Should I "out" my SIL's eating disorder?

sassyblue

mildred1978 wrote: »

Thank you. I won't be outing her, but I will have a word the next time I see her.

You can remove her posts from your wall so you can't seen anything she posts. You will only see what she posts then if you physically go to her page.

She won't know you can't see her statuses so everyone's happy. Well not her obviously.

Click on the right hand down arrow next to her status, select 'Unsubscribe from status updates by miserable, evil SIL' :rotfl:

giantmutantbroccoli

No, it isn't reasonable for you to "out" her mental illness on Facespace. I've spent most of my life either living with or in close contact with a close family member who has a serious eating disorder. I know the attitude, I know how horrible they can be. She (my relative) cannot see an overweight person, in real life or on TV, without making some comment about how gross/fat/ugly/nasty they are. I grew up with her, so I grew up with a constant stream of subtle and not-so-subtle comments about my own weight (which was way above what it should have been for all my childhood and teenage years). While I wouldn't say that I have an eating disorder myself, as a direct result of living with someone who did I cannot even stand to be in the same room as someone who is talking about dieting or weight loss. I certainly cannot stand the thought of dieting myself, so any weight control must be done through exercise. It has drastically affected the way I see myself and others. If I lose weight and someone compliments me on it, I cringe inside. I find myself vehemently disliking skinny people for no good reason. Being around someone with a disorder like that can have an extremely negative affect on your own mental health, and even if you're not that close it can be wearing and depressing. But, and this is a big but (lol) - given that this woman's comments are upsetting or annoying you, why keep reading them? "Outing" her with a FB comment, no matter how witty, is not going to help her with her illness. It will not stop her from feeling a deep-seated fear of or disgust for overweight people. It will not make you feel any better, when she responds by defending herself and draws you into an argument that is fundamentally unwinnable because her point of view is born out of her mental illness. It won't even make you look good - it's a pretty low move to use someone's mental illness to score points against them. If I was in your position, I would either hide or delete her from my friends list.