Lonely.

Lately, I’ve been feeling very lonely. Having thought about this a lot, I’ve realised that this isn’t the kind of loneliness you feel because of a lack of connection. I’m not lonely because I don’t have people in my life. I do. I’m often told that I have a lot of friends, and that I’m lucky because I find it easy to talk to and meet new people. I know I’m lucky to have friends and good people in my life. I don’t dispute that for a second. But in spite of all of this, I still feel very lonely.

If I have friends, and I’m not lonely because of a lack of connection, then why do I still feel this way? For me, this deep, painful loneliness, this ache, this profound, almost visceral longing, is the kind of loneliness that comes when something is missing, the kind of loneliness that comes from within.

When I think about what is missing from my life (which is something I do often), again, I come unstuck and my mind is filled with questions. “What can possibly be missing?” I have friends, family, a partner, and a career that I am (very) slowly but surely working towards. I have something that I love (writing), and I know myself, my triggers, my likes and dislikes, what I want, and perhaps most importantly, what I don’t want, more than I ever have before. So much so, that after 30 years on this planet, I feel as though I’m finally getting to know who I really am, underneath all the masks and guises I assume to make myself more presentable – more acceptable – to the rest of the world. I know all of this, and yet here I am feeling undeniably, impossibly, desperately lonely.

Why?

The answer, I’ve realised, like most things in life, is both embarrassingly simple and frustratingly complex. I’m lonely because I miss my eating disorder.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you will know that my relationship with anorexia has not been an easy one. Even as I say that, I feel stupid, because having an eating disorder is never easy – for anyone.

By its very nature, an eating disorder is like a prison sentence, a millstone around your neck, a coping mechanism defined in no uncertain terms by ‘not coping at all.’ But it is also predictable and safe. And comfortable in an uncomfortable sort of way. Through schedules and routines, rules and rituals, it gives the sufferer everything they need to survive, while at the same time, leading them, slowly but surely, towards an early death. As I know I’ve said before, an eating disorder is a paradox. Something that offers safety and certainty, but also misery and pain. With every routine that is followed, and every rule that is obeyed, the sufferer receives something in return: purpose, reassurance, numbness, the illusion of control. Even, at times, a sense of invincibility and superiority, a feeling of somehow being ‘better than’ everyone else.

When I am starving, my self worth increases. I feel pure and in control, as though the order of my inner world, my equilibrium, has been restored. When I exercise according to anorexia’s daily ritual, I enjoy the sensation of endorphins coursing through my body, but somehow, I also feel calm and at peace, as though someone is taking me by the hand, guiding me and showing me the way. With my eating disorder by my side, I never feel lost or lonely, even when I am alone, having isolated myself from everyone and everything in order to give in to its demands. As I said, it’s a paradox. A horrible, confusing, alluring paradox. And although I’m putting everything I have into my recovery, I miss it every single day.

Being your own best friend.

*Disclaimer*

This post has been in my drafts for a while, namely because it’s been such a hard one to write that I simply haven’t had the guts to publish it. I’ve thought a lot about why this is, and truthfully, it’s because it feels a bit disingenuous. How can I write about self compassion, and being your own best friend, when these are practices I’ve been avoiding like the plague? I’ve always wanted this blog to be a raw and honest account of where I’m at in my recovery – or indeed, where I’m at with my eating disorder. So, rather than posting this as anything motivational, or any kind of advice, I’m going to tell things as they are. Right now, I’m not treating myself like I’m my own best friend, but this is something I’m working towards, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, until it comes more naturally to me.

In hospital, I received a lot of advice. From patients, during therapy sessions, but mainly, from staff.

The piece of advice I was given most often was to treat myself the way I would treat my best friend. With kindness, care, compassion, and also, in a way that showed I was unafraid to call myself out on my own bullshit. Of all the people who gave me this piece of advice, there was one member of staff who’s words stuck with me more than any other. She told me, time and time again, that the voice inside my head was spouting lies; that I wasn’t horrible, disgusting, or the world’s most terrible person, and most of all, that nourishing my body wasn’t the ultimate sin. She also – very astutely – told me that she knew I didn’t believe a word she was saying, but that for now, that was okay, because one day, if I kept hearing words of kindness, and working hard to challenge my inner critical voice, all of that would change. And to her credit, she was absolutely right. I didn’t believe a word she was saying. But I listened. I listened and I saw the honesty and hope in her eyes, and I could tell that she was speaking as someone who had been there, who had lived through her own struggles, and had come out the other side.

She told me that ultimately, words can be powerful, but nowhere near as powerful as actions. So to make any real, lasting changes, I had to act like my own best friend, and to keep living as though that was my truth, until eventually, those actions would become second nature to me. She told me to act like I loved myself, and when I rolled my eyes, she held both of my hands in hers and said,

“No, girl, I mean it. You gotta love yourself like no one else ever could. You gotta spend time with yourself, find out what you enjoy, and take care of yourself instead of treating yourself like some piece of dirt you found on the bottom of your shoe. Take yourself on dates, go shopping, cook for yourself, and dress up nice, but do it all for you, not for anyone else. And whenever you decide to do something, check in with yourself first. Ask yourself, “would I let my best friend do this? How would I feel if I knew she were about to do this thing, whatever it is? And if the answer’s no, or even if you’re not sure, you’re not gonna let yourself do it either, because girl, you deserve better. Take it from someone who knows. Take it from someone who’s been there. In this world, people are gonna hurt you, people are gonna let you down, and at the end of the day, the only person you can really rely on is yourself, so you’ve gotta have your own back, or else, you’re in trouble.”

