This is for all the proana people out there. I admit i am guilty of being one of them from time to time, but it is only at my sickest points. I saw a post on facebook from a friend that is outraged by someone on youtube saying that ed is a lifestyle-not a disease. It got me thinking. What makes a person say something like this? For me, it was a way i could keep myself in denial. If i was telling myself that it was a lifestyle, then i could change that lifestyle at any moment. But deep down inside i know that isnt true. Not one bit. Going through the process of recovery from an eating disorder, it is easy for me to start believing that im doing great and that im cured. That maybe it IS just a choice to eat and not purge. But then the next time i turn around, i find myself doubting if i was even sick in the first place. And then i start to miss what i thought i had through my eating disorder. Then the cycle starts again. I start feeling like i need to get back whatever it is that my eating disorder gives me. Then the thoughts about how fat im going to get if i dont start eating soon start rolling back in and i dont know what to do except listen. So i listen. I put myself in danger just to live a life that continues to make me punish myself if i eat. If you look up the word "disease," you will find that it means "abnormal condition, illness." Starving yourself and/or forcibly getting rid of food for any purpose is ABNORMAL. Having an eating disorder is similar to having a medical condition like fibromyalgia.. Fibromyalgia is chronic pain all over your body. You can get on the right medications and manage the symptoms, but it will never be totally gone. You can also manage an eating disorder by getting a treatment team that works for you, but an eating disorder wont be totally gone either.
What im trying to say through this post is that an eating disorder is not just a lifestyle. Its a manageable but not curable disease. Thats all. End of discussion.
I keep having this discussion with my T, is it a choice or not. She keeps telling me that it's a choice (not the ED, but what I choose to do, like, eat or not eat, weigh myself, etc.) So, I came back with , "If it's a choice then it's not an illness. It can't be both." She obviously disagreed. I hear what you're saying though.
ReplyDelete