Episode 75: Binge Eating - It’s Real

Megan te Boekhorst

Megan is a certified life coach, therapeutic art coach, fierce mental health advocate and she works with folks who have experienced mental health challenges. She hopes to reconnect them with their authentic self so they can move forward in life with passion. She's about living mindfully, building community, and growing together. Negative self talk and fear are the most common causes stopping us from going after our big scary amazing goals. Megan will teach you how to shut down destructive thinking and manage fear allowing you to discover happiness in your everyday lives.

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Podcast Transcript:

Damaged Parents: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Relatively Damaged Podcast by Damaged Parents where shamed, disordered bingeing people come to learn. Maybe just, maybe we're all a little bit damaged.  

Someone once told me it's safe to assume. 50% of the people I meet are struggling and feel wounded in some way. I would venture to say it's closer to 100%.

Every one of us is either currently struggling or has struggled with something that made us feel less than like we aren't good enough. We aren't capable. We are relatively damaged. And that's what we're here to talk about. In my ongoing investigation of the damage itself, I want to better understand how others view their own challenges.

Maybe it's not so much about the damage, maybe it's about our perception and how we deal with it. There is a deep commitment to becoming who we are meant to be. How do you do that? How do you find balance after a damaging experience? My hero is the damaged person. The one who faces seemingly insurmountable odds to come out on the other side hole.

Those who stare directly into the face of adversity with unyielding persistence to discover their purpose. These are the people who inspire me to be more fully me. Not in spite of my trials, but because of them, let's hear from another hero. Today's topic includes sensitive material, which may not be appropriate for children. This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as advice. The opinions expressed here are strictly those of the person who gave them.

Today, we're going to talk with Megan to book Horst. She has many roles in her life, daughter, granddaughter, sorta sister advocate, and more. We'll talk about how binge eating is a difficult behavior to heal from and how she's finding health and healing. Let's talk.  

 Welcome to Relatively Damaged. Megan te Boekhorst. I'm good to say it correctly. Yeah.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:02:02] you got it. You got it.

Damaged Parents: [00:02:04] I'm so glad to have you here.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:02:06] Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Damaged Parents: [00:02:10] Yeah. Really interested to hear about your struggle because just from what I was reading, it sounds a little. Different than what I anticipated that maybe I might hear about depression and binge eating disorders and finding the solution.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:02:28] Yeah, it's probably not what a lot of people expect because we all have this preconceived notion of what an eating disorder must look like. We all understand anorexia and bulimia a little bit more, but when it comes to binge eating disorder, It's so full of misconceptions. It's so sort of hidden from the narrative of eating disorders, that there are people who have binge-eating disorder and don't even realize they are living with an eating disorder.

They have no idea because it's just not been taught to them properly. And yet binge eating disorder is the most common eating disorder. And most of. The world, honestly, when it comes to disorders and part of the problem comes from a lack of medical support for it. It was, there's a tool called the DSM five.

The I'm going to butcher this, but the diagnostic insight. Not statistical manual. It's the manual of all the mental illnesses that are diagnosable. So if you go see a psychiatrist for a diagnosis with mental illness in mind, she's pulling a diagnosis from the DSM-V. The DSM-V was updated in 2013 to include binge eating disorder.

So it's only been something somebody could be diagnosed with for the past seven, eight years.

Damaged Parents: [00:03:47] Okay. So if there's this huge lack of understanding, I'm thinking we need to know. So tell us what it is or how it showed up in you, or maybe just tell us your story. Yeah.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:04:00] let's go back. You know, it's. I became aware of my binge eating disorder, my depression in my first year of university. But really it started when I was in high school. It started when I had a little bit more freedom. So the first symptom  I looking back in hindsight and went, huh, that was a sign.

It was the fact that I used to hoard food in my car. So I would hide it from my friends. I'd hide it from my family. I didn't want people to know, but I would use any sort of break, whether it was a break in my class schedule. I could run out and go to the grocery store and buy some cake. That was a big thing for me back then was cake.

And I just, I would be alone and I would sit and eat in my car. I would hide the food that I didn't eat in my car. I always kinda made sure I had access to food for my intake whenever I felt like I needed it. So as time on these sort of behaviors progressed. And as I gained my freedom, you know, I moved out of my family's house.

I was living in a dorm in my first year. I was in charge of, you know, my own life. I was on my own. And so I also had more freedom to follow these binge impulses. I had to buy copious amounts of food and. Eat it that's the simplest way to describe binge eating disorder. It's typically defined as about a two hour period where you.

Eat a whole lot of food. And it progressed to the point where I was buying 60, 70, a hundred dollars Canadian worth of food and eating it all in a two hour period. And it wasn't like expensive food. I was buying, I was buying like $4 boxes of cookies, uh, you know, bag of M and M's like I said, a mini slice of cake boxes of Kraft dinner that I would cook and.

Yeah. So that's, that's a lot of food to consume in a two hour window or less. And often during those bingeing periods, you are unaware. Like I kind of blacked out during them. I don't really know or remember what was necessarily going on, but the idea was to numb yourself. You're not aware of that, but your goal is to numb yourself, but I can remember.

