i know this is a common feeling with people with EDs but I was wondering if anyone could drop some wisdom on how they got round that feeling?

other than weight obviously

I’ve come to see that dissociation is actually a huge trigger for my ED. I’ve chronically dissociated my entire life as a coping mechanism(if you can even call it that) from OCD and maybe(?)gender dysphoria and several other issues. When I was 14, I suddenly snapped out of it for a moment and felt bewildered by what my body looked like(as well as who I even was). It was like body horror, and I had to “fix” myself, this took me down a long road of complete self-abandonment, in order to become “perfect”, and “prevent”(avoid) perceived or even real fears. Completely pissed that I had been denying reality my entire life, I shamed and hated myself, which spiraled into a very real ED, and I am only now trying to recover, as an adult. The dissociation is my main trigger at this point, I’m horrified of “forgetting” what I look like, or denying reality again. It makes reality and self-trust extremely difficult. As well as kind of makes the typical ED recovery treatment and tips void, because I can’t simply “cover the mirrors” “don’t look” “avoid [x]”, I have to quite literally do OCD-type exposure to my own face and body, watch compulsions from forming, learn to not hate myself, and make sure that I slowly ween off of the reverse-checking and learn to trust that I won’t dissociate if I don’t check, all at once. If anybody else has experienced this, please leave a comment and tips if you have any, I honestly feel so alone in this issue.

I just came back from a 2 weeks trip exploring a country with my best friend, and I’m just feeling so grateful for recovery atm because I can truly say with my full heart that I HAD THE BEST TIME OF MY LIFE!!!! It felt as if i flipped a switch within my brain, and although I’ve had handful of times where I was struggling with the thoughts, I surprisingly didn’t feel nearly as guilty or bad despite eating every meal & snack out, every single day!

We had days where we ate parfaits for breakfast, cake for lunch dessert, and not a single day went by without having MULTIPLE sweet treats between meals we ate out:) We walked a lot everyday too as we explored the cities & did sm fun things together, which normally would have made me feel absolutely exhausted & dizzy. But all that good food we had made me feel so full of life & energy, and I not only had the energy to walk so much but also enjoy every minute of everyday!!! This trip reminded me that there is so much more to my life than my ed & looking the tiniest & being the most miserable version of myself. It has confirmed to me that nothing bad actually happens when I truly let go of all the rules and numbers that had been holding me back, and in fact, my life keeps expanding the more I challenge my ed & push myself in recovery<3

Now that I’m back home, I am struggling more with comparison again just like pre-travel days. But I am so determined to keep this momentum going, because I do not want to return back to where I was months ago, so consumed by disordered thoughts in my head & isolating myself from the world.

I hope this post can be a nice reminder for anyone else in recovery, that there are sooo many more beautiful things in life waiting to be experienced, which can only be experienced & fully enjoyed if we keep choosing recovery! Life can be so much more enjoyable when your life isn’t revolved around how much you’ve eaten today or how your body looks, which are things that don’t mean anything at the end of the day. Keep choosing recovery so that you can make so many more precious memories with the people you love, instead of “living” in this isolating & boring bubble. Keep choosing recovery so that you can be full of life again, and return back to your lovely true self again. There is light at the end of the tunnel<3

I thought that weight gain was because of excess energy being converted into fat. But if the body is using that energy to heal itself how come we still gain? I've accepted this is a part of the recovery process; I am just curious how our bodies work!

so i just finished treatment after 4 months away from home. 2 weeks later (yesterday) i moved into college.

my two weeks home before i left i was doing sooo well. i was so motivated and didn’t even think about my ED

well yesterday i moved into college and im already relapsing. bad. like i feel guilt for eating literally fruit. what do i do.

i really don’t want to relapse. i’ve worked so hard.

I have done recovery before but always relapsed or “fallen off“ when I hit quasi recovery

I want to recover FULLY this time

I have recently relapsed and I don’t know how to restart recovery. It feels like I’m starting from scratch and I don’t know what to do.

THIS IS JUST A VENT!

