BPDRecovery.com: Forums

I have yet to be diagnosed.
I am afraid to be diagnosed because that will mean I will have a lot of work to do to change.
I am afraid to recover because i fear I will never love myself enough to give up my self destructive behaviors.
I like it when I am self destructive.
I am thinking of lying whenever I do get therapy so I won't have to admit to my eating disorder.
I want to be deathly ill so I can get attention from my mother.
The only reason I want to b well at all is so my daughter does not grow up to be like me.

(I don't know if this was just a relief to put it out there somewhere, but it kind of feels good.)

Yep could have written that myself many many times.

I wanted to pick you up on something you said though and to be honest it is really important.



Ya know this is the stand point I started at ya know. Lots of people said to me that it wasn't good enough a reason and it had to be about me. Well to be honest the most important thing for me is to see my children grow up to be just who they are. Who they wanna be, and part of that is for me about making they don't grow up with disordered thinking and also eating disorders.

So you can imagine what a kicker it was for me when my daughter started to play about with food and refusing to eat and then over indulging at other times. Its my daughter in therapy too now. Hopefully between us we can get better. My daughter is nine! It is heartbreaking to watch and who ultimately takes responsibility for that? ME of course. Why? cos I am her mum and she soooo wants to be like me, kids copy, they learn behavioural habits from us too.

Having an ED that has only been recently diagnosed myself I know about not wanting to tell people about liking the feeling it gave me about having control over just that one aspect of me every possible reason you could give for sticking with it.

Honestly think about being deathly ill for a moment, do you really want that I mean really being force fed having no dignity, not to mention the irreparable damage you could do to your body in the long term. To do what?

I know my post sounds harsh perhaps and perhaps you don't really want to hear it, but please seek the help you need!

I never wanted to get well at one point either and loved the attention I got for it, but people wear out hon and one day you may find yourself on your own, still with an eating disorder, with no daughter because eating disorders long term are life threatening, it could even mean that she ends up without a mum. Is this really what you want?

I hope you will find the courage to speak to someone, there is life beyond and recovery is so much better than being ill ever was.

Your post was not at all harsh.

I don't actually want to be deathly ill. I would never want to go inpatient. I recently allowed myself to become very dehydrated but my mom never noticed, and I knew she would not take me to the hospital had she noticed anyway. I want to lose a lot more weight but I am a tiny bit worried that I may get what I want but nothing will change.

Part of me wants to stop the madness before I have a ragged, decayed body but I allow the part that must be thinner dominate. As I have already been feeling temporary side-effects of my "disorder" I fear it will take something more serious. I don't know what it will take for me to be ready.

Hon I don't think most people with Eds think they will end up an inpatient or get that ill.

I am aware that I got to the point where I couldn't eat if I tried. Sent my whole body up the spout. If I hadn't sought help then then I really would have been on the slippery slope down. I would hate to see that happen to anyone.

It is easier to lose weight following a sensible diet plan than it is to not eat. The weight you lose when not eating is mainly fluid not fat. Starving oneself causes one to become less active, and your metabolism slows down.

When you do eventually start eating the weight will come back on. seek some help honey cos they will also help you to keep a healthy weight and get all the nutrients your body needs.

keia, i think this post is huge. insightful and the first step needed to heal.

excellent work..just excellent. no one can begin to heal until they hit that and believe it.

you may not know it, but you took probably 50% of what you needed to heal right there.

i really send you good vibes on this. ED is so life threatening.

i used to do something similiar, not eating disorders but self harm. i finally realized i could lay in the floor bleeding out and no one would even see. i had to let go of that need for them to see me. i needed to see me. only me. only me can actually tend to me and fix me. and love me. no one else. others were not worth this crap i was doing to myself. i was worth fixing it! so are you!

i hope things work out and you continue this work. big, big step you took here. i so hope you see this will kill and you dont die. i hope you see nothing you do can MAKE your mom see...or anyone else. this needs to be for you and your daughter. do you want to see her grow up? i have grown kids and its fabulous to watch them become adults.

I have had every eating disorder there is and thought i even invented binging and purging in the 1970's. But, I still cannot bring myself to admit to it and get help. part of us does not want to give it us because it is OUR secret, and one thing that others cannot manipulate. I wish you the best in seeking help, as I am trying to get better too. Don't let it steal 33 years of your life away like I did....

I went from occasional purging in high school to daily purging in my early twenties to anorexia in my mid twenties.

I quit purging by vomiting when I happened to read an article that said those who did such things would end up with their esophogus eaten out by the gastric acid that accompanied the food on its way back up. It was an article in a medical journal and the details were impressive.

Laxatives never appealed to me. Possibly from all the enemas I endured as a child designed to ‘improve my attitude’. Plus, I read where the little sweeper hairs would stop working. Had an aunt who was into ‘physics’ and had no choice in later life. She died of colon cancer. Go figure.

After bulimia, anorexia was born. And I loved it! So much more control and not having to explain the trips to the bathroom or 'get caught'. I remember living with a family and their two young children. No one ever said anything until one day Jan said, "It breaks my heart that I try so hard to make good meals for you to enjoy - and you just throw them up." I assured her that I truly loved her cooking - that's why I ate so much I had to throw up - but she just looked at me, not understanding. I felt bad, but couldn't quit. I couldn't eat just a bit. All or nothing. I soon moved out. And throwing up in public bathrooms at restaurants was the pits. I'd insist on going dutch because I couldn't stand the guilt of throwing up the dinner they paid for.