The first incident where I went, Oh, this might be a problem. Was in that first year of university, I was in a long distance relationship. And so we would video chat all the time, but I'd be working on homework. And my boyfriend at the time would be playing video games. So we weren't necessarily paying attention to each other, but we just want it to be in the same space.

And at a certain point, he said, stop eating, stop eating the M and M's. And I had no idea that the entire time I was just. Constantly munching on m&ms and a bag of M and M's beside me. And I was like, Oh my God, I wasn't even aware I was doing it.

Damaged Parents: [00:06:49] Okay. So you had no awareness,

but I mean, besides the fact that you were going to buy the food and were you afraid you were going to run out of food or is it just not related to that at all?

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:07:01] it can be. So, I mean, the coronavirus pandemic. Brought some new unique challenges to all of us who live with eating disorders when there was food scarcity. So that changed a lot of my, impulses I had recently relapsed, so to cover a long 10 plus year, decade, I experienced my first awareness of binge eating disorder in 2010, I was in a place of recovery and about 2017.

That was my first. Go with it. And I relapsed in 2019 in the fall. So right before the pandemic hit, I was just in the process of getting some supports of getting a medical team in place for this relapse, when the pandemic hit and everything blew up, as we all know. And so when food scarcity was a thing in the beginning of the pandemic, one of my.

Comfort foods. I was in a much different place. I was very aware of my mental illness. You know, I would become aware of my binges at this point. And there was a food that I would turn to in sort of a protection comfort. It was kind of a, this one's not as bad. It was a bowl of honey nut Cheerios. And I've basically, if I could go at least 30 minutes without making a bowl, honey, nut Cheerios.

Hopefully the goal was after 30 minutes of sitting with this call to binge this desire to binge, it would hopefully go away. That was the goal. If it didn't, I would give myself permission to have that bowl of honey nut Cheerios.

And that nine times out of 10 would like mediate that need I had, you know, it would sort of soothe enough where I could feel like I was back in control again. But if it didn't, I would give myself permission to not feel guilt. If I still followed a binge impulse after having a bowl of honey nut Cheerios, guilt is a huge part of the binge eating disorder cycle.

That guilt after a binge , is awful. And so one of the first things I had to do when I was first getting treatment was learned to let go of that guilt because it was just feeding the illness.

Damaged Parents: [00:08:55] When you say guilt, are you talking about, Oh, I made a mistake or are you talking about, I am a mistake. I ate this bowl of cereal. And I think that's more shame than guilt. So I'm trying to figure out if I'm thinking about what you're talking about, do you see what are I'm

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:09:09] Yeah, it's probably a mix of shame and guilt when I was in the thick of it and having those really big, like I said, 70 a hundred dollars binges. When I'd come out of it, right. I'd always see the damage. You know, I know the food I bought. I saw the effect of my wallet of having no money. Cause, imagine spending 70 to 100 bucks a night when you're a university student.

And, and there'd be wrappers after like I'd have to clean up after myself in a sense. And so.

Damaged Parents: [00:09:38] So you were also trying to hide it

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:09:40] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was always trying to hide it. Like my house would be spotless if anybody came over I was always taking out the garbage with it. Like I lived alone, but even then, it's hard to go back there, but just the sight of like my coffee table littered with candy wrappers and cookie wrappers and boxes of Kraft dinner, or chip bags and pop, like all those.

I'm really sorry if that's triggering anybody the details of the food, but to see that covering my coffee table, it's kind of a scary thing at certain points. So at a point where I was very much more aware of what was going on with me, and I was understanding the systems at play within an eating disorder, it was terrifying to go, wow, like, this is scary to see because I have clearly no control, but it also fed into a narrative that I am weak.

I have no control. I'm worthless. I'm a disgusting slob. This is, sickening. I something's wrong with me. I am a wrong person. A lot of lack of worth, a lot of guilt over eating that much. It's the same sort of guilt. People may feel that is not okay at all. It's not unacceptable guilt, but that idea that, you know, somebody who is usually fit and in shape having like a slice of cake after dinner might feel guilty of like, Oh, I shouldn't have done this.

I'm so bad. Like I'm supposed to be eating better. That guilt. We all can feel around food sometimes because it's built into the narrative of our society that. Food and unhealthy choices equals shame and guilt. That is magnified when you're in any eating disorder, any eating disorder will magnify that feeling of shame and guilt to the nth degree.

And so, yeah, facing in a sense, what I had done during a binge. It would bring on a crushing amount of guilt and shame and worthlessness in that moment, which was what I was trying to numb from in the first place.

Damaged Parents: [00:11:40] Yeah, which sounds extremely painful. It sounds like you were eating to solve the problems which only magnified it

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:11:47] Oh, yeah, it's totally not a solid strategy. I do not recommend binge-eating disorder for solving any problems. It just makes them worse.

Damaged Parents: [00:11:53] well, but I don't know that, I mean, Yeah. I don't know that you even knew to not though.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:11:59] it took me a long time. You know, that, like I said, that first bout with binge eating disorder covered a roughly seven year period. And I was a very academic person. In fact, I saw a few different counselors during that time. And the counselor that I connect with the most was the one who provided me education on psychology and what was going on with me.

He would send me home with a new book pretty much every week after every session that was on, on mindset and how essentially, you know, our brain works. The learning of how my brain worked was what worked really well for me might not work for everyone, but it worked for me.

