Disordered Eating: When to Seek Help

Hi! I’m Elena and I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to take the time to share some of my experience with you, specifically with eating disorders and starting treatment.

First, if you’re questioning whether you need help, that can be a sign on its own. I often find that with eating disorders especially, it can be extremely difficult to acknowledge the need for help and to take the steps to get it. You deserve to have a positive relationship with food and with your body, and you deserve help! There is no such thing as “not sick enough” or “too sick” for treatment, both phrases I hear far too often. You may even feel both those things at the same time. You’re not alone and I’m here to help.

Feeling “out of control” in your relationship with food can be another sign that an eating disorder may be present. Eating disorders are often subconscious attempts at regaining control over something and ironically, the more we attempt to control our diet and body image, the more out of control we can feel. This can create a vicious cycle that can feel impossible to escape without help.

Questioning reality is also something I see very often and could be the reason you’re reading this now! Feeling like you can’t rely on your own thoughts, feelings, or judgements, feeling like you need more objective information or an outside source to determine what the “reality” is of your body image or your relationship with food, feeling like your attitude towards your body or diet changes significantly and frequently… These are all experiences that can make you feel “crazy” (another word I hear too much!) and can make it difficult for you to decide if you need help.

Feeling pressure to be secretive when it comes to your food or your body; the more an eating disorder progresses, the more we sometimes feel that we need to hide our relationship with food or changes in our weight. Sometimes there’s a fear of judgement, pressure, shame, guilt, and sometimes it can just feel too complicated or intimate to explain. Isolating from friends and family can be a sign that things have gotten even harder. Sometimes that pressure to keep things hidden, the exhaustion from all the thoughts, feelings, and expectations, and even the physical exhaustion from what your body is going through can make it really difficult to be around other people. This isolation can create another vicious cycle, wherein we become even more depressed or hopeless, and the eating disorder can take the wheel even more.

When the idea of recovery starts to sound scary or impossible, that’s one of the biggest signs it’s time to talk to someone. Especially if despite how scary it is, it feels like it’s the only option left. You don’t have to wait until it goes that far before you talk to someone! You deserve help whatever stage you may be in. Together we can talk about how to make recovery less scary. We can talk about how to break it down into little pieces and take it one tiny step at a time. We can also just talk. Sometimes feeling heard and understood is the biggest step.