I was a very joyful little girl, curious and with a great thirst for knowledge. From a young age, I learned to read and to cook. I especially liked to eat because I was greedy, which delighted my parents! But in High School, when I was 12 years old, I suffered from anorexia. At first, my GP managed my treatment, but the situation became more complicated than expected and I was taken into care at the American hospital. Although I recovered quite quickly, the pressure of the senior high school exams got the better of my fragile remission and I fell into anorexia a second time. This time, I was even more affected. I was hospitalized at the Robert Debré Hospital and accompanied by Delphine, a Tipi professional.
The Tipi follow-up accompanied me throughout my healing process and played an important role in my recovery. Indeed, the emotional regulations allowed me to unblock a certain number of problems. For example, when I felt like eating and started to eat better, I didn’t like it when people stared at me at mealtimes. So, we treated this with emotional regulation. It was one of the regulations that worked best, and it served me well because it meant I was no longer self-conscious about the way people looked at me. It was critical to my healing process.
It’s been a while since this emotional regulation took place, but I remember it well. I was asked to find a precise situation when people were looking at me when I was eating. As I was talking about it, I immediately felt the sensations in my body, but I let them pass through and very quickly they calmed down.
The change after that had a huge impact. I was no longer self-conscious when people stared. This was so important – it meant I could continue on my healing path, which could not have happened if I was embarrassed every time somebody stared at my plate. Today, I am almost completely healed, and I feel fulfilled, as much within my family as with my friends or in my studies.
Emotional regulation has certainly changed my life and allowed me to fully become myself by overcoming my problems. I still practice it in my everyday life, when the need arises: when it comes to problems in relationships with others, questions about friendships, love affairs or whatever… It is a method that I believe we can and should use throughout our lives because it can adapt to different experiences, feelings but above all, to different problems.
