Anorexia Nervosa

Hello,

I’ve been going through an incredibly challenging and painful time with my family. I'm 24 years old, and my family has always had control over every aspect of my life, especially when it comes to my relationship. They don't approve of me being in a relationship with my boyfriend, and it's caused a lot of tension and emotional strain.

It all started when I began a relationship with my boyfriend, who lives abroad in my family’s home country. My family, particularly my father, was very against it from the beginning. They tried to manipulate me emotionally and psychologically, telling me that they knew what was best for me and that I should always listen to them. My father physically and emotionally abused me during this time, and there were many instances where I felt trapped in my own home. They would force me into rooms and speak for hours about how my boyfriend wasn’t the right one for me, saying that I should always listen to my family and that they knew when the "right time" to fall in love was.

As the situation worsened, I was not allowed to leave the house without fear of being monitored. They put cameras in the house and would listen in on my conversations. If I ever went outside to talk to my boyfriend, my sister would follow me and eavesdrop on everything I said, taking screenshots of my messages and invading my privacy in ways that made me feel suffocated and trapped. My sister would take my phone and throw it on the floor saying I had a time limit of 5 minutes with him and starting screaming at me, alongside my mother and father. When I tried to seek help, I called the police, but the police officer who arrived seemed to know my father personally and dismissed my situation, saying there was no evidence of abuse, even though I had a huge bruise on my arm. He stated he knew many families from my culture that were "tough on their kids" and proceeded to foolishly say that if I was not a minor he would have just sent me back home. I explained how they invaded my privacy and how they took both my passports, legal government documents, and he said that they had the right to do so. He even told the other officer with him that I was lying and that my story didn't seem credible.

When I entered into this relationship my father became physically violent. He almost punched me in the face during an argument when I suggested the first time that I wanted to go see my boyfriend alone. I was terrified, and it made me want to leave even more. I decided to fight to go abroad and be with my boyfriend because the abuse and constant surveillance from my family had become unbearable. My family tried everything to stop me from going. They didn’t allow me to make my own bank account, took away the money I earned (I work part-time with my father in his business), and even tried to stop me from seeing him by using emotional blackmail. They would guilt-trip me by saying I was ruining their reputation and making them look bad by having a boyfriend and “going to see a man.”

At one point, my father even threatened my boyfriend, calling him a "pig" and a "pervert," and told him that he was no longer allowed to see me. They would use money as a way to control me—when I tried to get a bank account for myself, they refused, telling me that I couldn’t access my own money or even know my own financial information (Eventually I made my own account) They also manipulated me into feeling guilty for having a relationship and threatened to cut me off financially, which they eventually did, forcing me to get a student loan just to be able to finish university.

The situation only escalated from there. My family continued to undermine my relationship, and my father even hired a private investigator to take photos of my boyfriend and me when we were out together. The investigator was at the airport when I had arrived after months of fighting to see my boyfriend again and took pictures of us while we were kissing and sent it to my father. They spread lies about my boyfriend, saying he was a womanizer and trying to make me believe that he wasn’t trustworthy. My sister also started a group chat with my aunts, giving them reports about me and constantly criticizing my boyfriend. She even threatened to call immigration on him, despite him discussing with me that it would be best for us to move to the US for work reasons but he is not saying we have to do that. She and my mom would team up together and continuously call my boyfriend, threatening him, insulting him, and making him feel like he wasn't worthy of being with me. It reached the point where my father called him telling him to leave me and even tried to convince my boyfriend that I suffered from anorexia and health issues.

The worst part came when I found out that my family had hired a private investigator to spy on us. They had been following us around, taking photos of us while we were out in public, and gathering information about our relationship. My older sister had screenshots of my intimate messages and sent them to my parents. My sister is 34 years old and I didn’t expect this type of behavior from her. This made me feel humiliated and violated, knowing that they had gone to such extremes to try and control my life. It made me question how far they would go to tear my relationship apart and make me feel guilty for being with someone they didn’t approve of.