While I was in hospital, she and I had many conversations like that. And each time, her words stuck with me in a way no one else’s ever have. She was right. There was no doubt about it. And she spoke in a way that was so genuine, so raw, and so honest, that I knew her words were coming from a place of truth. She was a living, breathing example of what being your own best friend looked like, and if she could do it, I thought, surely I could do it too.

Right now, I know things aren’t perfect, and maybe they never will be. But I’m starting to think that maybe that’s okay. I read a quote somewhere years ago that went something like this:

“If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting for the rest of your life.”

So, I’ve decided that instead of waiting for the perfect moment (whatever that is), I’m going to start now. I’m going to start being my own best friend, and I’m going to take things one day at a time.

A quiet revolution.

In the recovery community, especially Instagram, there’s a lot of talk about tolerating your body. Usually, this is meant positively, in the sense of managing your own expectations, and not pushing yourself to achieve the ‘perfect’ kind of recovery (whatever that means).

Scrolling through my Instagram feed, I’ve come across hundreds of posts that talk about how it’s totally okay not to love, or even like your body, but simply to get to place where you can tolerate it just enough to live the life you ultimately want to live.

As someone who’s always had a difficult relationship with their body, I’ve thought about this a lot. At first, the idea gave me a sense of reassurance, because loving – or even liking – my body was something I never thought I could achieve. But lately, I’ve had a change of heart.

After 8 months in hospital, I am fully weight-restored (again), and if I’m completely honest, I hate it. I hate the way my body looks, I hate the way my clothes fit, and most of all, I hate the way it feels. That said, I’ve gradually come to realise that carrying around all this hate is as pointless as it is painful. I’ve spent the past 13 years of my life trying to change it, manipulate it, starve it and shrink it, and it hasn’t got me anywhere. Really and truly, I destroyed my body for a piece of mind that never came.

As much as I might not like it, this is the only body I will ever have, and in spite of everything I’ve put it through, it’s carried me this far in life.

When it comes to loving my body, the thought of it still makes me cringe. How can I ever love something that feels so wrong, and so uncomfortable?

The counselling diploma I’m currently studying has led me to think more deeply about my place in the world, the different aspects of my life, the things I love, and the things I don’t. I love my family, I love my friends, I love my cat, I love writing, I love that I’m trainee counsellor, and many more things besides.

Why, then, can’t I love my body?

The answer is, I have to. Or at least, I have to learn to try.

So, I’m starting a quiet revolution. Instead of simply putting up with, and tolerating my body, I’m going to try my best to learn to love it – starting by taking better care of it.

I’ve bought clothes that fit my new shape – the shape I have resisted for 13 years – products that will help me look after my feet, skin and hair, and yesterday, I got a massage for the first time in years. In the past, this was something I would never have allowed myself to do, simply because it felt so unnecessary, and like something I did not deserve. But you know what, I actually loved it, and afterwards, I felt the most relaxed I think I ever have. It was as though my whole body was letting out a sigh of relief, thanking me for finally giving it the care and attention it so desperately needs.

‘What have you done to yourself?’

Almost ten years ago, on my 21st birthday, I went to London with my mum and aunt to see a see a show in the West End.

I remember feeling excited at the prospect of a day out with family, and, although it’s possible that my memory is deceiving me, I don’t recall feeling particularly anxious about food.

I chose my outfit carefully – a dress I’d bought recently from Comptoire de Cottoniers – put on just the right amount of make up, and truth be told, I felt good about myself.

Before the show, we met my aunt in Soho, where we’d booked a table at a Chinese restaurant, having timed everything perfectly to fit the meal in beforehand without having to rush or spend hours waiting in any queues.

When I saw my aunt from across the street, I beamed, and immediately went over to hug her, since my being at university meant that this was the first time in many months that the three of us had been able to meet.

But instead of smiling back and returning my display of affection, my aunt held me at arms length, looked me up and down and said ‘My god, what have you done to yourself?’

In that moment, I didn’t know what to say. I was stunned, but at the same time, knew instantly what she meant. I had done it to myself. I and I alone, was the one who was actively – and yet unintentionally – destroying myself from the inside out.

But in spite of all that, it felt good. I felt good. And try as I might, I couldn’t even begin to explain why.

In that moment, I laughed awkwardly and hugged her anyway, trying to brush the remark away like dust under an old rug, but I wasn’t fooling anyone. I dropped my gaze to the floor, unable to bear looking either her, or my mum in the eye. She, albeit very bluntly, had said the words no one else had dared to, and for the rest of the evening, I could still hear them ringing in my ears.

‘What have you done to yourself?’

That, in itself, sums up the horrible, terrible paradox of an eating disorder. You know what you’re doing – what you’re putting yourself through – isn’t right. So much so, that when someone calls you out, you’re overcome by a miserable cocktail of guilt and shame. Your illusion, the one you have been devoting your life to, day in, day out, is shattered, smashed into smithereens.

But at the same time, it isn’t a choice. None of it is.

No one chooses to have an eating disorder. No one chooses to shrink themselves so much that they become a shadow of the person they once were. No one chooses to cause themselves, or their loved ones so much worry and pain. No one chooses to have a mind that, ultimately, wants them dead.

This is why, ten years on, I’m trying as hard as I can to recover. Having an eating disorder isn’t a choice, but recovery most certainly is. It’s one of the hardest choices I’ve ever had to make, but also, it’s a no brainer. I’ve got to keep choosing recovery again and again as though my life depends on it, because at the end of the day, it really, really does.

Comedy for Coping.

Week five: acid techno, punching up, and things a therapist would never say.

*Content warning* – very brief mention of topics that may be triggering to some (not ED related).

