Eating Disorder Movies: Triggering?

"I'm sorry that I'm not a person anymore, I'm a problem"
-Ellen, To the Bone

Fuck Hollywood's portrayal of eating disorders. The tiny, rail-thin girl who has been to in-patient multiple time and still isn't better. The girl who somehow makes bone-thin look pretty and finds "romance" while she's at the hospital. Fuck that. That's exactly why people with actual eating disorders feel like even bigger failures than before.

"I'm not that skinny..."= I'm not good enough at having an eating disorder.

"I've never been to inpatient..."= I must not really be sick.

"He fell in love with her while she was still sick/in inpatient..."= Being sick is attractive.



I get it though. You can't make a movie factual AND interesting. You've got to keep the viewer hooked so why not add a star-crossed romance in there? Hmm...movie about anorexia? Edgy girl thinks she's fat so doesn't eat...let's have her go to inpatient, make some friends, maybe throw in a boy and then BAM! she starts trying new things and, oh my lanta, actually eats something!, then she relapses but ultimately at the end, she returns to recovery! OH BOY! Fuck that.

Yes, there are definitely truths in these movies. Everybody's eating disorder story is insanely different and unique and seeing the same portrayal over and over again is toxic. You might say, "Then why do you watch them?" Why do you think? It's entirely sick, but we watch them to get ideas. Ideas on how to be "better at being sick." Do you think those disclaimers they show at the beginning are going to deter us from watching? No..if anything, it reinforces the need to watch.

While I obviously completely support getting eating disorder stories, and all mental health stories, out there, I also think they should be done right. That being said...I don't think there's any way to portray any mental health story, especially one about eating disorders, without it being triggering in some way to someone.

Why I Hate Thanksgiving

November 22nd: "Don't eat all day so you can eat tomorrow."

November 23rd, Morning: "Workout for hours so you burn off the calories before you eat them."

November 23rd, Dinner: "How many calories are there in turkey? Bite. Chew. Swallow. Did they use butter in the potatoes? Bite. Chew. Swallow. Why is everyone watching me eat...? Bite. Chew. Swallow. Will they notice if I go to the bathroom after we eat? Bite. Chew. Swallow."

November 24th: "Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. How could you be so weak? It doesn't matter if it was a holiday. So what? You're weak. You gave in and ate. Failure. Fat. Fat. Fat."

Thanksgiving is the hardest holiday for someone with an eating disorder. A holiday revolving around food? Our worst nightmare. You'll go back and forth between guilt and defiance. "I can't eat." "It's a holiday and I'm with my family. I'll eat." "These potatoes are full of butter and carbs." "It's one day a year, I'll be fine." You become stuck in this circuit until you're mentally exhausted. 

And the jokes don't help. "I'm going to have to unbutton my pants after this meal." Why would you ever eat that much? How can you eat that much? "I'm not going to have to eat for a week after this." Ha. Ha. Jokes about restricting are so funny. 

The thing you don't understand is that we've spent weeks, months even, preparing for the emotional turmoil that is the holiday season. So much food and having to eat it in FRONT of people? The constant thought that people are judging your every bite. The questions. "How can you eat potatoes without extra butter?" "You don't want dressing on your salad? Ew." "That's all you're eating?!" 

Please, just take into account that Thanksgiving and huge meals are an insanely tough time for some of us, no matter what stage of recovery we're in. Holidays are hard even for "fully recovered" eating disordered people (I put "fully recovered" in quotes because I don't believe this to be possible). 

Happy Holidays Everyone!!

I'm so mad...

I'm mad.

Pissed.

Frustrated.

Angry. 

Furious.

Mad that I've wasted more than half my life stuck in the grip of ED (eating disorder). I'm always going to wonder how my life would have gone if I hadn't been preoccupied with my eating disorder, and I don't just mean food or weight. I mean that I was preoccupied with being perfect, not taking up too much space, not being a burden...

I wanted to share a journal entry I wrote my senior year of college (about two years ago) after a particularly important group therapy session.

