I hope you have found someone to love you because you're very lovable. Ah, how about you James what have you been your experience in terms of how eating disorders can affect relationships?
James Downs
Well, I just wanted to say how nice it is to listen to Dave not because Dave's had these bad experiences and that's nice. It's actually just really affirming to hear somebody else who's had similar experiences although a bit different and you know, no two people are the same but I find that quite affirming because a lot of my experience with being in my body and these difficult experiences with eating disorders both anorexia and bulimia in my case have been really alienating and really lonely and I've often felt very removed from people and pushed people away including people who wanted to help me because I felt like they wanted to take away this way of coping that was actually helping me to survive and I didn't know any other ways of surviving or relating to the world and I found that really threatening because I didn't think that I would be able to cope without it. So, I pushed people away. But the result was that I felt like I was the only one going through what I was going through and there's nobody else like me. I went to services and health care and only saw women there really and I felt like an alien and I think that there's something really powerful about hearing somebody with a similar experience. And I particularly related to the idea of the body as a way of communicating and a way of being and moving through the world and people perceive us as bodies don't they? I know now I spend a lot of my time interacting with people through email or text or very disembodied ways but actually fundamentally I think where bodies move into through the world as well and I can talk a bit more later about how some embodied practices have really helped me with my recovery and my eating disorder.
But I think there was a time when being in this very emaciated quite shocking. Look at body was a way of saying to the world look I'm not okay because I didn't know how to say that or who to say that to but unfortunately being male I think played a part in this people thought that I had cancer because it couldn't possibly be a man with an eating disorder. They thought it must be a physical health problem because it couldn't be anorexia because this is ah this is a male and I think that was definitely a barrier to getting help and understanding sooner and then later on when I have been a normal weight but I've struggled with bulimia that's a very intensely personal and private thing. That's something that can only happen behind closed doors I can't reach out for help and and talk to other people when my mouth is full of food to put it bluntly I can't speak and ask for help then and that has been in some ways more isolating because nobody can see that I'm unwell and I've actually been very physically unwell and very at risk with bulimia and I look really healthy and that's been a really confusing place to be I suppose but there are other things around relationships and particularly intimate relationships that can be quite difficult to talk about and the feelings that come up can be quite difficult but I think the main one that comes up for me is that I felt very ashamed of my body for a long time and that I wanted to make it hide away I suppose which is the impulse when I think of the word shame I Just want to disappear or dissolve into the floor into nothingness and maybe I was doing that a little bit with my body as well and rejecting my body because I thought
There's some really interesting metaphors but over time learning to be in my body and understand that it's actually this really powerfully wonderful way of being in the world and really wonderful way of communicating and expressing things if you can do that in a healthy way. You know that's been something. That's really helped as well. So yes, it's really difficult to be in a body and I think that's so important to acknowledge and we don't really have any training in how to be in these changing. Bodies that are changing all the time but particularly during adolescence, if we don't have lessons on that in school apart from PE which I think you know physical education does this very badly, really helping us to be comfortable in our own skin I suppose… but it's something that I've found through recovery and I wish that we had more diverse male bodies that young people could see are equally valuable and so many things that we could do to help people not have the kind of experiences that you know myself and Dave have had.
Then when we're talking about really intimate relationships, I think there are bodily changes that happen with some eating disorders that aren't really talked about in men. I can't tell you the number of times I've been for treatment for Anorexia and being given information about losing my period and even being given information which has female pronouns and things and that can be really alienating reading she will experience this she will experience that and then there being nothing about how my body might change as a man and actually I like completely lost my sex drive my testicles shrank and that felt very emasculating and really embarrassing. And during that time I was in a relationship for some of that time and that has a really painful impact in the relationship even if the other person's really understanding. You know, this not being able to do what you want to do with your body or feeling like you're not like everybody else and all these people you see have in their best lives I think. Not speaking about those things makes them 10 times worse than they perhaps actually are even if they're already really difficult.
Dr Amy Harrison
Absolutely and these are very typical experiences of men with eating disorders that they impact your your sex drive and your body physically. I think the other thing I've really heard which is eating disorder is very isolating so they isolate you and cut you off from relationships and there's lots of problems with that. But I think one of them is that they really prevent… They stop you getting access to opportunities to learn those social skills that as Dave's mentioned is so important about how to kind of get on with others how to communicate that you like them how to flirt how to, kind of use that social space really well. But they also if you're very isolated and cut off and you're not feeling great about your body and as you say not, not having that that training and that support to be in your body at different stages in its life being isolated further prevents you from accessing positive feedback from others or just feedback from others that your body's okay and there were all shapes and sizes and all different bodies out there and so that sort of isolation really seems to be very key that loan you both use the term loneliness that and made you very lonely. I guess, leading on from that… if a man was worried about eating disorder of symptoms in themself or another person what sort of support have you encountered that's been helpful that they might be able to turn to? Dave, do you want to share some of your experiences?
