[Mukulaal]

I've been struggling with this eating disorder for a few years. It may not sound like a lot, but it feels like 5 years have past from everything that's happened. >_< However, I'm glad to say that I'm doing so much better now compared to before. The only thing that's been bothering me still, is jealousy. I get so jealous of my sister, and I feel like I always have to compare myself to her. And I just don't feel good about myself around her. It's been draining me for a long time now. When I was going through the worst parts of this eating disorder, I felt like she was always eating less than me because she always skips meals, eats very little, is all dancey, and it always crushed me and made me want to starve myself further and further and further. (She doesn't have an eating disorder btw. She has depression though. Which just makes me feel guilty about feeling angry and jealous, and then I get angry with myself, and it's just not good.) And when I finally told her about what I was struggling with, it was really hard, of course, but I never told her how jealous I was of her, and how I felt like I wanted to blame her for everything. I just told her that I was struggling with an eating disorder. And then I felt like she didn't really listen when she started talking about her own experiences and giving me advice.(I just wanted her to listen like I have listened to her for pretty much my whole life.) But to this day, maybe it's been a year or two after that, I still get somewhat angry and jealous when I go back to comparing myself to her, thinking about how she's skinnier than me, and she never binges like I have. But I think, it's slowly getting better. I just needed to vent this, because this morning I almost relapsed into that hateful mindset that I sometimes get when I'm around her, so that's all. Thanks for reading this, I hope you're all doing well.

[Blueberrybook]

I'm so sorry. I wish I could say it goes away or gets completely better. Maybe for some people it does. Not for me though. I'm 40, and I've had this thing since I was 19. I've mostly recovered but for the thoughts, but an emergency ulcer surgery in February which caused me rapid weight loss really woke up the ED thoughts.

I compare myself to other women all the time. Still. I had to quit going to eating disorder support groups because I'd make everything a sort of competition with those there and would be jealous of anyone thinner than I was or fighting to avoid hospitalization. It was not a good place for me to be.

I'm sorry about your issues with your sister. I'm not sure of your age or your living situation. Do you live with her and see her daily or not so often?

I don't think anyone who hasn't had an eating disorder can ever understand it, so I have to ignore any "helpful" advice on that front.

Luckily, I don't have a person in my life similar to your sister making me jealous about weight. I do have 2 sisters, but one is overweight, and the other is normal weight. I'm a loner too; I don't have any girl friends except my best friend from college, and she now lives in Connecticut while I'm in Texas. She didn't want to confront me about the ED in college even though it was so obvious, especially when we'd take pictures. I'm showing my age here; those were the 1990s, nearly all the pictures were print. I stumbled across some cleaning my office the a couple weeks ago, finally had to stuff the loose ones in a box and put the albums on the shelf without looking. That was a bad day.

The worst thing was a big part of me was jealous of how thin I was in those pictures...I was so bad, I should have been hospitalized (but wasn't because my parents didn't have insurance and couldn't afford it) and used "tricks of the trade" to weigh in at the psychologist just at the point where she couldn't immediately get me hospitalized.

Stay strong and keep from the mindset that you need to relapse. It is SO hard to come back from an eating disorder. You can read my lists of diagnoses below (though when my ED was bad it was full-blown anorexia, not ED-NOS). Out of all those psych issues, the hardest one to overcome was the anorexia. And not by a little bit. By far. It is the hardest thing I have done in my life, harder than giving birth, harder than being a mom to a child with sensory issues, much harder than bipolar or panic disorder or even the perforated ulcer surgery I had in February (not related to the ED, just NSAID use and a bacterial infection), but that surgery & recovery was so painful (I didn't even know people could feel that much pain and the morphine might as well have been nothing), it is easily one of my life's worst experiences ever.

Overcoming an ED is a huge accomplishment. You should be proud of yourself because it IS a big deal, even if it's not something you can go around bragging about. Which kind of seems unfair because this has to be one of the hardest challenges life can throw at a person.

[Mukulaal]

I really hope things will get better for you, too. You've been through a lot, you sound like a really strong person. Also, I can relate to seeing old pictures of yourself, and seeing how skinny you used to be.. It is pretty horrible. :/
I'm in high school, btw. Still young, so I live with my sister and see her everyday. Sometimes, I wish she'd just move out. But most of the time, it helps me feel better to just focus on making myself a better person. I believe that if I am happy with myself, inside and out, this ED can come to an end, because I won't feel like I have to compare myself. Thanks for telling me your story. Hopefully, things will get better for the both of us.

[Blueberrybook]

I hope it gets better for you. I won't lie. College is really hard because you don't have accountability to your parents daily (if you live away from home). That's when my ED kicked in though I had body image issues all through high school. Hopefully, it won't be the case for you. I'm sure once you do not see your sister daily, it will help your situation.

Still, for me, the lure of relapse has always been there. And yes, I've relapsed a couple of times, once really badly around 2015. And now again I'm struggling with the thoughts, and I'm 20 years down the road. It would be nice if you could just get over it and be done with it. I think some people can. But I don't know that I'm one of them. Sigh.