The Mind....and Anorexia


"What I Think of Me... I'm fat... I'm a horrible person... I must deserve this... It's my own fault... My problems don't matter... Others don't deserve an Eating Disorder, but I'm different..."

It is all too common for people living with Anorexia and Bulimia to have a mild to severe distorted perception of themselves. What is seen in the mirror isn't reality, and when they compare their physical or personality attributes to others they are extrememly judgemental of themselves. A person suffering with Anorexia or Bulimia may see another person and think "I wish I could be as skinny as them" and in reality, may actually be thinner. They may wish to be as smart, as funny or as compassionate as another person that they are equally as good as -- the bottom line is that they cannot see their own good traits, especially in comparison to others, because of the low self-esteem they have of themselves.

A good example of a distorted perception is black and white thinking... Thinking that bad situations or feelings are the complete end of the world, and good situations or emotions are as bright as the sun. There is no stability or "normalized" thinking with a middle ground, but harsh swings from one extreme to another. Combined with this is irrational behavior that is not okay for others, but okay for the person suffering with the Eating Disorder. An example would be: "when I eat I am just a horrible awful person and deserve to die, but when I don't I am the best little girl in the world."

A lot of times, men and women suffering with an Eating Disorder unfairly personalize the actions around them. They may think that everything someone says or does in some way is a reflection of them. For example: If during a group conversation one individual walks away to go to the bathroom, the person suffering with the Eating Disorder may think "they left because I was acting stupid again." There is also the feeling that "everyone hates me," or only hangs around because they feel sorry for them, or are just being polite. Compliments are seen as polite gestures, but not truly compliments, and are often met with a invalidating remark about themselves. For example: someone compliments on a sufferers achievement and they reply, "no really, I'm so stupid. You should have seen how badly I screwed up last week..."

People suffering with Eating Disorders take on unfair burdens of control for the world around them. They may feel responsible to make the world a better place, to want to cure the ills of everyone, and when they can't, punish themselves with self-hate remarks and actions. There is often a strong need to control their own lives and the lives of people around them, and when they cannot, think it is unfair and take it out on themselves.

Self-blame can be another aspect... the sufferer may blame themself for everything bad that has ever happened to them, believing that in some way they deserved it; ie., "my parents abused me because I was a horrible kid." On the contrary, they may also blame others for everything and take no responsibility for their own lives. For example: "if you'd been there for me, I wouldn't have purged."

People living with Anorexia and Bulimia have a hard time being optimistic about any aspect of a situation or their lives. Everything seems negative in one way or another, or they only pick the negative to focus on. In comparison to others, someone else who achieves something is considered great, but the same achievement for themselves would be met with negativity and how it could have been done better. Though the world is not seen as perfect and others are not expected to act as such, the person suffering with the Eating Disorder may have high expectations of perfection for themselves.

Ultimately, one of the biggest perception distortions of the person with Anorexia or Bulimia is that "life will be better and I will be happy when I lose the weight." There is a false sense of control that is achieved during self-starvation/restriction, a feeling of comfort when binging, or a temporary release of emotions and guilt during purging... In reality none of the above has been achieved except within the sufferer's perception. There is no light at the end of the tunnel of an Eating Disorder, even though those who suffer may think there is.
In reality, the only true light comes from recovery.(???)

"life will be better and I will be happy when I lose the weight." There is a false sense of control that is achieved during self-starvation/restriction, a feeling of comfort when binging, or a temporary release of emotions and guilt during purging...�

how about this… You speak of your so-called “control� when in fact you are completely OUT of control. The little mind games you play on yourself leads you to believe “yes. I am in control of this. This starvation/restriction� when in reality you are anything But. That control is controlling You. So don’t write out long winded excuses and complaints you hear about outsiders looking in on you- you do not know if that person has had ED or not, so who are you to throw your judgments back at me? When all I wanted to do was to help? But perhaps youre better at taking ‘help’ in the forms of compliments and support, which is fine but don’t get all bitchy when I have the right to comment on the subject as I see it. Its called….Debate. Debate brings better understandings of the whole situation but when you nasty and angry about someone saying something you don’t approve off then I suggest you not write out your woes and FIX them. Well how about this: Flip your so called control and revert it back into yourself instead of projecting all of your ‘problems’ towards food/starvation/restrictions ect. You understand that there is a problem by talking about it and labeling it an eating Dis-order. I got compassion towards your situation, more then you know, so please at least just take what I have said as friendly advice.

You never know when youre wrong when you think you’ve been right for so long.

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.
The world owes you nothing.
It was here first.
(Mark Twain)"


you should take that adive instead of showing it off.

I don't think people who suffer from anorexia have any more control over their situation than a person with a broken leg.

You can't 'think' a broken leg away!
You can't control anorexia away!

And, anorexia can be a killer, whereas a broken leg can be fixed.

rhymer- wow! what profound and logical theory you just unleash on me, Im totally blown away- so let me get this str8 before I pee myself:

You dont believe "control" is more of a meta- physical part of your mind?
Youre saying that a broken leg is like a meta- physical part of your mind?
you have control over both, but both are completely different. Body oriented people
only see themselves as their bodies which society fucks with or whatever other 'issue' caused
the whole ED thing, but lets face it: We all gotta blame OUR OWN feelings/control on something completely opposite. I suggest these people here take a long good deep look within yourself, with no distractions- close your eyes- deep inhale- slow release- and seriously take a look at what youre doing to your space suit called a body. there are so much beauty in this world, Silke I can tell you are a very beautiful person inside and outside so why not vibe that beauty with the world? We would love to have you amongst us. I only wish for peoples happiness, even if I dont know them. It can be from sitting at a street light on looking over and see someone looking sad- i project happy good thoughts towards them and hopefully itll be ok with them. I may have been a jerk eariler but alas- mental moods change with a slight breeze these days, please girls, Dara and Silke - i mean no harm. I shall humbly vacant this thread. good luck

anonymust
you are looking rather sophomoric on this thread, and do not appear to be 'helping'. maybe you should just go get high or something

anonymust,

It is apparent from your last post that you are only trying to help people.