Before the start of this week’s session, a few of us were chatting, and somehow got onto the topic of languages; specifically, which one we’d like to learn to speak if we could. Most people’s choices were pretty middle of the road: Spanish, German, Italian etc., but to up the anti, there was bit of Scandinavian thrown in for good measure.

When Dave asked if any of us had ever made these linguistic pipe dreams into a reality, one person admitted:

“Well, I’ve thought about it, but it’s been so long since I last logged on, that now I’m scared to even open the Duolingo app. I’m terrified that the owl is just gonna shout at me.”

With our dreams of ever becoming multilingual well and truly shattered, we began with our regular check-in; this time, the theme was music.

“Now, this might be a bit wanky, so tell me if it is, but I’d like us all to start by describing our week as if it were a type of music”, Dave said.

As usual, we covered a whole plethora of genres, instruments, and tastes: post punk, acid techno, regal trumpets (with an undercurrent of bass drums owing to Dave’s lingering three day hangover), blues, electro swing, new age trance, and death metal.

Whenever anyone asks me, I usually describe my – highly questionable – music taste as the kind of thing you’d hear on a wedding playlist from the ’80s. The stuff that only comes on at the end when everyone is hammered and really, deliriously happy. But this week, I made a new discovery. Something that was (a bit like my week itself) in part both joyful and absolutely horrendous: reggae Christmas songs.

After we’d done a quick recap of last week, and marvelled at one person’s very boujee backdrop (a conference centre in Las Vegas), we moved on to week five’s aims and objectives:

* More joke writing – focusing on technical terms

*To learn how to use comedy sensitively

To kick us off, Dave started with some simple rules of thumb:

*Never steal – in life (obviously) and also in terms of comic writing. As tempting as it might be, other people’s jokes are their own intellectual property, and plagiarism is a really big deal.

*Keep things short and sweet. “After all,” Dave said as he waffled on (his words not mine), brevity is the soul of wit.”

*Stay in the present. Joke writing can seem complicated, but at the end of the day, what every joke needs is a good set up.

Next, we played a quick game in a format borrowed from Who’s line is it anyway? just to get our heads in gear.

With 60 seconds to brainstorm individually, we had to come up with as many ideas as we could on the topic of: things a therapist would never say.

Some of the highlights included:

“Why do you never ask about me? All you do is talk about yourself.”

“I just decreased my hourly rate.”

“Listen to the voices.”

“Fuck it, shall we just go to the pub?”

“You know, I’ve worked with a lot of clients over the years, and you’re the craziest person I’ve ever met.”

I found this pretty difficult (perhaps because I’m actually training to be a therapist at the moment and was so worried about hearing all the things I might be doing wrong), but managed to come up with:

“I get the whole idea behind unconditional positive regard, but this week, I’ve been thinking. I’ve taken time to reflect on our sessions so far, and, well, the thing is, I just really fucking hate you.”

After that, we moved on to look at how to use comedy sensitively. To give us a better idea of how this works (and how it doesn’t), Dave gave the examples of ‘punching up’ and ‘punching down.’

“Punching down,” he said, “usually involves belittling people, and making jokes at someone else’s expense. It’s something you really want to avoid, and it goes back to superiority theory, the thing we talked about in the first week.”

Punching up, by contrast, is a form of satire that’s often achieved by being critical of those in power and going against the grain.

We then went through a few more rules of thumb, exploring things like ownership, and the important difference between ‘joking around’ and ‘joking about.’

‘Joking about’, essentially, is when the topic – for example eating disorders – is the butt of the joke, whereas ‘joking around’ looks at aspects of a particular topic, and explores them in different ways; often ones that people might not expect.

As well as using comedy sensitively and responsibly, the key with ‘joking about’ is to dispel misconceptions about your chosen topic, and ultimately, make your comedy more unique.

Using the example of Sean McLaughlin, we looked at how it’s possible to talk about a topic that is difficult, emotive, misunderstood, or controversial, but to do this in a way that is not only funny, but responsible, and doesn’t reinforce superiority theory.

In a five minute clip, Sean references necrophilia, paedophilia and rape, but by using reinterpretation, and talking around the words, rather than specifically about them, he does so in a way that manages to be far more amusing than controversial or offensive.

For the final part of the session, Dave got us thinking about how we might start building our own five minute sets, focusing again on the idea of ownership, and the overall structure.

Breaking the five minutes down into small sections, he suggested the following format as a good foundation:

0-10 seconds: this is about marking your territory, welcoming your audience, and making sure they can hear you as clearly as possible.

20-30 seconds: here, you want to really get things underway, starting with an opener that grabs people’s attention and hooks them in without being too risqué or controversial (you can save those bits for later). Anything to do with your appearance, demeanor or accent can be good as an opener – something observational, that anyone watching you see for themselves and feel a kind of connection with. This part also helps to lay the foundations of your persona.

60 seconds: now, slot in your one minute anecdote. Use this as a chance to build on your persona and give the audience a more detailed insight into who you really are, and how you want to come across. Make sure this isn’t the funniest thing in your set though, as you want to leave that to the end.

60 seconds: time for another anecdote. This can either build on the first one like a sort of narrative, or explore your chosen topic from a slightly different angle. Think reinterpretation.

2 minutes: this is where you can solidify your persona, and finish with your best anecdote. It’s a good idea to use call backs to things you mentioned earlier on, or find a way to link the whole story together and do you best to go out with a bang (not literally of course).

For this, Dave gave us a few last rules of thumb:

If you can, aim for six laughs a minute. It sounds like a lot (especially if you’re a total comedy virgin like me), but the comedian Dave Gorman has a useful tip. He suggests thinking of your set as a road, with the jokes – and laughs – like street lamps along the way. Leave too big a gap between them, and you’ll lose the audience along the way. All the way through, imagine you’re paving the way for your final (and funniest) anecdote.