"I'm just so angry. It's as if all of the anger that I've never felt is building up and radiating out of me now. I've never been able to feel angry without feeling guilty about it or feeling like a bad person for being angry. Now that I know what I'm really angry at, it makes it so much easier and honestly, my anger is just picking up momentum. I'm mad at ED for affecting so many people, and I'm mad at him for affecting me and stealing a huge portion of my life that I can't ever get back. I'm mad that he is still affecting me now and that he's probably always going to affect me. I'm mad that people on the outside just don't understand what it's like to deal with ED and there's no way to explain it to them. Honestly, maybe they don't think that way and I'm furious because ED makes me believe that there's no hope. I'm pissed as hell that ED has made me despise myself. I'm pissed that I can't see a reflection of myself without feeling disgusted and I can't see another girl without comparing myself to her or him for that matter. I'm pissed that I can't focus in class. while studying, while I'm with my friends, or while I do anything without thinking about my self-hatred. This is not a life to lead, a life full of anger and self-hatred, of something so unbelievably hard to control and I'm the most angry that it chose me. Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Am I really that bad of a person? That weak that ED saw me and picked me? What did I do wrong?"

It's so easy to be angry at yourself for feeling the way that you do, but remember, it's not you. Get angry at ED. Get angry at your anxiety. Get angry at your depression. NOT at yourself.

"Coming Out": Mental Disorders

Trusting someone enough to tell them that you have a mental illness is one of the most difficult things to do. There's always that fear that they'll think you're crazy or that they'll tell you to just "get over it." So, you keep quiet and go on believing you're in this alone until it eats you alive. Let me be the 10,000th person to tell you, YOU'RE NOT ALONE. I know, I know, it's the most cliche statement and has been drilled into all of us, but it's true. You'll realize this once you start sharing your problems with people you trust...or in my case, the entire internet. Just recently I've been told by people I love and have known my whole life about the troubles they have with mental health that I didn't know were happening. It makes me so sad that they have had to go through it but it also brings me comfort to know that mental illness is NORMAL. 

"Coming out" with your mental illness to your family or friends is a really difficult task and sometimes, depending on the illness, impossible. I know that for me, texting, emails, or notes were the easiest and probably the only way I could have told the ones I love about my problems. Most of the time, I am not able to talk about my problems with anyone. Now, when I say I'm "not able," I mean the words in my brain refuse to work their way out of my mouth. It's as if there's a shield blocking them from being spoken. So, I turned to writing and it has worked the best for me. 

The first person I told about anything was my mom. For me, this was the most obvious choice because she's my best friend. Even then, I told her by text message. I was a sophomore in college and writing my 10th journal entry about how I really wanted to start therapy when I thought, "instead of writing this over and over I should do something about it." So I texted her and told her what was going on. The next week I had a session with my first therapist. Now obviously, telling someone about this stuff isn't always going to go 100% okay, there are some people out there who still think it's all "no big deal" and you can just "get over it." But I'm telling you, a majority of people will understand and want to help you out.

I told my dad by email and he let me know that, while he doesn't understand mental illness, he was still there for me. I didn't have to tell some of my friends, they just knew and understood. My best friend has always just somehow understood that this is the way I am and has loved me anyways...I don't thank her enough for that. I told my college boyfriend about it all by writing him a long note and hiding it in his backpack. When he found it, he sent me the sweetest message about how it doesn't change who I am and that's something I think is really important. Your mental illness doesn't change who you are. You're still you. 

No matter what you're going through; anxiety, OCD, depression, an eating disorder, etc., you're still YOU. Although, mental illness will always be there to tell you that you're alone in this, at the end of the day, the people that actually care about you won't care what kind of crazy shit is going on in your brain, they'll just be there to love and support you no matter what. 

Picky Eating or Eating Disorder?

