Eating Disorders and life with one - Discussions, Opinions, Advice.

In a similar vein to this; I find that I just genuinely have no idea what foods I like or don't like anymore. I've got progressively more fussy with food since I was a child, and now there are quite a lot of common foods I just won't touch. But has anyone else had the problem where you don't know if you actually don't like something or if you've just conditioned yourself to 'not like it' because you perceive it as unhealthy?

That's what I was writing about. Your ED has been with you for far longer than you've KNOWN it's been with you, remember. And even longer than you knew it, but didn't ACCEPT it. And all that time it was conditioning you to think in a certain way. Your little loose brain screw was untwisting the entire time, teaching you that 1+1= 29 and a Chicken. And the whole time, whilst other people reached the answer as "2", you would shirk them, alienate yourself, because clearly ALL those other people were wrong; the answer is 29 and a Chicken.

But in doing so, the one thing that has conditioned your mind to think wrongly has suddenly become a comfort, a companion.

It's the same as having an abusive boyfriend or girlfriend. It starts off with loads of pals, a good life, and then he starts saying, "Oh, you're eating ANOTHER biscuit?" or, "are you going out again?!" - planting the seeds of doubt. Soon, you realise he's stopping you from seeing your pals and you've given up your career for him. Suddenly, he's all you've got, and though you know he's killing you and leading you down a slow and painful existence to nothingness, you defend him and stick with him. Suddenly at rock bottom, you cling to him.

That's your Eating Disorder. It's the thing that ripped your life away, made you trust him despite ruining everything, and now, you defend him until your death, as he's all you've got.

What would you tell a girl in one of these relationships? Would you tell her she's better than that? Get out?! Would she, though?! Well, it's all down to the person. It's just... if she leaves him, it might not get THAT much better to begin with. Maybe it will, who knows?! But if she stays with him... well, at least she KNOWS where it's going. Oblivion. But at least she knows that, right?

Is that solace enough?

This makes me really sad to read because it all rings so true. I just don't know how to get out...every time I feel like I'm making progress I slip back; and every time I do that I seem to fall further and more easily into bad habits, and find it harder to try to get out again. It must be that element of security, like you said...it has been a long time and I can't really imagine life without it but I don't want to be like this forever.

I guess the real test starts now that I've finished my uni exams - I was using that as a 'reason to eat' as such, and it was working quite well - so the challenge is to make sure I don't let any of my usual triggers set me off now that I don't have that goal.

That analogy really seems to ring true, Toto


Still struggling with my girlfriend. She's convinced she's 'fat'.
I think she's slowly building confidence (as am I) but she still comes out with the same hurtful things from time to time. 'I'm fat', 'I'm ugly', but I know she's not just fishing for compliments because she'd just been told these things by bitter siblings. Apparently one called her a 'piggy' and another a 'bottomless pit'. The latter I guess you could shrug off as a hearty appetite if you didn't have a serious problem but surely they'd know she had a problem?

[snip]

I'm taking it as a good sign that she's asked me to go get some Butterkist from Home and Bargains for our date to see Star Trek next week
maybe confident spontaneity will come in time.
I'm determined to get her out of her head and live a little of the good life anyway. Fingers crossed

I'm quite bad at doing the whole 'I'm fat' thing, especially if I'm having a bad day. I'll say 'I'm fat' when actually what the problem is is that I'm overtired, I'm cold, i'm miserable, or I'm stressed.

I want to get better, I really really do but why is it so hard. I know I need to talk to the doctor about ED stuff and not just depression etc but I dont know how. The words just wont come out.
Waiting for the CMHT is stressing me out. I went to the doctors and I was feeling so ready to start fixing this mess. And now I've waited and waited and I've heard nothing and I feel like I'm getting worse. :'( I feel like I'm giving up on getting better before I've even really started and that scares me. I scare me, the things I do scare me and I cant stop. I accepted I need help, I went to get help and nothings changed. I dont even know what to do anymore. My brain keeps thinking maybe youre not meant to fix it, so just give up and I'm trying to tell myself know thats wrong. But its not working. The fact that I have a summer holiday coming up as well means ED thoughts have gone into overdrive.. 'you cant go on holiday looking like this' etc and I feel like I'm giving up and sinking back into it all. I mean I was never out, but I was ready to try and get out and I've almost given up. I just dont know what to do

You don't "get out" though. It's not a prison. It's not like someone is forcing you to do it. Your mind is broken. You have a MENTAL DISORDER. An illness of the mind that's telling you to do something that you've now conditioned yourself to believe is right, when the whole world knows it's not.

Imagine trying to explain to a man who believes his teddy bear is his son, and has woken up for years talking to the teddy like a son, that it is a teddy bear. Sounds ridiculous? It's the same as your disorder. Your mind is telling you something totally irrational is real and true.

The man might cling to that teddy, crying, screaming at you that you're wrong, that this is his son and he'll always be his son. But even when he accepts that this is in fact, and was all along, a Teddy Bear, will he completely lose all of the previous emotions, experiences, tenets and beliefs he'd conditioned his mind to accept? No. In fact, it's a common issue in our circumstances, with our disorders, that there might not be a "perfect out clause". Do you pull the teddy away from the man and burn it so he never relapses? Or would the trauma be too much for him? Would you give him the teddy back on the understanding that he will refer to it as a teddy for the rest of his life, without succumbing to old ways? Would he even want the teddy any longer, and would the emptiness he felt manifest itself in other forms?

