How To Approach Our Eating Disorders
By: Braelyn Bjornson, The Maddie Project BC Ambassador
In honor of National Eating Disorder Day, I want to acknowledge the support network who play a pivotal role in our, in my, recovery. I have been the supporter. But, I have also been the one being supported. At times, recovering from Anorexia Nervosa felt impossible. To the supporters — the parents, best friends, and significant others — you make the impossible feel possible. I hope you find my reflections both informative and insightful. And to those fighting, I hope you feel inspired to share this piece with your loved ones — they want to support us, so let’s show them how.
As humans, our primary purpose in this world is to connect. Relationships, both personal and professional, stem from a connection. Think about the celebrations, vacations, Friday night gatherings, and awkward first dates you’ve attended — think again, but now, about food and the role that it plays. Did you celebrate with cake? Was food the highlight of your trip? What restaurant was your favorite on a Friday night? Did you share popcorn on your first movie date — butter or no butter? It isn’t until you have an unhealthy relationship with food that you realize it’s power in forging social connections. My fear and anxiety became so intense that I avoided every social setting in which food may appear. As you probably guessed, that was practically every social setting. I lived in isolation and my eating disorder loved it. Social avoidance — it’s a key behavioral symptom of eating disorder that you, as the supporters, need to also talk about.
“You’re too skinny” or “you look unhealthy.” I’m not surprised that society associates our weight with the severity of our illness. It is the biggest misconception of eating disorders and one that needs to be deconstructed. Depending on the individual’s body type and form of eating disorder, they may never reach what society depicts as an ‘unhealthy weight’. Changes in body weight, shape, or size are common physical symptoms but they are not a necessary condition. We do not have to be underweight, ‘skeletal’, or grey to have an eating disorder. I encourage you to talk to us about how we feel, instead of how we look. By shifting our focus from fluctuations in weight to changes in our behavior, we can increase the likelihood of onset, early-intervention. Our eating disorder is a psychological, not a physical, illness — remember that.
I encourage you to disengage and refrain from all weight-related conversations. On most days, my eating disorder treated “you look too thin” as a compliment rather than a concern. “If you don’t eat something you’re going to die.” These threats, despite the good intentions, didn’t scare me into getting help. I wasn’t afraid of death. The voice of my eating disorder was overpowering and manipulating — death, at times, was its goal. To avoid triggering our eating disorder, shift the conversation to a discussion about our behavioral changes — NEDA has provided a summary of the behavioral and psychological signs of Anorexia Nervosa here.
“Why don’t you just eat something?” — this question is both isolating and infuriating. We feel intense shame and guilt that we cannot eat like ‘a normal person.’ Food is a privilege, a physiological need, yet we struggle to be in the same room as it. There are biological, genetic, and socio-cultural factors that contribute to our inability to just eat something. If we could, we would. You wouldn’t tell someone who broke their leg to just run on it, would you? I responded best to concerned observations from my loved ones — such as, “I’ve noticed you haven’t been eating. Is there anything you want to talk about? I am always here to listen. I would like to learn more about what you are feeling.”.
Don’t get discouraged when we repeatedly shut you down — denial and resistance are our eating disorder’s best friend. I responded best to the two things my eating disorder deprived me of most — love and compassion. No single cause of an eating disorder has been identified — it is a combination of genetic vulnerabilities, psychological factors, and sociocultural influences. Be patient with our journey. This eating disorder did not manifest overnight or from a desire to be thin — it is so much more complex than that.
Don’t threaten or rush our process; instead, celebrate our victories — and I don’t mean our weight gain. I mean, our ability to be spontaneous. Celebrate our last-minute decisions to join you out for dinner or to order take-out. Celebrate our ability to be present. Celebrate our stillness — our newfound ability to rest and listen to our body. Celebrate our decision not to go to the gym. Celebrate our ease as we walk up and down the aisles of the grocery store. Celebrate our decision to eat a slice of the birthday cake. And by ‘celebrate’, I don’t mean explicitly tell us how proud you are for eating the piece of cake or not going to gym. We don’t need you to verbally remind us every time we are doing something our eating disorder tells us not to — we do, however, need your support as we do it. Perhaps the next time we go out for dinner, say “I missed spending time with you, I am so happy we are doing this.”
Prior to developing my own, I, too, have supported a loved one with an eating disorder. It is both heartbreaking and infuriating to watch someone you love self-destruct to such an extreme. In acts of desperation and hopelessness, I would ask, “do you know how hard it is for me to watch you suffer like this?” I now understand why the guilt approach doesn’t work. Our eating disorder isn’t about you. We carry a heavy burden, filled with shame and guilt. We are not in a position to counsel you — by projecting your feelings onto us, our shame and guilt are only worsened.
Acknowledge the battle that we have with our mind every single mind — tell us we are strong, brave, and courageous. “We can recover from this” — use inclusive words such as ‘we,’ they make that lonely place feel not so lonely anymore. Sit with us in the waiting room at the counselor’s office. Get curious — educate yourself on the statistics and symptoms of our illness (you’re doing it already). If you don’t know what to say or how to say it, “I love you” is more powerful than you think. Write it, type it, speak it — again and again. These three words will help us silence the eating disorder’s voice. Remind us of the all the reasons that you love us — perhaps it’s our sense of adventure or wicked sense of humor. We have a mental illness, but we are not our mental illness.
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The Maddie Project is a community effort in support of youth struggling with depression and other mental health related concerns. Driven by community collaboration and events, the project’s goals are to raise awareness by sparking conversations about youth depression and mental health concerns as well as to help provide uninhibited access to support for youth and their families.
The Maddie Project was founded in April 2015 in memory of Madeline Grace German Coulter. To date the project has engaged millions in active conversations around youth mental health and has raised over $1.3 million dollars towards the development of Maddie’s Healing Garden and support of other child and adolescent mental health services in our community.
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