03 Sep 2025

My Journey with Complex Mental Illness & Eating Disorders

In this blog, lived experience advocate Hannah reflects on her journey four years on since her initial blog post.

I turned 28 this year and wow, where did the last few years go? Since my original article in 2021, I have really worked hard to turn my life around.

For years, my eating disorder struggles felt like they were going to be chained to me forever – that they were always going to be part of my identity. It impacted many aspects of my life, from my relationships with friends and family, to employment too.

However, my recovery journey has brought with it a lot of wins, self-reflection, and the development of new skills and strategies to help manage and cope with my mental illnesses, my anxieties, my thoughts and my urges.

I want to share that as I write, I do my best to write from the heart. I like to put additional focus on including the ‘middle’ parts of the journey that you may not hear or see often. Not seeing or hearing these middle parts; made parts of my eating disorder recovery process rather lonely.

Finding my ‘person’, whether it’s a friend, a family member, or a health professional, was a crucial step in my recovery journey, and in my decision to stop engaging in self-harming. This trusted person taught me to use my words to express my feelings and thoughts when things were feeling difficult, and I am now five years self harm free! I am so proud of myself every year I reach the yearly milestone.

As I continue along my recovery journey, there’s been a lot of self-reflection. I’ve learnt a lot about myself, what my triggers are, what trauma is still attached to me and what anxieties or thoughts are holding me back from getting well. My improved self-awareness of where I am at mentally and emotionally has improved my ability to reach out for help. I’m honest with my treatment teams and honest with myself. And that is not always that easy to do.

Having a multidisciplinary healthcare team has also been a massive game changer. I engage in therapy multiple times a week, which gives me a safe space, strategies, feedback and an enormous amount of support.

The anxiety I experienced during the initial stages of eating disorder recovery was huge – and even then, I don’t even think the word huge really gives the feeling and thoughts justice, in terms of how disruptive and debilitating my anxiety was. It was awful and isolating. I still struggle with my anxiety but to a different extent.

For a long time, every meal or snack was a battlefield. It took time, effort, support, therapy and consistency to see improvements. Some days just getting myself to the table and sitting in the chair was a problematic experience. However, the biggest thing was that I kept showing up, no matter what. Even with the pre-meal panic attacks, the roller coaster of emotions and the consuming eating disorder thoughts inside my head. Slowly, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week and year by year progress was being made. Back then, I couldn’t recognise the improvements I was making. At the time, change felt far away.

Back when I was in hospital, guest speakers would visit the ward and share their experience – and for a long time, I honestly didn’t think that one day that could possibly be me sharing my story. I truly didn’t believe that I would ever get better, let alone the idea that recovery was even a real thing – it was hard to believe that there was a whole world out there outside of the life inside my head.

Sitting back, four years later, it was absolutely worth persisting with eating disorder and mental health recovery journey. I don’t claim to be ‘recovered’ at this point in time. Mental illness has put me through a lot in the last decade, and there were times when I didn’t see any light at the end of the very long tunnel. However, I have made it through some of the most dark, challenging and traumatic years. I’ve got through it! Even when I really did not believe I could.

The more I work on my eating disorder recovery and my mental illness conditions, the more I am regaining Hannah. Regaining, my personality, my strength, my values, valued employment, family and friends. Looking at all I have gained from recovery; I am a different person in so many good ways.

If I could go back and talk to my younger self, I would tell her that things will get better if I hold on, trust the process, and put the work in.

I now have the strength, emotional, mental and physical to start living my life “Han’s life”, as my team and I like to call it. I have been able to achieve, see and do some pretty awesome things that not that long ago I wasn’t able to do or have the capacity to do, including holding down a job, taking a solo cruise to the Whitsundays, trying out paddle boarding, ice skating, going up the Eureka Sky Deck, attending a pottery class, going camping, feeding giraffes at the zoo, a paint and sip (without the sip), and enjoying a sunflower farm. Taking part in these activities wasn’t easy, and there was a lot of anxiety involved, however reaching out for support and reassurance when needed made a big difference.

The list of things I want to achieve is growing, at times working on my goals and even establishing my goals and life’s desires can be quite hard. There has and there will be obstacles on the way, so fair by what I have achieved it’s worth working through them – and I’m proud of my perseverance thus far.

I like to think about how flowers, which grow from seeds in the ground, need both sunlight and rain to grow. Transformation and growth don’t happen overnight, but with time, persistence, and care, it will grow. And my flower is growing, every day.

Get Support

No matter how the eating disorder developed, recovery is possible, and Butterfly is here to help.

For confidential and free counselling, call the Butterfly National Helpline on 1800 ED HOPE (1800 33 4673) or chat online or email, 7 days a week, 8am-midnight (AEDT).

Find an eating disorder professional – search Butterfly’s National Referral Database to find eating disorder practitioners closest to you.