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The road to recovery for these people is a long one. It involves self-acceptance, self-respect, self-discovery, self-love, and a lot of self-exploration so they can get to the root of your behavior and change it for the better. People have got to understand that it takes a whole physical, emotional, and mental transformation for these people to be able to recover. A lot of times these individuals have to leave their families because of the negative effects of the environment. So often eating disordered people are great sacrificers, they either don't know or disregard their own feelings and needs to fulfill another's, which resulted in the eating disorder in the first place. For an eating disordered person to be able to get better they have to put themselves first.
The media is one of the biggest contributors to eating disorders. Watching an Oprah show yesterday and listening to two girls talk who have suffered, who wanted to be pretty like other girls, I realized that maybe if girls didn't feel like they had to wear such tight and revealing clothing they wouldn't feel they had to be so skinny. A few years ago I realized how mad I was that I didn't even know what a women's body was supposed to look like. Of course, if we look at the girls on TV we think that that is how we are supposed to look.
Girls have so many problems with their body image because no one is showing or promoting a real woman's body. Women are supposed to be strong, curvy, and soft. The media and most magazines promote women that are adolescent/teenage size, not woman size. So of course we've got girls that want to go on diets and lose weight, girls who feel like they are fat and ugly. There is a whole new category of eating disordered girls who have sprouted up, that plainly have become that way to fit the image. Pro-anorexia sites never really came into play until the media started doing a lot of eating disorder coverage and stories, they obviously ended up promoting eating disorders.
The other side of the story lies at home and on the social scene. Many eating disordered patients have been found to have parents that are very strict or very idealistic, parents that are hard to satisfy. Usually peers of eating disordered people have made fun of their body or the way they look. Most of the time they are very out-going people and confident people on the outside, but you do not realize how scared they are on the outside. When somebody says something hurtful, even if it is supposed to be a joke, the eating disordered person will not tell you that you hurt his or her feelings. Instead they will ACT like everything is okay and smile right back at you through their pain.
Many eating disordered people have been sexually abused, most have been emotionally manipulated in some way, and all didn't get the love and support they needed in one way or another. And when family and friends do find out about a person they love having an eating disorder there is a tendency to panic and overreact, causing the eating disordered person to freak out and panic as well, also possibly causing their eating disordered behavior to worsen. The best advice, for friends and family dealing with an eating disordered loved one, is to listen, not judge, and sympathize. When a person with an eating disorder has come forward what they really need is a hug, a kiss, and an "it's okay". Let them tell their story and speak their heart.
Today there are many more therapies for eating disorders than there were 5-10 years ago. There are psychotherapists, psychologists, nutritionists, doctors, creative expression therapists, movement therapists, and so on that all specialize in eating disorder treatment. In fact, most of these people have had eating disorders.
Counseling has been the most common form of treatment. Psychotherapists and psychologists are there to listen, that is their job, and if you can find one suited to your needs, they can be a lifesaver and eye-opener. Nutritionists help eating disordered people understand how to eat correctly again. One of the hardest things for a patient recovering from an eating disorder is learning how to eat well again. They have to correct their hunger/full signals again.
Also, getting over the addictive behavior of an eating disorder is the biggest mountain to climb to make it to the side where you can begin to change your eating patterns. All eating disorders have a ritualistic component, a routine. The longer a person deals with an eating disorder the more it will become a habit, a discipline. Expression and movement therapists encourage artistic and creative expression. They help a patient learn to express all of the feelings and the thoughts that they hold deep inside. This really helps the patient learn a positive and constructive way to communicate and express themselves.
Doctors and researchers help us learn more about the causes of eating disorders and the effect eating disorders have on people. They help us see the bigger picture. They link up common factors so we can have a better understanding. Western medicine offers pills, counseling, hospitalization, and nutritional support.
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Joanna Frizzell
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