Posted by Racer on October 6, 2005, at 22:50:07
In reply to NO ONE UNDERSTANDS, posted by tjeffries on October 5, 2005, at 5:57:46
> My husband, son, and Dad, THINK IT IS A COP OUT... they don't believe in this disease, and say I am using it as an excuse to be overweight, and because I am too weak to stick to a diet.
I've found that duct tape can be wonderful in this sort of situation: just tape their mouths shut and tape them to their chairs, and they won't bother you nearly as much...
Seriously? Yeah, there's a lot of that that goes around. I get it coming and going, since I have been on drugs that caused massive weight gain, only to go off the ADs and lose all that and more. My family will scream about my anorexia at one end, then scream again when the drugs make me fat. You know the one thing they won't do, though? Learn. Educate themselves. Shut their mouths about it. While I could go on for a great deal of time about this, I won't. You already know the answers, right?
OK, just in case you had a different answer in mind, here's mine: there's nothing we can do to 'make' them cooperate or understand or educate themselves or any of that. What we can do is learn ourselves that these are legitimate disorders, that they really aren't about Bad Character, or Weakness, or Laziness, or any of those Character Flaws that we like to accuse ourselves of having. We have to learn to respect this ourselves so strongly that we don't start to waver when someone else tries to tell us that it's just an excuse.
Remember, they wouldn't say it was my own fault for being "too thin" if I had cancer instead of anorexia nervosa, right? They wouldn't call you weak if you blew up from steroid treatment, right? They're just ignorant of certain facts. We're not ignorant of those facts. Just work on your own issues, and do your best to avoid internalizing what they say to you.
I know it's hard -- believe me. Good luck.
poster:Racer
thread:563093
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/eating/20050314/msgs/563912.html