What was the cause of your ED?

Have you discovered why you developed your ED? What were the fears or situations that helped trigger it? 

I've come to realize that a big reason I developed my eating disorder was because I feared growing up. I loved my childhood and early teen years. When I entered highschool, I didn't talk to many of my old friends - they had either moved away or turned into skanks only interested in boys (they've grown out of that phase now, though). Also, I was very close with my two older brothers, and they both moved out last summer at about the same time. I was also a late bloomer and starting to gain some weight in "those" areas. So I was at a vulnerable stage but felt alone.

Now I know that women are supposed to have a higher percentage of bodyfat than guys, and need bums and boobs! Also, just because I'm not a kid anymore doesn't mean I can't still act goofy and stupid. It just means that I have more responsibilities, and therefore need more confidence to carry them out.

While I don't want to point fingers at anyone, it was my family, namely my mom. They told me I was fat & needed to exercise & just made a huge deal out of it, so I think I sort of said "well, if they want me to lose weight, let's see how they like me now!" & just started starving myself. It soon escalated into a full-fledged eating disorder. It was something I could control in the midst of my depression & stress that I really had no control over.
But like I said, I don't really blame them for it. When I'm forced to point a finger, it's logically on them, but I take responsibility for what happened.

A few years ago, when I lived with my mom, she'd make me eat ALL the time. I'd feel so fat and bloated. if I told her I didn't want to eat, she wouldn't listen and make me eat anyway because I was "growing up". I know she did this because she cares about me, but it triggered the feeling inside me that I wanted to be skinny.

So last year when I moved in with my dad I started eating a lot more healthy-the way I wanted to. Sadly, each time I'd look in the mirror I'd still think I didn't look as skinny as I needed to ( I still do in a way). So I kept losing, and losing...

Finally all my friends made me realize how I am seriously SOO skinny and I need to gain. Like my perception is distorted now, aggh. But I can't bring myself to eat more than maintenance. It's sooo hard.

 

After having talks with toonnss of people [including strangers] and some reflecting, I've decided that it had, at least in part, to do with the fact that my dad was never around when I was a kid. He was always working and almost the only times I saw him were when he'd come home late at night, drunk, or at least with a blood alcohol level too high to enable him to do anything but head right off to bed. [The only other times I'd see him were sometimes on the weekends when I was in elementary, when he'd take me driving around and we'd listen to the Stones and the Beatles, who sorta played Father to me throughout my childhood :) ]
Although he always seemed to be having a chat with my sister, who's 3 years older than me, he could never make time for me. He would try to buy my happiness or approval or whatever by, well, buying me things. He started working at home when I was around 13, and let's just say we kind of got off on the wrong foot. I mean, I was 13, and a TOTAL rebel [which hasn't much diffused], and this was the first time I really had the opportunity to develop any kind of relationship with my dad. I also felt like he was controlling my life--from my friends to my grades. When I didn't get a bad grade, I basically couldn't do anything until I brought it up. I didn't understand why my older sister could do WHATEVER she wanted and had never brought home an A. That, coupled with my sister's lifelong thin-and-tinyness [she's 5'3" and weighs no more than 98 pounds], caused me to wonder whether she was favorited for another reason. During high school, my grades started to slip for whatever reason, and I was cutting the only connection I had to my father. The stress of high school, boys, grades, and always getting into some kind of trouble, paired with vending machines and giant Otis Spunkmeyer cookies, is what made me gain weight. During that time, and even sometimes through my ED, I'd be silently rebellious towards my dad in various ways, including drinking, quite a bit :/
In my mind, I started running and dieting because I wanted to be a bit thinner, a bit healthier, a bit more attractive to myself and others. It didn't take long for me to go waaayyy too far down the path. If my intentions had only been to be healthier, I would've stopped at 120. or 115. or 110. But I didn't. It was then, at the beginning of my ED, that I started to look at my sister as "better" than me because she weighed less. My father's sisters were always teeeny, too, but I never looked like them--I always looked like my mom, who isn't overweight but isn't a tiny little thing. Since my parents have never had the most loving relationship, I guess I felt like if I looked like my sister and my dad's sisters that he'd like me more and pay a bit more attention to me.
It got his attention, all right. My relationship with my dad was the worst during the lowest points of my ED. Whereas my mom understood some of the things I told her had caused my ED, I couldn't stand up to my dad and blame him.
My dad also wasn't the most supportive when I began my recovery, or throughout it. When therapists would try to calmly explain to him my thoughts and feelings, he'd get frustrated and wouldn't soak in a word. Now that I'm up to a healthier weight, and after countless sessions with therapists, doctors, and nutritionists, my dad and I now try to listen and understand eachother better and I'm confident that with our improved friendship will come my full mental recovery.

whew! sorry about the length :p

My cause....