Damaged Parents: [00:12:33] So he didn't come at you from the perspective of, Oh, you have an eating disorder and we need to fix this. He came at you or educated you first on what was happening with you or how did, how did you see that?

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:12:48] it's a little complicated. Cause I came to him. I was very well versed at that point. I had refused to get an official diagnosis at that point. I wasn't actually officially diagnosed until 2020, but there are very complicated and complex reasons that many people with mental illness will, not want to be officially diagnosed.

And for me, a lot of it was the fact that. You know, when I first realized I had binge-eating disorder, I knew that wasn't the diagnosis I received because I knew it wasn't in the DSM. I knew it wasn't even an option for my doctor to give me the only thing my doctor could have diagnosed me with in anything pre 2013 and even in 2013, which was when I really, really did start seeking proper treatment for my mental illness was eating disorder.

Not otherwise specified.

Damaged Parents: [00:13:34] So then how does that help?

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:13:36] right. Like even it just hearing the words there is bias in the medical system where all very, I think, acutely aware of that. We see it with people who have weight, we see it in race. And so it's almost this thing that a lot of folks just can't even be aware of it all the time. So if you were to be like walking into a new doctor's office for some unrelated symptom and, you know, they asked for your medical history, you can go, yeah, I have eating disorder, not otherwise specified.

They're going to like erase that from their memory. They're not going to care because that's just how the phrase sounds like when you hear, I haven't even started, but it's not even worth specifying. Nobody's going to care about it, but it was still a very, very real problem for me. And it had serious, serious side effects and consequences.

So I refused, I said, I don't want a diagnosis. This is it's bullshit. I have a diagnosis. You can give me, so I don't want it.

Damaged Parents: [00:14:31] Well, and it's really hard. It was at least in my mind, it seems like not otherwise specified it's like people with chronic pain that they can't figure it out. So then they give it a name just to give it a name and everybody knows what the name means, but it's not helpful because at the end of the day, it's not solving the problem.

It sounds like the same thing is happening with eating disorders.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:14:56] it's shifted now a little bit. When they updated the manual to add binge eating disorder, they also change it to other specified eating disorders because it's true. Eating disorders can be quite complex and there can be a lot of factors at play. Technically, during a period of my eating disorder, I actually had bulemia even though I wasn't doing any.

Of the expected purging. I wasn't throwing up over the toilet. I would wake up in the morning and decide that's it. I'm done. I am not eat. Like I would starve myself and I would overexercise and then I would get pent up with so much stress and anxiety over my relationship with food. And it was an obsessive thought for me.

I was thinking about food pretty much, 24 seven, that I would break in at night. I would binge again, and then I'd feel the guilt and shame. And then I would decide, okay, I'm not going to eat anymore. And so for me, purging was. Just not eating purging was just shutting myself off from food and overexercising and trying to, starve myself.

I was very, very much intentionally trying to starve myself.

Damaged Parents: [00:15:54] Right. So purge doesn't necessarily have to mean vomiting. It could just mean getting rid of

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:16:01] Yeah. A lot of people will purge with laxatives as well.

Damaged Parents: [00:16:05] okay.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:16:06] there are a lot of different purging behaviors that can happen with bulemia that aren't throwing up vomiting, that a lot of people, again, aren't aware of, but that is. Part of the bulimia. And that's what I mean when eating disorders are complex, is there are so many other factors at play that aren't part of the standard narrative of eating disorders.

And so there are also folks who will kind of like, I like to always call it as like a patchwork quilt, where it's like, you pull a little bit of everything and then you don't fit into the neat box that anorexia bulemia will provide. I mean, bulemia is already wide enough because yeah. It's any purging behavior.

But if you don't fit into that exact category, then the, you can't be diagnosed with that. So now they've got the general other specified eating disorder category for folks who don't fit into the exact criteria for anorexia bulimia or binge

Damaged Parents: [00:16:57] One, it sounds like because of those categories, there are tools in those categories. And then for you, maybe there weren't tools, I'm guessing. I'm guessing

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:17:07] Yeah. It's been a really interesting past year and a bit for me because as I've mentioned, I was diagnosed in 2020 and the diagnosis part. Wasn't what scared me at all. It was the fact that I had known for a long time. It was just making it official. And in the first meeting I had with the psychiatrist, you know, she asked, what do you want out of this?

And I said, you know, I want a diagnosis at that point, I was ready for a diagnosis and thought maybe it would help me get help. I was very tired of sort of trying to figure this out on my own, which is what I had been doing for about the 10 years prior. You know, I, I had been seeking out my own counselors, but it was general counseling.

It wasn't anything specific for the eating disorder. I had been rejected from eating disorder clinics because they only treated anorexia. And I thought, you know, what if I had got this official diagnosis, maybe I can get into some sort of. Formal program, formal support with other people who can help me get through this because I was very aware I could not do it alone.

I even said, I said, I can't do this alone. I barely did it alone. Last time, essentially, I had my family support, but I was really trying to figure out how to heal myself alone. And it took me years. And even that wasn't perfect. And even when I was in recovery, I was still suffering consequences of the binge eating disorder.

