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Helplines

If you, or someone you know, is struggling with mental health issues, then help is available here in the UK.

I’ve compiled a list of brilliant helplines dealing with everything from suicide and depression to eating disorders and anxiety. All these helplines are confidential and you can remain anonymous if you wish.

Never be afraid to speak to a parent, relative, friend or doctor about how you’re feeling. Getting help does take courage (you know what these Brain Deviants are like), but, in my experience, you’ll feel such a sense of relief afterwards. Things can’t change if you don’t speak up. It really is as simple as that.

MIND

Mind help with mental health, not just eating disorders. I have often visited their website when I’ve felt depressed or needed help.

Phone: 0300 123 3393

Text: 86463

Website: mind.org.uk

ABC (ANOREXIA AND BULIMIA CARE)

Phone: 03000 11 12 13

Website: anorexiabulimiacare.org.uk

ANXIETY UK

A fantastic charity for people who find life and what it throws at you overwhelming. They’re open Monday to Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Text: 07537 416 905

Phone: 08444 775 774

Website: anxietyuk.org.uk

B-EAT

The UK’s biggest eating-disorder charity.

Helpline: 0808 801 0677

Youthline: 0808 801 0711

Website: b-eat.co.uk

SAMARITANS

They listened to me when I was at my lowest. They’re open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

Phone: 116 123

Website: samaritans.org

MGEDT (MEN GET EATING DISORDERS TOO)

Website: mengetedstoo.co.uk

OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS

Phone: 07000 784 985

Website: oagb.org.uk

Prologue

I am not normal.

From the ages of four to six, I thought I was a dog. A German shepherd, to be precise, though I could also be a Dalmatian, depending on my mood. The dogs I grew up with were spoiled and loved, and played around all day, so that’s what I decided I wanted to become. I’d put my hands up to my chest and pretend they were paws, then walk on my tiptoes to mimic the way dogs’ feet arch up. I’d squint at things in the distance, the way dogs do when they spot something they’re curious about, and growl under my breath at strangers. In fact, I squinted so much that my nursery sent me to an eye specialist because they thought I was going blind. I was obsessed with becoming a dog, barking at strangers in the street in the hope they’d mistake me for a real one.

To prove how passionate I was about my alter ego, I spent one Christmas writing countless letters to Father Christmas begging for a metal dog cage I’d seen in the Argos catalogue. I wanted a big one, with room for a few pillows so it would be comfy to sleep in, and space to allow me to grow. Funnily enough, I was disappointed on Christmas morning.

Like many parents, mine thought this was just a phase, until my school genuinely became concerned and wanted me tested for autism. That’s when the ‘Why can’t you just be normal?’ questions began.

I didn’t know that wasn’t considered to be acceptable behaviour. I was happy pretending to be a dog. In fact, I would go so far to say that I was probably the happiest (and sanest) I’ve ever been. Since the dog thing, I’ve had a lot of obsessions. I’ve been obsessed with germs, believing I’ve caught HIV from a toilet seat, and wearing gloves on the Tube so I don’t touch the poles with bare hands. I have been obsessed with the idea that everyone hates me, working myself up into a frenzy until I want to rip my own hair out.

But, most obsessively of all, I spent almost twenty years of my life worrying daily about my weight – nit-picking all my flaws, believing my body to be grotesque, and feeling utterly convinced with every fibre of my being that I was morbidly obese.

My longing to be thin took over my life. To this day, I have never craved or wished for anything so deeply. I wanted to feel the outline of bones underneath my clothes; I wanted people to gasp at my frail frame. Most of all, although I didn’t realize it at the time, I wanted people to see I needed help with the anxieties in my brain, without having to actually say the words myself.

To cut a long story short, I know I am a bit mental. I know the word ‘mental’ isn’t a very politically correct term to use, but that’s what I am, I suppose. A bit cray cray. I know I don’t look mental. You wouldn’t think I had any of these issues if you saw me on the street, put it that way.

In fact, I have what I like to call ‘Sexy Illnesses’. Not because my OCD, depression, anxiety and eating disorders go walking around in fishnets and stilettos, but because they’re often glorified and gossiped about in the media or in magazines. You read about a celebrity losing an excessive amount of weight, written in a tone of awed admiration. How many people do you know who have referred to their tidiness as ‘OCD’, when all they’ve done is neatly fold their knickers in their drawer? How many people do you know who refer to their PMS mood swings or stressed-out mums as ‘bipolar’? These illnesses are talked about as if they’re fashionable now, but coping with them is another story.

My story begins at the age of eight, because that was the last time I remember being completely angst-free. Yep, it all went downhill from there, to be honest with you.