Eating Disorders, Body Dysmorphia, Obsessive Compulsive Disorders, Anxiety Disorders; no matter which combination you experience, the common denominator is that they are broken sets of reasoning that try to fix themselves with other disordered behaviour. It's why people suffering mental illness rarely only suffer one type; you might try to combat your depression with alcoholism, or you might attempt to stifle your anxiety disorder with obsessive compulsive habits.

You need to know what you're thinking is inherently wrong. Everyone else sees your teddy bear as a teddy bear when you're clutching to it like a child, and you need to accept that your mind is tricking you constantly. Why do you feel you need to sabotage your own progress? This is a step most ED-recoverers endure; it's a part where you reach a point "of no return". Where you've walked through a dark, empty tunnel towards a speck of light for so long that when you reach the light - the bright, wide, scary world... suddenly, you stop. Suddenly, that one directional darkness you've been in seems so.. familiar. safe. Strange, you know the darkness harbours danger, but you've been in it for so long, moving the same way for so long towards this, that when you reach the "real world", suddenly you cannot make the last step.

So your mind sets traps, and you start walking backwards. But it is mental sabotage, nothing more. Nothing else has changed. X

That makes a lot of sense and I know its true. I know I need to keep walking in the right direction. Its just so hard. I wish I could just turn my thoughts off. I'm almost scared of how I'm going to live without it. So what you said above makes complete sense. I dont want to give up, I really really want to beat this. Its just frustrating that I've gotten to the point where I know I need help, I even want help which is a big deal for me, but I cant get the help. Which is when my ED thoughts get more powerful and pull me back into the darkness. But at least I recognize it?? I guess thats a good thing. I cant live like this, I need to fix it!

The part you're at right now was by far the hardest part for me. Your eating disorder and body dysmorphia has been EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU for so long, you feel like it's all that exists about you just now. I use the tunnel metaphor because you've been working towards this singular, one bright light this whole time and now when you're about to leave the tunnel, this massive expanse of overwhelming options, fears, terrifying choices, choices, choices everywhere - it all arrives, like a punch to face, all at once. You start to wonder about clothes. About people. About work. About everything. How will people see you? How will you act when you go back to work? How will you cope with social outings? How will, how can, how?!

Eating Disorders are at their core, regressive. They take on a child-like state where you absolve yourself of the situation, the responsibility, the world. Nothing matters; you devote your entire existence to a loose cog in your head. So when the responsibilities appear, it's natural you would feel utterly overwhelmed by it all.

I love my metaphors but I put it to you like this; The Goldfish Metaphor.

You were a fish before ED; you swam in a huge lake, with all your friends. One day something happened to you; perhaps one of your fish mates was eaten, perhaps you accidentally flopped onto land for too long; whatever it was, is was traumatic.

Then, you decided the lake was too much to handle. After your traumatic experience which you may or may not be able to pinpoint, you decided to live in a small fishbowl at the side of the lake. Your fishbowl, your rules, nothing gets in, nothing gets out. You can still SEE the rest of the world, so it still seems like you're a part of it, but you cannot interact with it. The fact is, you can't see under the water in the lake either, so, out of sight, out of mind, right?

As you regained consciousness of why you decided to live forever in a bowl, you realised, this is no existence! I want to get back to the lake. So you eked closer and closer to the lake, and as time passed, your friends would come to the shore and occasionally shout to you, ask you how your were, and when you were coming back. You got a taste for life again, but were still frightened.

Right now, you have pulled your bowl INTO the lake, but are still too frightened to come out. The same water from the lake flows in and out of the bowl. You are IN real life now. It's just that you cling to a pointless shell. You cling to something that cannot benefit you in any way. That thing you relied on to keep you safe is now just dead weight, a useless artefact that just keeps reminding you of a past life.

My therapy for you then, is that you keep the bowl for now. Keep it. But one day a week, swim into the lake.

It's nothing more than integration therapy. One day a week, be a normal lass. Don't freak, don't count, nothing. If you want to return to it the following day, so be it - but do your one day a week at LEAST. Don't cheat yourself by letting the broken mind sabotage you during this day. You have the comfort of the bowl to return to should you want it, but TOMORROW. Not on this day, where you're normal, just another fish in the lake.

Do you think this is something you could accomplish?

please help me!!! im also a sufferer and at present can barely make my own tea being scared that ill put too much milk in it... just been offered a place at uni for primary teaching... how am I going to cope

-You will never truly enjoy lunch with friends ever again.

I'm going to Uni for primary education too ... And I feel the same. But we can do this. One of the things I think about it I want to inspire the children I teach. I don't want any child to ever ever feel like this. I'm going to be a role model to my future pupils and I need to be healthy for them. If they have a teacher obsessed with weight they are more likely to become the same ... It's one of the things I think about when I'm struggling. I need to get better to be a good teacher and I want more than anything to be a good teacher. Uni will be a challenge with no one to push us to eat and easy access to gyms but we can do it ... We have to!!!


Posted from TSR Mobile

Thanks so much... really good to hear that someone is in the same boat as me!!! Your so inspiring, and I can tell that you've a real passion for teachin!! Its going to be so hard but part of me thinks the independence will really help me outa this 'rut'... wat uni you goin to??? thanks for the reply btw x