Timing and pace are also super important, and the best way to get this right is just to practice. Say your jokes aloud, experiment with the order of things, and test them out on different people to guage the kind of responses you get.

At the end of the session, Dave gave us the last – and probably the most useful – tip. Often the best way to approach joke writing is to think of it like recovery. Try to run before you can walk, and you’ll almost certainly fall flat on your face. But if you break things down into small, manageable chunks, the whole thing will feel less overwhelming, and you’ll be much more likely to succeed.

Having your cake and (not) eating it.

Over the years, many people have asked me if I want to recover, and every time without fail, my answer has always been, “yes.”

Recently though, a friend posed the question differently, and for a while, I was stumped.

They asked whether, in my heart of hearts, I was, or had ever been fully committed to the act of recovery; whether I could find it within myself to really and truly let go of my eating disorder, once and for all.

And when I thought about it, I found I had no choice but to say that I didn’t know.

I know enough about my own life experience, and about eating disorders in general, to know that no matter the initial cause or perpetuating circumstances, they are, at the end of the day, a coping mechanism. A way to make sense of the nonsensical, and deal with the distressing and often arbitrary things life throws at us. It is perhaps for this reason, that they’re often referred to as a crutch, a safety blanket, even, an addiction; something at once both so destructive, and yet so powerfully alluring, that for the sufferer, they seem almost impossible to let go of.

I’ve spoken before on this blog about the idea of ‘letting go’; about how it is not, and can never really be a singular, finite act – a decision made once and then swiftly forgotten. And although I still believe those things to be true, I feel I’ve learned a lot since writing that post, even though it was less than twelve months ago.

I’ve tried to ‘let go’ many times over the last twelve years, and each time, there has always been something drawing me back in, in spite of the insight that both I, and the professionals and clinicians I have worked with know that I have.

Whenever I force myself to think deeply and honestly about why this might be, once again, I find myself at a bit of a loss. Not perhaps for words (I always seem to be able to find those), but certainly for answers.

A psychologist who worked with me for a number of years would often ask me what it was that was “keeping me stuck”, and each time I did little more than stare at her blankly. I would cry, shrug my shoulders and make jokes, doing whatever I could to come up with something, or at least try and change the subject, but I could never work out why I found such an apparently simple question so impossible to answer.

For a long time, I thought what I was experiencing was perhaps a mixture of shame, frustration and guilt, brought about, largely, because I am the sort of person who likes to know the reason behind everything. I hated not knowing, almost as much as I hated the realisation that ultimately I was the one who was responsible for perpetuating my own suffering.

I am also the sort of person who hates to feel they aren’t making progress, so this too, caused me a good deal of anguish. Week on week, we would try various tactics and strategies, and yet I still found myself slipping further and further, ever deeper into anorexia’s cold, hard grasp. I felt deflated and often defeated, berating myself for ‘failing’ at recovery, for spiting myself (albeit unintentionally), and also, in no small part, for wasting this woman’s time.

She would do everything she could to help me, using what felt like every trick in the book: CBT, DBT, psychodynamics, SSCM, MANTRA, antidepressants, fortisips, and yet, I was still stuck.

Often, what keeps people stuck can be a lack of motivation, but even that didn’t quite seem to fit. Even in spite of low mood, I always knew I had a lot of things that ought to be keeping me going: friends, career options and aspirations, a desire to travel, and one day hopefully, to have a family of my own. But for some reason, it never seemed to be enough, and I couldn’t for the life of me work out why.

I’ve been reflecting on this again over the past week, and although I may still not have the answers, I have begun to realise something that I’d never thought about before – at least not quite in the same way.

You can want something with every inch of your being, but as is the case with so many things in life, this alone is not enough. You have to act. And not just once, but over and over and over again, until one day, you are able to do it without a fight, or even any conscious effort.

In this sense, saying you want to recover without repeatedly engaging in recovery focused actions, is almost like saying you want to drive from Lands End to Inverness without putting any fuel in your car. Or, like saying you want to become a Doctor, without doing any of the studying or training that it takes to get you there. Or even, in a much simpler sense, like saying you want something from the shops, but you don’t want to walk the 15 minutes it will take to get there, stand in the queue, and then hand over your hard-earned cash to pay for it. In an eating disorder recovery context, it really is like saying you want to have your cake, but at the same time, refusing to eat it.

In recognising all of this – in particular, the times when I have found it so difficult to live my life in a recovery focused way – I’m conscious that it may sound as though I haven’t been trying. But in actual fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Even in the moments when I’ve felt totally overwhelmed, completely and utterly engulfed by a toxic combination of anorexia and depression, I have always tried my absolute best.

And although I know there have been times when this simply wasn’t enough to instigate active, positive change (which has been, and still is, a very hard pill to swallow), for once, I feel I am able to acknowledge that no matter how it might have looked from the outside, I kept going when all I wanted to do was give up. And in those moments, it was, and always will be, enough.

Comedy for Coping.

Week four: shit storms, comic writing, and the best, worst joke you can think of.

How are we on the fourth week already? These sessions seem to be flying by.

Like last week, we started with a check in, but this time, the theme was weather:

“If your week was a type of weather, which would it be and why?” Dave asked.

Between us, we could have made the front page of the Daily Express, covering all four seasons in the space of 10 minutes, as well as rainbows, hurricanes, blizzards, tsunamis, and shit storms (this, I feel I must regretfully clarify, was my contribution).

With the somewhat tempestuous check in out of the way, we got down to the nitty gritty by talking through the aims and objectives.

