How do you help someone with eating disorders? Gf suffers from anorexia nervosa...

How do you help someone with eating disorders? Gf suffers from anorexia nervosa, which makes her alternate periods of completely not eating and eating too much, the latter leading her to force herself to throw up.
I'm worried sick about her, and I don't know what I can do to help her

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Well since we as a society have decided to "help" mentally ill sexual dysphoria patients by chopping their genitals off, it follows logically that you should tell her she's fat and try to get her stomach stapled

That's not really the help I was looking for but thanks I guess

I myself have anorexia nervosa. Best thing you can do to make her feel better is to just avoid triggers at all costs (may include excessively talking about food/weight, offering her fatty or triggering foods, attempting to forcefeed her or pressuring her to eat, watching her eat, commenting on what she eats- "why is your portion so small?" or "why did you take so much?", not allowing her to know what's in the food or making it with "banned" ingredients, etc). She most likely won't seek treatment herself, as we tend to be terrified of recovery ans she may very likely try to hide things from you and compulsively lie. All she really needs at the moment is support because us ED sufferers hate having other people try to get too involved. We feel much better if you just leave us alone about it ans let us live.

t. femanon anorexic

So basically don't do anything even remotely related to food; don't acknowledge the existence of the concept of food; don't eat.

Have you tried NOT being fucking insane? Like, just eating a cheese sandwich? I'm curious. Right now, will you please eat a cheese sandwich? I'm trying to help you, you batshit lunatic. Eat the cheese, you skinny fuck

Until a few days ago it did go better though, she'd eat three meals a day with no skipping or over eating. It's since two days that she started having problems and breakdowns again. Plus I can't really leave her alone, if I do she'll stop completely eating again and chances are high she'd die this time

What you don't understand is how forcing an anorexic person to eat makes things substantially worse. I'll lay out the sequence if events

>anorexic person is sitting next to someone with food-mild anxiety
>>person asks if they want anything to eat-moderate anxiety
>>>person pressures anorexic person to eat trigger food- anxiety increases by large amount
>>>>anorexic person eats food- extreme anxiety

basically, forcing us to eat is extremely triggering, and triggered anorexic --> not wanting to eat

You can't just let someone go like that though, since that'd pretty much mean death for them. I see where you're coming from, but I don't think leaving an anorexic person alone is the right thing to do

I hate to say it, but in a case like this where death is increasingly likely, you may have to force her into inpatient. Yes she will be upset. Yes she will hate it. Yes she will beg you to not take her. She may even try to sabotage it and run away. But the point is, our illness forces us to believe that recovery is the worse thing that could ever happen to us and that if we attempt to recover, everything will somehow go wrong. During successful recovery attempts, sufferers usually come to their senses and attempt recovery. Expect relapses multiple times. If she looks like she is physically better, that does not mean she is mentally stable. The real recovery happens when she chooses it for herself. Also "fake recoveries" are increasingly common, where people pretend to recover. Yes, our illness makes us very manipulative. No it's not intentional, it's the illness doing it, not us

t. femanon anorexic

Ok, I knew anoroxics were crazy but didn't quite understand how the mechanism worked. So thanks for the insight. I'm genuinely concerned for your wellbeing though. Have you been eating enough lately? If not, get a cheese sandwich down your gullet you lunatic. Make sure it's good cheddar cheese, a fresh white roll, and lots of cold butter

>t. Hungry for a cheese sandwich user

eh, dairy gives me anxiety so no thanks

I don't see how. Cows like being milked, and the millions upon millions of bacteria crawling all over cheese and in yoghurt are almost entirely good bacteria that will live and breed in your stomach and intestines without affecting your health

--Small insight into what eating a trigger food feels like--

Dairy is a huge trigger food for me so I can't eat it without anxiety. Trigger foods basically feel like you're shovelling tasteless globs of fat down your throat, making you feel heavy and disgusting and taking away the happy burning feeling of hunger. Some foods are a lot scarier than others. I know rationally that touching dairy won't make me fat, but when it's in front of me the fear feels so real I can't even look at it straight without my eyes hurting