Aged eight was the last time I recall feeling like life was simple. I had no idea that periods existed, or that women were treated differently to men, or that my celebrity crush, Ricky Martin, was, in fact, gay. Money grew on trees and people were either fat or thin, black or white, rich or poor. I was, for the most part, totally innocent and naive, with everything a girl could have wished for.

Aged eight was the last time I remember viewing my body as solely that: a body. It was the last time I didn’t question the way it looked, or view it as though it was Mr Blobby (if you don’t know who Mr Blobby is, you’re missing out). There was nothing to preen, nothing to alter, nothing to lose. Little did I know it would take nearly twenty years to view it in the same, non-judgemental way as I did back then.

Some people think eating disorders are genetic, and others think they may be caused by the influences around you. Perhaps you were destined to be that way inclined – I certainly had my fair share of mental health illnesses – or perhaps they develop from a build-up of things you see and hear. I personally think it’s a bit of both.

My eating disorders were an addiction. I was addicted to being perfect – the type of girl other girls want to be. When I saw a series of beautiful, skinny women plastered across fashion magazines and TV, as an impressionable young girl I formed a belief that took me a very, very long time to get over: that to be happy, I had to be thin.

Unlike a lot of people, who can open a magazine and see pictures of thin, beautiful women smizing back at them without so much as another thought, I stored them in a mental filing cabinet. I couldn’t forget about them. I managed to convince myself that becoming thin would somehow make all my problems disappear. I mean, if I looked like the girls in magazines, what would there be to be sad about?

You might not be aware of it, but your brain is currently soaking up lots of slogans and pictures without you even realizing. Suddenly, the things you didn’t notice about your body before seem very noticeable. You’re not the same shape as the models you see in magazines. You notice you have acne and cellulite, but those happy girls in adverts would never have flaws like that. For someone with an obsessive personality like me, becoming thin became something else to fret over. I began to hate my body, and wondered how I could possibly change it.

My experience is not unique, I know. It’s universal. Think about it. You wake up in the morning and scroll through your Instagram feed, which is full of girls who look like you, just a bit more polished. You leave the house in the morning, drive past a few adverts full of glamorous women having a whale of a time, laughing at things that aren’t actually fun, like salad and couscous. After you’ve finished your food at lunchtime – having battled past so much contradictory dietary advice everywhere you look (LOW FAT! DELICIOUS! CARB-FREE! BIKINI BOD! INDULGE!) that you end up hating yourself and whatever you chose to eat – you might flick through a magazine, which features even more beautiful women, and whose lives look far more thrilling than yours. Later, you make the return journey home, seeing (you’ve guessed it) more billboards and advertisements. You’ll go online and scroll through Facebook or Twitter, clicking on a few weight-loss pop-ups as you go. Afterwards, you’ll watch a bit of TV, where women giggle hysterically while eating yoghurt and chocolate in the ad breaks. Then you’ll check your phone again before bed, and repeat the same process the next day. And the next. And the one after that …

As a teenager, I looked nothing like the girls I pinned on my bedroom wall, but I so desperately wanted to. Their lives were so glamorous and perfect and worry-free. I was chubby and tall – not thin and beautiful like they were. I hated school and felt isolated. They had rock-star boyfriends, tons of money and beautiful clothes, which couldn’t have been further from my life if I tried. And so I soon discovered I could plough my anxieties about fitting in and being lonely into controlling what I put in my mouth.

After many years and much soul-searching, these fashion images are what I think triggered my eating problems. At least, in part. As I said, I’m a little bit mad. It could have been a lot of things. Either way, it was after coming to this conclusion from the images around me that I suddenly grew even more concerned about fitting in with the girls in my class. I didn’t want the outside to reflect the craziness that was happening up in my head. I was a teenager in the noughties, at the height of the size-zero trend. That was what I thought I needed to look like to be normal.

Maybe if I’d opened up about how I was feeling, my eating disorders wouldn’t have been triggered. But if I have learnt anything, it is that people do not like discussing mental health. It freaks them out. And despite the fact that children are capable of developing things like anxiety, eating disorders and depression, it makes grown-ups somewhat uncomfortable. And because we don’t like to talk about children’s feelings, the domino effect begins, where one undiscussed problem leads to another, and then to another, until children become so overwhelmed that they can’t deal with life. At least, that’s what happened to me. By the time I was in my late teens I was a seasoned pro at bulimia and starving myself. I was a nightmare at school, acting like a total arse and obsessing over boys. I felt directionless and alone, and thinness was all I could control and therefore all I cared about.

