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She cannot avoid carrying out the act, except at the price of an unbearable anxiety, which she has to face in two different moments, when she binges and when she vomits … An act carried out for its own sake, that is from some hidden compulsion to empty oneself independently of the act of filling oneself up. Only in order to avoid exploding from anxiety.

Obsessive-compulsive anorexia (via betterthanbones)

(via parisstateofmind)

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People become addicts in the process of trying to feel whole instead of fragmented, connected to something instead of lost and alienated. They try to calm the torment of shame and anxiety and fill the void of inner emptiness.

Joyce Houser
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‘What’s wrong with me?’ If there was an anthem for eating disorders, this would be the chorus. What’s wrong with me that I can’t starve away? Or exercise away? Or stuff into silence? What’s wrong with me that I can’t feel, that I can’t express- that I can’t get rid of?

Aimee Liu, Gaining
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We are trapped by our illusions of perfection, depressed by the difficulty of the road ahead, overwhelmed by the patterns of defeat. Until we are convinced substantial change is possible, our lives remain little more than a waking dream.

Perfectly Yourself
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For those who feel a pervasive sense of loneliness and emptiness, food can serve as a constant companion. Eating becomes something to do, a way of filling up the empty space in their lives by creating a sense of fullness in their stomachs. Others may starve themselves so they won’t notice their loneliness. That way they won’t have to take the risk of meeting new people or getting too close to others they fear might reject them.

Eating in the Light of the Moon
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She is plagued with a vague, uneasy sense of emptiness, so she tries to fill herself up. Since she is no longer clear about what she longs for she assumes her hunger is a physical one. And so she either eats compulsively or becomes horrified at her seemingly insatiable appetite and proceeds to starve herself. She then continues through life with the assumption that something is very wrong with her. Her struggle with food confirms that indeed, there is something wrong with her and this becomes her focus, her obsession: if she only could fix this problem, then everything else would be okay.

Eating in the Light of the Moon
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There is an empty spot in many of us that gnaws at our ribs
and cannot be filled by any amount of food. There is a hunger for something
and we never know quite what it is, only that it is hunger, so we eat.

Wasted
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That night, in my room, I gorged myself. I had stolen a half-gallon of strawberry ice cream from the freezer, and I forced spoonful after spoonful down my throat. And later, for several hours after that, I sat hunched on the fire escape landing outside my bedroom, retching back into the ice cream container. And I remember wondering why it was eating something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good.

Amy Tan, Joy Luck Club
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Bulimia is a speeding train with no brakes, bingeing and purging and bingeing and purging no matter how broke you are or how disgusting the food is or what you should be doing. It’s gorging until you can barely stand, puking until you bleed, and the city could burn to the ground and when it was over you’d still be standing in the ashes, bingeing and purging.

disenchantED (via crollando)

(via )

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They try to use bingeing and purging to discharge the anger. They have not learned to tolerate their anger long enough to feel it, to understand what it is signaling to them, and to express it effectively on their own behalf. Instead, they experience anger as destructive- of the self and of relationships.

-Sensing the Self