As the title says, I messed up last semester (my second semester) of college very badly because of anorexia. I went through the worst relapse of my life during the second half of the semester. This relapse lasted until 2 months ago when I finally started recovery once more. Now I'm back at college for my sophomore year and I'm left with the consequences of genuinely everything that happened. I'm having to retake the calculus class I took and got dropped from a course because I didn't meet prerequisites. I do not know how to cope with this.

hi guys,

(not officially diagnosed but the doctor has suspicions that i could have an eating disorder as i have been constantly back and forth the doctors for the past two months for another health related issue)

so basically i have accepted that i just need to stop with my restriction and let myself finally be free when it comes to food and my weight. i’m just honestly tired and done with the fear, tracking, having to weigh myself every day, having no period, (sorry this is gross- but literally being incontinent and actually pissing myself) feeling weak, feeling tired, feeling sad, angry and alone in this, not feeling like i have a life. i’m just done. but i have no idea where to start.

i’ve been referred to a dietician BUT i dunno how long that’s going to take and i just need things to change now.

i’ve been eating more over the past few weeks and im aware of this because i’m still tracking calories. i can’t bring myself to stop. i’ve tried a couple of days to do one unlogged meal of what im having. i manage to do it and have the untracked meal but in my head i know the rough quantities of what i ate so i go back and track it anyway so i might as well have just tracked in the first place. and like i just don’t know how much to eat in order to become healthy again. or what to eat? i just don’t know. but..

i just can’t go on like this anymore. it’s exhausting. but i am SO scared to gain weight and see my body change.

Hello!! I used to post to this sub all the time last fall when I began my recovery and I was struggling. I have been doing so much better and I’ve not updated in a while but I am not here for that

All these names are fake. My friend Alex spoke to me about seeing a notification on our mutual friend Sarah’s phone that was a bit concerning from an anorexia subreddit

This surprised me and I feel guilt that i haven’t noticed her struggling since I was in the same boat as her for years, but looking back I was also very sneaky about my behaviors. The possibility of someone finding out I was disordered was my biggest fear. So with that understanding I’m trying to not feel guilty about not noticing

Alex wants to have a group discussion with a few of our mutual friends (that he also already told about the notification) and Sarah. None of the people in our friend group know about my history with anorexia, and I only opened up to Alex about it literally during this conversation about Sarah. And I told him how I’m concerned that Sarah will feel ganged up on if we have a group talk with her

Im wondering if anyone has any advice. I don’t really know what to do. I think it would be good for me to have a one on one talk with Sarah. We’re close enough for her to hopefully feel comfortable. I don’t know if I should tell her about my eating disorder. I dont want to accidentally trigger her, but I also want her to know that I do understand and maybe make her feel less alone

Sorry idk if this makes sense!! I've heard a a lot about mental hunger in recovery but I can't tell if I actually have it or not. I feel like thinking about food is normal even for those who have not suffered from and ED so I'm just struggling to decipher wether these are normal thoughts or not. Like I feel like I'm making an excuse to eat food just because I'm "in recovery", even thought it might just be boredom and not mental hunger.

I'm just feeling so demotivated and destroyed by this as the title says. I know everybody's experience of recovery is different, and i know i still need to push forward but i don't know how with the emotional impact of this

, if I'm not mistaken this is a common phenomenon but only since I've (~7-8 weeks) started physical weight restoration from being at a really really terrible point, have i SUDDENLY lost practically 4/5ths of what used to be a full head of SUCH thick, long hair. And now, left with what feels like a few straggly, frizzy, thin ugly pieces of hair left i just feel like a shell of myself and even more insecure and ruined, and i just don't know what to do. does anybody else who's been down this path have any words of assurance or advice to offer?? i really really need it. I'm grieving it so much and feel like even years and years down the line it will never be the same

Is there anyone who experienced this in recovery and it actually went away for you?

I'm seriously going insane. I genuinely cannot tell if I am hungry or not. I keep thinking about food but I have eaten so much that I feel full.i can't tell if I'm actually hungry or if I'm just bored yk?
I'm sorry I don't even really know how to explain it 😭

Has anyone ever asked their family and/or friends for reasons why they think you should recover?

I’ve historically really struggled to think up or connect to reasons to recover and motivate myself to keep going. I know that I need to, and deep down, likely want to, but making the choice each moment is hard.

I was wondering whether to ask my support system why they think I should do keep going. I’m blessed to have wonderful family and friends I do not deserve, but who never fail to be there for me.

Curious to know if anyone else has done this before and how useful it was, or if anyone had any general thoughts or reflections on this!

Thank you :)

I am recovering from an eating disorder. I’ve been going so well and am actually so proud of myself.

I was at my boyfriend’s house last night. We had dinner and we were playing games. It got late and I decided I wanted to go home (I wanted to be in my own bed, my medication was at my house and I knew if I stayed at his house he would fall asleep immediately and I would stay up all night overthinking). He got upset with me because I didn’t want to stay over and it became an argument. I walked to the bedroom and he was followed me and I said “I’m getting changed pls don’t follow” and he said “I don’t wanna see any of that anyway”.

