#i can't imagine how triggering this kind of tiktok might be for them

[straightfromthetorturedpoetsdept]

so i've been thinking about something.

the human body does not fucking care what sickness the brain is dealing with, and that has got to be so fucking scary when you're recovering from an ed.

a few years ago i learned that if your body experiences a starvation event, your body will change the way it stores fat to avoid that in future. and they think this might be what causes genetic fatness.

anyway, i was thinking about how a lot of people with ed genuinely can experience starvation events and how, once they recover, it can be so easy to slip into it again because you suddenly start gaining weight and it can happen kind of fast. and now your old methods aren't as effective because your body has changed, y'know? it's harder to lose weight once you've been in recovery

you talk a lot about how eds stem from control issues and even though i don't have one myself, i can definitely imagine how that would make you feel out of control.

your body's just trying to keep you alive but your ed brain doesn't understand that.

it really makes you think about how ed recovery isn't 'oh, just start eating properly again' because your body might be ready for that but your brain isn't. recovery feels like you're losing control and your body's fighting against you. there's so little care or understanding of what ed recovery really is and that's pretty frustrating.

Huge trigger warning for the content but yes to all of this anon.

I just don't understand the disconnect between EDs and other forms of mental illness. If you wouldn't tell your suicidal friend to just love themselves through the bad thoughts, why would you say that to someone with an ED?

It misunderstands what an ED does, how it functions, and why it occurs at such a fundamental level but there's such a huge stigma over women with EDs being vain/self-centered that no meaningful public conversation can be had about this topic without people making other people's EDs about themselves.

It happened with Taylor Swift, but it happens all the time in my and everyone who is in recovery's daily lives too. People tell you they want you to be honest about your mental health until you express how you "feel fat" sometimes when you look in the mirror and now people think you've confessed to thinking they're the ugliest thing you've ever seen in your entire life? It's really wild because if I was to say something about my autism and how before my diagnosis, I "felt broken" or even "felt evil inside" y'all would understand I'm talking about my own personal experience with being undiagnosed and not making a blanket statement about how I think everyone is evil inside?

I've seen a lot of tiktoks demonizing women who say "I don't feel like this about any other body but my own" and I am struggling to see how that's a bad thing- you feel? Like, it's so prevalent on tiktok to demonize your thinner friends for feeling bad about their bodies and it's like are you even listening to yourself? Like, honest to god, I think these people just forget that EDs are MENTAL ILLNESSES and that it truly doesn't fucking matter what you want to think or even feel. You can't will away mental illness.

Do you know how scary it can be to be suicidal, for example? I've been at war with myself because I don't want to die but my brain does, and it's just so offensive that people think they know how to help you better than what you're asking for as help? I think that's really what irritates me about the discourse around EDs.

It's this air of "we know better for people with EDs what's good for them" and like the advice is just repackaged toxic positivity bullshit that just invalidates the biological reality of MENTAL ILLNESS. Like, idk, i just wish people understood it's a fucking mental illness and literally ANYONE can have it.

Like, y'all want people with EDs to speak up and then get offended when we say something you take the wrong way because of your own personal trauma and not because of anything we actually said to offend you.

How else are we supposed to speak about these issues? How else are we supposed to communicate that we fucking know it's an issue with OUR thoughts about OUR bodies because we're only having these thoughts about OUR bodies and nobody else's? How else are we supposed to communicate how communicating on how fat we look triggers our EDs (in the case of the anti-hero bathroom scene and the people who are like why couldnt she not use the word fat and it's like... because she was literally called fat in 2017 when she recovered from her ED... she was talking about how the word fat triggers her ED... as evident by the tone of the video. let me not i'm getting ranty again).

Anyways, I say all of this to say- it's exactly like this, anon. You know your thoughts are the issue, just like I LOGICALLY know that not everyone hates me and wishes me dead but that doesn't stop my MENTAL ILLNESS from telling me to kill myself anyways.

It's just tiring at times when I have to constantly remind people that they don't know me, my ED, or my history and what they think is "helpful" advice is just harmful bullshit that doesn't do anything but make people feel guilty for having "impure" thoughts. that's really what this shit comes down to- you hate your body and that's wrong. if you love yourself, you'll be cured. and i just don't know how else to really explain to people that shit is fucking problematic lmfao.

#eating disorders #suicidal thoughts #depression #mental illness #ask and you shall receive #anon love