Before going into more detail, I’m going to add a small disclaimer. This week’s post might be a bit jumbled because, at the start of the session, I was in a really fucking bad mood. So much so, that I almost didn’t come.

To add insult to injury, Dave began by warning us that this week’s session would be quite heavy on the theory, and also potentially a bit confusing, admitting that he himself found this topic the most difficult to explain.

Usually, this sort of thing wouldn’t phase me, but on this occasion, I found myself groaning inwardly. After the week I’d had, confusing theory felt like the last thing I needed. As is often the case with me, self sabotaging and sacking whole thing off altogether seemed preferable to joining in and forcing myself to smile when I’d spent most of the afternoon drowning in a pool of tears that would have given Alice in Wonderland a run for her money.

But I fought the urge to wallow in my own self pity, putting all my energy instead into keeping an open mind, and I’m so glad I did.

As this week’s session was on joke writing, the aims and objectives were:

* To understand different types of jokes

* To get to grips with the mechanics of jokes and joke writing

And for Dave:

* To teach us how to do it

Not much to cover in an hour then…

By way of a warm up, we started with a game. One of us (me) was asked to choose an animal, and someone else a job title, and then we all had 60 seconds to come up with as many crossovers between the two as we could think of.

The chosen job – Police Officer – seemed simple enough, but not when compared with the animal I’d picked: a unicorn. That’ll teach me for trying to be quirky.

It was really bloody difficult, but between us, we managed to come up with a few:

Both are equally as good at preventing crime; have silly, phallic things on their heads; are never around when you need them to be; and have a jumped up sense of self importance. After all, as someone pointed out, a unicorn is really just a bog standard horse trying to be fancy.

Next, we moved on to last week’s homework task: to bring along the most rubbish joke we could think of.

Some of the best (worst) ones were:

Q. How do you make Christmas pasta?

A. In an advent colander.

I heard on the news today that people have been going around stealing motorway signs.

The police are looking for Leeds.

Q. What’s brown and sticky?

A. A stick.

And my personal favourites:

Q. What’s blue and sticky?

A. A blue stick.

Q. What’s blue and not heavy?

A. Light blue.

After we’d all had a much needed laugh, Dave started taking us through the mechanics and methods of joke writing.

Most often, you start by choosing a topic, when you have something you want to say but aren’t quite sure how to say it, or make it funny.

Next, you break it down. Using a spider diagram, explore every possible angle of the topic you can think of, listing all associations and connections that come into your head, no matter how small, tenuous, or seemingly random.

Once you’ve done this bit, pick one of your associations, and then find as many overlaps between that and your chosen topic.

The aim, Dave explained, is to get as far away from your topic as you can, while still making connections.

As an example, we looked at the topic of mental health, then tried to come up with as many associations as possible. Things like stability, mental illness, medication, therapy, wellbeing, research, eating disorders, depression, coping mechanisms, etc., etc.

Then, we looked at the sorts of connections we could make, in order to bridge the gaps between them, and come up with a punchline, which, he said, should always be hidden.

“People like to be fooled,” he said, “but they don’t like to be made fools of. That’s where subtext comes in.”

This is where things started to get a bit confusing. It all (sort of) made sense in theory, but I had absolutely no idea how I’d ever get from this stage to being able to write a single joke, let alone an entire set.

Luckily, Dave gave us some examples which helped shed a bit of light on the bits my worn-out brain was struggling to comprehend, including a clip of the brilliant comedian Hannah Gadsby, explaining how autism works.

So, as I understood it, the foundation should look something like this:

Topic – Association

Set-up – Connection

Hidden punchline

Admittedly, I was still a bit confused, but also excited by the prospect of getting a few more joke writing tips.

For the next part of the session, we started to explore two different methods: reinterpretation and stream of consciousness.

Reinterpretation seemed pretty self explanatory. In a nutshell, it involves looking at one specific word in detail, and finding ways to change it up, either with synonyms, opposites, different languages, puns, or a good old fashioned bit of word play. The Instagram account You Are Awesome -Positivity Puns has some great examples.

Stream of consciousness is centred around the notion that ideas can come from anywhere, at any time, and it’s a technique Eddie Izzard often uses, which he describes as ‘rolling over’ – sifting through the thoughts that come into your head, a bit like panning for gold.

For this approach, there are 3 basic steps:

*Write – do this with an open mind, being as non-judgemental as you can. Judgement kills creativity.

*Edit – sift through the crap and keep an eye out for those glimners of gold.

*Practice – joke writing can happen in any form, not just while you’re sitting at a laptop. Say things out loud, always trying to stay true to your authentic voice.

This was all quite a lot to take in, but eventually I think I’d begun to get the hang of it.

Towards the end of the session, several people – Dave included – told me how much it had meant that I’d been so open and honest about how I was feeling, and that I’d still chosen to come, even though initially, I didn’t want to.

I really appreciated this, but after reflecting on it a bit more, I realised something.

In showing up that night, I wasn’t just showing up for other people, or out of a sense of obligation – I was doing it for myself. Which, I suppose, is what recovering from an eating disorder (or any mental illness) is all about. Not only does it take a lot of hard work and determination, it involves showing up time and time again, when every fibre of your being is screaming at you to do the opposite.

Recovery is about showing up, not for your family, your friends or even your future self, but for the version of you existing in the here and now; the one who feels downtrodden and hopeless, and is in need of a bit of love and care. It’s about showing up for yourself in whichever way you can – no matter how small or inconsequential it may seem to anyone from the outside looking in, and allowing yourself to believe that you’re worth it.

Comedy for Coping.

Week three: the axis of attitude, zombies, and the perils of dating.

