Re:Eating Disorders

Dear J.C,
I had annorexia when I was younger. One day I saw my reflection in a window and thought that I looked a little overweight, so I went on a "diet". As I began to lose weight and look better I felt better about myself. I'm pretty sure that my sense of self worth was not the best to begin with, so this was a real "boost" for me. Now that I think back on it this is where the problem began... The diet went out of control when the emotional want for that boost to continue outweighed the considerations that what I was doing wasn't healthy for my body. From there it spiralled downhill into an obsession. I went to great lengths not to eat.. and the issue of not eating began to control me. Any fat that I saw on myself was an imperfection that had to be gotten rid of.

Luckily I felt guilty when my mum became really upset about it all and said to me that she didn't know what to do with me. I knew that what I was doing was wrong, so I snapped myself out of it.

I'm sure that not everyone's experience is the same, but my advice to you if you wish to help anyone with this problem is to find ways to help them build their sense of self esteem and self love (in healthy ways). Do everything that you can to help them to accept, love and respect themselves the way they are naturally. This usually means making sure that they know they are very loved. Tell them what is so special about themself, as often people don't know this. In general we're put down in life a lot more than we're built up.. so we become far more aware of our flaws than what is wonderful about ourselves. This seems to be a big part of annorexia.. as when I looked in the mirror I looked for flaws.

I would also check to see if they had been through some difficult emotional experience in which they didn't have control over something. I went through one a little time before hand and I often wonder if the whole obsessive controlling of my body wasn't a result of the sense of loss of control that I had experienced -...Maybe some kind of subconscious attempt to re-gain a sense of control in some way?

I hope that this is of help to you and or anyone else out there. Best wishes.

Replies:

Re:Eating Disorders, by J.C. Tredway, 03/23/03 Re:Eating Disorders, by Annonymous, 03/27/03 Re:Eating Disorders, by J.C. Tredway, 03/28/03

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