Advice About Not Wanting To Get Better
Hello -

I have been struggling with an eating disorder for 7 years now, I am 18 now so I have started pretty young. I have heard about the over achieving and its relation to anorexia and bulimia. I can see that happening...I have always had a very good average in school and I am very competitive in sports. Last year I was hospitalized for anorexia and bulimia and I have seen nutritionists and doctors as well, but they couldn't find an answer to why this started and neither could I. There is no reason that I think could have caused this. All I know is that I have an extreme desire to be thin. School, family, friends, were never an issue it was always weight for me. I must be thin. It's hard - I can't see myself getting better and a big part of me does not want to get better. Getting better means getting bigger.

I also have all kinds of information on the topic that the hospital gave me as well as books but I only take out information that helps me towards anorexia and not against it. I know that it's not going to go away for a while and I'm not at that point where I want it to go away. I want to thank you - It's nice to have someone to talk to.

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Hi - thank you for sharing more about how you relate to your eating disorder. I will start by saying this - I admire your courage and insight into where you are in the progress of your disease right now. I am glad you are able to articulate what you are and are not willing to do and how you are feeling about who and where you are in life as a person with an eating disorder. That, believe it or not, is at least a tiny step in the right direction.

I want you to understand something, however. Eating disorders are not a 'desire to be thin.' They are a MENTAL ILLNESS. They are one of the top 5 LEADING CAUSES of mental illness in this country. They KILL over 50,000 young people just like you each year. And I don't need to tell you about the side effects if you survive - heart failure, loss of the ability to have children, loss of the ability to do everything you have ever loved or dreamed of wanting to achieve in your life - because you already know them.

In the meantime, recognize that it is your right to, for example, not like a doctor or therapist who is assigned to you, and that it is your right to find someone who is the right fit for your personality and needs. Just because you didn't find the right therapist or program who understands you and how you communicate and what motivates you to indulge in an eating disorder doesn't mean that healing isn't something you can achieve.

Right now I hear you say that a little part of you wants to heal, but your mind has somehow convinced you that being extremely thin is an essential factor in your identity - and yet in reading your email I perceive that it seems to contribute nothing to the rest of your life - you do not have trouble with family, friends, school, sports....I want you to think about and write about what you think the disease is actually contributing, and brainstorm for yourself why you think you would feel so lost without it.

I honestly believe you when you say you do not know why you have developed the disorder - I believe there is a genetic component to it, and I too developed it almost unconsciously like you have - it was just a part of my life almost before I realized it was there, and it is even in my family. But I do believe that deep down inside you DO know a lot about what is feeding your continued desire to maintain anorexia, and I want to encourage you to find the courage to look for those reasons and identify them for yourself.

So let me leave you with this word of encouragement and support - you right now have all the power and all the information you will ever need to heal from your disease. I did not have a formal treatment program - ever. The people around me had no idea how sick I was. I kept up a good front - just like you I excelled in almost everything I tried. I had to - ON MY OWN - buy into my desire to heal, had to decide that I WANTED a disease-free life and that I was going to do whatever it took to get that life for myself - including changing my own ideas about what 'thin' is to me so that I could see 'thin' and it would be 'thin', not 'dead.' And it took me a long time, but I healed.

I found my own therapists, screened them, and only went to the ones I felt could help me. I read books. I journaled. I taught myself how to eat so that the nutrients my body needed to survive was what I gave it every day, even if that meant Smoothie King and Power Bars every day for my meals for awhile - food is better than no food no matter what it is.

This is your responsibility - no one else can do it or will do it for you. You are not too young, or too sick, yet, to bear that responsibility. You HAVE to choose life of your own free will - even I as a survivor myself cannot do that for you, but can only try to help you re-think the choices you've made up until now that have caused you to choose the road to slow suicide. I want you to think about that.

You have not yet consciously decided you want to live a life free from the eating disorder, but I don't believe that you don't want to heal. You just haven't yet applied your intelligence and determination, perserverance and discipline to the one goal worthy of your complete time and attention - your own life. For now you have made an extreme and unsubstantiated choice -you have decided that, with very little proof that the disorder contributes anything at all of value to your otherwise vibrant and successful life, that there is no such thing as too thin, and I don't have to spell out for you where that road will eventually take you.

You have to stop - turn 180 degrees around - and walk back in the absolute opposite direction if you are going to survive this thing that's got you. It is NOT stronger than you. It does NOT have the power to give you anything good in this life. It WILL take your life if you let it. What are you going to do about it?

Please think about these things, and email me with your thoughts. You are obviously extremely smart, motivated, and intelligent, and it is clear to me that you have a lot of people in your life who love and care for you and would absolutely be devastated to lose you to something like anorexia.

You have a bright future ahead of you - but only if you want it, and it does not, cannot, include an eating disorder. It is up to you - but I believe in you, and I believe you can turn your life around if you put your mind and heart to it!

Blessings and peace,

Shannon