Figure Skating (pressure to be a certain weight and told by coaches that I couldn't eat certain foods)

Ballet (weighed weekly and measured)

College (promised myself that I would not gain weight)

Sorority (compared to 90 other amazingly gorgeous girls)

and writing for a fashion magazine (ummm stick thin models who I thought were fantastic)....

could I have been any more of a "screaming victim"??

muttlover--this is a good question!  hmmm...I think I developed an eating disorder because I had a controlling father and parents did not express a lot of outward emotions towards my brother or I, such as hugs, "I love you's", nor any indepth feeling at all.  I learned to suppress those emotions and felt that the only way I could get my dad's approval is to be perfect, which at the same time I felt I was a complete failure and that the only thing I was really good at doing was being thin.  I was always thin as a child & once puberty hit I was terrified of getting fat and I suppose I was also afraid of getting attention from boys, but at the same time I wanted the attention, so it was a constant contradiction.  Plus, it was a way to control something in my life--nothing else matter to me when I had the eating disorder. 

When I had my relapse, it was due to stomach problems--I lost a lot of weight and since I had previously had an eating disorder, I found myself down the same path again.  This time I knew what was happening to me, but it still took a while to get over it.  I did it though & am sooo thankful to have my life back to normal. 

hmmm

i feared that all my friends would be or were getting skinnier than me. i didn't want to be the "fat one" i just stood in the mirror one day, extremely paranoid, and pointed out all the things i wanted to get rid of. i would pose in my bathing suit everyday and just criticize myself. i've also been best friends with this girl my whole life who is just naturally thin. she's such a stick. and plus she's tall, so i wanted it to be like "well she might be tall, but i can still be short and skinnier than her". and just pictures in magazines too. bathing suit ads and advertisements for cute summer clothes and i thought "i'll never look that good". i was so afraid to gain weight, and of course i wanted boys to think i was attractive. and it was like my thing. just one little thing nobody ever knew about, i was organized, kept a little notebook planning my meals and exercise. i can honestly say i don't blame anyone but myself, and it wasn't even an issue of that being the only thing in life i could control. it was total vanity and wanting to be able to be compared to other girls and not completely dismissed. it was also somewhat of a rush, having my small secret nobody knew about it. like nobody knew this layer of my life. they only saw the surface, i was losing weight.

whew. haha i sound kinda crazy don't i?

cheerleading, boyfriend cheating on me with a much skinnier girl, and I think it went deeper in the sense that if I couldn't be the best student or the best athlete or something then I needed to be the skinniest.  I felt such a sense of accomplishsment in lying about what I had eaten or hadn't eaten and seeing my friends eat while I watched made me feel proud and perfect at something.  I am not close with my family at all and I think the remarks they used to make about my huge intake of sweets as well as my "weight problem", althought I was never overweight, pushed me over the edge.  I also think my mom has an ED although I would never mention it to her but she has control issues and a major food problem.  I am also a perfectionist and I loved the feeling of having my clothes hang off of me, even if they were 00's.  Oh...this all brings back such hard memories.  Of course, my anorexia has turned into bulimia and I am trying so hard to get rid of it.

There is no doubt what has caused this, STRESS. As this pattern has gone on and on, I get more distressed and feel more out of control. Not to mention, I am beginning to gain weight. Thus, causing me more stress.

One of my two stress triggers is work. I finally walked out and started a new job this past Monday. A new job causes it's own stress but I'm in a better place now. The second thing is my health. I've had surgery twice in the last year and a half (female issues). I am currently in more pain then ever. Was in the ER just this past Monday. I had some tests done this morning. After seeing specialist after specialist, the radiologist/ultrasound tech may have finally spotted the problem. I feel like there is a little hope. Waiting to talk to my GYN and MD.

I just posted this about my binge eating disorder. I pasted it over here.

I'm really afraid my situation is going to turn into bulimia. I feel like if I can not control the eating...???

Fallingupstairs, you are not crazy - I felt much the same way. Saw myself in a photo at a friend's wedding with the other four girls in my group and I was definitely the "fat one".

My mum always favoured my brother because he's been really sick most his life, and she didnt pay any attentions to my achievements (hense perfectionism). I learnt early on that her affection was best earnt through being sick, so I starved. Ballet was another factor, i put a lot of pressure on myself to be as thin as the other girls, and its making recovery difficult becuase Im still comparing myself.

it wasn't one particular thing, its was kinda everything all lumped together.

my mom told me i was fat, and i suspect she has some form of an eating disorder herself. she weighs about 43kg and complains of being fat.

being afraid of growing up

my sister is really really skinny and never has eaten a lot, so in my mind it became a sort of competition. And my sister has scoliosis, and my parents were paying a lot of attention to her, so i felt kinda rejected, so i thought that by making myself sick i'd get there attention [selfish i know]

and being able to control what i didn't eat made me feel better, and just seeing that bloody number on the scale going each day.

and several other factors, but just all of it became overwhelming.

My mom always talking negatively about weight. She is thin but she says she is fat and stuff a lot. So yeah, it gave me an odd contatation of what normal was. Then I think it was some ughh bad things that happened to me with my past that caused me to have an e.d. It was just a bunch of stuff rolled into one most likely.

i was 15 and my whole life i was always super skinny, then i got up to 100 lbs at 5'5 and for me that was like the fattest i've been in my life. it didn't bother me too much at first, but then the girls on my cheerleading squad who had to lift me up, complained about how heavy i was, so i felt fat and guilty and dropped down to 80 lbs.