So. I need, I need a formal support. I need something more structured. And I envisioned something that we hear about a lot with anorexia, where you get to go to an inpatient treatment facility and they help reshape your relationship with food. You get group counseling, you get one-on-one counseling, you get to be in the kitchen sometimes and learn more about food.

That's what I wanted for myself. And so after my diagnosis, she, she said, yes, you, you have binge eating disorder. You have depression. I was surprised to find, I also had symptoms of PTSD, but not enough to diagnose PTSD. And I said, okay, yeah, that's that was expected. The PTSD was a bit of a surprise, but what's next?

You said, this is when her face fell. It wasn't giving me the diagnosis. It was this part where her face felt and she said, Unfortunately, there is nothing under our medical coverage I'm based in Canada. So, you know, most medical stuff, a lot of medical stuff is covered. And I was freelancing at the time, so I couldn't afford out-of-pocket healthcare.

And she said there's no formal support in Toronto where I was living at the time for binge eating disorder.

Damaged Parents: [00:19:31] Now there's no formal support in Toronto, is that. Though worldwide. I mean, is this just something, no one that it's just not out there.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:19:41] Pretty much, there were the potential of some, inpatient clinics that I would pay out of pocket for, but they probably wouldn't be binge specific. Toronto is Canada's largest city. It's Canada's most populous city. If there was going to be treatment for my eating disorder, it would have been in Toronto, within Canada. I later found out I've been doing a bit of research. There are four hospitals that have any sort of program for binge-eating disorder in all of Canada. They're not inpatient. They are just some sort of outpatient form. I found out one of those is only specifically for youth, so I still wouldn't have qualified for it anyway.

And the reason this is, and so it's kind of a. Hypothetical assumption that I'm fairly certain in making that it would apply to the U S and the UK is and other parts of the world as well, because it was only recently added to the diagnostic tool. Only. Now they can sort of formalize a treatment plan for it.

In a sense and start to do the work to figure out, okay, what is the best course of treatment right now? They kind of have guesses and they kind of pull from different things, you know, counseling is great. Cognitive behavioral therapy is, good for binge eating disorder, but it's kind of like again a patchwork quilt of, okay, we'll take a little bit from this.

We'll take a little bit from that and kind of get you into what we can.

Damaged Parents: [00:20:58] So, no one's really figured out what works best.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:21:01] And I asked, you know, why, why can't we start? Like, why isn't there anything inpatient, why isn't there anything specific for binge eating disorder that, you know, I asked the NEDIC, NEDIC is I can't remember their full acronym, but it's, it's a great eating disorder, specific, nonprofit here in Canada.

And I said, okay, what's the treatment for anorexia? And you get like this very like, Oh, you can get this, this, this, and this. Okay. Bulemia same thing binge-eating sir. Oh yeah. There's not as much like it's different and it's because it's so new that they haven't had the ability in a sense to do the work, to figure it out.

And they still aren't figuring it out because there's just no government support to figure it out. The government. Doesn't care essentially enough to put the resources behind doing the work, to figure out what is the best way to treat this, to begin treatment facilities, to expand more than just four hospitals and maybe consider doing something in patient.

There's just no government support for that idea,

Damaged Parents: [00:22:02] Well, cause it was just added to the DSM in 2013. So we're what almost eight years out. And. I'm not certain how long research would have to go on. I'm not certain if research was done. Cause what I'm thinking is from a billing standpoint, from insurance or even facilities investing their time and energy in this.

If they couldn't bill for it, then what would be the purpose in investing in it. And so it seems like it would be really easy to get lost on even setting up a program.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:22:34] Yeah. Yeah. The red tape of the medical system definitely complicates things. And how insurance and hospitals and government all play a role in the system, complicates things and slows things down. For sure. My hope, like I remember when it was added to the DSM, I said, what's the point of me getting a diagnosis still at this point, because it's so new there won't.

Be anything I had hoped by this point by 2020, there would be something that there were some sort of okay. Benefit or reason to be diagnosed. And there wasn't of course, less than 10 years is very various, basically yesterday in government hospital time. But the problem is, is there. Even though, you know, maybe not enough time has passed to do all the things there.

They haven't even started,

Damaged Parents: [00:23:27] Well, it certainly sounds like that, right?

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:23:30] They're still lobbying. I asked NEDIC when I was on the phone with them. You're like, well, how do we get them to care? And I could hear sort of, I think it was the sympathy that, her pain for me in her voice when she said, we're trying, we're trying every day, it's a problem that the activists are acutely aware of and are trying to fight for.

We just need to get more. We need to get louder. We need to get more vocal about it. We need to, I mean, that begins with education that begins with understanding what the illness looks like. It begins with recognizing and validating it as an illness that is just as serious as any other eating disorder.

You know, anorexia is, do not get me wrong. Anorexia is deadly. Anorexia would be awful and blaming is awful too. But binge eating disorder is deadly. Also. It's just deadly in a different way. Binge eating disorder is going to kill me. Slower. Binge eating disorder may still be my cause of death, even if I don't die for another 30, 60 years, because essentially for the past decade, I was poisoning my body.

With food. I was poisoning it with sugar, with carbohydrates, with processed, who knows what I was eating from, these places, the foods that I was eating, like I can't pronounce the ingredients on the back of it. I was poisoning myself essentially very slowly, and I still feel the side effects of that to this day.

