 |
 |
  |
 | ||
 |
 |
 |
 | ||
   |
In the words of those who suffer... read and find out what each individual feels could have prevented the onset of their Eating Disorder.
"all I really needed anyone to do was to tell me that everything would be
okay. I had a lot of problems and let them show in what i was doing and all
I was told was to keep up apperances. That was the worst thing for me."
"I don't blame my parents for my disease but I never felt that I could go to them with my concerns or problems. If I cried their advise was to get a grip and deal with it. They had very high expectations and were very critical of anything they did not approve of ( friends, actions, looks, behaviors)."
"My friends that I have I confided in have been a great source of comfort and encouragement to get well. My parents know but never mention it. They make comments like " You've lost weight recently." or " How long are you going to diet.
"If I had an ounce of self esteem and no fear of making others unhappy I would have asked for help when I first noticed a problem."
"I have read what others have said on your site and I cannot find myself in
anyone else's thoughts. I have/am suffer(ed/ing) from eds and I take all
the resposibility. My mother blames herself because she thinks she gave it
to me because she was a victim as a teen-ager, but I don't believe it. i
don't believe that she caused it, I would never put this on her shoulders.
My family is pretty typical, I think. I think that my problems are my
problems and were caused by me. I always wanted to fit in and always
envied other people and how easily it appeared that they could be liked and
be popular. I also think that if it was not for my problem I would just be
and people wouldn't pay attention to me. I guess I see myself as very
selfish and that is probably my problem talking. I don't like to see my
family hurt becasue of me and I tell myself that I will get better for them
but I always fall. I don't know how I could have prevented this and I
don't know how anyone can be prevented. This is probably not what you are
looking for but I just wanted to write it. I hope I get better and I hope
everyone that is suffering gets better."
"...I don't rememer my eating disorder starting until after i got back from
California when I was 15. My dad had gotten a job there and we stayed for 6
months. When we came back to New Mexico we moved into a trailor across the
street from uncles house... My uncle always knew when my parents where gone
because they always asked him and my aunt to keep an eye on the house... He
would come over though and corner me... and other stuff. By the time we moved
back from california i was 16. I knew what my uncle was doing to me was wrong
so about 6 months after it began I told my cousin who is a year older than i
am about what her dad had been doing to me. We were at school..She told me it
was perfectly ok that her dad had been doing it to her and her sisters all
there lives. That was a slap in the face! So i kept quite. Sometime when i was
17 one of my friends called right after my uncle had left the house.I don't
know why but it all just spilled out i told him every thing my uncle had
done to me... The next day my best friend called me... then a priest from her
church... then a DA then yet another DA. Every thing snowed balled and I
felt I had lost control. Up until I told my mom and dad what had happened and
why it happened I had only been starving myself.
When I told my parents though this is what they said to me
'you are a lying little b3tch and if you don't get the da's to drop it you
are out on the streets.' So that was that I lived there and handled it
quitely for another year, eating but always puking as much as i could. After
I met my husband and moved in with him I stopped because I shortly after got
pregnant and didn't want to hurt my baby. After he was born I would do it on
occasion for 4 years. But 3 months ago the same cousin i told in high
school - she is 26 now. It happened to her. She is 26 years old!!!! I was
16... But she calls me and tells me to repeat what i told her in high school
infront of her locker... I did but guess what?! No one gives a damn except for
her older sister who lives in another state but emailed me and
told me she always knew and that she was sorry. She did always try to protect
me I guess but at the time i didn't realise it. I guess it had always
happened to her to. My parents still don't believe it though. I am 25
now.... I will never forget.I don't want to throw up all the time and
i always tell myself this will be the last time. If my parents would have just
believed me..."
"I need to look good in order to feel good and present "happiness", spirit
and self confidence. And what helps me
achieve my presentation is internal, physical emptiness. I like to feel my
bones stick out, not my stomach. I want fully visible sticking out
cheekbones like all the models, and not my stupid donut face. I wish someone
would suck out all the fat in my body. I want to be thin. I need it to be
happy. Why can't they understand?"
"My parents treated my problem as a self-induced desired
attribute, rather then a emotional and physical disorder. They critisized me
and ridiculed my habits as if they knew more then I did. I realized i needed
help but i wasn't sure where to turn. Financial difficulties added to the
pressure of giving up on recovery. My parents didn't understand my disorder
nor did they try, they were ignorant to the severity of it and refused to
become educated. My only wish was for them to try to understand. I don't know
what they thought, but it was reality. I still suffer from relapses and as to
my knowledge my parent are unaware. I hope i my find the courage to seek help
somewhere sometime in the near future. For all you parents out there - research
this disease before you talk to your child, hear her out, love her and
support her. This is a complex problem that shouldn't be taken lightly. If my
eating disorder had been properly attended to long ago, i wouldn't be having
relapses like so. I believe that anyone can overcome this, but alone its much
harder."