Dave Chawner
Yeah I think that is a very big question and I think with that I think it's a) always really important to acknowledge your relationship to the subject because actually one of the best people I ever spoke to about my eating disorder was my old man. My dad was brilliant but eating disorders were not something he ever came into contact with he sort of grew up in a rough end of Birmingham. And, he was salt of the earth guy but I never forget I got my diagnosis three days before Christmas and I went home I remember my dad shuffling and shifting had been a bit weird really which is unlike him and mom had left the room and he almost like pounced on me and he said “look son I'm gonna be honest. I I don't understand eating disorders I don't get Anorexia I've never had it myself. So understand this if I say anything wrong if I do anything wrong. It doesn't come from a place of malice. It comes from a place of just not understanding”. That was such a relief to me because I actually didn't know why I was doing this and that's why it gripes me so much when people say just talk well you know what? if I could just talk I just sort it out myself. I didn't realize why my brain was tying itself in knots and I think that firstly if anyone wants help or support I think it's really important to acknowledge a relationships that subject of life. Yeah, I'll be honest I'm here for you as a mate I am not a healthcare professional.
So, let's think about maybe talking to a professional I also think that there's little things that you can do that make a big impact whenever I started looking into I actually went first for treatment for the depression rather than the anorexia and I kind of played the system and you know what one of the reasons I didn't want to get help was everyone talked about taking the disorder away. And I knew it was bad I knew it had side effects I knew certainly where I was going with it but no one talked about giving anything back. Everyone talked about taking something away. So, I got everything to lose I've got nothing to gain so just little phrases of like well you know what you can actually regain your sense of fun you can regain your sense of socializing you no longer have to feel like an alien you no longer have to feel alienated and you can feel unique in a fun, in a good way and take that shame away. But I think the biggest thing for me helping blokes - and James hit it right on the head with metaphors I think metaphors and analogy are really useful way. So, if someone says to me you know like oh how do you feel? Well, I don’t know where to start with that question. But if someone said on a scale of 1 to 10 one being rubbish 10 being great. What number do you feel? Or even I used to do this in the mate of mine and I actually find it really good, fun and silly of like who do you feel like today like well today I feel like a bit of a Marcus like I'm not really like I haven't really got much direction. Ah, but I'm actually all right and I'm feeling a bit silly. But I'm also feeling that I should really get on - if you can use analogies like weathers or colours or even numbers ah to try and put that into some kind of kinaesthetic explanation of like if you're a weather what sort of weather do you feel like today? I think that can really help start those conversations as well as people like beat. Of course, there's people like slam and the hub of hope which is the UK's biggest mental health database. But I think really early on analogies and metaphors really place this in an easy and understanding way.
Dr Amy Harrison
Thanks Dave and how about you James? What sort of support can men turn to if they want some help with eating disorder symptoms?
James Downs
So, I think it would be really individual wouldn't it? Depending on what somebody thought they wanted or what they thought the problem was and I think there are different stages I suppose in different places to turn to because I know that when I first thought about asking for help, I Didn't want to go somewhere that would come straight in all guns blazing and help me change and everything would be different and I wouldn't know how to cope anymore I would have found that really threatening. So I wasn't at that point but some people are they might think okay I have an eating disorder. It might be this particular eating disorder because they might have looked at information on websites like the beat website or other charities or the NHS website and they might be ready to go: I Want to change this, I want to recover, I can recover. But, not everybody is there and actually they might want a space to just talk or explore or be listened to and for me and this is just my own experience, that really pushy approach to me when I've gone to ask for help has actually sometimes pushed me further away because I've not been ready and what I might have really wanted in those moments is just somebody to be there and to listen to me and help me to explore my experience and to validate it as something real for me and something important and not to rush onto the next stage if we've got to change it. We've got to fix it which I think is what people naturally want to do is they want to be helpful and some situations are emergencies and we have to be honest about that and if somebody thinks they're in an emergency and is feeling very physically unwell I'd recommend them to go to accident and emergency because these things can be really risky.
