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

and I don't want it ALL to be gym but in this case |I stayed inside watched Hetalia sorted my room we're moving house soon it was OK
needed the rest




It is really really important I sleep well enough right now for the sake of my mental wellbeing. The consequences of not could be disastrous (I mean my psych said I would probably get arrested. Is it still vain and selfish?
because you are probably still right

I'm sorry to chip in but I'm really interested in what comments you might want to hear instead of ''you look healthy''? like what encouraging comments would you like to hear that wouldn't sound off-putting or be quite sensitive to you? It's just nice to hear things from other people's perspective that's all, thanks

Riku, I don't want to come across as OVERLY harsh on you, but you are being that on yourself already, so I fear I haven't got much other option. You've proven yourself a loyal friend to me for a while now, so I want you to take what I have to say in great weight.

The very nature of your posts (frantic, panicked, emotional) - it's obvious to me that your mental disorder is still very much in the apex of it's grip on you. The problem is that when we start to recover we forget what it is we might've wanted in the first place. But we slowly learn to appreciate it once more.

We put stupid, arbitrary, pointless things on pedestals and worship them. Are you dying? Are you unhealthy? In pain? No, you're not, Rik, and I stress that to you. You're none of these things. You're a healthy young man, who keeps making excuses to get even healthier. Mega-healthy. The HEALTHIEST. Do you see what I'm doing here?

You are definitely a considered, incredibly intelligent guy, but what you're lacking is perspective. You're lacking viewpoint.

I was once that guy. I used to scrutinise every aspect of life and find a fault, ravage it to cinders, yet still dote on it. That's no way to live your life.

I gained a sense of optimism. My mental disorder at one point had me with weeks to live. WEEKS, Riku. Yet I still made excuses for it. "Surely I'm not being THAT unreasonable, right?" - I look back on it now and wish I could teleport myself through time and space just to slap my own face.

Riku, you are being unreasonable and you are making excuses, but you are not under attack. I am only telling you what I am telling you because it's the stern, cruel, and very real - truth.

My holiday has set me back so much. I cant believe my supposed best friends would act like that. I dont even feel like I belong here anymore.. so confused about everything :'( I just want it all to end.

You want it "all to end"? You mean, life in general? I hope you've re-read this statement you made with a bit of level-headed clarity today.

Sometimes we place critical value on something in the moment that in the grand scheme of things, means very little.

Often I'll think of when I was fifteen or so and thought being rejected by a girl was the most devastating feeling in life, and that I wanted to just be swallowed by the earth beneath me. Now, I think I was a stupid child.

In some respects, I still act like a stupid child - and that's what these mental disorders do to us. They undermine our maturity and make us think like kids.

Riku, you are being unreasonable and you are making excuses, but you are not under attack. I am only telling you what I am telling you because it's the stern, cruel, and very real - truth.

I guess thats what I meant :/ I dont even know anymore. I just cant cope. I tried so hard and it all got thrown back in my face. I'm not doing this for me, I was doing it because my friends wanted me to, said I needed to. And just as I was accepting I needed help, finally getting my life back on track, they scream at me that I'm just attention seeking and I don't actually have anything wrong with me at all. And now I feel like a fake. What is wrong with me. I'm so confused. I was trying to fix this. And now I've taken so many steps backwards. They convinced me I had a problem.. and now they think I dont. I don't know if it was just the alcohol talking but they were all so horrible. And I cant cope with that again. With people thinking that. I'm struggling so much, and now I dont even have my best friends. I'm sorry if this is really negative and I'm stressing people out. I just cant stop thinking like this right now.

Bear in mind that these are people who are wracking their minds of ways of how to help you. People that have brought you into the world, who have fought to bring you up safe and well, and here you've developed a mental disorder they can do nothing but watch destroy you from the inside. Nothing they can do can help. No matter how frustrated, how incredibly hard they fight to find ways to help, how to convey it, they keep watching you again and again do something so completely illogical to hurt yourself again and again.

Remember my metaphor of the man who puts his hand into a flame? That's what you are right now. Everyone is told just to accept it. "He's got a mental disorder, he just does that." The man, every day, burns his hand in a fire. He has believed it's normal behaviour, yet it hurts like crazy and he's fed up of doing it. One day, one of his family can't take any more and screams, "WHY THE HELL MUST YOU BURN YOUR HAND?! IT MAKES NO SENSE!!" - suddenly they've had one too many. They've seen you killing yourself just a touch too many times and it becomes an outburst.

You have to understand we put the people we love through a lot as they witness the things we do to ourselves - a somewhat selfish indulgence in killing ourselves slowly just so we don't have to face real world issues, so we have a preoccupation with something else to give us carte blanche, to absolve us, make us exempt from the criteria of normality.

I can't excuse your friends for what they said but they only said it because they care and they're confused. They don't know how to help and what they do know is going to be patchy and sensationalised at best. If you had never had ED but your friend suffered one, would you know what was up? How to change their mind or why they did the things they did? If it only it were that easy...
The media likes extremes, not always the reality of shades of gray. So for Joe Public that can mean they understand an eating disorder as what it actually is in its final, most fatal stage. It should never go that far, warning signs are littered about long before that dark day. It's often difficult to tell the difference between a genuine cry for help and seeking attention. But watch out for the tendency to play the Boy Who Cried Wolf (by that I don't mean lie, but play the 'I'm sick!' card to absolve you of any responsibility. It's too easy to fall into, and the only way you can get better is to accept you want to change.

Please don't give up. You'll fix this, and we're here. They may just ened some time to think, learn and understand.

Okay, your views on your family are totally skewed. I thought the way you do at one point, and my father in particular said some utterly abhorrent things to me about my illness, but it was all through frustration.

For example, he shouted into my face, "Fine, kill yourself then, my son's dead anyway now" when he was drunk. That one statement crushed my soul, but simultaneously it gave me strength to realise just how far I'd pushed them. Now, many many moons have elapsed since then, and now I'm in strong recovery he continuously tells me how proud he is of me that I attempted to really battle this full-on. He reminds me every day that he tried everything from pussyfooting around me, to tough love, to full-on soul-destroying insults, to try to get me moving.

Ever heard the phrase, "You never remember a decent day"? It refers to the phenomenon where humans are unable to be happy with being contented. Some people have varying degrees of it - unless it's absolute elation or utter turmoil, some people thrive on the extremes alone. They never hear, never care about anything that isn't an extreme. This is why we only tend to remember the truly extreme measures people take.

So remember what they said to you because they did it out of extreme love, because you pushed them to a point of frustration where they could do nothing else, just as I did. I never remember them trying the OTHER measures because, as I said, none of those were quite as extreme - but they had been trying the entire time.