Sitting in the fluorescently-lit doctor’s office––my third that week––hands folded in my lap, slightly hunched over in the highly-sanitized, wood-framed chair, I waited for my prognosis. I did not expect good news: my body was significantly (albeit reversibly) damaged as a result of my eating disorder, I’d be out of sports for the foreseeable future, I had a long and difficult journey to recovery ahead of me. It had now been multiple weeks of that kind of news. But on that muggy Friday morning, the words I heard were not those I’d been expecting.

“Lindsay,” the physician began, looking directly into my eyes, “the first thing I want you to know is that this is not your fault.”

I felt tears well up in my eyes and a tightness in the back of my throat. Of course I knew my eating disorder wasn’t my fault. According to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), “No one knows exactly what causes eating disorders, but a growing consensus suggests that a range of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors come together to spark an eating disorder.”

Nonetheless, I felt tremendous guilt, both for developing an eating disorder and for its symptoms: my increasing rigidity and irritability, the lies I told about “being fine” and “not having lost any weight” to anyone who noticed or asked, and most of all, the pain I had caused my family and my friends.

Such guilt is too often a reality for people who struggle with eating disorders and other types of mental illness. The fact that this doctor––the second physician and fourth medical professional with whom I’d spoken since being officially diagnosed with anorexia and orthorexia––was the first to explicitly tell me I wasn’t to blame for my sickness is an indication that, to a certain extent, our society still perceives mental illness as a choice and its consequences as direct results of that choice. Having heard phrases like “so-and-so would be so upset to learn you went down that path” during my own recovery, it seems to me that language surrounding mental illness certainly upholds the standard that its sufferers “chose” to be ill. 

A steadfast follower of logic over emotion, perhaps my unusually visceral reaction to the physician stemmed from the fact that it was the first true validation I had received in the recovery process. My illness was isolating beyond what I can describe in words. Physically, I rarely left my house unless it was necessary. Mentally, I felt like I had no one to rely on––according to my own mind, my relationships with family and friends were destroyed beyond repair. Here was someone actively disrupting the status quo––and contradicting my own thoughts––to affirm what I knew deep down to be true all along.

Though I’d already begun treatment, which included weekly therapy sessions, it wasn’t until this moment that I truly recognized the positive impact of opening up about my sickness for my recovery. For months I had kept quiet as a monster crept deeper and deeper into my brain and consumed my thoughts. An integral part of struggling with a mental illness is the silence in which one suffers.

If you were to ask me in July how my summer was going, you’d hear all about the internship I absolutely loved and the statistics class which provided me a new lens through which to look at data. And those are absolutely important parts of my summer because of the time I devoted to and the concepts and skills I learned in both. But my continuing battle with anorexia is just as important––if not more. It’s something I will wrestle with for the duration of the recovery process and live with for the rest of my life. Knowing I am neither guilty for––nor alone in—my struggle has given me the strength not to conceal it from public view, in hopes that others who are struggling will have similar realizations and feel empowered to do the same.

My sickness took so much from me. And every day there are still plenty of moments where I feel guilty or alone or recovery seems impossible. But the only way to take my life back is to be open about my feelings–in doing so I can count on the support of those closest to me and encourage others to open up about their own battles. Eating disorders and other mental illnesses are not a choice or a fault, yet they remain heavily stigmatized, leading sufferers to silently blame themselves. To share my story is to counteract that stigma in hopes of eventually changing the societal standard.