Even if I am in a place of recovery.

Damaged Parents: [00:24:55] Help me understand the difference between overeating and binge eating. because I don't know that I totally get that

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:25:02] So I am, I'm no doctor. So these are not medically official terms by any means. Please, please do not legally held me accountable to these, but overeating is kind of like that feeling of you're having a meal you're full, but the meal is really good. So you just want a little bit more like it tastes good, so you're going to eat more, you know, and then you're going to feel like, Oh, I'm really stuffed like that.

That like, Oh, I'm so stuffed. I can't move that feeling. We get after Thanksgiving. That's overeating and that, you know, it happens. It's nothing to feel ashamed of if it happens in moderation in theory. If it's a once in a while thing, if it's, you know, we're having a party or the family's altogether for that dinner, and we just are enjoying that moment and we eat past the point of feeling full that's overeating with binge eating, it took me years to recognize what full felt like.

Again, It had nothing to do with, like, it wasn't that I would eat copious amounts of foods until I was overfull. I no longer knew what full felt like, because it, my brain, I stretched my stomach to the point where those signals couldn't like, and the signals were ignored for so long that my brain just didn't recognize them anymore.

 I wasn't eating because necessarily like the food tasted good. Yes. But it was eating to numb. It was every night. I think it's the minimum for binge eating disorder is bingeing food for a period of about two hours, at least three times a week.

Damaged Parents: [00:26:25] So you're just not stopping at all for those two hours. It's not like you have a meal and a couple of hours later, you're hungry. So you eat again. You're just eating the whole time.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:26:34] eating the entire time. And yeah, for a minimum of at least two hours and three times a week, I was doing it every night at a certain point in my illness. I was bingeing every single night at some points I would just eat all day. There were definitely times where I was, if I wasn't eating, I was thinking about what to eat next or trying to think of where I was going to get food next.

If I had eaten everything already Like food was an obsessive thought. It was always on my mind. Other symptoms would mean you don't want to eat in public. Like I would think about how. Can I get home to eat?  I wasn't eating in front of people as much because there's a lot, again, a lot of shame associated with food and you start to think about what people might think when you're eating.

Even if it is a plate of vegetables at a, a party or whatnot, like you, you just don't, I wouldn't eat as much in front of people. I would wait to go home so I could eat whatever I wanted and how much I wanted. I would leave social events early. Just to go eat well, to go binge more specifically, it wasn't eating, it was bingeing.

You hide what you do eat. Like I said before, you know, I was always throwing the garbage away before anybody came over. It wasn't just, I'll put the wrappers in the garbage, under the sink. Like I wanted to make sure nobody even looked under my sink and saw the wrappers there.

It's more encompassing.

Damaged Parents: [00:27:49] yeah, it sounds like more eating for emotional purpose than for nutrition

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:27:57] cause it tastes good.

Damaged Parents: [00:27:58] or because it tastes good. Okay. So you're really trying to like fill in and tell me if I'm getting this wrong. It sounds like maybe there were some other things of depression and things like that going on.

And you were trying to solve that with food.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:28:12] essentially there certainly were. Traumatic incidences in my youth. I hit puberty early and so I was often harassed. I was sexually harassed by somebody in the seventh grade to the point where he. Should have been expelled the first time, but wasn't, and then got expelled later. And then after that I started my first relationship.

My first boyfriend was in the eighth grade and we dated on and off for about five years and it was emotionally, mentally abusive. And so having to deal with these really heavy abusive situation at such a formative age, Had it side effects. I also have a family history of depression of, bipolar disorder.

There's deep family history for me when it comes to mental illness. And there's a lot of different sort of things that built up and into play. And I think that part of it is. Because these incidences happen when I was young because of family history, I couldn't necessarily, I didn't learn how to deal and process with emotions.

I had a lot of negative thoughts about myself, also built up that then would cause painful emotions that I didn't know how to deal with. And so, yeah, for me, food was a way to numb food was a way to sort of ignore and repress, but I wasn't even conscious that that's what I was doing.

Damaged Parents: [00:29:31] Right. Yeah. And it's just. gaining emotional intelligence would have been extremely helpful. And I'm thinking that's part of your journey as you healed, tell us what you did for you that is helping you now. What are you doing now to help keep yourself or to help move in the right direction?

So I'm not certain in any situation we can keep ourselves anywhere.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:29:54] You know, one of the best things I did from myself, this go round, like I had said, I relapsed in 2019 received my diagnosis in January, 2020, and then the pandemic hit in March and impacting all of the systems that were beginning to be put in place for me to heal. If you're support, medically supervised support, what little medically supervised support I could get is at a hospital and nobody can go into hospitals unless it's absolutely emergent.

Suddenly you're cut off from your support. So I, at 29 years of age, moved back in with my parents, I essentially, what I've done is I've created my own in patient care. I. Have my parents' support. My parents are wonderful. I'm very grateful and privileged to have incredible parents who do support. Yeah.

I moved back in with them. I do the cooking for the family because that way I do get to change. My relationship with food. Food has become something where I am showing my care for my family. I'm I'm nurturing my family. It's not just me. It's easy to not care about me. It's a lot harder to. Not care about what my parents are eating.