So, how did a slightly bonkers misfit with anorexia, bulimia and anxiety decide to solve her problems? I became a model. As you do.

I truly believed that becoming a model would make my life better. It would mean I was beautiful. It would mean my body was perfect. If I couldn’t be ‘normal’, then I’d be superhuman: the type of girl other girls wanted to be. That was better than normal. The people who had ever doubted me or bullied me or called me ‘weird’ would suddenly want to be my friend. Finally, I’d have a chance of becoming those girls in magazines I’d aspired to be and live the lives they had.

What a prat.

In fact – surprise, surprise – my anorexia and bulimia were exacerbated by modelling. My obsessive personality clung on to the idea that being considered ‘beautiful’ would make me happy. Over time, my anxieties and self-image got worse and worse. Even when I became really thin I still wasn’t thin enough. And guess what? Losing weight didn’t make me more beautiful, and I certainly didn’t end up looking like the girls in magazines.

That’s the thing: the girls in magazines don’t look like the girls in magazines. Half the time, even I didn’t look like the overly Photoshopped images I’d had taken of me.

But what better way to prove to the world that I was ‘normal’ than by hiding my eating disorder behind the glamour of modelling! No one needed to know I was making myself sick, or measuring my hips obsessively ten times a day, or falling off running machines from exhaustion. I was becoming the girl I’d dreamt about since my early teens, but as my illness became worse, maintaining the illusion that everything was fine sent me into a meltdown.

It feels insane, looking back now, that I went along with these weird beauty standards. In fact, by working in the industry that partially caused my illness, I was contributing to the problem. It couldn’t last, and it didn’t. I’m out the other side, and I want to talk about it. I don’t want to make the same mistakes again – I want to start a conversation.

This is the story of those missing in-between years, which stretched from my childhood to my mid-twenties, that the pressures of society and pre-existing anxiety conspired to ruin by triggering an obsession with food and thinness. Twenty years of my life that I will never get back. It’s a tale of how chasing perfection did not make me happy; how no matter how much weight I lost, I never reached the happiness I wished for. But, most of all, this is how I learnt that there is no such thing as normal, and that standing out is so much better than trying to fit in.

Acknowledgements

Wow … a real-life acknowledgements section! Who knew I’d be writing one of these someday?!

I must first thank the hard-working team at Penguin Random House UK for not only letting me write this book, but for also being so supportive with it. To Simon, Tania and the rest of the lovely ladies in the PR and marketing teams; to Wendy Shakespeare and the copy-editors for correcting my grammar (and incessant swearing); to Benjamin Hughes and the art team for a beautiful cover; to the very patient lawyers … Thank you for making a childhood ambition of mine come true!

But a huge thank-you must go to my wonderful editor, Holly Harris at Penguin Random House Children’s, who has made this whole writing process feel as seamless as it could possibly be. I hope I haven’t been too much of a diva! Without you, not only would Misfit not have a title, but also wouldn’t be here. So thank you for allowing me to share my story (and for making me feel not as mental as I usually do!). You’re brilliant.

To my literary agent, Adam Gauntlett at PFD, who has been on the receiving end of my anxious emails and phone calls for the past year. Your advice, patience and guidance has been invaluable and I’ll be forever grateful for what you’ve done for me. Let’s grab a celebratory lunch (not as wanky as the Groucho) sometime soon.

To ‘Mark’, for reading through the bits you’re in and not demanding I remove them. Sorry for slapping you that time at your party. And for calling you a dick. You’re pretty chill now. And you have a good sense of humour.

And same goes to Dave the Woman. There was a time the legal team thought we’d have to change your name to Steve the Woman to help protect your identity, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it somehow. Thanks for being cool about letting us use it.

To my Muse NYC family – Conor, Becca, Danielle, Veken, Derek, Jess, Chrissie, Dan, Tara and anyone else I may have forgotten – thank you for believing in me when I’ve often given up on myself. You’ve made my dreams come true … and then some!

To all the people reading this who might be struggling with an eating disorder or mental health issues. Help is within reach. You can be happy. I chat to many girls on Instagram who struggle with their body image, and allowing us to share our experiences has aided in so much of my recovery. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

And finally, to my family – especially to my mum, who has had to listen to me tirelessly ask for reassurance (thanks, OCD) for the last twenty years. Thanks for not throttling me at times I’m sure you would have very much liked to. I love you all so much.

xxx

The End

And so this is where my story ends.

In case you’re wondering, I’m still a bit mental. I’m still a bit of a misfit. But that’s OK. Being mad has allowed me to share my story, and doing that helped me to recover from my eating disorders. I’ve learnt that talking openly about my problems doesn’t make me a weak person, nor does it anyone else.

