Please help, I need advice page 23

[billp]

It's an impulsive thing. Usually I can stop myself but sometimes I just need to cut. I'm trying to stop though because the scars don't always heal well.

Don't ever cut yourself. No one needs to cut themselves, ever. There are lots of sports where you can hit people as hard as you like and will get hit yourself. Boxing, for example, or Krav Maga. Letting your aggression out is liberating! There is a case for saying that depression, anorexia and self-injury are all forms of aggression turned inward, because people become so attuned to not being aggressive. But humans are aggressive animals. Send your aggression outwards!

My parents don't know anything. But maybe I'll tell them about my eating issues if I want help one day.

They wouldn't be making you eat if they didn't already know. You need their help now, not one day.

Haha wtf, I had a panic attack in the shower earlier and cried for 3 hours because I couldn't make myself throw up. Obviously eating more isn't going to help.

Every single problem you have at the moment is directly connected to not eating enough. It is the only problem that truly matters, and eating more is the only thing that will really help you.

[teach2183]

Your parents would rather see you get help now rather than later when you have done even more damage to your body. You are shaving years off your life. Yes, it will be hard for them to hear you are struggling because they love you. But they will want you to feel better.

It is not normal to cut yourself, you need a counselor to help you with other coping mechanisms. I have been through a lot in life and once sat in my college dorm room with a bottle of pills, I thought about using my razor to cut. But I couldn't do it for sake of my niece and nephew at the time. The only way I got better was counseling to get over a traumatic event that clearly affected my whole life (which was hard for my parents to learn about). Because I developed a strong foundation with the counseling, I was able to get through my mom passing away when I was 22 by going to grief counseling and never considering any harmful ideas.

[Chatty]

From Mark Sisson: How to Conduct a Personal Experiment: Cold Water Plunges | Mark's Daily Apple

"We’re all about the ease of Primal eating, exercising, and listening to one’s body while looking at calorie-counting with suspicion and often barely veiled scorn – “just follow these basic rules and everything will fall into place like so” – but logging data, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions from said data is really about honing your intuition. It’d be nice if we all maintained that Primal connection to our bodies, but most of us have not. Most of us have lived lives divorced from our bodies, eating weird pseudo-foods, strapped several inches of rubber to our feet, sitting in the same place for ten hours a day, staring at one electronic screen or another instead of the wide world around us, sleeping in rooms with bright blue green blinking shards of light filling our dreams, and we’re all a little confused. That’s okay. That’s to be expected. We can come back from this to reclaim our intuition, and data logs, journals, and self-experiments are how we get there.

You know how people say you go to college to learn how to learn? This is kinda like that.

What’s cool is that we can all learn something from a self-experiment. No matter what you know or think you know, you have a weak spot that can be identified and hammered out by systematically logging, journaling and testing. I know this because I have plenty of them myself. Ever since I wrote that first post on self-experimentation, I’ve been playing around with my own experiments, and I have an effective, simple methodology for testing. Also since that blog post I’ve quietly been putting the finishing touches on a new book, a 90-Day Primal Journal that will contain this methodology and deals with precisely this subject. It drops later this month."

...........and the poster is pulling our leg, me-thinks!

[billp]

you just told an entire board of real people you want to die.

you have people giving you the attention you are seeking and you disregard their advice. get help. not from here, in real life.

I think what perplexes me is that you want to convey the message of despair yet you put the effort and energy into refuting the arguments of everyone who offers advice. It doesnt fit, sorry.

Of course it doesn't fit. Anorexia Nervosa is a mental illness. If someone was making rational decisions they would not be in that situation.

I don't think people realise just how deep the effects of starvation are on the brain. One of the features of WW2 is that soldiers from both Germany and Russia all experienced starvation in their childhoods. The Germans had suffered famine during the WW1 and after, caused by the Allied sea blockade that carried on until 1921, then no one could afford food because of hyperinflation. It wasn't until the mid-20s that things calmed down. The Communist regime in Russia set off politically motivated famine after famine in the 20s and 30s trying to make an insane system work by fear and force. The resulting Russian and German soldiers had no limits the their brutality and fought like lions and with immense bravery - whereas well fed British and American soldiers were much less brutal, and much less brave.

