More threads by Ashley-Kate

I sort of kind of need to vent..

I am reading a new book. It is a great book i have to admit but i came to realize that although being a great book i find that books that tell the story of someone's life with the eating disorder frustrate me a great deal - not because they are not helpful but because to some extent they are really harmful depending on were you are in your recovery and even at that sometimes they are just really not good at all.. Not all of them and only parts of them

I like the idea that people tell a story and that it gives hope. The thing that frustrates me is the fact that too often these authors who have had eating disorders themselves don't think of how they were at the time of their eating disorder precisely and what i mean by that is that they often perceive the weight they were at when they were at the lowest and when they were at the highest and although to a normal person they may see how frail the girl or boy must have been to the anorexic mind its different.

I for instance saw weight as objectives if someone was thinner than me that i felt i was not anorexic enough, i was not thin enough because i was not the thinnest... and when i read a book about a girl that dropped very low i would aim for that reminding myself that the Dr's knew nothing because they told me i would be dead at that weight but the girl in the book lived so i convinced myself i could drop to that too...

I am better now slowly getting a grasp on my eating disorder but I still envy the frail silhouette and the numbers I never reached and I find it hard to believe that people who write about their own struggles and express the very drive of competition don't remember how they felt about others that were thinner than them...

Anyway, thanks for letting me vent
 

David Baxter PhD

Late Founder
Ashley, I would say that thoughts and feelings like this may represent the part of your eating disorder that still lingers. You have come a long way but at this time your recovery is still rather fragile. To use your words, this is the part of the eating disorder you have not yet "beaten". There will come a day when you will think and feel more like the authors of those books.
 
thanks for clearing that up some for me.. but the thing is i understand i am not at that point in my recovery but at the same time i don't think i would ever write about talking about the lowest weight i reached knowing very well that girls and boys that are struggling to find their own identity will see it the same way i see it now.. I understand that most people that read the books on anorexia and bulimia are people that struggle with the illness and are fragile just like me and therefore i would have to consider the fact that putting down a certain weight that i may have reached could serve only too encourage the person struggling to want to beat me.. in some twisted way thats how some minds think in eating disorders.
 
don't get me wrong i am the first that will encourage people to read these books but in the sole purpose to help them realize that they do have a problem but i will also note if the person is ready to read it as well. I believe that i am at a point that i am still fragile to the numbers but i also believe i am able to see that those are numbers i should not wish to reach because i could die, i am able to see the possibility of death by anorexia as a reality and i am at a point that i don't chose death.. thanks for the response
 
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