Yep – it’s only taken me twenty-odd years, but I am pleased to tell you that I have embraced my curves, well and truly. I actually like my squish; I like the things that make me womanly. If you’d told me, aged fourteen, that I could be a model as well as curvaceous I would’ve spat my tea out. In fact, screw that – if you’d told me I’d be curvy AT ALL, I probably would’ve had a heart attack. Weight gain was the thing I feared most. And yet I embraced my fear, and realized that becoming bigger wasn’t bad at all.

I sometimes receive comments from people online calling me ‘fat’, ‘ugly’ or ‘out of shape’. That would have bothered me, too. But I know I’m not, and that their words are just a reflection of their insecurities. Seriously – is that the best they’ve got? Is being ‘fat’ truly the worst thing in the world?! Answer: nope, it isn’t. I’d much rather be fat than a bully. And that’s what those trolls are.

Muse have never told me to lose weight, and instead encourage me to be the best version of myself. They’ve done the unimaginable and encouraged me at the size I’m at, which I know I am very lucky to have had. They’ve booked me huge campaigns and jobs, and I’ve gone from making seven pounds an hour on a brownie stall to making a real living as a model. I’m living my dream while getting to eat a chocolate digestive when I want to. What could be better than that?!

I know I am lucky. There have been some plus-size models who have accused me of taking their jobs, assuming I have it easier because I’m thinner. Maybe there’s an element of truth to that – I don’t know. I do know a lot of models who’d like to be in my position, but whose agents won’t push them at their natural size. I’d love for them to feel content in their job, but the fashion industry still has a long way to go until that happens.

I may have gained a few pounds, but I’ve gained some other things, too. First off, I’ve gained a massive dose of self-respect. I no longer let people walk over me. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.’ Never has a quote resonated with me quite so much.

Secondly, I’ve gained the understanding that being kind to myself, both physically and mentally, is a necessity, not a selfish act. I look after my mental health, giving myself time to breathe when I need to.

Finally, rather than solving all my problems, I have realized that being thin was the cause of them. Losing weight does not equal happiness. And I’m proud to no longer contribute to an industry that makes girls feel that way. I’m celebrating the fact that we are all misfits, and that the things that make us unique are what make us beautiful.

If I of all people can have a fairy-tale ending, anyone can.

Epilogue

I read recently that apparently everyone on this planet will suffer with a form of mental illness at some point in their lives. This makes total sense. You don’t go through life NEVER experiencing a cold, do you? You don’t go through life never getting a bruise or a cut, right? You may get bitten by a snake one day, but there’ll be things to treat it if you do. So why wouldn’t your brain get a bit ‘bruised’ from time to time? Doesn’t that deserve to be looked after, too?

Your brain is so clever – capable of making big decisions, telling right from wrong, knowing what it likes and dislikes and being able to fall in love – that it may need a bit of maintenance from time to time. Because it works so hard it will become overwhelmed by different chemicals and emotions that it will make the rest of your body feel ‘odd’ or out of place. So, just like we would a broken leg, we need to mend our heads sometimes, as well.

Over time, I’ve started to realize that the illnesses I’ve struggled with don’t make me weak or an oddity, but that I definitely don’t need to let them rule my life, either. Pushing problems to the back of your mind is the equivalent of having a tumour and ignoring it until it gets too big to handle. Getting help isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign that you value yourself enough to treat yourself right.

I wasn’t even midway through writing this book when, like an unwanted guest, my anxiety returned. It crept up on me ever so slowly, gathering negative memories, comments and thoughts from my memory bank, before letting all of them off in my head like some sort of bomb.

I didn’t get it. This didn’t make sense. Writing a book was supposed to be so exciting and special, and yet here I was, riddled and dazed with insecurities and self-doubt. Would anyone like my book? Would anyone even read it?! What would my Amazon reviews say?!! Aaarrrrgggghhhh!!!

I was living in the future, too concerned about what people would say about my book, rather than actually living in the present and writing it. I was going to bed at 2 a.m. every night, going over and over and over all the things that could go wrong. My tummy was in knots, sick at the thought of what people would think about it. I couldn’t look people in the eye; my hands would be quivering when I handed a cashier change, or if I went into my agency. Then, because I couldn’t focus on anything bar my nerves, I couldn’t eat. I’d live on caffeine in an attempt to stay focused, but this just made everything worse.

The more I thought about it, the worse it got. Maybe I deserved to fail? Maybe this anxiety was karma for something I’d once said or done? It wasn’t just the book I worried about; it was everything. I was ringing my mum up to twelve times a day, asking her if everything in my life would be all right. Modelling, relationships, family. Were my parents proud of me? Would I ever work again? What if my agency dropped me? What if I left the house and got hit by a car? WHAT THEN?!

