{"id":191679,"date":"2017-07-29T18:46:13","date_gmt":"2017-07-29T18:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/this-bachelor-star-is-opening-up-about-her-struggles-with-bulimia-and-addiction\/"},"modified":"2017-07-29T18:46:13","modified_gmt":"2017-07-29T18:46:13","slug":"this-bachelor-star-is-opening-up-about-her-struggles-with-bulimia-and-addiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/this-bachelor-star-is-opening-up-about-her-struggles-with-bulimia-and-addiction\/","title":{"rendered":"This ‘Bachelor’ Star Is Opening Up About Her Struggles With Bulimia And Addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI\u2019m going to talk about addiction,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a big part of my life, and it\u2019s good to share.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy makeup is basically that I just want it all, all the time,\u201d she continued. \u201cThat\u2019s what makes me a really joyful person \u2026 I really like experiencing life, I really, truly enjoy life so much\u2014but I also don\u2019t know when to stop.\u201d Nilsson says that she\u2019s struggled with binge-eating disorder (BED), an eating disorder characterized by a cycle of binging and purging, since she was young, and later developed bulimia, which is an obsessive desire to lose weight with bouts of binge-eating, followed by vomiting, purging, or fasting, in college.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI had a lot of shame, and that just kicked it up,\u201d she said. \u201cAll addictions are pretty related to shame and pain avoidance, in my experience. The years after college were really dark years. I was binging all day, throwing up. I was hiding it because I was so ashamed\u2014I was just mortified with myself. I would spend my days eating food in secret, throwing up in garbage bags in my car, throwing up in dumpsters, throwing up behind bushes, in the shower.\u201d Britt says this went on for years, but she didn\u2019t tell anyone because she was too ashamed.<\/p>\n

When she started filming The Bachelor<\/em>, she relapsed. \u201cFor me, having tons of food everywhere \u2026 it just became too much,\u201d she said. \u201cI had pain and anxiety, I felt insecure, I didn\u2019t feel pretty enough, I didn\u2019t know what was going on, I missed my family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Britt says she was \u201ctotally terrified\u201d that she would be caught on a mic and that \u201cmillions of people were going to know that I just couldn\u2019t control myself. It was really, really hard for me, and it just kept going and going.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou\u2019re mic-ed 24\/7,\u201d she continued. \u201cI would take my mic off and try to hide it under towels so they wouldn\u2019t hear me throw up, because then that was going to be on the show and that was going to be a plot line. How horrible would that be, to be the girl who has an eating disorder, who can\u2019t stop eating and throwing up? I mean, I had broken blood vessels. I would throw up until I was bleeding out of my nose. I just couldn\u2019t stop, and that\u2019s kind of been a theme in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Britt says she\u2019s also struggled with drugs and alcohol.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m an alcoholic,\u201d she said. \u201cMeaning not that I was drinking a bottle of wine by myself in the bathtub, or waking up and taking shots, but my personality, for better or worse, is a personality where little is good, all is best, and more, more, more. \u2026 That\u2019s just something that I\u2019ve had to navigate throughout my entire life. Alcohol has been part of my life off and on, but whenever it is a part of my life I try to control it and I can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Britt said she was also addicted to drugs in college, including cocoaine and marijuana. \u201cI used to smoke weed every single day in college,\u201d she said. \u201cI would be high giving presentations. I basically didn\u2019t know how to live without drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Britt says she hasn\u2019t had alcohol for a year. \u201cIt\u2019s really changed my life,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve reconciled with my dad, I\u2019ve gone back and made amends with most people in my life. I called all my roommates that I\u2019ve ever lived with. That was hard and embarrassing, but it was a really beautiful process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Britt says her fianc\u00e9 Jeremy Byrne has helped her recover. \u201cThe first person that I ever told [about my bulimia] was Jeremy,\u201d she said. \u201cIt actually was a huge release. He just stuck by me with it, he would ask me about it, he would keep me accountable, and it actually got much, much better. I started talking to people about it, I started going to groups about it. \u2026 I learned a lot. It wasn\u2019t completely eradicated, but it wasn\u2019t this shameful, horrible secret.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, I feel healthier,\u201d she said, adding that she made a vow to never purposefully throw up after The Bachelor<\/em> and has stuck to that promise. But, her recovery is still ongoing. \u201cI\u2019m not perfect, at all,\u201d she said. \u201cI still struggle. It\u2019s still hard for me to know when I\u2019m hungry, when I\u2019m full, when to stop \u2026 I used to be embarrassed about this, but it is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Super-stressed lately? This yoga pose can help:<\/em><\/p>\n

Britt\u2019s story is intense and emotional. However, it\u2019s not uncommon for someone struggling with eating disorders to experience symptoms of more than one, says Hannah Beaver, L.C.S.W., team leader at The Renfrew Center of Radnor<\/a>. \u201cThat is referred to as \u2018symptom swapping,\u2019 which means replacing one disordered behavior with another over the course of time that they are struggling,\u201d she explains. \u201cBecause binge-eating disorder and bulimia both involve bingeing episodes, there is overlap between the two eating disorders quite often.\u201d<\/p>\n

People don\u2019t typically suffer from two eating disorders at once though, says Julie Friedman, Ph.D., executive director of binge eating treatment and recovery at Eating Recovery Center<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s very common to have patients who are suffering from bulimia for a bit to migrate into binge-eating,\u201d she says. \u201cWe see that a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bulimia is a complex disorder that\u2019s often caused by several factors including biological, psychological, and environmental influences, genetic factors, low self-esteem, negative body image, other mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, relationship issues, the need to feel in control, and other stressors, Beaver says, adding that the causes of binge-eating disorder are largely similar. \u201cOften times, an eating disorder is functioning to help an individual cope with difficult emotions and life events,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

Friedman also says it\u2019s common for people struggling with an eating disorder to have a substance abuse issue and vice versa. \u201cThe biology is so similar,\u201d she says. Patients with bulimia, binge-eating disorder, and substance-abuse disorders have an underactive reward center in their brain, so they\u2019re motivated to seek out rewards and seek more of them than most people in order to get a feel-good response, Friedman explains. And they\u2019ll seek out anything that boosts that reward\u2014including drugs, alcohol, and food.<\/p>\n

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If you\u2019re suffering from an eating disorder and substance abuse problem, it may seem like you can\u2019t be helped, but Chelsea Reeves, director of alumni services at Newport Academy<\/a>, a mental health and addiction treatment center for adolescents, says it\u2019s possible to tackle both issues at once\u2014and the same skills you learn in treatment for an eating disorder can be applied to an addiction (and vice versa). “Clients who come in with bulimia more often than not have problems and difficulty with alcohol,” she says. “Once they confront the underlying problems that cause their eating disorder, they no longer need to seek out alcohol to fill that void.”<\/p>\n

Beaver says it\u2019s crucial to seek professional help as soon as possible\u2014the sooner you get help, the sooner you can recover. It\u2019s also good to talk to a family member or friend who can support you in the recover process. \u201cIt can be scary to do it on your own,\u201d Beaver says.<\/p>\n

Britt agrees. \u201cTell someone that you know, because just letting the secret out is the biggest part of it,\u201d she said in her video. \u201cWe\u2019re only as sick as our secrets.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re struggling with an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorder Association<\/a> hotline at 1-800-931-2237<\/em><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m going to talk about addiction,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a big part of my life, and it\u2019s good to share.\u201d \u201cMy makeup is basically that I just want it all, all the time,\u201d she continued. \u201cThat\u2019s what makes me a really joyful person \u2026 I really like experiencing life, I really, truly enjoy life so Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}