Starvation does that to people. It changes them. Makes them brutal, willing to run risks and endure hardship. You need to in order to survive. J.G. Ballard is an example. You can see that in "Empire of the Sun". He's boyhood in Japanese prisoner of war camps changed him for life. True starvation does drive people mad at the time and leaves them changed.

That's all very well, but we all have enough to eat. We aren't fighting our way across the mud of Eastern Europe. We have so much food that we can get too fat (like I did). But when someone goes on a crash-diet they risk getting into the same state. If they are lucky, the starving gets so uncomfortable that they stop. If they are unlucky, especially when young, especially when under stress for other reasons, the effect of starvation knocks the sense out of them and they latch onto not eating enough in the way a starving prisoner latches onto exactly what time the camp guard bring the food bag, and who exactly is too weak to defend their bread. Starvation makes you obsessive, and it makes you brutal. But in the case of the Anorexic they are obsessing about something that stops them from eating, because that was when they were doing when they got into this state. It makes them brutal to themselves. That is why it is the mental illness with the highest death rate - because once the effect of starvation is to make someone chose to eat less and risk their own life, instead of risking their own life to eat more (as for a normal starvation victim), there isn't really anything to stop them starving to death. It is why they end up force feeding them in hospital - because however unwilling they may be to be fed, once they had had enough food for a while the starvation-craziness passes and they start thinking more along the lines of "hey, I'm hungry, lets have something to eat" instead of "hey, I'm hungry, how can I brutalise myself further". Brutality is a great strategy when the cause of you hunger is outside of yourself, but it is terrible if you are your own cause.

I don't actually think it has much to do with wanting to lose weight or anything. Until the 19th Century (mostly) girls were getting into this state out of piety - start off with a religious fast, then they just carried on, getting more and more holy but thinner and thinner. Excessive poring over books seems to be involved too - that is common between Mirabilis and Nervosa. If you look at the case of Timothy Dwight in the 1770s, he wasn't trying to lose weight but he was studying 14 hours a day. Counting things is connected too - Timothy Dwight counted mouthfuls, because calories hadn't been invented in 1774.

Anyway, got a bit side tracked. Anorexics do despair, because however hard them are on themselves, they are still starving. The human hungry-instinct is to be more brutal, not less, but their being brutal to themselves only makes things worse. Of course the only thing they can do is eat and avoid sources of stress, then they can get over it, as a kind of leap of faith. At the end of the day being slightly fatter than you would like to be never did anyone any harm. Being hugely overweight takes years to even do you some harm, and decades to kill you. Being too thin will kill you in two months flat.

[Ribbons]

you just told an entire board of real people you want to die.

you have people giving you the attention you are seeking and you disregard their advice. get help. not from here, in real life.

I think what perplexes me is that you want to convey the message of despair yet you put the effort and energy into refuting the arguments of everyone who offers advice. It doesnt fit, sorry.

I appreciate all the advice I've received on this thread but I know it doesn't seem like it because I keep arguing with everyone. But at times during the day that I'm thinking clearly and I'm not completely insane, I do actually consider everyone's advice and I'm much more likely to get help if I need it than if no one had responded to me on this thread. I'm not trying to "convey the message of despair", I'm just saying exactly how I feel because there wouldn't be any point in lying and saying I'm totally fine when people are giving me good advice based on my circumstances. But thanks for making me more aware of how I sound to everyone. Tell me if this thread is too annoying and I'll stop posting.

Nothing says it even has to be the same school. Maybe you will be fine once you start eating normally again. What I mean is that if you did have to resit stuff it wouldn't really matter. Your own health is more important that school, and as long as you are in good health (i.e. eating properly) school and university related stuff is much more fixable. It is not just about motivation or pushing yourself. You can't do either of those things unless you are properly nourished, and that is going to involve eating a lot more for months, panic attacks notwithstanding. They will pass, anyway. I juist think you need a really big break to relax, rebuild your strength and appetite, and get away from studying for a while. It is making you ill. I remember being at school and things like being ashamed about dropping behind or resitting. But as an adult I realise it just doesn't matter, it is all about doing things in a way that suits you. It is one of the reasons school is such a poor preparation for life, as real life is all about rejigging things.

It's good to have the option of repeating year 12 but I think it really does come down to me being able to push myself to study. I don't want to waste a year of my life when I could just get this over with this year. I probably won't do as well as I would if I wasn't distracted by my food anxiety but I should be able to do well enough to not have to repeat.