I was only trying to explain to you that some medical problems cannot be sorted by applying self-control. For some reason, these conditions cannot be 'treated' by mind control of any sort.

In the broken leg 'analogy', I was intending to point out that you can think for as long you like "go away broken leg", but you will still have a broken leg.

Don't give up trying to help people. I have made some mistakes too. I have read up on conditions and improved my comprehension of some of them. The body and mind are extremely complicated and it is so easy to aggravate rather than assist. But attaining knowledge is the most rewarding activity one can undertake - especially when you can then help others.

Bye for now, Bill.

Hey everybody...

Unless you have anorexia, you will never understand it. It is really inscrutable. I have it myself, but not as bad as Silke and Dara do. In all three of our cases, we were sexually abused as children, and we have had other abusive experiences; this seems to be a common thread among us "anas." It is one of the things which makes all this so complicated...

I have a very hard time talking about this issue, but I just wanted to sort of "weigh in" here--pun intended--to express my unbreakable solidarity with Silke, my wife, and Dara, my sister, and to remind you all that I too suffer from anorexia nervosa. Since I suffer from it too, I can tell you that, as I said at the outset, if you don't, you just won't get it. I don't know how helpful that is, but I just wanted to say something about this. It's hard to, but it seemed necessary.

Here's a really, really important point: Those of us who suffer from anorexia nervosa are just unbelievably sensitive. Any sort of comment like, for example, the one above from anonymust, just has an impact on us like you wouldn't believe; you just can't begin to understand how seemingly innocuous comments devastate us. Yes, we are not normal, but yes, our feelings are real, and it is very easy to hurt those feelings.

And, take it from me, those feelings have been hurt enough. Maybe that's what's wrong with us, that we have been hurt too much.

Respect and Solidarity.

Yes, Steven is correct in saying unless you have anorexia you will never understand it. Heck, I HAVE anorexia and I dont even understand it. All I kniow is how I feel, what I think and what I do. Sometimes I feel sick and then I THINK I have to eat more, but what I DO is eat less.


Silke, I love all your posts on the ED site. I am one who benefits form reading your words, thanks for posting everything you do, especially the stuff on this forum!

Love,
Dara

its been my experience in dealing with my own manifold obsessive conditions that my "will" relating to the habit in question, seems to be stuck on auto-pilot, and is inaccessible to normal decision making processes. maybe, i thought, it is not me, really, but some splinter self, with whom i must make friends, must reassimilate into myself. that's a scary thought that gets scarier when you realise (as it began to seem to me) that the internal splinter really is just a 2 dimensional character but as viable and strong as a baby and 2 dimensional in the sense that it knows just 2 things well- the addiction and the use of will- of your own will- to persue its obsession.
so my theory has been to wean the baby, to limit its time at the breast, as much as possible, and to manuevre it into other focuses- which I share ; for instance i began to make my gambling (compulsive) contingent on other, chance-dependant variables: i'd only gamble on days when the first car i saw was white. i soon found though that i had to keep the variables changing in dynamic ways or else: it wasn't long untill i only gambled on days i'd done something dangerous. that was a bad period, but i managed to keep enough control to make helping strangers count as something dangerous (i'm very shy and live in a dangerous place) and somehow in constantly expanding the criteria for that help the need to gamble started to fade, now i have this transformed and potent urge to break habits- as it were, to help myself and others- i've quit drinking, smoking, sweets, talking bullshit, and maintaining diplomatic silences. which is all to the good, but also anything i do regularly becomes somehow threatening, which makes it hard to stay in one place, hold a job, maintain a relationship. but i'm working on that

Interesting post, and I am glad that technique has worked for you...but anorexia is not only an OCD, it is so much more complex. I also have had OCD that I was able to "will" or logic my self out of, with time and patience. I have overcome self mutilation, I have overcome drugs, I have overcome compulsive exercise just to name a few of the more difficult ones.

It is absolutely not the same for me as getting past my ED. It is something so deep within me, something that I battle on a daily basis. I guess it is easy to put the razors away and NEVER lok at them again, easy to STOP going to the gym and JUST DONT GO BACK...but how can I have a normal relationship with food, when iti s the very act of eating that triggers me? The act of looking in the mirror, or wearing clothing..these are things I cannot escape, I cannot just never wear clothing or never eat again...

Just some input on my perspective. I am sure there are others who have been able to voercome ED, but it has been 17 years of hell for me...

Dara

I have witnessed, in other people as well as in myself, what seems to be 'the body having a mind of its own'.

This is not the 'self' versus the 'Self' or anything like that! [that seems to be a conflict between the individuals own needs and the needs of Society].

We are only able to control some of the 'things' we each do on a daily basis.
Other 'things' seem to be in the control of 'the body' or 'that thing over which we appear to have no control'.

It seems obvious that when 'the body' makes wrong decisions, for whatever reason, be it genetic, dysfunctional, hormone or chemically induced [internal or external] we arer likely to find difficulty enabling some sort of control over it.
I suspect that many 'odd behaviours' [ie., offering no advantage to the individual] are caused by this 'body control'. Maybe it's the autonomous system, or perhaps a ;default', distrorted, personality which doesn't fade away when ones own personality kicks in.

I would like to hear what others think of this idea, only with a view to clarifying the compexities of E.D.. panick attacks, phobias, etc., etc.

We must also not forget the influence of traumas during childhood being a possible contributing factor, either to the cause of such conditions or the establishment of 'the bodies own mind'.