Right. And so I get to see food as a way to show love, to show that I care to nurture and provide them with nutrients. I have their support, even when things get hard, you know, I'm back in a place of recovery. Now I say, I am in recovery with my eating disorder. This time around I've had struggles still, but having that sort of.

Change in my relationship with food was really a powerful way, to shift how food and I have a one-on-one relationship as well. Like I'm feeling secure that when I do move out, I can continue to look at food and treat food the same way as I do now.

Damaged Parents: [00:31:38] well, and it sounds like that's what you needed to me and I'm not certain that I think sometimes it's really easy to be humbled or humiliated by a choice we make and think it's wrong that, moving in with my parents is horrible. If you will, like as an example. And yet sometimes that safety net is required.

And without that safety, the work couldn't be done.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:32:07] a hundred percent, 100%. Moving on with my parents came with some added complicated layers. They were living on the complete other side of the country from me. So we had to, move in the middle of a pandemic from Toronto to Vancouver, British Columbia, essentially. And that meant there were a lot of different changes in my life.

I had to leave my. Yeah. I was a freelancer. All my contacts were in Toronto. There were a lot of things that a lot of pros and cons I had to wait. Plus the pandemic, it was smart to move back where my family was when there was a global pandemic going on. I had elderly parents, their grandparents, you know, my, my grandpa, he didn't pass from COVID, but he did pass shortly after I moved back.

It was a good decision with many factors involved, but it also meant I had to give up a lot of things. I'm also very aware that. Oh, a lot of people don't have that option. You know, a lot of people don't have family. They can safely move back in with a lot of people. I have wonderful parents.

There are still things that influence this eating disorder with my parents. Parents can leave a lot of trauma with their children, you know, intentionally or not. Nobody's gonna raise that perfect kid. And so some people, it would. Worsen their eating disorder. If they move back in with their parents, because their parents are a lot of that triggering underlying cause for their eating disorders.

So I am one of the privileged, grateful ones who have that option of yes, giving myself exactly what I needed and it being with my family. But I know that there are so many who don't have that option.

Damaged Parents: [00:33:40] Well, and I'm thinking even with the family that you said has been supportive and wants to help, they're still going to be triggers in the dynamic because of how you, I mean, if no child escapes, childhood unscathed, then aren't, we all injured in some way. Right. So. There's going to be dynamics that are not fun, and they're going to be some dynamics that are fantastic.

So as long as most of them are fantastic, if you're able to cope with the triggers, I would think that would be,

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:34:11] Yes, absolutely. And at the same time too, my parents aren't psychologists. They are. One's a bookkeeper and one works in animal control. Like they are not professionals in the mental health field. So they're doing the best they can. They've had over 10 years of expense of watching me live with this and try to communicate with them what was going on.

But I certainly was not very good at that for most of the past 10 years. And so I think living with me has also been a bit of an eyeopening education process for them. As well as to what life is like with an eating disorder, you know, they, they really didn't know first hand, a lot of it, for example, when, when I did first move back, my mom cleaning the kitchen at night is kind of like her de-stressing moment.

She sounds super stressed out when she does it. So dad and I are both like, I don't know how that works, but she is like, Nope, I cleaned the kitchen at night. You don't clean the kitchen at night, Megan. Like I wanted to she's like, Nope, this is, this is my thing. And I think the third night of me cooking, I had really, like, I had made like pasta sauce from scratch.

Like there was just, there was a lot of dishes and she was a little upset about the amount of dishes and you know said this, this can't happen every night. Like you can't be cooking like this every night. There's just too much and that was a huge trigger for me. I, I ended up in my room.

I was like trying to stop myself from crying. And she came in and going on, like what was going on. And I had to explain to her like, A little bit more. I think that was her first eye-opening moment. She knew that part of the reason I wanted to do the cooking was to heal my relationship, but she didn't realize that it was such a vital part and that, being able to make things from scratch, being able to experiment and play with food was such a.

Important part to my healing, but also she had no idea how bad it got in this relapse. Cause I, I loved her. So you just, you have no idea how bad it was. And she said, well, tell me, and I had to tell her, you know, why you wouldn't have recognized me there. I was dead behind the eyes. I was not really living.

I was just moving through the days and yeah. And I still remember her like processing the information, seeing just seeing my response to her frustration. And, you know, she said, I'm so sorry. I should have never, put that on you. Like, she apologized for the way it was approached and it was wonderful in the end, but it was also a huge learning experience for her to see, Oh, this was bad.

We almost probably lost her. I didn't have to say the words I was feeling suicidal in this, go around for, to get that. I almost didn't make it through this time.

Damaged Parents: [00:36:40] Yeah. Okay. So you brought up, I think a really interesting question in my mind about when you're around someone with an eating disorder what's, I mean, at least for you the best way to be supportive.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:36:57] in my early days, I made jokes a lot. About when I was first starting to tell people I have an eating disorder I approach as with many communities. I mean, many comedians do have different forms of mental illness. And that is why they're so funny. And so for me, I still approach my mental health from a very dry, sarcastic, comedic standpoint.

