When you love a girl with an eating disorder, you'll likely feel helpless and confused as thoughts you cannot fathom plague her mind daily.
Maybe she's your daughter, your sister, your best friend, your lover. She brightens and adds life to your world, but you have to deal with the pain and helplessness of watching the darkness in her mind eat at her as she slowly ends the life you so care about. It's likely that you don't understand how something as simple as a granola bar or a skipped workout can send her spiraling into an anxiety attack.
Have Your Voice Heard: Become an Odyssey Creator
When you love a girl with an eating disorder, you watch someone you love slowly kill herself.
You'll soon learn that this disorder reaches far beyond vanity, far beyond a desire to lose weight or be thinner. She grasps for control in at least one area of her life-- at least she has power over what she eats. When she sees the number on the scale drop, or her clothes become a little looser, it gives her a relieving sense of control. In reality, she is entirely out of control: a slave to her disorder.
She'll try to explain the "voice" in her head that tells her not to eat. The voice that nags at her until the food she consumed is in some way purged through exercise, laxatives, or self-induced vomiting. Sometimes it's the voice is whisper. Other times it's a scream.
Imagine this "voice" as a mosquito bite. An unbearable itch that steals your focus until finally you scratch it. That's what it's like to listen to the voice, to succumb to the urge. But once you scratch it, it becomes itchier; it would've been better to not scratch it in the first place, and you know you shouldn't scratch it again, but the itch is unbearable. And so you find your nails raking at the bite, only to make it worse. Eating disorder behaviors become an addiction.
When you love a girl with an eating disorder, you'll see that some days are good, and some days are hellish.
Some days, she might stick to her “safe” foods-- the foods that give her the least anxiety. Other days she’ll be fine going out to any restaurant and enjoying a nice ice cream cone after. Sometimes it's as if the inner demon that makes her feel worthless, guilty, and ashamed has gone away. But when it returns, and the life is wiped from her eyes and the girl you love becomes distant once again. Or maybe she struggles in silence, manipulating you to believe that everything is fine.
When she falls into that dark abyss, oftentimes it's not easy to find the right thing to say. Something everything you say is the wrong thing. That's okay. Instead of fumbling to find the right words, simply reassure her that you are there for her; that you are not judging her; that you will support her through her struggle. Remind her that food is not something to fear. That feeding and taking care of oneself does not equate to a lack of self control or a reason to feel ashamed. That you want her to be healthy, and that in order to be healthy, she has to take care of herself.
Rub her back when you sense the anxiety arising over making a decision on what to eat. Sit with her as she stares at her food with fear in her eyes. Hold her when she shakes with regret over the food that she allowed herself to eat. Assure her that a missed workout-- several missed workouts-- won’t have an effect on how she looks. She knows her thinking is irrational, that food will help, not harm, her; she has no reason to be afraid, but the fact of the matter is that she is afraid.
Talk to her through these fears. Assure her that you won't leave her. Remind her that you love her.
Check in with her. Ask the questions you know might make her uncomfortable, but ultimately will help her break free from her disorder. Did she eat? All of it? Did she hold it down? Did she overexercise, or later restrict her intake to make up for eating previously? Her secrets keep her sick. If she isn't recovering from her eating disorder, she is slowly dying from it.
Disclaimer: Eating disorders such as Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder, and Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder (OSFED, previously known as EDNOS) are serious, life-threatening conditions. They are mental disorders that affect a person's emotional and physical health, relationships, and relationships. They are life consuming diseases that affect women and men of all ages, races, and socioeconomic levels. The anecdotes I used in my writing are inspired by my experience as a girl with an eating disorder.