To kick off the third session, we started with a technicolour check-in:

“If your week was a colour, what colour would it be and why?” Dave asked, by way of introduction.

As we took it in turns, it soon became clear that the overall mood over the past seven days was decidedly “meh”, so it made sense that our collective colour palette was a dreary mish mash of beige, brown, grey and black.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom though. One person described their week as a shocking neon pink – for reasons both good and bad – and another, a deep, atmospheric burnt orange, the colour of autumn and of burgeoning change.

After the check-in, we moved on to discuss more pressing matters: our plan of action during a zombie apocalypse. Here, Dave wasn’t settling for anything vague or non committal. He wanted details: specifically, which film or TV character we would be, what weapon we would have, and where we would go to seek solace in this hypothetical, zombie-ridden world.

For this bit, a couple of people had a head start, since this wasn’t the first time they’d thought about what they’d do in a zombie apocalypse. I on the other hand, didn’t have a clue. The choice of film character came to me straight away though; I knew without a doubt that I’d be Brave from the 2012 Disney film of the same name. I don’t often feel particularly brave, but owing to my hair colour, a week rarely goes by without someone pointing out that I look like her, so I can’t really imagine myself as anyone else. Plus, bravery would surely serve me well in any altercation with the undead. My weapon of choice was, of course, a bow and arrow, and after a bit of contemplation, I decided that actually, I wouldn’t need to travel anywhere at all. In the film, Brave procures a spell that has the power to change her fate, so I figured that with something like that in my repertoire, I’d be able to handle anything that the zombies might throw at me.

Others among us chose to be the loveably dim Sid from Skins, Nevil Longbottom, Sherlock Holmes, Kirk from Gilmore Girls (with Cat Kirk as a weapon), Lisa Simpson (who would hide out in a library and then use rhetoric to overpower the zombies), Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and Patti Simcox.

As the focus of this session was persona, we spent a bit of time exploring the axis of attitude. I’d never come across it before, but to me, the name seemed to suggest a sort of personality spectrum.

To explain the concept, Dave showed us a short sketch by the trans stand up comedian Jordan Raskapoulos, who spoke candidly and openly about their struggles with anxiety.

Simply put, the axis consists of four polar opposites: insider, outsider, lover and hater, and in the realm of comedy, people tend to fall into one of these categories. Of course, lines may blur and there may inevitably be some overlaps, but in general, insiders (people like Russell Howard, Lee Evans) tend to write comedy on everyday topics, things that most people can relate to, while outsiders (such as Miranda Hart) draw their audiences in just by being…weird.

Lovers are pretty much what you’d expect: comics with positive personas who base their anecdotes on the good things in life (e.g. Catherine Ryan), and haters (e.g. Frankie Boyle) don’t really care what the audience – or anyone – thinks. Their sets often cause a stir, but that’s exactly the way it’s supposed to be.

Thinking more deeply about the idea of persona, we spent a bit of time exploring the relationship between comedy and identity. Dipping our toes into some psychological theory, we discussed the link between identity and eating disorders, and how, often, sufferers can feel that their struggles with food and eating become so all consuming that they begin to lose any sense of who they really are, underneath it all. Mental illness is such a difficult, complex, and highly individual subject, the nuances of which can often be misinterpreted, misunderstood, or lost altogether. And that, I am learning, is precisely what makes it such a great topic to write comedy on.

Drawing briefly on the work of Carl Jung, we looked at his definition of persona, one of the archetypes derived from the collective unconscious:

“The persona, or mask, is the outward face we present to the world. As the conformity archetype, it conceals our real self, and forms the external role we play, separate from our true self.”

For Jung, the ultimate aim was to achieve a state of selfhood, a unity between the outward persona we use to cope with the outside world, and an understanding and acceptance of who we truly are, beneath the mask.

In this sense, the ideal comic persona should be not a performance or a character, but rather an amplified, larger than life version of you. Your story can be embellished, added to, and amended at will, but to achieve meaningful, genuine connection with an audience, should contain, at its core, an essence of who you really are.

To finish, we were asked to come up with at least 3 topics that we’d like to write comedy on, and decide whether we would be an insider, an outsider, a lover, or a hater. For a bit of practice, we were all given the topic of dating, and then 60 seconds to tell the rest of the group what it is that we loved or hated about it – a task much harder than it might sound!

Encouraging us all to keep an open mind and steer away from rigid thinking, we then had 60 seconds to switch our stance, and share our thoughts from the opposite point of view. By far the most enjoyable part of the evening, this really put our quick thinking to the test, especially since our answers had to be as convincing – and as funny – as we could make them, pretty much on the spot. I myself started out as a hater, likening dating to a lengthy, tedious and highly invasive job interview; a lose-lose situation which binds you – potentially forever – to someone who probably seemed much better on paper than they would prove to be in real life.

Then, I had to switch sides, and spend a minute telling everyone why I absolutely loved dating. For a few seconds, I panicked. Mere moments ago, I had professed that I thought dating was the worst thing imaginable; how could I change my viewpoint so quickly, and more importantly, how could I make it funny? I wracked my brains, focusing on the hint Dave had just given us. Often, he said, irony was a good technique for this, as we could use the basis of our original stance, and build it up from there. So, I gave it a go, and was surprised how easily it seemed to roll off my tongue. Dating was great because…you get to talk about yourself endlessly. Because…if you think the person is truly awful, you can walk away and never set eyes on them again. Because…you can reinvent yourself over and over – one evening you’re a teacher, the next a magician’s apprentice, the next, a member of MI5 who can’t possibly reveal their secrets. And perhaps best of all, maybe, just maybe, you might meet someone who lights you up and, in spite of it all, makes you realise quite how beautiful life can be.

