Just some things I have read recently that I really like. At last there are some things around that haven’t got eating problems totally upside down!
“People who develop eating disorders feel that they’re not good enough,” Sacker says. “They become obsessed with perfectionism. That perfectionism begins to focus on what they eat. But underlying it is depression and anxiety.”
“At first, it was such a relief not to worry about anything else. The eating disorder started as a coping mechanism to help me avoid my other problems. But, in the end, it became the biggest problem of all.”
“If your value is looking good by societal standards, then you’ll feel good about taking that self-depriving step towards trying to lose a bit more weight – e.g. passing on dessert. There is definitely some psychological reward from having this Spartan mentality. On top of this, if you value achievement and hard work, it seems you’ll certainly at an increased risk of deriving a lot of pleasure from controlling food intake.”
“They are emotional illnesses and really there is only one illness: the use of one or another aspect of eating behaviour to change the way we feel.”
“Too fat or too thin, it’s the same emotional illness.”
“When I had Anorexia, I really wanted to say to an aunt: ‘please don’t mention that I look ‘well’ because this triggers my eating disorder thoughts’ but I didn’t know how to do say so tactfully, and did not want to bring attention to myself, so what did I do? I started to avoid that aunt. What did my mother think? She thought I was being rude. And on it goes …”
“I can’t even look at the menu. There’s nothing on here I can eat. There are too many choices. I don’t want to be here and now everyone’s looking at me. I want to go home!”
“The biggest problem with humanity is that we always want to know why. Maybe it is ok to sometimes not know, and to accept life as it comes. You have to challenge your own hurdles instead of sitting down to look for an answer you might never find.”
anadancer 