But I do think there needs to be a bit more space at that exploration end of things that let's listen and sit with and be present with somebody's experience rather than rushing to fix it or to make everything better and for me I found Samaritans extremely helpful. I Found them a really unconditional supportive service where I could just talk I didn't have any pressure to have to explain or to get it right. The other person didn't feel obliged to be an expert - I think Dave has really hit on an important point that to help somebody else with an eating disorder. You don't have to be a medical expert. In fact, you might just need to be a really good friend and there's nothing just about that everybody needs good friends. Everybody needs to be listened to and sometimes when you have an experience that is maybe a bit out of the ordinary, people forget that all of those things still matter. It's still really important to listen to somebody or to be listened to and to find people you can talk to who perhaps might understand that at the moment you can't talk over a meal. You might be able to go for a walk or sit on a bench or do something that speaks to your personal interests because they're all still there somewhere in the mixture. They just might be overshadowed by the eating disorder and connecting with people who do connect with those parts of you still is so important even in recovery. I think for me I always felt like just became an eating disorder and that was the only thing people saw me for and actually staying in touch with friends where we did other things we didn't talk about the eating disorder that was also really important for my identity and having those people understand that maybe I couldn't do everything but I could do something. So, I think it really depends on what stage somebody's at in terms of exploring their health, their illness, their eating, their body image and whether they want that really targeted help right away or whether there are several stages before that. But I think it could all be part of the picture of directing somebody in a healthier direction.
Dr Amy Harrison
I Think as a member of a public of the public, it sounds like a curious kind listening ear. Somebody who's open minded who just wants to hear a bit about your experience in a non-pressured, non-judgmental way and somebody who can and allow you that sort of safeish space to talk about what you're thinking and feeling and validate your experiences and say “yeah I get that this is a tough time”. And, also step in if there's a medical emergency and support you to potentially go to A and E if that's if that's kind of needed.
James Downs
Absolutely. I think that we often overlook these things. I do lots of talks about eating disorders to school teachers or family members or friends and students and they often tell me that they don't know what to do and that they you know what can I do to help this person? And I think that they probably already know what to do to be a good friend. They just don't think that it's enough they think that they have to be changing the eating disorder and fixing it and supporting somebody's recovery and all this kind of stuff and have specialist language and skills and actually I don't think we should undervalue those really important things that are part of being a good friend or a supportive colleague I think that those can actually be the bedrock and then the specialist support comes on top of that.
Dr Amy Harrison
Indeed, and I think we've spoken about the social impacts of eating disorders and the role of them and ways of coping with emotions and expressing emotions and that's what friends can help us with they can help us to feel more included and more acceptable and help us manage and regulate and look after our emotional health. I guess following up from that with that support in your experiences of recovery, do some of these things get Better. Do some of the physical impacts of eating disorders on your body? Do they repair? Do relationships rebuild and repair what have been your experiences there Dave shall I ask you first?
Dave Chawner
I think that's a brilliant question. I absolutely do. I genuinely do and I know it sounds like guff. But, I do think it gets easier. When I was discharged from therapy I actually found out that I was technically overweight and you're kind of like when I went in with anorexia is that a good thing? is that a bad thing? Have I lost control but you know what I think a) exhausts on about weight but b) sometimes you don't know where the boundaries are until you push them and I absolutely do think that it gets easier and I absolutely think that it's something that you need to keep on top of and I still do that I'm always in the market for looking out for like tangible in the moment everyday things that you can help to do with your mental health in general. Whether that's like feel good folders of funny means funny pictures on your phone or YouTube or Spotify playlist of music to pick you up. But I think one of the biggest things for me about getting better was regaining my identity because the eating disorder had been that explanation that I'd lacked I'd never been a “bloke” I'd never been sporty I'd never been geeky I'd never been anything I became “Dave the anorexic” and to lose that was quite difficult but to gain back something more sustainable something arguably more real and something that was actually me. I think it was really terrifying and scary and still something that I'm doing. But a lot more rewarding and when you start building on that that is a sustainable and a healthy and a long-term coping mechanism so it absolutely for me, I've been incredibly fortunate and lucky it has got easier. Yes.
Dr Amy Harrison
That's a real message of hope it can get easier. How about you James?
James Downs
And yeah, I absolutely think things can get easier and I'm not saying that from a point of being fully recovered and having a perfect life. I'm still in recovery I still struggle significantly with bulimia. But, I have improved a lot and I sometimes forget that actually and then I pinch myself at certain moments. I go to the clinic the eating disorders clinic every week at the moment, and I have to be weighed and I love being weighed. I jump on the scales, I see the number goes up and I'm really happy and then I have a moment where I'm like oh my goodness how far have I come because that used to be absolutely existentially terrifying for me I used to worry about it so much I used to be extremely underweight and I'm not and I have this body that is powerful and strong at times. It's really tired knackered and getting older all the time at other times but things can improve and I think that is difficult to be proud of sometimes but I actually am proud of it and the body is remarkable so much of our body can recover. Yes, there is some long-term damage and particularly teeth can't recover when you've eroded those. But luckily there are dentists if you can access them but I do think that the body has this remarkable healing capacity if we can perhaps stop doing things and have the help to stop doing things that are harming the body.