I think this is awesome!!! This is a real improvement over how you used to be. And your posting here is helping you, even if you don't think so. Please keep reading, keep talking, keep answering questions.

Today's question: How do you feel about, say 900 calories a day? I know 2000 calories freaks you out, but can you handle 900 approximately? It's less food than you need, but if you make those calories chock full of nutrition, it's workable.

I'm glad not everyone wants me to leave because last night I know I probably sounded like I was just looking for attention or something but I just needed to express how I felt and unfortunately there aren't many other places I can do that.
I guess 900 calories might be ok but I can't predict how I'll feel afterwards because it's different everyday; some days 400 cals feels like a huge failure and some day 1000 cals is fine.

Don't ever cut yourself. No one needs to cut themselves, ever. There are lots of sports where you can hit people as hard as you like and will get hit yourself. Boxing, for example, or Krav Maga. Letting your aggression out is liberating! There is a case for saying that depression, anorexia and self-injury are all forms of aggression turned inward, because people become so attuned to not being aggressive. But humans are aggressive animals. Send your aggression outwards!
They wouldn't be making you eat if they didn't already know. You need their help now, not one day.

Every single problem you have at the moment is directly connected to not eating enough. It is the only problem that truly matters, and eating more is the only thing that will really help you.

I always regret cutting but I've never been an aggressive person so I don't think I'd be very good at aggressive sports.
My parents don't make me eat anymore as long as I'm not going to bed having not eaten all day. But if I just have something small then they don't notice the size because they assume it's enough. But I'm sure I will ask for help, I'm just not ready yet.

Your parents would rather see you get help now rather than later when you have done even more damage to your body. You are shaving years off your life. Yes, it will be hard for them to hear you are struggling because they love you. But they will want you to feel better.

I just need some time to sort out exactly why I have this problem and how to fix it because if I tell them before I have a plan it'll become their responsibility and they won't trust me to make my own decisions anymore.

It is not normal to cut yourself, you need a counselor to help you with other coping mechanisms. I have been through a lot in life and once sat in my college dorm room with a bottle of pills, I thought about using my razor to cut. But I couldn't do it for sake of my niece and nephew at the time. The only way I got better was counseling to get over a traumatic event that clearly affected my whole life (which was hard for my parents to learn about). Because I developed a strong foundation with the counseling, I was able to get through my mom passing away when I was 22 by going to grief counseling and never considering any harmful ideas.

Sorry about your mum
I don't think I need help with the cutting because I don't do it that often anymore. But if I go to a counsellor I might bring it up and see what they say.

From Mark Sisson: How to Conduct a Personal Experiment: Cold Water Plunges | Mark's Daily Apple

"We’re all about the ease of Primal eating, exercising, and listening to one’s body while looking at calorie-counting with suspicion and often barely veiled scorn – “just follow these basic rules and everything will fall into place like so” – but logging data, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions from said data is really about honing your intuition. It’d be nice if we all maintained that Primal connection to our bodies, but most of us have not. Most of us have lived lives divorced from our bodies, eating weird pseudo-foods, strapped several inches of rubber to our feet, sitting in the same place for ten hours a day, staring at one electronic screen or another instead of the wide world around us, sleeping in rooms with bright blue green blinking shards of light filling our dreams, and we’re all a little confused. That’s okay. That’s to be expected. We can come back from this to reclaim our intuition, and data logs, journals, and self-experiments are how we get there.

You know how people say you go to college to learn how to learn? This is kinda like that.

What’s cool is that we can all learn something from a self-experiment. No matter what you know or think you know, you have a weak spot that can be identified and hammered out by systematically logging, journaling and testing. I know this because I have plenty of them myself. Ever since I wrote that first post on self-experimentation, I’ve been playing around with my own experiments, and I have an effective, simple methodology for testing. Also since that blog post I’ve quietly been putting the finishing touches on a new book, a 90-Day Primal Journal that will contain this methodology and deals with precisely this subject. It drops later this month."

...........and the poster is pulling our leg, me-thinks!

Sorry, I'm not sure how that's relevant, could you explain please?

[jammies]

I'm jumping in late here and I'm glad you are a bit better today.

But I'd like to ask you a question -

If you had cancer, would you hide it and refuse help? You wouldn't, right? At least not out of some sense of shame. You would go to the doctor, get the support of your family, and do what it took to get better.

