She’s eating one small meal a day, she feels weak and she says she trusts her body so she won’t eat more. She refuses to get help, she’s looking for a “natural” way to deal with it. She’s afraid others will look down on her for some reason, no matter how much I tell her her family and friends care about her and won’t look down on her. I showed her medical sites that clearly showed that eating disorders can cause death, but she won’t listen. She’s going to get hurt, what should I do?
being a fellow doper she’ll probably read this, you can leave any messages for her here.
I don’t know that there’s much you can do. My little sister is has an eating disorder. I knew about it for a good 6 months before she would even admit the possibility of something being wrong, and it was a further few months before she got treatment. It broke my heart. She says she’s better but I don’t think she is. I guess my point is that there isn’t anything that you can do except plant the seed by telling her of your concern for her, and then just love and support her anyway. Until she’s ready to face it, there’s not a lot you can do. It may well be that she’s lying to herself (this was the case with my sister), she really believes that there is no problem because she explains away her behaviour.
Eating disorders don’t just affect the person involved. They are a disease of trust, and can take a long time to heal. The fact is, my family and I don’t trust my sister with food anymore. We probably won’t for quite some time. We don’t allow her to be in the kitched unsupervised, for example.
If she’s ashamed, she doesn’t need to be. It’s an illness, and there’s no shame in that. Also, people notice anyway, they may be too polite to say anything, but they notice that you don’t eat or that you lose weight. People know there’s something wrong. Getting treatment won’t make it worse, and you can keep it confidential. One thing that helped for my sister was that she would tell her friends that she was spending time with me whenever she was really getting treatment. Because I already knew that she was ill, I could help her to save face with her friends at school.
It really is heartbreaking to watch someone fade before your eyes. I didn’t have the answers when my sister was sick, and I don’t have much more insight now. I wish you all the best.
Well, if this person is going to be reading the thread, then let me say this:
There is no shame in having an eating disorder. I have two friends who have gone through battles with eating disorders, and both of them are some of the most intelligent, funny, and nice people I have ever met (one of them is in the running for valedictorian, if it helps). Having this disorder is not a reflection on your intelligence, or on what sort of a person you are. The real shame lies in ignoring it, and refusing to admit that there is anything wrong. It’s like a cancer patient ignoring a tumor: there is a way to treat it if you’re just willing to try it.
You say you trust your body, but if you constantly feel weak, that is your body trying to tell you that it needs food. Hopefully, you can trust it enough to listen to it, and if you find yourself completely unable to get through this, you have to be willing to seek outside help. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact I would go so far as to say that it makes you a stronger person to admit it.
And clayton, on the chance that she doesn’t see this thread, you have to help her understand this, as her friend. Maybe print it out and give it to her. Either way, she needs to see that trusting your body is a matter of listening to what it tells you, not forcing it to do things that are harmful to it. Also, help her to see that this has the potential to hurt everyone around her very much, and again, no one will look down on her for seeking help. E-mail me if you want to talk about anything.
-Walt
I read your post with a heavy heart. My ex-wife, long before I knew her, was hospitalised for nine months with anorexia. She was really close to dying, and it was a long time before she was physically well again. It’s sad to say, but I don’t think she actually has recovered mentally. There are still aspects of her personality that are affected by the disease. I feel that a part of her died when she was sick, and she was never able to recover it.
I think that your friend needs to get help sooner rather than later. My ex-wife suffered because she was sick for so long (from what I heard later she was showing signs for about two years), and she wouldn’t have been affected so badly if she had been helped earlier. Part of her problem was that her mother also had it to some extent, and no one picked my ex-wife’s problem until she went to university.
As I say, I wasn’t around when my ex-wife was going through her physical problems. I hope I would have been strong enough to get her to seek help. One of the aspects of any eating disorder is that the sufferer becomes very controlling, and unwilling to take advice. I think you should be willing to risk your friendship to try to get her help, else you may well risk losing your friend.
One group that helped my ex-wife after her hospitalisation was Overeaters Anonymous (despite their name, they help persons with any type of eating disorder). OA also has literature that can help you as well, clayton_e–they offer advice on how to help identify and aid those people with eating disorders. You can get the phone numbers and addresses of OA branches on the internet–just keyword-search for “Overeaters Anonymous.” There are branches in most major cities in the US.
Thank you for writing in to us. I pray for you and your friend, and urge you again to get help and advice from Overeaters Anonymous.
Thank you, everyone. I’ll make sure she sees this. Thank you.