I stopped with the anorexia when I had a seizure at the commissary on the base where I was stationed. I awoke in the emergency room with a hurting chest (a nurse also in the check-out line had decided I'd stopped breathing and 'thumped' me) and no memory of dropping out in the checkout line. Last I could remember was picking up milk at the back of the store. When asked when I'd last eaten (skin & bone, I was), my best recollection was five days before. On top of running a couple of miles a day and going to night school after work.

But a couple of days in the hospital gave me time to think. They'd scheduled an EEG to see if I'd done permanent damage to my brain. Such fear gripped me. All I could think of was that I would never, ever be able to drive again. I could never GET AWAY. I realized that my driver's license was more important to me than being thin. Out of that was born eating once a day, the evening meal. Could have anything I wanted - once a day. I missed seeing my pelvic bones through my jeans or the 'cadaver' look when I would lie down - but got over it. My desire to drive was greater than my desire to be desirably thin. If they wanted Twiggy, they'd have to keep shopping - no one was worth my being fed through a tube in my stomach or not driving.

Of course, back then, I thought it was all about men and being thin to fit into 'society'.

But what I really wanted to write about was this....in my thirties, I was living with a guy and we'd gone to a bazaar of crafts and such. When we got home, he gave me a framed quote he'd picked up. It didn't cure my bpd or whatever various elements of mental distress I had but it really had an impact. My favorite place to hang it was over the kitchen sink or, when I later married someone, the opposite wall of the toilet.

"Live Well. It is the greatest revenge."

I thought about it long and hard. Often. And eventually I began to see that my mother was fed by my misery. A vicarious thrill for her. Her martyrdom not only included her own strangeness but mine as well. My self hate fed her own. She knew the buttons to push and also knew I was too sensitive to do it back to her. Not, I learned, because I was 'better than' - but because she could cut deep so effortlessly that to provoke would asking to be eviscerated. There was definitely *more* behind those smiling eyes and childish grin as she lilted out her assaults.

That quote seemed such a contradiction - and yet it began to free me. I didn't become the picture of mental health, but I stopped bleeding all over the place. My messy me became contained. I learned to say, simply, "no" and not attempt to explain. My mental stability now came first.

When asked by my mother to accompany her to the funeral home to visit someone she hadn't spoken to or seen in twenty years, I said, "no". When she started with the 'all I'm asking' or 'I don't want to go alone' or 'you could do this one little thing after all....' - I said calmly, "Look, I'm not going. You can call a friend, go alone, or not go at all. Your choice." She never asked again. Out to dinner with the family? No, thanks, not tonight. "Not tonight; it's that simple." Sometimes I'd be up for it and go. But my terms (mentally stable enough), not theirs and guilt trips.

*I* knew me, and they were clueless. Guess I began to accept me as I was and stopped trying to be what others wanted me to be (like them). As if I accepted that my inner child was fragile and while I couldn't help her - yet -, I could protect her. I found I could do that much - and got good at it. Only in the very beginning did I read that quote as meaning living materially well.

I understand that my mother's illness comes from her childhood. And her mother's illness from her mother's. I get the 'hall of mirrors'. But I can't fix any of them or make them understand me.

And it occurs to me that my inner child won't talk to me if she is afraid of me. Maybe there is more that I can do than protect her from others. Perhaps I can begin to take steps to protect her from me. Don't know how much of a connection this really is, but I learned not to tell as a child. And I became the 'enemy' to 'her' within. Cutting, etc. I felt their hate which was hate for themselves and learned to hate myself the same way. Different methods, but the same effect. (Possibly feeling forbidden to hate them caused self-hate – dunno.)

And now that begs the question of what I can do to make her feel safer. In what ways can I stem the depressions and suicidal ideations and show her that I want her to live and grow up - and find peace. She's awfully angry - I'm afraid of her rage and she's afraid I'll snuff her. Aren't we a pair? Not sure how to proceed but it feels like a little window has opened. A bit of fresh air sliding in.

Best to All,

Pamela

I really enjoy hearing from others and find comfort in getting support with this damned eating disorder!!!! maybe the forum moderators will consider it? If not , fellow suffers, please keep posting and sharing your thoughts...

It? What's this "it" that you hope the forum moderators will consider?

Oops, Ellen, I didn't clarify that very well. I was hoping there might be a separate forum for eating disorders in this index. I actually first learned about BPD and DBT from an eating disorder forum. Since then , I have learned that bulimia and other ED's are closely connected with BPD. It is helping me to get my problems sorted out. Many of the eating forum members on the other site I was referring to have been diagnosed BPD and are active in recovery, But most of them suffer like hell from it and don't realize there is help for their chaos and self destruction.

I cannot tell all of you that posted, how comforting it is to know that others feel the same awful relationship with food, weight, size, and love/hate with our family.

I had an active ED for 10 years. I was bulimic and then anorexic.
You can heal from this but it is a process.
When I had a set back one of the things that helped was for me to not beat myself up. I would feel so much shame and devastation that I would keep engaging in destructive behaviors.
But once I stopped and started accepting that it was hard and that if I fell I could just keep going. I would say ok that was tough what were the preceeding events that got me here. Once I could identify my triggers I could head it off. If I could not then I would just promise to do better next time.
I stumbled a lot but eventually I could string together enough good days to make a week, then enough to make a month and so on. So here I am 10 years later recovered.

I was neglected as a child and only through grand gestures of disaster was I able to get attention so I totally know what you mean.