"No matter how I scream inside for me to stop. To 'Just go away,
just go away from here' and 'Leave to a better place'... But what better
place is there? It's like there's two of me. One is the disease me. The
bulimic me. The other one is, well, me. I (the normal one) Plead with
myself to go away and get out of there. I scream and hollar in my inner
concience. The bulimic one tells the other one to shut up and go away. I
say I am no good, and I deserve no more than I get. Eventually, the bad one
takes over and the real me is so beaten and afraid to come out that I just
shy away into the corner. This is when things get really bad and tough and
i can no longer control it. The bulimic me shines out and I now say out
loud the things that the bulimic tells me inwardly all day long. These are
not some voices that I am hearing. This is my heart. This is my soul. It
has been so damaged through the years. It hurts so bad. My father is an
absolute jerk. he only cares about himself. I no longer matrter ot him.
It's all about him anyway. He never cares when I do anthing good. I can
never please him."
"Parents need to be aware and look for early signs of eating disorders.
To this day my parents still can not see the signs or they are not
looking for them on purpose. I have had an eating disorder for many
years and it got to the point where I hit bottom so I told my parents
about it. To my surprise they had no idea I had an eating disorder and
also were not even aware of early signs. We talked a lot and I shared
with them all the early warning signs, but to this day they do not
recognize them. They think I am well now as does my boyfriend, but
little do they know I am not. Even though parents know the warning signs
they do not look for them. My only wish is that parents, relatives and
friends would be more aware of the signs and really see them. Also,
I wish parents would not believe a person when they say they are fine.
Everyday I tell my parents I am fine, but inside I just wish they would
discover that I am not. It seems obvious to me that I am not and I think
it would be to others if they just LOOK harder. So my advise to prevent
eating disorders is to make everyone aware of early warning signs and
tell people to look harder at a person if they suspect anything."
"My parents: I'm
not blaming this on them, but i think they could be a little more
comforting just with general problems. for example if i was upset cause
i had a bad day at school and then i proceeded to talk about it to my
mother, she'd tell me i should have done this and this to prevent
whatever the thing was; she'd lecture me. then she'd tell me to stop
complaining and that my attitude was part of the problem, even though
the problem would be totally irelevant to that. i wish that as she
listened to my troubles she'd speak comforting words and let me cry on
her shoulder, it would not mean i was weak, it'd just be a way of
venting. so instead i would not tell her my troubles, i'd just put on a
frosty attitude when i came home and eat a couple bowls of ice cream and
maybe chips. then i'd feel so fat i'd go and throw up, it almost felt good."
"What would I suggest? Please don't ever tell someone they look
"perfect". My father said I didn't need to lose any more weight. "You're
perfect." When I was XXX pounds. So I believed him. XXX pounds is perfect.
Any more is bad.
"Allow people to speak, to communicate, about what they're feeling. And
don't call them "whiners" when they're actually just speaking from the
heart, about issues concerning them, overwhelming them. Getting those
feelings out, dealing with them, and having people accept them is so
important. If I'd been able to be honest as a child, maybe I would've
been more honest about my eating disorder as an adult."
My ED...anorexia changing to bulimia changing to compulsive eating...
may not have happened if:
"even today,
when I have a flare and lose too much weight, my mom will say "you'd look
so much better if you cut your hair." or something equally Doris Day.
Right now, I am pretty stable. What keeps me going is my children. I do
not want to hand my son or my daughter this horrible legacy. That means
that I have to do things that I was never taught...let my daughter go on
vacation with grandma...I can't shelter her from the world and being
street smart is a life long process....my son will go to camp that is
run by strangers this summer..(Oh God...). They are allowed to throw
tantrums in their rooms and allowed to argue and work out their own
differences. I respect their right to feel and say what they
want...tempered with watching their tone of voice...I wish that things
had never happened, but they did...and making their world very small by
smothering them is only repeating the process....thanks for listening..."
"Feelings were not allowed in my house when I was growing up. Especially
anger. So I swallowed it. And it ate away at me. I thought no one felt
anger. That there was something wrong with me. That it made me a bad
person. My mom completely shut down in the presence of any emotions. Good
or bad. So I learned not to be me, to put up a front. To keep her happy
and relaxed. I grew up with contradictions-- don't be pretentious, but
don't be low-class. Don't eat too much, but don't starve yourself. Be a
woman, but remain my little girl. Leave, but stay. Go, but don't. Be
yourself, but be exactly the way I am. Normal but better. Tell me the
truth, but make sure it is what I want to hear. Nobody said life would be
easy. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Or can you?"
"Prevented? I am not truly sure how. I was raped and molested by two
uncles when very young. I remember clearly feeling betrayed by my body
and feeling trapped in it.
"I have been buliemic since age 13. I know that my parents saw signs
during my teenage years, which, if dealt with could have prevented
further years of bulimia. I understand their fears and hopes that it
would go away on its own. I am now 27 and in therapy for the initial
abuse and my eating disorders. I believe I can do it. My parents work
hard to support me in my efforts now. I hope for others. My hope is
that we can learn that an eating disorder is serious, not a passing
thing, needing to be address as soon as possible."