And that’s when I realized I was still running away from my problems, thinking I was big and clever enough to deal with them all alone. Suffering with these things didn’t have to be my ‘normal’. Who would willingly choose to constantly live in fear over something built up in their brain? You’d have to be crazy to want to do that, rather than want to get better. Besides – how could I end a story about mental health when there wasn’t even an ending to what I was going through?!

Anxiety, OCD and eating disorders didn’t need to be part of my story any more. You can’t control the things that happen or have happened to you. But what you can control is the way you handle situations. You can let them make you or break you. And you can also choose whether you want to be happy or not.

I wanted a different ending. I wanted to end this chapter of my life with a new beginning.

And so that’s what I did.

Although I was in New York during this time, my mum was a tremendous help. I told her I was struggling, and rather than telling me I was being ridiculous like the Brain Deviant told me she would, she got on a laptop from the other side of the world and helped to google therapists. I decided to bite the bullet and ring a therapist specializing in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

CBT is a way of training your brain into thinking differently – to unlearn what you’ve already learnt, and to see your thoughts as just thoughts. Rather than telling yourself you’re a fat failure, for example, you either tell your inner self to shut up, or push the thought from your mind completely. Most of all, you take a step back and think about the reasoning behind that thought. There’s a reason behind every action or anxious thought; we just often forget them. What event or comment triggered you to think so negatively about yourself? OK, that wasn’t very nice – time to throw that thought in the bin.

Magical things happen when you stop caring so much about what other people think. Who cares if someone doesn’t like you? Is their opinion really the end of the world? Not everyone is going to like you, just like you’re never going to like everyone, either. As long as you like yourself, who cares?

I can categorically tell you that you won’t reach happiness chasing a low weight or dress size. You won’t be happy staying in relationships that aren’t going anywhere, or waiting around for people to like or accept you. Running away from your problems won’t help you, either.

Happiness is living in the here and now. It is being confident. It is accepting what you look like and who you are. It is being self-aware enough to accept you’ll be fine if someone doesn’t like you. It is surrounding yourself with people who bring out the best in you, and you in them.

And the most important thing I’ve learnt about happiness?

There is no such thing as ‘normal’.

Dear Reader,

Before you start, I just want to warn you about a couple of things. The topics I write about are sensitive and I really want to be honest about my experiences, because I believe talking about things is healthy and we should be able to discuss these matters openly.

However, there is a lot of honesty in Misfit. This is a book about my mental illnesses. I use words that I find best express how I’m feeling: mental, cray cray, insane. I know that some people find these words offensive but, for me, it is the best way to talk about my life. So, if you find that problematic, please be aware that you will find words like these in my book.

This is also a book about my eating disorders. I have suffered from both anorexia and bulimia, and I want to talk about them because I am recovering now and passionate about promoting body positivity. But I wasn’t always that way, and I have to honestly show what my life was like when I suffered from my eating disorders. I know how certain images, words and phrases can trigger difficult emotions in people suffering from eating disorders, and in people who have suffered from them in the past. I know that people with eating disorders will look for weight-loss inspiration everywhere, and that this book could be one of them. Therefore, be warned: there will be triggers in this book. This was the most truthful way for me to tell my story, but I do not want to cause any harm to others at all – the reason I have been so honest is to help others who feel a pressure to look a certain way to realize that happiness is not proportional to dress size. If you are suffering or could be triggered, please do not read this book. I’m not a health professional and there is no advice in here. It’s all just my experience.

Although all the stories are real, for obvious reasons some names, dates and even locations have been changed. That’s because it is my story, not theirs, and I have been respectful of privacy.

Also, when you read this, you will discover that I was quite badly behaved, even as a kid. My teenage years were no better, and there are stories of underage drinking and other stupid things in here. I in no way condone or promote any of this bad behaviour – I was an idiot. Do not try any of these things at home. I really regret them, but have put them in this book because they are part of my story.

These things happened to me and if anything good came out of my experiences it is that I can share my mistakes so that maybe other people don’t have to make them too. If it ever seems like I am making light of a situation, please be assured that I’m not – it’s just that humour is the best way I know to find light in the darkness. And you can find humour in just about anything. That is my philosophy, but I don’t want anyone to be offended by what I’ve written. This is my personal story, not a self-help book.

If you are suffering, be kind to yourself, and maybe don’t read this just yet.

Charli x

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Helplines

Prologue

Acknowledgements

The End

Epilogue