I was probably 9 or 10 years old when I had my first "eating disorder" thought. We were at my grandparents house for family Christmas and there was chocolate cake for dessert. I loved chocolate cake. I was so excited when my aunt cut me a rather large piece and then someone said, "You're going to eat that whole thing?" in a disdainful way. I didn't love chocolate cake anymore. I can still remember this moment so clearly. It was when my whole life changed. 

After that, I started noticing how my clothes were tighter on me, especially around my tummy. I noticed that my friends were thinner than me as well as my brother. By no fault of his own, I have always, to this day, wished I had his body instead of my own. While growing up, I started to develop these thoughts categorizing foods into "boy foods" and "girl foods." "Boy foods" were mostly junk foods: potato chips, sugary cereal, chocolatey desserts, basically anything greasy or sugary. "Girl foods" were the blander, "healthier" foods: pretzels, rice, plain pasta... I think I doing this because I knew my brother could eat these things and still stay skinny but I couldn't, so instead I would just say, "I don't like that," even if I may have actually wanted it. This is where I began being classified as a "picky eater." 

I never realized that my picky eating was disordered eating until I got to college and started going to therapy. See the thing with my version of picky eating wasn't that I would try something and realize that I don't like it. My picky eating was refusing to eat something in the first place, usually because in my mind, it was "bad." This in itself is considered a form of Anorexia: the refusal to eat. Then with anorexia almost always comes the binge eating of these so-called "bad foods," normally in secret while alone. Which eventually leads to the purging of said foods, enter: Bulimia. So you can see how this "picky eating" quickly became more than meets the eye. 

I'm definitely not saying all "picky eaters" have underlying eating disorders, that's not true at all. I'm trying to help you watch out for signs of more than just picky eating. This is something I've dealt with for a majority of my life, a lot I which I'm angry that I let it affect me the way it did and that it held me back from so many opportunities. I'm hoping that by sharing my stories, I can help someone else struggling know that they're not alone, and help others understand that mental health is more than just a bad day.

"But you don't look like you have an eating disorder..."

"I haven't eaten all day. God, I'm so anorexic."

"She's not skinny enough to have an eating disorder."

"Ugh, she's so skinny, she's practically anorexic." 

No.

Stop.


These may be some of the most toxic sentences ever spoken for someone who has an eating disorder.
As someone who has dealt with various types of disordered eating since they were 12 (not diagnosed until I was 18), I can tell you that there is no one way that an eating disorder "looks."
Yes, the most common idea of what an ED looks like is a very skinny female with sunken in eyes and bones protruding, but that is only a small percentage of people who cope with an eating disorder.
In the USA around 20 million women and 10 million men deal with some sort of eating disorder at some point in their life (NEDA). The most commonly known are anorexia and bulimia. But what you may not know is that there are other kinds of EDs and some people may have more than one type.
There are really four(-ish) types of EDs (NEDA):

1. Anorexia Nervosa: restriction of food/drink resulting in inadequate food/drink intake with a fear of weight-gain.
2. Bulimia Nervosa: the purging of food/drink through vomiting, excessive exercise, and/or laxatives.
3. Binge Eating Disorder: seemingly uncontrollable eating/drinking of excessive amounts of food.
4. EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified): any other eating disorder that causes significant distress in your life but cannot be defined by the other three categories.

Each of these types have many different signs and symptoms and can all be deadly.

Before I continue, I would like to make it extremely clear to anyone who doesn't know: EATING DISORDERS ARE NOT SOLELY ABOUT FOOD/WEIGHT/BODY IMAGE. Yes, those are major factors in what composes them, but what really drives an ED is perfection, and the definition of "perfection" looks different for all of us.

Most of the people who have EDs don't "look" like they have one. The reason the idea that there is a way EDs "look" is so triggering is that when we hear this, it flips a switch inour brains. See, an ED will always tell us that we've failed. "You're not skinny enough." "You don't have good enough self control." "You're not 'sick enough.'" Essentially, you're a failure. When we hear things like those at the beginning of this post, that validates these thoughts and the cycle gets worse.

So please, try and help change the stigma that mental health problems are not adjectives and are not to be taken lightly.