[littleyellowspider]

This is really what I'm wondering lately.
I started struggling with my eating disorder at 12. I am now 20. I have been to therapy, seen regular doctors and psychiatrists, I have been on medication, I have been on alternative medicine, I have kept journals, I have made scrapbooks, I have read books and done different projects. I have done everything they've told me and I feel like it will never end. For the past 8 years it has been an off and on struggle. but even at the off times I still think about it. I will eat and then I won't purge, but I still think about it. I still hate my body and myself, I still want to be skinny. I still want to lose weight and get upset that I can't. I talked to someone once who told me that it never really goes away, you just learn to live with it.

I got out of therapy in the spring because supposedly I was doing better because I hadn't been restricting or purging for a while. But i wouldn't consider myself recovered at all because I still had constant thoughts about it. yeah i have learned how to handle the thoughts other than doing something that will hurt me. But how do I get rid of the thoughts? do they ever actually go away? I have started acting on my thoughts again over the summer and i can't help wondering if this is just an endless cycle. act out on the eating disorder, manage to handle it but still feel like **** for a while, stop being able to handle it and starting acting on it again.

I need some help really badly.

[Isabella12]

personally, I feel that it never really goes away entirely but that there are periods of your life where you will feel it has. For me, if i'm happy and things are going well in my life its easy for me to eat and not think about it in a disordered way at all. But as soon as something goes wrong or there's a stressor in my life it's the first thought that pops into my head and i panic. I hope someday this won't be something I use as a coping mechanism, but it remains that for me.

I've been eating disordered for 27+ years now and I don't think it ever does go away. I think you can learn to deal with things better though.

[eskielover]

Sometimes there are also underlying reasons for the ED....not just the need to be thin or body image issues & until those issues or those pains are delt with, it won't go away either......this is not all ED's, but there are many that hit because of trauma(s) the person has gone through & doesn't even realize it has anything to do with it.

Listening to a report the other day, they are finding that many people who end up going through abortions end up with ED because of it hiding the pain behind the ED. I know I went through a trauma & the stress affected my eating so bad I ended up in the hospital in IV nutrition....took over a year to get myself back to a safe weight & when I was told to call & find an ED treatment center to treat me....none of them would help me because it wasn't a body image issue.

There are many causes of ED's....not just the set one the professionals try to force on those who suffer. Think is you look at many people who are dealing with ED you will find some sort of pain, abuse, or trauma in back of iti....& yet there are those who;s issue is body image......many causes.....same disorder. That is why the treatment is so difficult because it isn't a set cause as they would have us think there is.

[amante]

I totally second what Isabella12 said, it never really ever leaves you, I started at around 20, bulimia was my thing. Got married, had kids, but then found myself doing it again periodically over stress factors, not even about body image. i'm 42 now and still doing it..... the best thing you can do is lean on the support that is out there.