After months of emotional and physical abuse, I decided to leave and go abroad to be with my boyfriend. But my family made it difficult for me. They insisted on canceling my plane ticket, cutting me off financially, and even threatening me with guilt and shame to try and force me to come back home. They even imposed a curfew on me, demanding that I return home by a certain time, and constantly checking on me when I went out. My family went as far as to accuse my boyfriend of being a "bad influence," calling him a "pig" and a "pervert," which made me feel humiliated and trapped. They had given me a credit card and had blocked it when I arrived abroad to punish me.

My aunts were also heavily involved in monitoring my movements. They showed up uninvited to the apartment where I was staying with my boyfriend, often spying on us. One aunt even came into the apartment without my consent early in the morning and started checking rooms to see if he slept over, which infuriated me and made me feel like I had no privacy. They were using this as a way to gather information on my relationship and control my every action. These aunts were close to me, and I felt betrayed by their constant intrusion into my personal life.

Eventually, I came back home, but the situation didn’t improve. They still controlled my every move, trying to manipulate me by withholding money and information, and even threatening to cut me off completely. They told me that if I stayed with my boyfriend, and decided to frequently visit him throughout the year, I would never be accepted into the family and that I would have to choose between them and him. This was especially difficult because I am the youngest in my family, and they used financial dependency as a way to control me.

I’m struggling with guilt, and it’s hard to accept that my family can’t accept me for who I am or support my choices. Now, I’m living with my boyfriend, and I’ve been trying to make a life with him, but the financial struggles and emotional turmoil are taking a toll. I’ve been trying to go abroad every two months, but I’m struggling to afford it because my family cut me off financially, and my boyfriend can’t support me alone. I feel torn because I want to go back for Easter, but I also don’t know if it’s worth it, considering the stress and manipulation I would face. I am doing university virtually, all my classes online, and it wouldn't be necessary for me to go back now but I always hope my family changes and I don't have any more money to spend. Should I go back for Easter or remain here?

My therapist diagnosed me with #AnorexiaNervosa (Nos). I have been restricting for awhile now and I am obsessing over the scale and I fear of getting fat. I’m constantly weighing myself. I just don’t want to be who I was when I was married. I lost a lot of weight when I stopped drinking soda and since I walk every day. Since started Caplyta I been dropping weight. I also reversed my #Diabetes so that was good.

Hi, my name is BecE1974. I'm here because my daughter has anorexia and is still in denial; I have an appointment with a certified Eating Disorder Recovery Coach and Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner this week and just wanted to reach out for any advice in this space.

#MightyTogether

Whenever I attempt to discuss with my therapists what exactly depression feels like, I tell them that it feels like I am drowning. It is peaceful but suffocating at the same time. It is also cold and dark, but it is freeing and calm. I often find myself fantasising about how I would commit suicide, and it would involve me drowning peacefully in the sea, allowing the cold water to fill up my lungs as I sink down. I would essentially reunite with my older brother and accept defeat.

Once I had accepted the idea of death, living this miserable life became more bearable and peaceful. Not being scared of potentially getting killed or run over feels peaceful in some sort of twisted way.

I had a colleague once tell me that I would stumble across other hardships in life, which would snap me out of this and teach me the reality of life, and she proceeded to explain to me how she had undergone a divorce. I understand her viewpoint, of course, and do not want to dismiss her experiences, but I find it offensive to assume that just because I am still young, I haven’t experienced some form of hardship. It may be up to you to decide whether 14-year-old me battling with cancer was a form of hardship or not. Believe it or not, I still didn’t feel any emotion during my war with this ovarian tumour. Would my young 15-year-old self be disappointed at how badly I am living my life at the very moment? Most likely, yes, she battled the war and survived, and here I am, hoping I get killed.

Could the cancer phase be what triggered this depression, then? It may seem like the most reasonable answer, but unfortunately, it most definitely is not the cause because I thrived mentally during my tumour days. Embarrassingly enough, I had wanted to get a sickness in order to gain a form of attention or care from individuals, and of course, I got slapped with a tumour. A famous quote which I adore is, “The desire to be sicker, to prove that you are sick, itself is indicative of sickness. A well person doesn’t desire to be sick” - Jay Vespertine.

This quote speaks to me and to a bunch of other struggling individuals because it may seem that we attempt to get sicker for attention, but in reality, we are struggling and want others to notice and help us.

