Hi Soul-searcher.. fellow person with ED issues here. Definitely don’t look anorexic or anything..but for years I have danced around counting calories, punishing myself for wanting food so badly, giving in and eating what I “shouldn’t,” binging occasionally and trying to make myself throw up and never being able to.. eating in secrecy in the bathroom.. I hate it so much. I’m not sure if you can relate to any of these.. I hate it sometimes too because so much stress and mental energy goes into thinking about food constantly. I love food, truly.. but it must be some deep-seated way of punishing myself, I think from all the stuff I’ve read regarding this. I feel like there is also the topic of “higher weight anorexia” which is common, and often overlooked.. I saw that on National eating disorders association the other day. I also feel like I have something along the lines of body dysmorphia or whatnot.. like I imagine myself in my head looking thinner or heavier.. and then when I see the hard reality of what I look like in pictures, in the mirror, I sometimes am really surprised at how different I look, especially when standing photographed next to other people.. it is weird. Like what is in my head what I look like can be starkly different, and can frankly be crushing if I feel like in my head, I’m thin, when in the photo, I look heavy and like I’ve gained weight. Do any of these resound with you? Please let me know more about your ED tendencies and what a typical day looks like for you. I seriously hate obsessing over food.. it takes up so much time and I don’t want to it just forces its way in my brain so often.. I feel like it is a terrible misuse of my time and mental energy. Sometimes I really frustrate myself because I get too stressed out and I end up eating before my husband because I don’t want to wait hours before we can eat together after work and then worry about overeating, eating too late, etc. It is so ridiculous. I want to let it all go and just let loose and give myself permission to enjoy food and be at peace with food.. then that is when the magic happens. I look forward to your response!

Dear Soul-searcher:

Welcome back. I noticed your thread yesterday but wanted to read your previous threads before responding, which I did in this morning, lots and lots of previous posts to re-read.

You mentioned your boyfriend, same man, is it? The man you mentioned last to me in May 2018: “He will never change and I have a strange addiction to this man, and I don’t know why…why I can’t let go of someone who’s so obviously not good for me”?

March 2017 you wrote about this man: “I believe when someone WANTS to change they can.. but not because they have to because it will make their lives easier.. This is what I am trying to make him see, that if he truly WANTS to change anything is possible.. ANYTHING is possible”.

And yet, it has been impossible for you to change and let go  of this  man. Holding on to him is easier for you than letting him go. Difficult to comprehend, how you having spent so much money on being with this man, experienced so much distress, so much anxiety and deep depression during this relationship, feeling physically unwell, proceeding into  the disordered eating you described in your new thread.. how can this possibly be an easier life?

I will attempt to answer my own question: you spent time with him in the UK in 2017, it was pretty terrible, you left and went back to your country but you were miserable without him just as you’ve been miserable with him. And then he came to visit you: “from the minute I saw him I relaxed and felt happy again”-

-bingo, this is the easy part. Depressed before him, depressed while with him, depressed while separated from him, you get that magical happiness break-from-depression, “relaxed and ..happy again”!

“the minute I saw him I relaxed and felt happy again… this must mean something” you wrote in March 2017. And so, you took the easy way and back to the U.K, to live with him again. In January 2018 you wrote: “I am so scared to abandon all these hopes and dreams I’ve set my mind to with him”-

– to abandon those hopes and dreams to be happy with him is the difficult life you  don’t want to experience. Holding on to these hopes and dreams is the easier life version for you, so you choose what is easier.

“when things are good between us things can’t be anymore beautiful” you wrote early 2018. And this is the best your life gets. Otherwise, it is the same baseline experience of childhood: “I felt alone, I felt like no one wanted me, not my father, mother or  sisters… this is the punishment I deserve for all the wrong things I’ve done in life, that I won’t find anything more than this” (Jan 2018).

*Interesting, you wrote about your mother: “my mother is the same, she will  put everyone before her no matter how she feels and I get this from her”-

– you wrote this as if you forgot that she put herself before you when she abandoned you at 14 to live with another man in another country, leaving you behind to live with your unloving, angry older sister. So you see, she didn’t put everyone before her- she didn’t put you (or your half siblings) before herself: she put herself first!

Maybe you get that from her, putting yourself first.

anita

Dear Soul-searcher:

“are you saying the way my relationship has been is the cause of my disordered eating? How so?”- No, I am not saying that your relationship is the cause of your disordered eating. Lots of people aren’t in relationships or are in healthy relationships and yet they suffer from disordered eating.

If your relationship is still as unhealthy as it has been, it is keeping you unwell, is what I am saying. When we are unwell in life, over the years, we sort of come up with new dysfunctions, over time. We add to our resume of dysfunctional behaviors.

Regarding my comment regarding your mother, I will rephrase: you shared that you and your mother are alike, that the two of you separately put everyone else ahead of yourselves. I corrected you when I reminded you that when you were a child she left you in one country so to live with a man in another country- and that is not putting you ahead of herself.

Did I clarify myself?

anita

Dear Soul-searcher:

I am glad to read your relationship has improved a lot. Disordered eating as I know it from my personal experience is a big challenge. Anxiety fuels it. In my case, I never gained weight until my very late thirties. When that happened, a new eating disorder appeared- the obsessive counting of calories eaten and burned, over-exercising so to burn, burn, burn (including injuries)- I even received a late-in life diagnosis of anorexia, to add to my resume of diagnoses.

Regarding your mother being “being a stress head, always thinking the worst has happened”, it is anxiety provoking for a child to have a very anxious mother. It is not passed on genetically, it is passed on by the actual day-to-day experience of the child living with a very anxious mother. A child needs a calm mother, not an anxious mother.

anita