Stories of Healing: Gabby
After years of living in shame and fear, Gabby finally decided it was time to get the help for her battle with an eating disorder. She came to Rock Recovery in 2018, desperate for care and a community to support her. It was through Rock’s Breaking Bread program, Gabby gained the tools she needed to find true and lasting freedom. Now, she inpires to others do the same!
My disordered eating began my freshman year of high school, but I began to experience poor body image beginning in fifth grade. I come from a multi-cultural family, my dad is American born and raised, my mom an immigrant from El Salvador…When I was little, I was always called ‘flaquita’ which is an endearing term in Spanish for a ‘little skinny girl’. This name in my perfectionist mind became part of my identity. Family members would comment on and rave about my small body and I loved hearing the positive affirmation. By the time I was in sixth grade, this manifested into body dysmorphia, seeing my body much differently than it truly looked, and comparing myself and my body to the bodies of my friends whom I envied for the small bodies they had. I began self-harming, isolating myself from my family and developed severe depression…
My freshman year of high school was a big shock for me…I became very suicidal to the point where the school had an intervention and my parents got involved. I was being checked regularly for indications of self-harm and needed a new way to cope. Earlier that year, my health class had completed a unit on nutrition in which we used a phone application to track physical activity and our nutrition. So, as my new coping strategy, I switched from self-harming to counting calories. It started out pretty innocently. I would meet the number the app suggested was sufficient, but then I started wanting my weight to go down and it became a competition with myself to eat below what my “goal” number was and to be under by more and more each day.
By the end of my sophomore year of high school, my health was beginning to be compromised. While I was getting a lot of positive feedback on my weight loss from my peers, my memory was not the same. I was sleeping through my classes, spending most of my time and home, and my body couldn’t recover from or complete the physical activity I was used to. After some neighbors expressed to my parents that I looked sick, my mom brought me to my doctor who told us that I would either need to start eating more on my own, or he would recommend that I begin an inpatient program. Out of fear of costing my parents more money, I decided to eat again. In order to regain control over something, I went vegan, started training for a half marathon and continued to have my own “food rules.” This became my new identity.
I started college with this mindset, and it made a lot of normal things extremely overwhelming for me. On accepted students day, the sandwich they advertised as vegan friendly had cheese in it and I ate it without realizing until the end, then had a panic attack. My parents watched me cry inconsolably in front of all my new classmates – a full-on elementary-level temper tantrum. This was when I started accepting that I needed help…I was seeing a therapist at the time who recommended and spoke highly of Rock Recovery, so I decided to apply. I loved that it was faith-based and focused on overcoming fear foods.
On my first day at Rock, I commuted over an hour to get there. I remember joking on my way in after seeing the Five Guys on the corner I said, ‘I’ll die if we’re having Five Guys tonight.’ Lo and behold, that was our meal. We sat around a table facing each other, we discussed our hunger, and we shared our hopes and fears about the meal. I hadn’t had a burger, french fries, non-diet soda, or a real dessert in over two years, but doing it with other people who could relate to my fear made it so much easier.
Now I am a first-year law student at Catholic University on a full-ride, so I think I’ve grown a bit. While it would be so simple for me to regress into the eating disorder right now, I have learned that being free from it is worth the effort. I have allowed my friends, family and my fiance to be my support system for this struggle, letting them know what I am feeling and how they can help. I have turned my social media into a space where I advocate about my own story and share resources and affirmations for those who may be struggling. I even participated in Miss Maryland (and did not win), but grew in confidence and proved to myself that I can be proud of my body.
Whenever the topic of my recovery comes up with my family, we are in full consensus that if it wasn’t for Rock, I still wouldn’t be living a normal life. I would be living in constant fear and guilt and loneliness, but thanks to Rock, I don’t have to live like that. Thank you for making it possible for me to get the help I needed and to succeed the way I have today. I wouldn’t ever be as happy or free if it weren’t for you.