Unfortunately, mental illness is just as significant as a physical illness; anxiety can create health issues, and anorexia can lead to the failure of organs. However, society continues to fail to place importance on mental illnesses.

We are often deemed as a ‘danger to others’ or as weak slugs once we show people the ugly true side of mental health illnesses. Leaders and organisations continue to praise the importance of speaking up about mental health and being open about it until we do and suffer the consequences.

I have learned my lesson from previous jobs to keep the mental health side completely private for my own sake; the manager will either claim that I am mentally incapable of performing my job or that I cause too much annoyance in the workplace. It really is funny when people label us as ‘danger to others’ purely because we place so much hatred on ourselves. I got this label when I was working in the nursery and was placed under supervision once they found out how bad things were getting up there. If I was to kill myself, I wouldn’t go around killing others instead? The label really does defeat logic; now, I understand that some other mental illnesses can make some individuals a ‘danger’, and if anything, being depressed makes you a danger to yourself only.

The label can feed into the devil in the head, the devil chanting along while being fed with others’ criticism, “See! Even they think you are a burden”. It is almost like asking a small mouse to get along with a bunch of hungry lions; there is no winning for the small mouse, and eventually, he would need to give in and accept defeat. It is hard dealing with outside criticism when you are already involved in a war in your head until you realise that the only way to win would be to end things and give up.

Now, the issue here with depression is that it is part of a family; depression is the supportive older brother who can have sisters or brothers just like a regular member of the family. You may be lucky enough for the older brother not to have any siblings at all, or you may fall into the loop of having other siblings like I did. Depression invites all kinds of friends, aka mental disorders. I have a younger little sister, and I will call her Ana. She came as an influence from our older brother - depression. Ana is weak and doesn’t have a great impact on me; I am able, to an extent, to control her also. Ana allows me to gain a sense of control, and I can go to her for support when depression gets too much. Ana, in this case, is my little sister anorexia; she comes and goes but is within my control. I am able to turn to her as another form of coping mechanism, but she leaves me frail and weak.

So, depression is my older brother, and anorexia is my younger sister. Does this illustration make sense? Because it is the only way I can explain this. The doctors could not place me at two different treatments to remove both depression and anorexia as it was a ‘conflicting’ matter. So I found myself at a crossroads, with two daunting choices: between deciding to heal depression or to heal anorexia. Each path held its own weight and its own consequences. The real issue here is that both siblings are interlinked by DNA. Being depressed makes you lose your appetite, and it leaves you in a spiral of wanting self-control by restricting your food consumption, ultimately inviting Ana in. But having anorexia makes you depressed due to the lack of energy and little motivation; it leaves you isolated, and it uses the same techniques as depression does, luring you in like a hungry snake. If I were to treat depression and abandon Ana, anorexia would then battle and cause organ failure, like a protesting child during a tantrum. If I were to then focus on healing anorexia but abandon depression, the devil in my head would take over, and I would risk committing suicide. It really is a loop, isn’t it? Either choice would have its consequences, but it is about which consequence I would prefer to tolerate. It was a difficult decision to make, but I had decided to discharge myself from the eating disorder services, and abandon Ana and focus on healing the depression. As I said earlier, anorexia is like a little sister, because I have the ability to control her, and I could make her go away if I really wanted to. Depression is what caused me to get stuck in this dark, soggy cave, so in order to climb this broken ladder, I need to focus on gaining control over my mind and gaining the will to get better. I got placed on a different medication in the hope that it would maintain the battle until I get a true psychiatrist assessment.

The issue here is once I gained the label of being anorexic, it felt as though I needed to live up to the label. Which in turn made my eating disorder worse; you see, eating disorders are a very competitive mental illness, almost like it’s an academic competition. You strive to be skinnier than those around you, to be the thinnest one in the room. You start to observe and body check every person around you, to see whether or not they’re thinner. It came to the point where I would compare myself to the kids I looked after in the nursery. What is the end goal here? What do I achieve from finally gaining the “thinnest girl in the room” award? Pretty much nothing, if I’m honest, it is purely the satisfaction of being thinner; it gives you a distraction almost, something else to focus on.

Run out of characters again! part 3 out :)

#Depression #Loneliness