As our third session drew to a close, it dawned on me how happy and motivated I had felt from start to finish. I always look forward to this course, but this week in particular, it offered a kind of solace I hadn’t been able to find anywhere else; a safe, supportive, uplifting space, where I felt comfortable enough to let go of everything that had been weighing me down, and really be myself.

As always, I felt truly grateful to have been able to take part, and just want to thank Dave and everyone else involved for making it so awesome.

*Our homework for this week had been to tell our best funny anecdote to someone who hadn’t heard it before. As most people close to me have had to listen to it many times, I tried it out on my dietitian, who laughed her head off and told me in no uncertain terms that she thought it was hilarious. I appreciate the positive feedback, but since I’d just spent the past hour crying over the fact that she’d added 3 extra yoghurts to my meal plan, I can’t help but wonder whether her laughter was driven by an attempt to boost my faltering morale!

Comedy for Coping.

Week two: stage presence, mystery objects and funny anecdotes

This Wednesday marked week two of Dave Chawner’s Comedy for Coping course, which started with a quick recap of the previous session (I suspect he wanted to check whether we’d all been listening, and luckily I think we passed with flying colours).

After that, Dave gave us a little run down of what the evening would involve, explaining that we’d be looking at stage presence, connection, and public speaking – with a good amount of laughs thrown in, of course.

Last week, we’d been set three homework tasks, which would be used as the building blocks of our session this week, as well as the set we would be writing in the coming weeks (no pressure then)!

The first task (the Harry Potter nerd in me can’t help but think this is all sounding more and more like the Triwizard Tournament) had been to think of our favourite film, which in principle was easy enough.

Then, Dave explained that we’d take it in turns to describe the plot of our chosen film to everyone else in just 30 seconds, which made things a bit trickier. After the first person had given a potted synopsis of their choice – True Romance – the anti was well and truly upped. The next person did the same, but in 15 seconds instead of 30; the next in 10 seconds; and the last, in just 5. Eek!

Funnily enough, the person with the least amount of time gave the best and most succinct description of all: “It’s about a little boy who’s best friend is Hitler”.

Can you guess what it is?

As this week’s focus was stage presence, the next task was designed to help us develop our ‘story’ – the very thing that would allow us to build connection with an audience, and provide the foundation of the sets we would eventually be coming to write.

For this, Dave got out a (virtual) mystery box, and we each had 60 seconds to talk about an item that we felt symbolises who we are – a show and tell of sorts – to help us get to know one another, and give us all the opportunity at public speaking.

Some of the mystery items included a pair of much-loved Doc Martens, a Rubix cube, a Care Bear, some pink sparkly beads, a light up coat, a rucksack, and a cobra-shaped nail from Marrakech that cost £14. What a bargain.

Once we’d all shared our mystery box items and got to know one another a little better, we continued our introduction to stage presence.

Here, we learnt that clarity, confidence and brevity are all key components, all helping towards the ultimate endgame: hooking people in and getting them to listen to what you’ve got to say.

It was at this stage that Dave struggled to get his words out (he was the first to point out the irony of this) and eventually said: “basically, I’m gonna give you some hints and fucking tips and then we’re gonna crack on.”

Things to avoid

* Speaking too fast

* Fillers (e.g. ‘and’, ‘um’, ‘so’, ‘like’, ‘sort of’)

Hints and tips

* Slow down – pace yourself; the last thing you want to do is rush through what you’ve got to say.

* Rehearse – practice your jokes and anecdotes on friends and family to guage responses and get feedback.

* Structure – beginning, middle and end to your set. Think of it like a story, and this will help build your persona.

* Hook – every set needs one of these. You should start with the second funniest thing you have to say, and end with the first. That way, you’ll hook your audience in, and make sure you go out with a bang.

* Eye contact – scanning and panning is an absolute no go. Make regular eye contact with your audience, especially the people who are enjoying it the most. This helps them enjoy it even more, and reflects onto others in the audience, too.

* Authenticity – be completely yourself instead of playing a character. This helps strengthen connection and builds your persona.

To end the session, we took it in turns to tell our best funny anecdotes in just 60 seconds, which is trickier than you might imagine. Some of the highlights included taking your Australian girlfriend home to meet your Grandma for the first time, singing the praises of Satan during a deep tissue massage, and coming face to face with an ostrich, on the way back from a family trip to watch Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Owing, once again, to my terrible WiFi (Virgin Media can get in the bin), I didn’t get to tell my anecdote, so I’m going to include it here:

When I was in my early twenties, I got a job as an intern at a national red top newspaper. Fresh out of my studies in English Lit and journalism, I thought it was the best thing in the world. I’ll admit that as career choices go, this was perhaps a bit morally – and politically – questionable, but in my defense, I was young and naïve. And they had a really swanky office right in the middle of central London.

On my first day, I sat through my induction, eagerly waiting to find out what a typical day on a national paper would be like, what jobs I’d be given, and the people I might meet. I’d been an intern before; this wasn’t my first rodeo. So I knew better than to get my hopes up too much. I fully expected to be making tea, going on coffee runs and doing whatever admin jobs no one else could be bothered to do, but I didn’t care. I was a journo grad working in the offices of a national newspaper. I was over the moon.

After a tour of the building, past the fancy water fountain and Big Brother diary room chair that took up a good proportion of the lobby, I was shown back up to the newsroom, allocated a desk (my very own desk!) and told to familiarise myself with Photoshop and Premiere Pro, the video editing software they used. In my interview, I’d told them I had no experience with video editing whatsoever, but this didn’t seem to bother them in the slightest. There would be training, they said. Everything would be absolutely fine, they said. Spoiler alert: the only training I received was the training I gave myself.

