Thank you for sharing your story with us, I think it is great how you are actually now trying to take what made you go down this path and use it to your advantage. Best of luck for your recovery!
I will share my story but I fear it will be quite long, as I personally have never been able to pinpoint one key cause of my eating disorder, so I feel compelled to include everything, although it may be terribly tedious... No one has to read it, I will just type it. But I will try too keep it short anyway.
I had alot of problems in my childhood:
-My brother has Autism and he would get very violent almost everyday, I used to sit up in my bedroom, baricade my door and go to another world trying to block out the sound of him beating up my mummy. Sometimes he would take all my clothes, including the ones I was wearing and throw them downstairs from my bedroom, so I would have to run downstairs nakes to get them while he would laugh. One day he traped me and my mum in the kitchn and threaterned us with a knife. Yet my mum would always say, "he doesn't know what he is doing, it is not his fault".
My dad was always at work, so he never saw what happened.
-I developed quite a rare form of epilepsy when I was 4, which meant constant hospital visits and lots of different medications which caused terrible side effects, severe weight gain, insomnia, depression, anxiety, one even caused hallucinations. But luckily I grew out of it when I was 10 and the seizures stopped.
-I was sexually abused as a child by someone I am not willing to ever identify, it lasted at least a year when I was about 7/8.
-I was severely bullied for 7 out of11 years of my time at school. In primary school I would get beaten up in playground by about half the boys in my year pretty much everyday and get called names constantly. Then in secondary school it got worse, a group of girls would chase my around the school at breaktime, also I got called names pretty much constantly and had no friends for most of the time. I had to spend most of break times in maths class or in the office just to escape.
-My parents divorced when I was 10, my dad got severely depressed, began drinking and lost his very high paid job. We had to move into a house much smaller than the one we used to live in, my mum worked all hours of the day for littly money and I would be left on my own. My brother went to live with my daad wo managed to sort himself out and get a new job after living with his parents for a year.
So by the age of 14 I had a BMI of 38 being the result of 6 years taking medication which basically turned my metaolism down to 0, and 4 years of binge eating when I was on my own in the house. My logic was, I either kill myself, or I eat, so I ate.
Then I started throwing up, not much just a couple of times a week.
When I turned 15 my BMI had gone up again to 39 as the throwing up just made me eat more.
So one day something in my mind just clicked, don't eat.
I started by just cutting down as much as possible, eating the bare minimum and water fasting when I could. Then I learned about calories and became obsessed about them. Just a few months later my BMI had fallen from 39 to 26, I know that is still overweight, but it was very fast weight loss.
Then I went on holiday, and started binging again. I went back up to a BMI of 30 in what seemed like no time at all.
When I got back from holiday i tried to restrict again like I was before, but I got very ill I could hardly walk, every single muscle, every single bone, every single joint, basically every cell in my body hurt so bad and I was so weak. I experienced episodes of temporary paralysis, my resting heart rate had dropped to 39 bpm at it's lowest. No matter how many layers I put on I was freezing cold, my thick curly hair felt like straw, it was falling out, and I would often turn blue.
So I ate, and rested and after a while I stabalised physically, but I felt so big I could not stand it, so I started throwing up again.
But this time it was several times a day, at my worst, I was throing up a dozen times a day, and when I could not throw up I would take lots and lots of laxatives and diet pills. But I was still binging. So I dropped down to a BMI 24 by this time I was 16. But my GP figured out that I had been purging so I was sent for counselling with someone who as it turned out knows nothing abou eating disorders.
But I told my friend around this same time what had been going on with me and she was such a big help, am very lucky, purging gradually decreased down to just once per week. But I kept binging so i got back up to a BMI of 29.
After a while I could not stand it anymore, started restricting again, got down to 22 BMI.
Then got diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, started getting some proper help, and now I am happy to say, I am finally on the road to recovery. My BMI is 25 at the moment, but I am dealing with it. I have had heart,kidney, digestive and liver problems, now i just need to get on with my life.
Sorry that was very long...