How Jody Unrau turns down the volume
HSC’s Eating Disorder Program helped Jody Unrau when she hit rock bottom: “I was so malnourished that my organs started to shut down.”
Despite passing out, Jody Unrau remembers the day clearly. It was dark, it was devastating, but it was also a turning point.
“I went to have a shower and I fainted. Then I fell out of the shower and just stayed on the floor for an entire day. I was weak, defeated. I felt like I couldn’t move and I had suicidal thoughts. I just wanted to disappear. It was my rock bottom,” says Unrau of that critical day in 2008. “But the turning point was seeing my mom’s reaction. She came home and saw me lying there and just fell to the floor and broke down. She had been so strong for both of us and that was her breaking point. Seeing her so devastated made me realize that my anorexia wasn’t just affecting me, it was affecting my whole family. In that moment I didn’t really feel ready to live for myself, but I decided I was going to heal for my mom.”
Two weeks after that pivotal experience, a spot opened up for Unrau in HSC’s Eating Disorder Program. By then, she had been on the waiting list for nearly three months, but hadn’t been fully committed to getting better until that rock-bottom moment. It all happened just in time.
Unrau was in her early twenties at the time and her anorexia had become so severe that what should have been routine gall bladder surgery a few weeks earlier almost took her life. “I was so malnourished that my organs started to shut down,” she says. “My doctors told me quite directly that unless I get help, I might not make it to my next birthday.”
She found the help she needed at HSC; the Eating Disorder Program started her on the road to recovery.
“I think a lot of people might think a program like this focuses only on eating, but there’s so much more to it,” says Unrau. “You can’t recover from an eating disorder unless you know why it started in the first place. HSC helped me rebuild my relationship with food and they helped me to discover the root causes, the cognitive piece. That’s what made the difference.”
The program comprised group sessions, individual counselling, keeping thought records, and sharing meals with staff and others in the program. A psychiatric nurse offered Unrau the metaphor that having an eating disorder is like having a tape recorder in your head. When it’s active, it’s screaming. The goal of therapy is to turn down the volume until your own voice is louder—and eventually, to have it muted or barely a whisper.
“That’s where I am now,” Jody says. “It’s muted most of the time. But I never say I had an eating disorder. I say I’m in recovery. There’s a difference.”
Jody Unrau organizes community events with proceeds going to the HSC Foundation in support of HSC’s Eating Disorder Program.
Helping others turn down the volume has become her life’s work.
Through her business, Embrace Your Reflection, Unrau serves as an educator, fitness coach, consultant, speaker, and workshop facilitator, helping others in their eating disorder recovery and encouraging body-image positivity. She also organizes community events with proceeds going to the HSC Foundation in support of the hospital’s Eating Disorder Program.
“I feel like I was given a second chance,” she says. “And that second chance means sharing my story, so others know they’re not alone. It’s healing for me, too.”
To support the HSC’s Eating Disorder Program, visit our donation page. Visit EmbraceYourReflection.com to learn more about Jody Unrau’s work.