So, I've found many things have really helped me with that I've had dialectical behaviour therapy which was something that really helped me to regulate very intense emotions and I was doing that with food and I learnt lots of other ways to try and do that to be honest I don't think some of these ways are as effective and automatic as the eating disorder behaviours I think you need a whole range of skills and you really need to practice them if they're ever going to come close to how effective eating disorder behaviours can be in my experience and I think that's just quite validating in a way because we do these things for good reasons. But I really wanted to try other ways because I realized it was causing this damage and I gently over time had enough hope to think that it was possible to change and I had. Support of help me change which was essential. I think it's really frightening though when especially if you've had an eating disorder for a long time, it can become pretty much a whole life or it overwhelms the rest of your life and it can become your identity for some people and that was the case for me too and the idea of recovery was very frightening never mind trying to change. It was almost like that blank page or blank canvas feeling where it's like what would my life be like without the eating disorder? Everybody else is telling me it would be great or stop doing the eating because that's really bad, but nobody really asked me what do you want your life to be like and that blank page was all that I had and that felt too frightening and I needed little baby steps to start making little bits of my life a bit more positive and over time that built its own momentum and I think I'm kind of at that point where the good outweighs the bad and when I engage with my eating disorder behaviours now just to be really frank and honest about it they seem a bit empty which I think is a good thing. They don't give me what they used to give me because I have other things that now are seeming more familiar to me and now much healthier.
And a lot of things that I love are expressive creative things like dance and yoga and I used to be so awkward in my body when I was really unwell, and I didn't want anybody to see me I'd rather have been invisible and now I teach yoga. A big part of my job and I stand in the front of a class teaching yoga or dance in my lycra and I don't care - I feel like so at home in my own skin and that is another pinch me kind of moment where I would never have dreamed of doing that and maybe if I didn't have my experience of an eating disorder I wouldn't have got to that point actually so who knows, and I think we can definitely learn a lot about ourselves through some of these difficult experiences even if we wouldn't have wanted to have had them in the first place.
Dr Amy Harrison
I find that incredibly inspiring and I'm sure that's going to be a real message of hope to others. I wanted to end with one final question which is what's one thing that you've learned that you'd like to share with other men with eating disorders - Dave?
Dave Chawner
Well, I think I'm going to go back to the beginning and sort of actually say that and I think James is absolutely right, that there are different stages and building on from that point that eating disorders are on a spectrum and in the same way that mental health is on a spectrum. It's not a something you have or you don't it's something that you can sit on a line and you can be further or lesser away from it and actually I think one of the things that I have learned that has been really lovely that I would love to share with each other is that you know what you can have bad mental Health and you can have problems with food but you can also have good mental health as well and I think one of the biggest things that I've learned is - if you are looking after your mental health when you are coping and when you are healthy it's a lot easier to look after it when it ain't so good. So, I always think that personally, exactly like James was saying creative practices and having fun is so much more inspiring personally to me and when I say inspiring I mean inspires people to change so getting better can be fun, getting better can be enjoyable and I would argue funny as well. But that's my own kind of axe to grind that I do genuinely think that recovery can and I would argue should be fun.
Dr Amy Harrison
Thanks Dave! How about you James?
James Downs
And I totally agree with that I think sometimes yes, it can be very painful and difficult and serious but part of recovery for me has been about having fun and experimenting and playing with things because what have I got to lose? you know, I've got to create this new way of being in my body and. I Remember saying to my therapist once like oh should I enjoy coming to therapy because shouldn't it be really painful and difficult and horrible and I actually kind of quite have good fun when I come or seem to laugh a lot when we're having our sessions and I think I learned to not feel embarrassed about that and actually feeling good in my body or having a laugh like that, that has been really important to me too and finding those things that you enjoy because they can be completely lost I suppose when you're feeling really unwell. I think back as well to when I was at my worst and what would I have liked to have heard from somebody and I think it would be just somebody telling me that my experience however isolated or alienated or alone I felt was real and that it was valid for somebody like me to have the experience I was having with an eating disorder and that my experience was worth paying attention to and worth caring about and caring for. Because that was really difficult to find at some points you know somebody who would understand who would care for me to get the care that I needed from Health care which sometimes is a bit of a mission but it's definitely worth persisting with I think that left me feeling like I wasn't worth caring for but wasn't going through something real and actually anybody who is struggling it is important, it does matter, It is real and with the right help in the right environment the right situation things really can get better and even if you don't feel now that it. Possibly could at all things can get to a position that you could never even have imagined when you're at your worst so that might not sound very relatable if somebody is struggling but it's the kind of thing that I wish had reached me when I was at my worst because I did feel like it would never get better that it wasn't important. And everybody's experience is really important.
Dr Amy Harrison
Thank you both so much for sharing your experiences and your expertise here with our listeners, if you want to learn more about my work. You can find me at Dr Amy K Harrison on Twitter and at Dr Amy K Harrison Dot Com. You can find James on Twitter and Instagram at James LDowns and you can find Dave at comedy for coping dot com and his book is weight expectations. Thank you.
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