"When I was around 14 a friend of mine asked me how I managed to stay slim
when I ate so much and I told her that I just brought it back. She said to me
"what a lucky person you are to be able to do that". The sad thing is that I
did not know that as a direct result of this thing I would have to have most
of my teeth capped by the age of 26 and that my life would be dominated by
food. I think that if I'd known about the damage to my teeth and the
resulting crippling effect on my social and working life, I would have
addressed the problem much earlier.
"To people who are friends with ed victims I would say to you never tell your
friend that you think purging is an acceptable way to exercise weight
control. I had one friend who told me that she couldn't see a problem with
the way I was behaving. So:
"Always keep fighting it and enlist your friends/family to help you.
Finally, bulimics and anorexics are not just silly girls looking for
attention and never let anyone tell you that. We are smart, and have so much
to offer the world. It's just a shame that we have to overcome this disease
before we can show our full potential!
"Never give up. Life is too important."
"In a lot of ways, I don't believe that my ed
could have been prevented, unless I started over from birth. It was an
accumulation of so many different things in my life. However, there are
some things that may have helped prevent it. As a child, I learned that
it was not Ok to be sad or depressed. I believed that I suffered from
depression as a child, but no one noticed, or I was criticized for
feeling this way. I also suffered from a chronically low self-esteem.
I encourage family and friends to not ignore the eating disorder until
it reaches severe levels."
"I can't really put my finger on what exactly led to my eating disorder.
I think it was a bunch of things. I guess the biggest thing was
probably society's respect and admiration of the thin. I can remember
watching tv as a child seeing beautiful THIN actresses on shows and
wanting to be like them. I also had two thin sisters who were
constantly watching what they ate. I always felt that if they think
they need to watch what they eat, then I should probably watch what i
eat too. When I was in middle school I was a little bit
oveweight, and then in highschool I grew taller and became very thin, and
suddenly everyone wanted to be around me and I received a ton of
attention. This praise I received for being thin fueled my eating
disorder. And now that I am in college I long for that praise and admiration. I want people to tell me how thin I am etc. It is almost sick. Society has taught me that it is
a higher compliment to be thin than smart or funny etc. I think if
society did not praise the thin so much than losing weight would not be
an issue in my life. But, unfortunately that is not the case, and until
I recover from my e.d. the amount of food I consume, and the amount of
time I spend exercising are probably the most important thoughts in my
head."
"It never occurred to me that so many people out there were seeking as much validation as I am. I grew up trying to be perfect in every
way, I did everything possible in high school, and now am graduting
college, with about a hundred activities on my resume. But no one
ev er said "I'm proud of you" or "wow, you've accomplished a lot."
So I took this as I had to do more. And what it ultimately came
down to was my weight, it was my weight that everybody was so
displeased with, that was what was holding me back and no one would
look at anything else unless I lost it.
"I did lose it, I kept losing it, and along with the weight I lost
control over my body through bulimia. Bulimia consumed my life, the
planning, the plotting,a nd the b/p ing. But no one knew, no one
noticed, all they noticed is that I looked good. No one ever said
to me I think you have an eating disorder, so I never beleived I
had it. I needed the approval of an outsider to tell me I had
bulimia, before I could say it myself and believe it and take it on
to fight it.
"I tried to commit suicide because no one was hearing me, no one was
caring, no one was listening. I didn't have a home, and I felt that
since no one cared tenough to notice the bulimia, no one would miss
me. And so to validate that I needed help, I attempted. NOW,
everybody is hearing and listening and caring.
"To all those out there like me, please don't take the path I took,
I am getting better now, but there are other ways out. It takes a
strong person to see the problem in themselves, find the treatment,
and confide in your friends, your family or your counselor, whta
you REALLY feel. People do care and people are on your side, by
coming to this web page, you've taken the first step. You can do
it, and your not alone!"
"All I wanted growing up was my father to notice me. To say, 'yes, you're there
and I love you.' But he never did. He stopped caring when he got sick, and yeah,
okay, that sounds really selfish, but I was there for him even when I was 9 and he
needed to know.... Why couldn't he love me? Why did he stop? Why
did I stop mattering? DAD I'M HERE - NOTICE ME. Will it take my death
for him to validate me?"
"My parents could have done nothing for me because they were too tied up
in dysfunction to know that their daughter was killing herself. They
do not acknowledge that they have a problem, so they deny that their
daughter has a problem. All they have ever wanted to see was the
"perfect good-girl". That's why I've worked since I was fourteen,
practiced guitar until my fingers bled, double majored in college,
completed my paramedic training in half the time most people take,
write, teach, try to be the perfect wife, have to be number one at
everything I do and do it with a smile. Only perfect good girls are
worthy of being loved by parents who really don't even love themselves."
:: What's the Cause :: Love :: Listen :: Communicate :: :: :: Relationships :: Abuse::
|
 | |||
 |
  |
 |
 | ||
| :: back home :: | The Something Fishy Website on Eating Disorders is the property of and copyrighted to Something Fishy Music & Publishing. All rights reserved. Read the legal stuff and our privacy policy, who we are, and thank you's. To get authorization for reproduction, in part or in whole, for print or electronic media, you must get permission. |
 
|