It's okay to laugh. When somebody with mental illness is making a joke about their mental illness. Sometimes when the worst thing you can do is not laugh because then I'm like, Oh, should I not have said that? Do I make, did I make them uncomfortable? Like, I start freaking out about how I made the other person feel.

Even my doctors, like I always know I'm with a good doctor when they laugh at my humor.

Damaged Parents: [00:37:37] Okay. So it's important to be with you where

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:37:40] with you where you're at  and follow. That person's cues. if I'm not bringing up the eating disorder, maybe don't bring it up into conversation with me. It's a constant I'm reminded of it enough times.

I don't mean people bring it up.

Damaged Parents: [00:37:54] Okay. Thank you for that. Because it just hit me. That society tells. Us all day long, what we're supposed to look like. And it's probably in your face all of the time. And even if someone's coming to you because they're concerned and they love you. That may not be even helpful because you're already beating yourself up over it.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:38:18] Yeah. That's true. And I'm also because I'm, I'm still in a fragile place with my recovery. Like, I feel stronger than I have in the past 10, 10 years. There are so many amazing things that have happened in recently, just because I am in such a stronger place. And I'm grateful for that, but it's still a very fragile place.

You know, I, I could be fine today and tomorrow. All I want to do is binge Easter is really hard for me because I really love mini eggs.

Damaged Parents: [00:38:43] Oh, my favorite

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:38:45] Mini eggs are delicious,

Damaged Parents: [00:38:46] they're so dangerous.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:38:48] they're so dangerous. There were again, because I do the cooking. I also do the grocery shopping. That was important for me too, is to see how I am in grocery stores.

Because grocery shopping is a scary experience for me, even before there was a pandemic and people were afraid of being with other people in grocery stores, grocery shopping is terrifying for me. And here's one of the great things my mom did. Because we were sitting on the couch, just watching TV at like eight o'clock at night.

And I was like, Oh, I could go for a slice of cake right now. And I just, like, I could go for some mini eggs because that's all I had been thinking about for days was mini eggs and truth be told. I like a couple of weeks prior. Relapsed and had been bingeing on mini eggs in my room in quiet with like when my parents went to bed because I had relapsed and mini eggs were around and they are one of the deadliest things, like the biggest triggers for me and my moms.

Like the second, I just like, I could go for so mini eggs. My mom's eyes went wide. She looked and she's like, I forgot mini eggs are a big trigger for you. And it's Easter. I'm going to do the grocery shopping from now on. So you don't have to go into the store to see them.

Damaged Parents: [00:39:48] Instead of asking you

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:39:49] Instead of asking,

Well but you know what?

I was okay. She like, she knew me well enough to know that that like she just she's like, I'll do the grocery shopping, like it for it was this immediate, like responsive, how can I help? And if I had said, no, no, no, I need to do it. She would have been fine with that. She's like, I'll do the grocery shopping for you until Easter is over.

And I just looked ahead. Thank you. Like, I didn't even think to ask her to do that for me. I didn't even think of that as a, like, Probably a good idea to not be surrounded by this big trigger for myself for the next month, because they put candy out. So insanely early for holidays these days.  I stopped not only did I stop bingeing on mini eggs.

I also thought any time that that thought came up, I would think to myself, my mom is being so great and supportive for me. If she could, like she's being so awesome. I can do this. I can do this. Not just for myself, but for her as well. You know, it wasn't a guilt thing. It's it is a thought that does strengthen me when I do have this like, Oh, I really need some mini eggs.

I go, yeah, your mom's doing the grocery shopping for you. Look at her. It's a way for me to sort of remind myself that I have so much love in my life, so no, like my mom knows me well enough. She knew that moment. Well enough to know, like, I'm going to do this. And if I had said, no, I need to do it anyway.

She'd be okay. And I have done some grocery shopping in between. Now that supplies are running low I was like, okay, I'm going to do some grocery shopping last week. I think I went back for the first time and I was perfectly fine. I didn't even see an Easter section.

Damaged Parents: [00:41:11] Even if someone comes to you and says, let me do this, you take responsibility and say, no, I could have said no. Or I could have said yes. And allowing you that broom, because I also heard you say, mom would have respected if I said, no, no, no, I got this. And so allowing for whatever the struggle is, don't, it's not necessarily about walking on eggshells and not being certain what to offer or.

So still be as a support person, all of who you are, just allow that person room to say no, if that's not what they need or want.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:41:43] Trust that person to know what's best for them. This may be a little complicated to bring in, but I have a clothing line related to mental illness that had to shut down for the pandemic. Prior to that, I was planning this really, really cool campaign that is going to be our relaunch campaign come September when we get back live.

But as part of that, I did a survey on what people with mental illness wish other folks knew. And one of the biggest things that came out of that, one of the like consistent. There were a few different threads, but one of them was, you're not our doctors and we don't expect you to be if we have a doctor, we have a healthcare team supporting us.

We don't need you to play the role of doctor. We don't need you to be the insight into how to treat us. So trust us that we have that team trust us. When we say what we need for our treatment, we just need you to be our friend. We need you to listen. And when we are stressing, you know, It's like with almost any relationship, especially with women where, you know, if you're venting sometimes your job isn't to provide answers.

