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.
+ bulimia + anorexia + binge + purge + vomit + compulsion + empty + anxiety + exploding + unbearable + fill + avoid + urge + overwhelming
Many never feel safe enough to relax yet find in eating disorders an pervasive mode of escape. Here’s how the escape works: you flee anxiety by pulling into yourself, you purge your fear by vomiting it up, you become so obsessive about your body that nothing else in the world seems to matter. The result is that you feel you have this body- your contained world- under control”.
+ gaining + aimee liu + eating disorders + anorexia + bulimia + recovery + escape + anxiety + depression + fear + purge + body + obsessive + world + contained + control + safe + survival mechanism
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.
+ addiction + shame + eating disorder + binge + purge + bulimia + addicts + fragmented + fill + emptiness + calm + anxiety + void + vacant + connected + relationship
‘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?
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.
+ trapped + depression + eating disorder + binge + purge + restrict + change + recovery + future + patterns + symptoms + overwhelmed + defeat + road + possible + life + dream + living
update.
omg (triggering)
+ edproblems + bulimia + anorexia + binge + purge + restrict + recovery
*triggering*
+ fourth of july + update + bulimia + purge + binge + tired + college + therapy + disappointment
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 + eating + eating disorders + anorexia + bulimia + starve + purge + binge + full + loneliness + emptiness + companion + reject + close
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 disorders + eating in the light of the moon + anorexia + bulimia + binge + purge + starve + emptiness + fill + hunger + compulsively + appetite + wrong + obsession + focus + problem
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.
