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Stop Exploiting Mental Illness

I’m tired of my diagnosis being a tag line.

When looking for recovery advice and research, I don’t want to be triggered by someone else’s idea of shock-horror illness. The media loves the grotesque side of mental illness because it’s a marketing tool, an invitation to a fantasy freak show neurotypicals can’t truly comprehend. Everyone wants to see suffering and hardship manifest physically because mere empathy isn’t enough.

It’s even worse when it’s done by people who have struggled with the same disorder. The trend of “My Anorexia Story - with Pictures!!” is toxic and dangerous. It’s only one example of the perpetuation of incorrect information that excludes the vast majority outside the stereotype.

Hearing people’s stories is so valuable in recovery. Please don’t jeopardize that same recovery by exploiting one symptom of the disease.

#depression anorexia recovery edrecovery anxiety

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ED Recovery

I have spent over 100 days in treatment. Compared to the many who suffer from eating disorders and spend months, oftentimes years, and thousands of dollars on the recovery process, my sentence has not been very long at all. Yet 100 days is barely a breath of the six year affair between anorexia and I. In fact, I’ve known less than 10 minutes of peace since my struggle began and 44 days cannot begin to quantify all the other days I have lost playing with the untamed beast in my head.

Many people like to think about eating disorders as a person, an abusive partner most often, named Anna or Ed or Edith. I like that approach. I think it’s creative. I, however, have always thought of my eating disorder as a wild, caged animal. A tiger most often, or an enormous wolf with a grey, bristling and patchy pelt. This makes sense to me because like a vicious beast one might be locked in a cage with, one will do anything to pacify the eating disorder and prevent its threatening snarling. It’s growling at you, so you throw it a bone. And this works for a little while. It chews on the bone and you sit as far away as you can, safer now, but with one eye open, of course. Yet, anyone can tell you that the tiger’s hunger will return again and this time, it will be stronger for having been fed once already. And so the cycle repeats and repeats and repeats. To stop the gnashing of the teeth and the growling, you feed it and feed it, giving in only to protect yourself and stop the terrible thoughts. And so, the thoughts become stronger each time you pacify them, until you’ve created a danger far greater than before by trying to mitigate its howling. This is the eating disorder. That’s how it works. That’s what I can’t escape from.

I don’t want to go to treatment again. At residential, they considered me something of a wonder. “So dedicated! So insightful! So determined to recover!” Bullshit. I was a fraud. For 9 days of PHP and 35 of RTC, I was a fraud, wiling away the repetitive days and getting through each meal by making promises to my eating disorder. Don’t be like me. Don’t lie to yourself and lie to the girls around you, who struggle more at meals and look at you in amazement as if you’ve uncovered some incredible secret. You haven’t. You’re just thinking that the sooner you eat this and follow orders, the sooner you can embrace your beloved beast again. Be honest. Don’t waste your own time. I played the white knuckle game and it cost me a full year of school, instead of the original three months. Now, because I thought I could retain a casual relationship with anorexia, I’m repeating my junior year and facing the prospect of residential again. Take it from me: you will not be the exception. You cannot be partially in the arms of ED. You cannot flirt with it and have everything else you’ve ever wanted and everything you deserve. It simply cannot be.

To anyone out there who has fought this battle and has won or is beginning to win, do you have any tips? Any secrets to help me? I struggle with body dysmorphic disorder, seeing myself (specifically my thighs) as much larger than they are. It’s making restoration and recovery very difficult. Has anyone found loopholes around this? I’m so tired of hating a distortion, something that isn’t even real. It’s so much wasted energy.

I long for a day I can simply get dressed without obsessing about how fat I feel or seeing a distorted image in the mirror. I want truth to return to my life. I want peace. I want the battle to be over and my life to begin again, in earnest, for the first time in six years.

#eating disorder #edrecovery #ed treatment #body dysmorphia #ed #anorexia #anorexia recovery #recovery #recovery tips

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