>Cheese: tasteless gloves of fat
>Happy burning feeling of hunger
Wow. I really feel sorry for you user. Maybe you just haven't found the right cheese yet? There are plenty with strong, pungent flavours. Maybe you can overcome the feeling with a nice Wensleydale with ginger?

haha no it's okay, most all food is disgusting masses of fat that you just swallow while growing fatter and fatter. It all tastes the same ig

>Fatter and fatter
Sounds like you think this is a bad thing. But consider: firstly, if your body is burning muscle instead of carbs, you smell really bad. Bad breath, bad general odour. That shit is not cool. Secondly, I've got laid more since I got a dad bod. So it's not all doom and gloom

Well, i don't really want to lose weight for appearances, obviously. What i really care about is just being able to have self-control over something just so I can do it. I do really wnat to be as skinny as humanly possible, but only so I can finally be happy and not have to depend on other forms of happiness. I really don't care about any of the negative side-effects and i don't care if I die trying. I just have to do it

Oh-Kay. But logically, you COULD exhibit MORE self control by eating "disgusting globs of fat" despite your inclination to not. This would surely be far harder than simply controlling your appetite to eat, and therefore more fulfilling when you actually do it?

I've never really thought about it that way. It would really take more self-control and determination to eat something that makes me suffer rather than to just give in as usual and continue to avoid it

TRIGGER TRIGGER TRIGGER FAT FAT FAT TRIGGER I'M A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE FAT FAT FAT TRIGGER TRIGGER GLOBS OF FAT TRIGGER FOOD TRIGGER RECOVERY TRIGGER TRIGGERED TRIGGER
fucking crazy anorexic bitches

Ah, well triggers are very real, just assholes on Tumblr being like "uwu dOn'T aSsUmE mY gEndEr I'm tRiGgErEd" make us look bad

I'm not anorexic but I can really relate to some of the feelings you describe.

I'm a guy but I have an extreme desire to be skinny at all times. I think I've only ever looked attractive when skinny. When I'm even slightly chubby I look hideous, all the weight collects in my face and I get super pudgy looking and my entire jawline disappears. When I'm skinny, at near underweight level, I look amazing and have a super well defined jawline. I can also back this up with hard evidence. I can't get a girl to save my life when I'm chubby/fat, but when I starve myself into skinniness for a few months I get attention from all the women. It's literally like I can get any woman I want, I just have to talk to them and suddenly they want to sleep with me or at least make out with me. Whereas when I'm fat girls won't even give me the time of the day. I really do think I go up about 5 points on a 1 to 10 scale just from losing weight.

So yeah unlike you I do want to be skinny for attractiveness purposes. But I feel the same anxiety about food. I LOVE food SO MUCH and when I was fat I got so much pleasure from ordering like the largest pizza and sides and just devouring it all while watching a movie. But I got so fat and ugly from doing that. So I basically have a choice between starving myself and being attractive, or eating what I want and being a fat incel. Both options bring a mixture of happiness and unhappiness. But I'd rather be hungry and get pussy than be full and ugly.

The only way to help her is to get her to a team of professionals who have experience treating people with her disease. You cannot fix this. I repeat, YOU CANNOT FIX THIS. Not only do you not have the slightest clue how to treat someone with this condition but you can't be her boyfriend and her therapist. It won't work. The physical dangers of anorexia are severe and 100% require the supervision of a physician. This condition, if left untreated, is fatal. Stop trying to get involved in this because in the long run you'll only make things worse. She needs professional help.

I can suggest having the boyfriend have a few counselling sessions so he can learn how to help her

The boyfriend should dump her and find himself someone not totally crazy and more fuckable than a forever not eating bag of bones

The boyfriend needs to have a few counseling sessions to learn how to help himself. He has already definitely crossed a line from merely supporting to trying to treat this thing on his own so the safest option he has is to take some time to himself and learn when to let go because, as I said, trying to get intimately involved into her pathology without the proper training and supervision will only damage her in the long run. The best thing he can do is get her to a doctor and in the future when she's going through a bad episode or relapsing to take her back to the doctor and not try to be the stopgap between her and her disease. This is kind of the same reason that alcoholics and drug addicts have NA and AA and their friends and families have ALANON. Its really important that recoveries be kept relatively separate.

You're probably leaving her alone right now.... you cruel fuck