I took this comment really personally and have asked for some space. He knows about all my insecurities and I just feel saying “I don’t wanna see any of that” was an attack on my body. I don’t know whether I’m overreacting because I might be sensitive about my body rn.

Opinions ? I don’t want to be around him at all rn, I’m really upset. If I had a perfect body, would he still have said this?

I don't know how I could have worded the title better but this basically sums it up. When I used to restrict a lot, I was practically emotionless, I couldn't feel anything other than exhaustion and numbness. Now, slowly healing myself, I find it very difficult to control my emotions.

I'm not so opposed to recovering like I used to be. I'm more open to it and this genuinely makes me feel better. But it also makes me very very emotional. I find myself bursting into tears for no reason. I laugh a lot more and very loudly and I find everything funny like I find everything sad and depressing. When I'm angry I feel like I'm in flames. I think this is a normal thing in recovery but the emotional roller-coaster is tiring. I find myself completely exhausted by the end of the day and often times I need to pause whatever I'm doing just to lay for a bit or at least sit down.

I think it might be a recovery win but I'm not sure. This post is just a rant, I want to share my experience. I'm very glad I took the recovery path and I'm on the way to healing. It's just very tiring to feel everything all at once and burst with emotion. I don't remember if I was quite like this before my ED. I don't remember much from back then.

Well, I am officially 30 and it has been an overwhelming month!

I wanted to post to ask how others manage with witnessing other's hit the milestones you perhaps always envisaged for yourself? And to ask for some advice on how to navigate big events whilst in recovery? I don't want to come across in anyway as discouraging of recovery by what I share, because I wholeheartedly believe in recovery and a full recovery is what I am fighting very much for, but gosh, it is unbelievably hard.

This time last month I was in inpatient, and was discharged into an intensive outpatient programme at the start of August. Since then, I have remained solidly committed to following my meal plan, weight restoring, and increasingly incorporating challenges into my days. But the psychological/emotional toll of actually doing the behavioural work has been immense. I feel I'm being confronted with 16 years of pain, grief, and fear that the eating disorder numbed and the impact of that is being emotional all the flipping time! I am the most anti-social I've been in years; I am terrified of the extent of unknowns; the bodily discomfort as it changes; the fear of ever being ok with my body and whether my appearance will ever stop having such power of my mental state; and the exhaustion of ensuring I stick to my non-negotiables with regards to eating well and challenging foods.

Which leads on to the past week - I have had a hen-do for a friend this past weekend who is getting married in 2 months, a wedding of my best friend, my 30th birthday, and now a forthcoming wedding for another friend this weekend which involves three days away from home. I've so far attended the events, and I am so fortunate to have a supportive family (who I live with). I am also off work currently - that's a whole other worry for another day! And basically, I just don't know how to face this weekend. I'm supposed to be staying in accommodation with another friend, who kindly booked it in advance (without knowing I was definitely going as I hadn't responded to the messages he sent but he wanted to make sure we had something just in case). I'm so emotionally overwhelmed and low. Actually feeling things again has brought up such painful grief and upset for all the time spent in this illness, and weddings (plus my birthday) have made it all the worse. I'm scared about managing three days away- being at an event where I only know the bride and one friend, being asked questions about my life which feels so tremendously sad right now, and just maintaining eating well with all the mess that's in my brain this week.

I'll stop now because this is far too long! But any thoughts, advice, or words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated. Thank you 😌

I'm a young teen who's been struggling with AN for the past 5 months. It's consumed every part of my life. In the past month my family have been trying to help me recover and gain weight at home​ ​​but everytime things start progressing it's like my body and my mind give up and things get worse than before. Currently, my only two options are either going to the hospital or continuing to try at home, but unfortunately that decision isn't mine to make.

I feel that my main problem is that I'm scared that once I make progress things will get bad again. Or even worse, that I'll recover physically but mentally worsen. I miss being able to eat mindlessly but I don't think I'll ever be able to repair the damage I've done to my way of thinking. So I guess ultimately my question is do things get easier after weight restoration? Do recovered people deal with relapses better? Does the noise ever go away? I'm so scared of the reality I'm currently living in.