We're not looking for solutions. When we are expressing our feelings, we're just looking for somebody to listen to us and to sympathize or empathize to acknowledge the validity of the pain. You know, that was one of the biggest struggles for me was I felt like my eating disorder was unvalid.

From the fact that it wasn't even diagnosable to the fact that it's, it's not the common story told with eating disorders. You know, I thought because I didn't have anorexia or bulimia, my eating disorder wasn't even worth looking at or talking about like I was making too big of a deal of it, or I was, I was being overly exaggerating or too big, or just trying to get attention.

All those sort of narratives were hitting me. And so just having somebody say that. They acknowledge and accept in a sense that my experiences are valid. That what I was feeling was real, was the biggest support anybody could give me.

Damaged Parents: [00:43:43] That's amazing. I'm so glad we've gotten to have you on the show today. Like I've learned so much and I love that. I got to have an aha. I love being surprised.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:43:53] like to surprise people. I like to keep different. Uh, no, thank you for having me again, like I said, the first step with any of this changes is yeah. Bringing awareness to what it is and know that if you have binge eating disorder, you think you have binge eating disorder that is valid, that trust your gut, go to your doctor.

It's not going to be an easy road, but. You don't have to do it alone. And if you think somebody has binge eating disorder, or somebody comes to you and says they have binge-eating disorder, it's a very real problem. And it's probably not what you expect. It probably has very little to do with food actually.

And what way a little to do with weight often though, they are factors and more to do with trauma and trying to numb, and it is not an easy road, but at the same time, Yeah, you're not our doctors. We just need you for support.

Damaged Parents: [00:44:44] Oh, wow. That's just amazing. Okay. I promised you three things or I asked you, I told you at the beginning, we'd round out with, or before. I don't know if that was before we were recording or not right now, but what are three things that support people or people who are struggling with binge eating? Can can do today.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:45:03] so I'm a big fan of prepare before. An incident. I build myself a little mental health toolkit. So I put together things that I know are going to support me because when we do experience, whether it's mental illness or just a mental health gen challenge in general, we all have mental health. We all felt low mental health days when I'm in that moment.

When I wake up knowing my depression is taking control of me, I don't want to do the work to think of what can I do now to make this better, to ease this pain. Instead, I think about that when I am strong, when I'm healthy, what can I do to help myself? You know, I know essential oils work wonders for me. I know that candles are great.

I know that I sometimes need to write out my feelings and I know that seeing photos of my loved ones are important. So I have all these things in one centralized location so that when I do wake up going, Oh, today's going to be a hard day. I can just open the drawer where they are. And pull out the resources without having to think about it.

So build yourself a mental health toolkit with the practices, the rituals, and the supplies, you know, we'll help you. That is my biggest tip. My second tip would be, if you are wondering, is my relationship with food. Normal is my relationship with food healthy. Basically, if you have any questions, if anything is normal, feel free to ask your doctor.

You may be surprised. I had been in the mental health care field for about 10 years. I had been looking and learning about mental illness for at least five. And I had no idea that I was experiencing symptoms of PTSD. Right. That surprised me. So you might be surprised and there might be resources and tools out there to support you through what's going on.

So please talk to a doctor or talk to a counselor. Counselors are great for everybody just like once in a quarter, have a little check-in appointment and be like, okay, I want to know what's going on with me. They're great. Counselors are there to support you. And my third is to trust yourself, trust your gut trust that you can support yourself with support.

I always wanting instances that, you know, external support is very, very important because sometimes we do need to be monitored, but trust that. You know, what's best for you. You know, even if something seems counter-intuitive like my safety net of a bowl of cereal might not make the most sense to everybody.

The fact that I was literally having panic attacks because honey nut Cheerios were not available for months because the pandemic seems very petty and very small, but I know just how much honey nut Cheerios helped me, even if it's right. Like, it's so weird because. Shouldn't food. Shouldn't be the thing that helps me, but just having a box in my house makes everything else easier.

And I'm okay with that. I don't feel guilt over that, but it was a process. So give yourself permission to do what feels right.

Damaged Parents: [00:47:54] and it doesn't have to make sense to everyone

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:47:58] to everyone You don't even have to explain it to everyone else. I only had to start explaining my honey nut Cheerios needs because I was getting Instacart shoppers to bring me groceries and had to stress to them. The importance of honey nut Cheerios,

Damaged Parents: [00:48:10] Oh,

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:48:11] the weird, it was a really weird moment in the pandemic for me.

Damaged Parents: [00:48:15] It's okay. I just really liked that idea of, you don't have to justify what works for you. It doesn't have to be because once something that works for me may not work for you and vice versa and that's okay. It's totally okay.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:48:31] If it works for you, it's valid.

Damaged Parents: [00:48:33] exactly.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:48:34] It's that simple.

Damaged Parents: [00:48:35] Yeah. Thank you so much, Megan. I'm so glad I had you on the show.

Megan te Boekhorst: [00:48:40] Thank you so much for having me.

 Damaged Parents: [00:48:42] Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Relatively Damaged by Damaged Parents. We've really enjoyed talking to Megan about how she learned to find her own path and really advocate for herself. We especially liked when she reminded us that what works for her might not be what works for you.

To unite with other damaged people, connect with us on Instagram. Look for damaged parents. Then. We'll be here next week still relatively damaged see you