A little while later, the video editor said he had a very important job for me. I grinned from ear to ear, and began wondering what on earth it might be. An interview? A story to write? The chance to help out on a photoshoot?

He said there was a folder on my desktop that contained everything I’d need for the task.

“Just, you know, make them more presentable. They’re going on the homepage of the site so they’ve got to be eye-catching. Pick the best one for the cover but make sure you get rid of the…naughty bits. No nipples on the front page.”

Nipples?!

He walked away, and I clicked open the folder to find more than 300 photos of a young woman – presumably someone off of Love Island or The Only Way is Essex – wearing what I can only describe as a fishnet thong. Unsurprisingly, it left almost nothing to the imagination.

After a bit of trial and error, I found the blur tool on Photoshop, sighed inwardly, and set to work obscuring nipple after nipple until I’d done every single photo in that folder. When I was finished, I looked up at the clock and saw that it was lunch time, which meant that I’d been staring at nipples for 3 and a half hours. This might have been every teenage boy’s dream, but I myself was seriously starting to question my life choices. “I worked my arse off at uni for this?” I thought, incredulously.

“I spent four years slaving away in the library just to sit here all day Photoshopping boobs?”

I winced as I imagined updating my LinkedIn or attending an alumni event at my old university, and having to tell people that, as a professional Nipple-Blurrer, I was certainly putting my First Class degree to good use.

Just then, the editor called over to say he had another job for me. One that turned out to involve a string of phonecalls to a rival paper, and a very heated argument over a video of a woman doing unspeakable things in the meat and poultry aisle of an Iceland somewhere in South East London.

Comedy for Coping.

Week One: hopes, fears and terrible inventions

This Wednesday evening started out like many others I’ve spent over the past 18 months: sitting in front of my laptop, headphones plugged in, nervously preparing to join a Zoom call.

But this time, I wasn’t waiting for a work meeting, a job interview, or even a Halloween themed COVID-style pub quiz (and thank God for that. I think I’ve done enough of those to last a lifetime). I was getting ready for the start of Comedy for Coping.

What’s that, you might ask? Well, in truth, I had absolutely no idea. All I really knew was that it was a course run by comedian Dave Chawner, designed to help people with eating disorders use humour and stand up to see recovery differently, which, to me, seemed like a pretty great idea. Not least because right now, I need all the help I can get.

Owing to some WiFi issues, I logged on about five minutes late (definitely bad form on my part, but what’s a Zoom call without the odd technical hitch eh?) to find a screen full of unfamiliar faces and was relieved to find that things were only just getting started.

The only person I did recognise was Dave, as I’d had the pleasure of seeing his stand up a few years before in the dingy, boiling hot upstairs room of a pub as part of Brighton Fringe.

After some brief introductions, Dave gave us a run down of what the course would entail, and I was reassured to hear that I wasn’t the only one feeling a bit apprehensive.

He said we’d start off by talking about the purpose of comedy, in particular, how it could be used in a positive way to help explain things that are difficult, distressing, or hard for others to understand. “By breaking things down, humour is a great way to make things more manageable for everyone involved. Because at the end of the day, it’s pretty impossible to be laughing at something, and scared of it at the same time.”

Throughout the introduction, Dave was careful to emphasise that the main aim of the course was to build a space where each of us could flourish, and work towards getting to a better place in our recovery, because after all, we’re all in this together.

He mentioned how people with eating disorders (himself included), can tend to use their bodies as a way of communicating to the outside world that something is wrong – ultimately as a way of coping.

When describing an ED as a coping mechanism, Dave said that people talk about taking it away, but when that happens, often there’s nothing left to fill the void. This course, he said, was created as a way of giving something back.

To help us create a safe, optimistic space and encourage everyone to start thinking more positively, Dave gave each of us a terrible invention, and we took it in turn to tell everyone else why it wasn’t really terrible, but in fact something totally amazing. Examples included pyjamas for squirrels, see-through toilet doors, square bicycle wheels, radio for deaf people, therapy for flowers, crocs, and wipe clean toilet paper.

Upon being asked to sing the praises of waterproof bath bombs, one person looked perplexed, and then proceeded to come out with what was probably the funniest exchange of whole evening:

“Waterproof bath bombs?”

“Yeah!”

“Right. Do they still dissolve?”

“No, they don’t.”

“So they’re just rocks?”

Next, we learnt a bit about the four theories of comedy: play theory, release theory, incongruity theory, and superiority theory.

To round off, we were each asked to come up with one hope we have for the course, and one fear, before sharing them with everyone. At this point, by way of encouragement, Dave declared our little corner of Zoom a judgement free zone.

For me, this was the most heartening and heartwarming part of the evening. Although, really, we were just a group of strangers with eating disorders talking to one another on the internet, the task brought us together in a way I’d never expected. Of course, we all had different experiences, and had all been on different journeys up to this point. But by allowing ourselves to be open, honest and vulnerable, for a few moments we became so much more than that, and it really did feel as though we were all in it together.

For privacy reasons, I’m not going to share anyone else’s hopes or fears, but I do want to document mine so that I can look back at them when the course draws to a close.

My fear is based around the fact that I tend to use humour to be self deprecating. In the past, I’ve always been the first one to poke fun at myself and laugh whenever things go wrong, which, as coping strategies go, I know isn’t the absolute worst. But lately, it’s become yet another way to beat myself up, and be unkind to myself, so this is definitely something I want to try to avoid.

My hope is that the course will help me to put a positive spin on my recovery, and turn what have been a pretty horrible couple of years into something productive, compassionate and nurturing.