The phase between moving on from CAMHS to adult services – how is that taking place? You know is there something already changing?

Yeah there’s something in place but it’s more around, centred around as a safety net as opposed to a compulsory thing now. So when I’m at university and, if I’m struggling I can go there and they’ll, there will be someone there to talk to me.

And how do you feel about the change?

I’m looking forward to the change in lifestyle by going to university. And having a different life and knowing different people. But I don’t, am sort of feeling a bit of anticipation about the actual services because the CAMHS psychiatrist I’ve had has been so good so, it’s going to be very hard to find someone to live up to her standard.

And do you plan to apply to the university here or somewhere else?

I have done, but it’s mainly a backup choice. I’m hopefully going to do history. We’ve talked to University about back up support and things like that.

Really. Okay.

And they are very supportive about it.

When I was going through my worst stage that it I had a religious experience which converted me from atheism to Christianity. Cos I used to be very outspoken against religion and

Really?

And I used to upset a lot of people about that. And since then it’s mainly been trying pursue I don’t know if you’ve heard it’s processed thought theology which is that bad things happen in life you have to accept that, but if you, if you try and do good things then they’ll have a knock on effect. it’s like the Buddhist way of thinking but with God in the equation.

But good will breed more good.

And my experience as well it was sort of being an example of that.

Do you actively, do you go to church? Or do you go to meetings?

Yeah I go to my church and youth group and things and although some of some theories are controversial still they go along with me.

And is your family religious? Do you come from that background at all?

My Mum’s family, my Dad’s family is not religious, but my Mum’s was a Methodist family that were kind of forced to be Christian. And she never was a real Christian until about the same time I changed, and that’s when we both kind of being born-again so to speak, as opposed to the established church we’ve more branched out to searching for God in our own way.

And then you came up with this different method, trying this contract thing. So how, who came up with it, did your Mum come across that cos she did research or

My Mum came up, came upon it, a similar thing on this American website it was their version of Beat, I can’t remember what it’s called now.

And she thought she’d, she’d discuss it with my psychiatrist and we talked about it and we did try it but it didn’t work at first because even though we were all, though we’d agreed to trust each other, my Mum still had quite a lot of angst over what I’d done in the past so she found it very hard to trust me. And then one evening we had an argument but this time my Dad kind of saw sense with me and realised that I could be trusted. And that, it was after then that it started to change properly.

So it required mutual trust to work? So you talked about the challenges, how did it like work just in practice?

At the end of each week my Mum would go through the week with a piece of paper and we’d put down tallies for the challenges that I’d done,

And I would be honest and tell her what I’d found challenging during that week. And it pretty much, you could tell by the honesty because otherwise I’d get to the next CAMHS session and lose weight as opposed to put on weight. And it did go up and down the weigh, but it was going up and down as opposed to down. So that’s how we dealt with the trust, and my Mum finally agreed that I wasn’t lying to her.

And I think as I did things as a challenge more and more they became less and less of a challenge until they didn’t become a challenge at all. And it’s still going on that contract. But now it’s down to like very, very small things that I find challenging now. And it’s mainly challenges like used to be having certain foods, but now it’s more doing certain things like going out with my friends, and making an effort to go out with friends and stuff.

And what were the first challenges like?

They were hard to do but I always knew that I was getting something out of it, and it was probably going to make me better as well. And it was more an attitude of I’ll give it a shot rather than I can’t, I’m not doing that.

So was it mainly about eating a certain amount or certain types of foods? Was it those sort of challenges?

Yeah it was sort of, types of food where you’ve eaten it, how, who you’ve eaten it with. Cos going out for a meal was a big challenge. Some challenges were worth more like staying the full day at school would have been like 2 points as opposed to 1 point which was half a day. And no points for not going at all.

And yeah it was social things, food things and exercise related things like if I said that I had some weights today but I didn’t do as many as I usually do cos I was actually tired then I’d get a point for being honest that I didn’t do all my weights cos I was tired.

I was putting a lot of stress into each day having to achieve this confidence and a lot of stress to be better than my peers and stuff.

So it [school] was quite competitive?

Mm. Yeah.

And so you felt like you made a conscious effort, you know every day to you know make it happen?

Mm. And it’s in foresight that I see it that, at the time I thought it was just, just life. But then I, afterwards when I realised other people weren’t doing that, that it was actually a problem.

Yeah. How did you realise that, Oh actually, not everybody’s doing this

Well it was after my treatment and everything with a psychiatrist, yeah.

Yeah.

Cos even though I’ve only had anorexia for about 2 years I’ve probably had that EDNOS you know, strange behaviour with eating probably since I was 14.

And how did that sort of first start manifesting, the strange behaviours?

It was probably when, in year 10 when I got quite depressed and trying to keep up with every day and I got fed up of it, so I sort of swung from being really high to really low. From eating loads to eating nothing. And that’s when it started to kick off really and I didn’t know what was a middle ground.