Saltare

Testimony of Anne, 19, participant in the Saltare growth courses, for De Warmste Week 2021:

Three years ago I took the growth course by Outward Bound and Saltare for people with an eating disorder. My parents had suggested it because of my bulimia. They had just discovered it and wanted to do something for me straight away. When they found out, I thought it was terrible. But once I was signed up for the course it gave me peace. I thought: ‘Okay, maybe there is finally something that can get me out of here’.
The problem had been lurking since I was 14. It was a part of me that only I knew and lived. I had accepted it as something that would always be there. I was afraid of living alone later, because then the eating disorder might take over. At home I still had my parents’ control. How incredibly glad and grateful I am now that they discovered it then and that I got help.

Everything is different now. Better. Before taking the course I could never have imagined that it could be different.  

A beautiful outside

I was doing quite okay, I thought. I had a full social life and my grades had been good in the first year of university. On the outside my life looked good. I met the expectations of the people around me. I could laugh, I could have fun, I could not cry.
I lived in a student room and went home at weekends. I often could not sleep before first watching a series and eating a lot, then throwing it up because I absolutely was not allowed to put on weight. It is a ‘loop’ in your head that repeats itself every time you get the chance. A way of dealing with tension and suppressing real emotions.
I think I could not handle the stimuli of the day, the social and school-related stress, in the evening. Inside I was restless, and that is why I preferred to have as many people around me as possible, so that I did not have to be alone.
I was critical of myself in many areas. About my body, which I had found too fat since puberty. Also in my family I felt inferior and not good enough. I felt I had to compensate for these shortcomings with good grades, showing talents and not disappointing anyone.
 
A leap into the deep

The growth course was a leap into the deep. On the first day I cried for a whole hour straight. It was confronting to hear the stories of women who were older than me and were still struggling with that same problem. Suddenly I could talk with people about the thing I had always been ashamed of. They listened without judgement and with a lot of understanding.  

Climbing, walking and reflecting

I am an adventurous girl, so this camp was ideal. We went climbing on mountains and in caves, we went walking and did group exercises. Afterwards we always reflected on how we had felt in the group, and what the exercise/experience had triggered in us. The focus was not on the eating problem itself, but on us as a person with our background and feelings.

Understanding where it comes from

In my experience an eating disorder is only the expression of an underlying problem. Solving the ‘disturbed’ behaviour alone is not enough. Understanding where it comes from is so much more important. We were given an exercise in which we went back to experiences from our childhood. I became aware that I had a negative and somewhat repressed image of that. I was 18, and had never reflected on my childhood experience in depth. Later, after the camp, I had a number of sessions with my parents and the psychologist. I am lucky to have wonderful parents who were open to communicating about how I felt and had felt in the past. Expressing this was one of the steps towards my recovery.  

A letter to myself

At the end of the camp we wrote a letter to ourselves. It is strange to write to yourself as if you were another person. I promised then that I would be there for myself, whatever happened. Every time I fell back into my old patterns, I would no longer beat myself up (figuratively) but look at it lovingly the next day and try to understand why it had happened. Quietly I built my inner world: a safe place where I could come home.  
The confrontation with myself was painful, but now I know it is good pain. It is in any case better than twisting yourself into all kinds of shapes so as not to feel the pain. I learned to deal with my feelings and to express them.
Writing became my way of doing this. My inner dialogue, which before had mainly consisted of self-criticism, changed. I had agreed with myself not to write badly about myself any more. Thoughts just pop up, but while writing you can choose to use your words so that you don’t trash yourself. Writing songs was like a warm blanket around me. It gives comfort and satisfaction when a song lyric expresses exactly what lives inside me. Music is something so beautiful.

A different way of thinking

For me the growth course was the beginning of a whole different way of thinking. I can even say that I am grateful for the eating problem, because I got so much out of it. The song ‘follow the bird’ comes from the period after the growth course. You can listen to it on SoundCloud if you type ‘thecolorbleu’. For me it is about freedom and daring to look at who you really are."