Before we start, I want to say this: Massive, Massive Trigger Warnings Ahead. If you are sensitive to the subject of eating disorders, do NOT read this.

It’s taken me a great many years to be able to write about this. It still isn’t something I can give breath to, that I can talk to even my closest friends or therapist about. What I mean of course is what I still to this day only refer to vaguely as “my eating thing”.

Calling it a mental illness is just too hard.

Thinking back on those years…Well. I try not to. It’s just too…too painful. The hidden and frantic exercises on tiny bathroom floors, trying desperately to work off whatever it was that I had just eaten. The dozens and dozens of bathrooms that I got sick in. All of those times I said that I wasn’t hungry even though my body was eating itself from the inside just to stay alive.

I had a very different idea of health back then.

What does stand out as a prevailing theme, though, was this community that I found myself a part of. The Pro-Anas or pro-Anorexia. There was also Pro-Mia for the bulimia sufferers, though most of the girls seemed to use tactics from both diseases to achieve their “goal weight”. It’s a sort of joke, though, isn’t it? We all had a “goal weight”, but once we got there, we would all simply strive for the next lower number.

The real goal weight was zero.

It wasn’t that anyone within the Anas was suicidal or anything. No one wanted to die, but there was this sense that dying was a potential occupational hazard or something. Now, looking back, I wonder how many of them are dead now.

Let me explain a bit further, though.

The Pro-Ana/Mia movement, for lack of a better term, is a group who follows the tenets that their eating disorders aren’t “illnesses or diseases”. They hold the belief that anorexia is a lifestyle. They support one another, even forming so-called support groups, in their weight loss journey. Participants create and consume media they call “thinspo” or thinspiration and share diet plans, tips and tricks, and even pair up into weight loss buddies to encourage or shame one another, whichever they preferred.

Their beliefs strongly mirror those of the Fat-Acceptance movement, a movement that claims that the more you weigh, the better, typically catering to the obese and morbidly obese.

The pro-Ana movement believes in the achievement of “perfection” or their ultimate ideal of beauty. They encourage one another to lie, stay quiet about their struggles, and even alter one another’s thinking to view their eating disorder as a way of life. Each pound lost is a small victory. Every pound gained is a tragedy to be mourned. Sneaking laxatives, only listening to songs that fit their narrative, giving encouragement on the harmful symptoms your body is experiencing because more symptoms means you’ve lost more weight, right?

It sounds like a cult, doesn’t it?

I watched a video on the Fat Acceptance movement recently and it reminded me so strongly of the pro-Anas that it was alarming. Then I had the sort of sick realization that I had never heard anyone talk about it before. Unlike other movements, the Anas don’t proselytize. Their cause survives only by it’s obsessive reliance on secrecy. Their movement reigns supreme from the closeted darkness, going so far as to coach one another on how to hide symptoms and traits of your illness. How to exercise, make excuses, how to throw up in secret. After all, you can’t be forced into an inpatient recovery program if no one ever knows about it. At least, not until the secret shows in every rib, bone, and dizzy spell for the world to see.

“Don’t give yourself a reason to say, ‘I’ll do better tomorrow’.”

I held that belief once too. Now, looking back on it, it’s painful. But that’s how it was. Painful. Waking up hungry, eating just enough to keep living, going to bed hungry. Starving for perfection, as the Anas say. Eventually you get so thin that even your exercising has to be altered because your body is just so damn tired…The crunches and sit-ups bruise your back because there’s nothing to pad your spine on the floor anymore. Your heart feels like it’s going to hammer out of your chest just walking up the stairs because the muscles themselves are wasting away.

‘Thou shalt not eat without feeling guilty.’

I don’t know what it was that brought me to the Anas but I had already begun to descend into the disorder that would come to characterize so many years of my life.

I turn thirty this year. I have a daughter of my own and I’m long since “recovered”. This past year was the first time since it all that I have had a scale in my home.

‘Though I walk through the aisle of the pastry department, I shall buy no pastries for they are fattening.’

Eating disorders are like alcoholism. Even though you may be in recovery, you will always be an addict. I still get triggered sometimes. I still have to be careful not to fall into old habits and ways of thinking and probably will for the rest of my life. Even now, I’m paranoid about this article triggering me, but I had to tell this story. This needs to be brought into the spotlight more so more people are aware of it. So more people know the cues and clues and so these young men and women can get the help they need.

So maybe one day, no other little girl has to wonder what it takes to like what she sees in the mirror.

‘Being thin is more important than being healthy’

What’s the best way to help? Don’t be accusatory. Forget about what or whose fault it is. Punishments or shaming will only hurt, not help. Sit down and listen. Don’t talk. Don’t scold. Just…ask them how they feel. Ask them how they feel when they see themselves in the mirror. Be completely judgement-free. Ask them if they would be open to eating healthier but maybe go on walks together with you.

Be supportive. Be patient. Be kind. Be loving.

But most of all, let them see that you are those things.

Recovery can be slow going. It can take years and it certainly won’t happen overnight. Think of it as the deprogramming that comes when a person leaves a cult. They have to change their whole way of thinking, their viewpoint of themselves and the world, and that is a scary, exhausting, and herculean effort. Don’t try to scramble or rush to stuff them will anything and everything in an attempt to get weight back on. Doing that will only convince them to be sneakier or to turn to bulimia to get rid of it all.

Don’t use phrases like ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ and don’t use language that places blame. Mental illness is no one’s fault and you don’t get to blame someone for being mentally ill any more than you blame someone for catching a cold. Don’t cut them off from their friends or support networks but be firm in that you don’t want them visiting pro-Ana sites anymore.

However, you have to understand that unless the sufferer can see that they are hurting their bodies, unless they can see that they need to change or die, they aren’t going to. Just like with addiction, you can’t force someone to get better if they don’t want to. They have to want it for themselves. It takes an extreme act of will to get passed something like that and no amount of bribery, threats, punishments, or cajoling can force a person to want recovery for themselves. They must be willing to put in the work and effort and tears for themselves. Anything less is just a path towards relapse. However, getting professional help with their struggles, someone unbiased and who can help them pinpoint the root of the illness, is absolutely imperative for not just immediate help, but for long-term wellness.

I suppose the whole point of this post is to just…make this group known. To pull them out of the dark and into the light so that maybe if people could see what this is and the harm it does, they would realize that what sufferers are looking for isn’t the disease itself. It’s community. Togetherness. A kind ear to listen and not judge their tears or their fears. To not tell them that they’re crazy or that they’re sick and need help. To listen. And maybe, if they don’t feel so alone, they might be willing to seek help and there won’t be any more mothers burying their babies because of this disease.

With Peace and Passion.

Ta!

Resources:

Amani Latif did a wonderful final paper over on Slide Share doing a deep dive into the pro-ana community and it’s impacts on sufferers: http://www.slideshare.net/AmaniLatif/pro-ana-final-58807659