We all need to be heard for a little while.

codemonkey

I am grouchy now. There's a girl in my office and she's probably very nice. However, she made a very judgemental comment earlier and now everything she does annoys me. She's on the phone (very loudly) atm and I just want to rip my arm off so I have something to throw at her.

mellymoo74

Penguin link

http://www.b-eat.co.uk/about-eating-disorders#prclt-2Pnij31l

As you know I am slightly relapsing found this (was on LinkedIn) thought it might be helpful to some.
WaS you didn't cause it.

Waves_and_Smiles

That is really interesting melly, especially the change in classification in Ednos.

Penguin (bit of a CBP really)

I was diagnosed with EDnos but under the classification now it would be binge eating disorder. I largely have it under control unless something goes very wrong but I would eat very little for days and then eat a huge amount of food as quickly as I could, hardly chewing or tasting it. The aim was to make myself so full that I was in pain, my head hurt and I felt really ill. I remember the sense of achievement once when I ate so rapidly that I couldn't breathe properly, it pleased me. My aim is always to physically hurt myself, the pain is satisfying. The eating is just a means to that. After that I would return to hardly eating again, watching every calorie and losing weight as fast I could until the next time I was compelled to binge eat. As I said it is mostly under control right now but the urge is still there and I am aware that I could relapse at any time. It began just after my dad died and the thought of pain still makes me long for it. It is one area that I have never had specific therapy for because psychiatrists were insistent that I spend 3 months in a therapeutic community to treat it because they felt looking into why I do it would trigger my other illnesses and that I would need 24 hour monitoring. I didn't want to do that so they thought it best to leave it be. The downside is my Endocrinologist believes that years of doing that has added dysfunction to my already broken metabolism.

End penguin

elsien

Totally unrelated to any previous conversation, but I found it interesting.
Radio programme about autism and autistic spectrum disorders, a one to one conversation with an autism specialist which delves into genetics a bit. The follow up next week talks to someone who was diagnosed in her thirties, is happily married and holding down a high powered job. Just to confound the stereotypes a bit.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052j0tr


Edit question for WaS, please don't answer if it's too personal. It's just me being curious. I'm interested in how things are linked, but I don't want to trigger anything with my nosiness.
Just wondering if the overeating to cause pain was linked with other self-harm, and if not how the eating/pain thing managed to get themselves linked in the first place?

End penguin.
Thanks for the link melly, I had no idea there were so many different definitions.

mellymoo74

I can answer for me elsien yes it's a form if self harm in as much as the release is generated by pain and control and emptiness

elsien

Another question, if that's ok?


What do you think makes some people self-harm using food, for example, whereas others start to cut instead? Is it what seems easiest to control at the time, do you think, or is that a bit simplistic?

End penguin.

Things any easier at home today Melly?
Also wondering if WaS is still hiding from passing workmen, or if the worst is over?

mellymoo74

ine started when I was 7 and food was the only thing I could control so for me it was a means if control that also hurt.
My ex self harmed (cut) for him the release came with the bleeding it was a very visual release.
I think cutting is faster and more immediately visual my self loathing was such I deserved long and slow.

Will be ok managed to eat a rasher if bacon a mushroom and half a scrambled egg today as well as small smoothie

mellymoo74

Yay I made it white on my phone

System

Penguiny response to discussion

I don;t think i've specifically over eaten as a form of self harm, though i've also restricted and binged/purged too. I self harm by scratching with something sharp (sorry if that too much detail but i have to explain to people i don;t cut per say) so i already have the self harm, the issues with my eating were more triggered by being bullied for being fat, i ended up losing and unhealthy amount of weight where as now i seem to have gone in the opposite direction. How i eat is very much dependent on my mood. If i'm down i tend to binge, which sort of locks me in a cycle of self loathing for hating being fat yet punishing mysef with food, on the other hand when my mood is up i get the idea that i dont need to eat and i feel good when i go a day without food. I;ve never really had help with my eating before, mainly because i present as obese so they dont seem to think i have problems.

end penguin

Work went ok, though it was really quiet. Have a meeting with area manager and someone from occ health next week...not looking forward to it. i can see them just saying we cant make this work so we are letting you go or something

Waves_and_Smiles

Giant CBP in response to elsien's question! Honestly, do not read this if feeling fragile.

From what I have gathered through therapy (although I have never had therapy specifically for ED) it is linked to being abused. When I was under 5 and my mother was abusing me it used to hurt a lot. The pain became something I associated with guilt and self hatred but was also safe because it was what I knew because parents are the ones who keep you protected, right? She was nice to me after she abused me so pain=being loved. As a child, again before the age of 5 until I was about 8 I used to mimic the pain of abuse as closely as I could by stopping myself from pooing. I would goes days without doing so on purpose for the pain, I felt I deserved the pain plus I had a huge problem as a child with feeling disgusting when I pooed because I associated it with the disgust I felt about myself while being abused, not quite the same area but close enough to a child. Anything to do with the area below my waist made me feel dirty and hate myself when I was little and the thought of having something there even if it was only poo felt like further abuse to me. When I finally had to poo I would be terrified and vomit.

When my mother was very ill my dad would buy me lots and lots of sweets and chocolates and allow me to eat them all at once as a way of apologising to me. The stomach pain as a result reminded me of the abuse pain and the pain when I used to withhold my poo, I can actually remember realising the pain was similar as a child. So, I started to replicate that pain by binge eating, it was now a way to feel disgusted with myself which I thought that I deserved, plus I also associated the feeling with being loved by my dad. So for me ED comes from self-disgust, a need to make myself hurt and suffer and is also something that makes me feel safe.

As well as binge eating I used to be prone to taking laxatives. This is related to feeling disgusted by the fact I needed to poo as a child. I would want to remove it all from body so that I felt clean. On the same point I used to rapidly drink alcohol to make myself sick. Vomiting would make me feel clean and I also wanted the pain of the thumping head, same reasons again. The difference with doing things to feel clean are that they make me feel in control. I don't have 'disgusting poo' in me, inside I am clean and therefore I am not being abused (it is somewhat twisted thinking and all mixed up). Plus I still get the pain from laxatives or that a hangover gives me to punish myself. Obviously, neither method of ED is healthy.

I have always inflicted pain on myself. As a child I would shut my hands in doors, drag my knees over gravel until I bled and smash bottles over my head simply so I felt pain, my dad tried everything from sympathy to smacking me with a slipper to try to get me to stop (the latter wasn't best idea because more pain!). I learnt to hide it after a while. This turned into more common self-harm when I was older such as cutting and burning myself. Because the reasons for my ED are so complex and go back so far initially no one would treat it without me being in a hospital setting for months. It would mean examining closely all the emotions and memories I had as a child that led to this and it really isn't a good idea with someone prone to stress psychosis. I was referred to The Tavistock clinic in London which is THE big specialist psychotherapy unit and they advised that I should never be treated for it, it was far to risky that I would lose the sanity that I have left if I am forced to relive what I went through before I was 5. Other people (or personalities) in here hold the memories, I hold very few actual abuse memories before the age of 13 which is how I still function. So I muddle through with it all the best I can.