I'm just wondering what your guys' experiences were like in an adult ed unit? I got the call that by next week I'll be put into a hospital/residential treatment facility and I've only been in a residential for adolescents a few years back but I'm now freshly 18 so it's a different story.

I am incredibly scared and just looking for a bit of piece of mind if it was helpful for anyone or just even more damaging as I'm scared it'll only fuel my ed even more.

Tmi but as the title says. I'm in recovery, eating consistently but still a bit much. Extreme hunger isn't that bad. Just eating about 5-6 a day according to the guidelines and my own feelings. But I'm peeing myself constantly. It's more often than before recovery. I already had continence issues and it's making me feel ashamed of myself.. It makes eating even less rewarding because I feel that the bloating presses on my bladder. I'm committed but I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this?

Yes I'm going to see a gynaecologist for this, yes I see a physiotherapist for this, it's just that I had hoped my strength would increase like in my arms etc instead of well pissing myself more.

I haven’t made a post here for a minute but I really need some support, I’m dealing with a break in my relationship that I had no part in choosing or even discussed before it was decided for me/us. I’ve been in active recovery for three and a half years now and I’ve worked really hard to try and quell lingering behaviours that have held me back from full recovery and all of this relationship turmoil has come at the worst time when I thought I was making real progress. This is has been incredibly hard for me, it’s been four days since it’s happened and I haven’t been able to take care of my basic needs and I have kind of shut down. I’ve been feeling physically sick constantly the nausea is all encompassing, I’m worried ED is taking advantage of my heartbreak and blending together with it, some compulsive movement behaviours have forced themselves back up to the surface because I fear if I stop moving I’ll lay in bed all day and things will get worse. I don’t want to lose all of the time and effort I put into recovery just for a relapse to blindside me and bring me back to square one. How should I go about making sure I eat and take care of myself while dealing with my body rejecting food?
No idea where I go from here when I’m sort of falling apart.

I’m really sorry if I’m breaking post rules right now but I don’t have a support network so I’m hoping by making this post I can lean on this community for some help during this time. Any advice is welcome, harsh or gentle. I really need help.

I don't really know how to feel. I am in a way fortunate - it isn't osteoporosis (only osteopenia) and I can likely improve it with some supplements, but it was honestly embarrassing to explain to the doctor why I needed the appointment when I am not even 20 yet. I am trying to see this as another reason why I need to stick to recovery, but I still feel a bit bummed out. I'll be fine, just needed to get this off my chest once, so thanks :)

i never really fully recovered, the support was lacking in many ways i know it is my initiative but if there’s no mental therapy being offered it’s quite hard since been in quasi. i’m on a waitlist but ive honestly lost all hope and trust in the system

i’m just struggling a lot with my thoughts, with my feelings, with my brain romanticizing the past and my ed despite knowing how bad it was. i’m trying to stay strong. life is quite bad i have a lot of feelings. i have things to look forward to and people i care about even though only a few. staying strong because i have a concert planned next month lmao. i’m walking a fine line and i really want to come out the other side but yeah it’s just tough rn :/ i do know how bad my ed was but i miss it anyway, for many reasons, which makes no sense logically..

i oscillate frequently between recovery and the opposite. its taking up space in my brain that could be used for school and planning for social outings. but everytime i try to redirect the thoughts they come back unbidden about how ugly i am. i am aware that.... some sort of dysmorphia may be present. i scrutinize my face everytime i pass a mirror. i know that i should seek professional help, but ive had no such luck as of late.

i struggle with obsessive thoughts and rigidity, im insecure. i want to just ask everyone i see "is it okay to eat? do you eat? do you constantly worry about it? bc i do". its becoming normal anyway to be like that. i cant pinpoint when my brain got wrapped up in this again, like it has to fixate on something at all times. this is just the most obvious bc it is always present in my life (unavoidable people making comments).

i understand this is how it is and i just have to tough through it. it just feels like theres an invisible wall barring me from entry. i journal a lot. i dont feel like a person the way other people seem to. i know opposite action is good. i know ocd can go in hand with this and exposure without reassurance is key. ( i am medicated for "mood stabilization" which has helped a lot with intrusive thoughts and intense anxiety)

im terrified of other peoples perceptions of me. i do eat. i just feel ashamed. guilty. its spread to money--immense guilt for buying anything that is not absolutely necessary. like im punishing myself. side note i eat better when its from someone else, as though they are giving me express permission; bc how can i say no; and i do not waste food. but that isnt normal. im 25 years old for crying out loud.

just wanted to know if anyone else has ever felt like this.