Eating Disorders Support Group
Eating disorders are marked by an obsessive need to control the intake and/or purging of food. This community is dedicated to those struggling on the road to recovery. Join to discuss your experience with others and find support. Get advice, ask questions, and meet others who are going through similar struggles.
I've been Anorexic all my life, for over 20 years. But I am finally really sick. Like really sick. My kidneys are shutting down. I'm in Stage 3a failure. I guess that's not so bad. (It's kinda bad) If I take care of myself now, I could stay at this stage and probably avoid dialysis...or so says the nephrologist. I follow up in 4 weeks to see if it's advancing. My labwork looks like I'm starving, even though I'm NOT underweight. Which is how they diagnosed me. I'm malnourished. Dehydrated. You think all this would be enough to make me "just eat". Only now it's not so easy. Even though I want to. I can't. My therapist found a team of ED Specialized Dietitians for us to start working with. They had me start using this app called Recovery Record. I've been using it for 2 weeks with them. It's really amazing. Hard, but amazing for recovery and accountability and encouragement and keeping me in touch with my team all day, 7 days a week. I'm scared. I don't know how to live without my eating disorder. But it's killing me...physically and emotionally. I HAVE to start eating. I HAVE to start somewhere. I just don't even know where.
How have you been doing since your post? I read your post a few days ago, and have been thinking of you - my heart goes out to you. Anorexia, and eating disorders in general, are terrible diseases. I hear how hard the struggle is for you - one one hand, you are experiencing serious, life-threatening health complications from the eating disorder and you realize it is killing you, yet it feels terrifying (and so very difficult) to give it up.
It sounds like you have a great team in place and a lot of people who care about you on your side. I wonder what it would be like if you put all your trust in them for the time being and followed the plan. You know what it's like to live with anorexia...what might it be like to give life in recovery a try? Maybe this sounds terrible, but it helps me to think of it this way - I can always go back to anorexia. I know what that life is like, and anorexia will always be there. But I do not know what recovery/being recovered is like. I think it is only fair that I should experience what that is like before I spend the rest of my life with this terrible disease, allowing it to consume the rest of my life and possibly kill me. Maybe thinking of it this way could help you also.
I hope that doesn't make it sound like I think anorexia (or any EDs for that matter) are choices. Because I truly do not believe they are, not at all. Yet at some point, recovery does become a choice - an extremely difficult choice, and one that must be made over and over again, each day, each meal and snack. But it is a choice you have the power to make. I hope that you do make that choice. It sounds like you already are. It is terrifying, and overwhelming - taking things just one day, one hour, one minute at a time can help. Each time you are faced with a choice - to restrict or not to restrict, to be honest with your team, to reach out for help - think of your goal. Take it one choice at a time. Just for this day, this hour, what choices can you make to move you towards your goal?
I would love to hear how you've been doing, if you feel up to it.
You can do this. I believe in you.