Bodies

I was just reading one of those rando facebook-esque articles about 'how to talk to your daughter about her body' and the advice was:
Don't talk to her about her body, except to tell her how it works. Don't comment if she's lost weight or gained weight. And don't talk to her about how much you dislike your own body.

And now I want to talk about my parents. Guess what? My parents never made a comment on my body one way or another until I was losing about 7 pounds a week.When I hit 100 pounds? My mom started screaming at me at the dinner table to eat. 95? She tried bribery. 90? Doctors visits.  What I'm saying is, they never commented on my body. Ever. And I still ended up with an eating disorder.  My mom never commented on not being satisfied with her body either. I can't think of one instance where she said anything self deprecating.  This is actually remarkable because... well, she's a woman. I'm sure she had these thoughts.

I don't know what I'm trying to say. Maybe those of us who have had eating disorders were predetermined to. Maybe it was just in our DNA and inevitable. It's a mental illness. People with other mental illnesses don't blame their parents, do they? The thing is, if you sat a hundred women in a room and interviewed them separately, asking them to recall a time someone has commented on their body that had a lasting effect, probably all of them would have a laundry list of comments from relatives and classmates throughout their childhood and adolescence.

The difference about those of us who had an eating disorder? We obsessed over these comments and used them as fuel.  Sure, negative body comments likely caused insecurities in all women; maybe some that were even damaging to their sense of self worth. I'm not discrediting the effect of words on everyone. I'm simply saying that those that have had eating disorders have a distorted perception that may have been triggered by comments, but the comments themselves did not cause the disorder.

A person may argue that, unlike other mental illnesses, people 'get over' anorexia/bulimia. I'm here to tell you that people that think this have never had an eating disorder mind.  I will never 'get over' the obsessive battle in my mind over food and exercise. I have been given tools through psychiatric treatment to defeat these hundreds of daily battles going on in my mind, but never will I fully conquer the beast.  It's one small battle at a time. I'm terrified that I'll get exhausted and give up the battle and end up back where I was.  But, right now? I'm winning.