I lost 65lb the healthy and sensible way, when i was down to a weight I liked I wanted to eat more foods that were yummy, like chocolate & chips, but oh so bad for you! My cravings were getting so strong for the forbidden foods I had cut out for so long and before long I was scoffing them all down then I was making myself sick and believing that I could eat loads of bad foods and then get them straight out of my system. I lost 7lb in a week and at the time I thought it was great. Soon afterwards it spiralled out of control and I was having a 50cal soup for lunch and then making myself throw that back up too. In the end I ended up GAINING 11lb. I knew I had a problem and confided in my best friend who got me to see a doctor, which I did and he gave me a number for a help line to call. I never called it, the fact that I'd been given a number to call for "troubled people" made me see I didn't want to be sort of person looked on for being the way I was and so I took control. It wasn't easy at first but eventually I turned things around and now I (joined this site) have a healthy diet where I can allow myself a treat and lose weight, I love it!

Oh, I'm sure mine was a mix of things. Begin a perfectionist, having black-and-white thinking styles (all or nothing!), etc. But mostly it was depression/anxiety from extreme loneliness. I didn't have a single friend until I was 18 years old. I think some part of me listened to every bad thing I ever heard about people who were fat, and I listened to how my parents were always worried about me and my brother (especially my brother) being overweight, and I saw how nobody wanted me (except for family, but they don't count). My mother offered to bring me to a diet clinic when I was 16, and I just saw how I could change something by eating less and less and working out more and more, and I felt proud of myself, and then I just took it too far. And now, 8 years later, I'm still having problems with food and eating, depression, anxiety, and all of it. I don't think I'll ever be normal.

Original Post by var:

Fallingupstairs, you are not crazy - I felt much the same way. Saw myself in a photo at a friend's wedding with the other four girls in my group and I was definitely the "fat one".

Yeah, I was always the "fat one", too. It's sad how much that can affect how much we value ourselves.

i'm a perfectionist. and i was a sort of chubby kid- i weighed 100/110 lbs in 5th grade. i didnt know i would grow about 8 inches, and i freaked out. the height of my ED (eating about 100 calories a day) was almost 2 years ago now, but I'm still not happy with myeslf.

people started complimenting me, guys started liking me, and i wanted it to keep happening. i straightened my hair, got rid of my glasses...i thought i looked good b/c everybody else thought i did

it felt so good to be called skinny :)

i'm a classic perfectionist. i have a 4.0, my hair and makeup and outfit must be perfect, if i make one mistake on a drawing i hate it, etc etc. wanting to be skinny was just an extension of that i think. if i saw even a TINY bulge (thinking back, i'm sure i was imagining it, because even my highest was 128 at 5'9) or if i thought my thighs looked too big that day i wouldn't eat that day. i would mark my hand so i would be reminded if i started to reach for food.

but everyone around me got so upset and worried. even my great grandma noticed and would constantly try to get me to eat and i could tell she was hurt every time i would just smile and say, "no thanks i'm not hungry. but i could go for some coffee." and random people stared at me when i walked by and i'd overhear them say stuff like "skinny b*tch".

but now i'm finding new outlets for my perfectionism and can proudly say i'm recovered (:

A number of things collided, I suppose...

I am a complete perfectionist, and I went to a small school with 9 girls in my year who were all, also, complete perfectionists, who would pick up on every little thing you did wrong.  

My mother started working abroad more, to the stage where if I saw her once a month, I was very lucky.  She had an ED in her youth (bulimia) but wasn't around enough to notice a change in me.

My exams started and I would panic that, if I ate 15 hours before one, I would need to go to the toilet during and I would fail.  Weird, but true.

My nan would insult my weight at every opportunity.  My father was drinking way too much, and became very violent towards me. My best friend moved to the Caribbean.  All in all, I felt very alone.

I suppose I was, at the beginning at least, doing it for attention.  I wanted to know if anyone would care if I starved.  If I died.  And no one did. 

Its gotten hard to resist the temptation to starve again, because the exact same things are reoccurring, and it is killing me.  The only thing keeping me going is that I've joined a new school, and have a very close group of friends now.  I saw how much it tore all of us apart when one of my friends overdosed (she survived) and if I was to go "too far" with starving myself, I would hate to put them all through the same thing again.

A big part in mine was just complete and utter self-hatred about my body. I literally felt like I was in the wrong skin and just felt uncomfortable, being that I was a young girl I didn't really know hot to handle that. I just wanted to feel comfortable with myself and just be free of all the excess baggage. I also think fashion was a big part of it, I wanted to look good in anything that I tried on and just be beaming with self-confidence. I didn't want to constantly be ashamed of myself, especially around my family. My mom and my brother would say things to me about my size, my childhood was definitely full of a lot of embarrassment.

I'm 5'10 so naturally there's no way around it, I've just been bigger than other girls. Especially being heavier I just felt like an ogre compared to everyone else. I remember when Shrek first came out my brother even called me an ogre. I was horrified. So I have always thought I had to make up for my tallness in other ways to be considered feminine or dainty. Also I've always adored the supermodel look, I just want to be long and lean and happy.