Your disease has a fatality rate that is HIGHER than lots of different types of cancer!! Please don't allow yourself to believe that it can be managed on your own.

Telling someone seems like an impossible hurdle. Find a way to do it. Write it on a note and hand it to someone - a teacher, a counselor, a parent. Someone who will help you take the first steps.

[Ribbons]

I'm jumping in late here and I'm glad you are a bit better today.

But I'd like to ask you a question -

If you had cancer, would you hide it and refuse help? You wouldn't, right? At least not out of some sense of shame. You would go to the doctor, get the support of your family, and do what it took to get better.

Your disease has a fatality rate that is HIGHER than lots of different types of cancer!! Please don't allow yourself to believe that it can be managed on your own.

Telling someone seems like an impossible hurdle. Find a way to do it. Write it on a note and hand it to someone - a teacher, a counselor, a parent. Someone who will help you take the first steps.

I will, I just need more time so I can think about what I'm going to do. And I want to wait until exams are over which is in just over a week, in case telling someone makes me more stressed. But thanks.

[Metric]

I'm jumping in late here and I'm glad you are a bit better today.

But I'd like to ask you a question -

If you had cancer, would you hide it and refuse help? You wouldn't, right? At least not out of some sense of shame. You would go to the doctor, get the support of your family, and do what it took to get better.

Your disease has a fatality rate that is HIGHER than lots of different types of cancer!! Please don't allow yourself to believe that it can be managed on your own.

Telling someone seems like an impossible hurdle. Find a way to do it. Write it on a note and hand it to someone - a teacher, a counselor, a parent. Someone who will help you take the first steps.

+1, Very excellent advice here! Follow it! Don't wait to figure out how you're going to do it because you likely won't and it will progress and get worse! There is no easy way to do it, but it needs to be done nonetheless. Ask for help now. Stop trying to avoid the issue. There is nothing shameful about needing and asking for the help. That's what professionals are there to do. They have their positions specifically for this reason. If you don't feel like you can talk to your parents, talk to a teacher, guidance counselor, other family member, nurse, doctor, etc, etc. You have the resources to get the help, but you are not taking them. Your health is more important than grades. You may think that it's not, but it really is. You may think that getting the help that you need will make you more stressed out, but the opposite is true. Telling someone, in person, what you are dealing with will help relieve some of the stress you are feeling. I know, I've been there.

My story:
I used to have Trichotillomania (didn't consume though). Read a bit about it here so that the rest of the post makes sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichotillomania Although it's not something that I could die of, some aspects can be related.

It started in grade 12. I was able to hide it, but then, the disorder started to consumed me. I was worried about people finding out about it. People knew something was wrong because I was so preoccupied thinking about something, but no one knew what exactly. I was preoccupied in trying to keep the baldness hidden. That's all I thought about. (The patch was in the middle of my head where my ponytail would be). I was always worried about someone finding out about it. I didn't want to talk to anyone about it because I was so ashamed of myself. It was DEFINITELY stress related and happened during my high school years, as my parents also had very high expectations of me. I tried to stop on my own, but that didn't work. I needed professional help and I spoke with a psychiatrist about it. Having met with a psychiatrist, I now know how to basically prevent it from starting again. This is the help that you need. Aside from my psychiatrist, and now this forum, I have told no one else. My parents never found out and I never even told my best friends. In hindsight, I regret not getting the help that I needed sooner and regret not having talked with my parents when I needed the help.

Fact:
Anorexia Nervosa (AN) has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness – it is estimated that 10% of individuals with AN will die within 10 years of the onset of the disorder.
Sullivan, P. (2002). Course and outcome of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. In Fairburn, C. G. & Brownell, K. D. (Eds.). Eating Disorders and Obesity (pp. 226-232). New York, New York: Guilford.

[billp]

It's good to have the option of repeating year 12 but I think it really does come down to me being able to push myself to study. I don't want to waste a year of my life when I could just get this over with this year. I probably won't do as well as I would if I wasn't distracted by my food anxiety but I should be able to do well enough to not have to repeat.

Exactly, the option is there if you need it. I think it is likely that pushing yourself to study is one of the factors making you ill. That is very common (like with Timothy Dwight above). Obviously your own health and life is much more important than going to university a year later. Combined with it being impossible to study effectively when starving, nor perform well in exams however hard you work, going back a year may be the single most beneficial thing you can do.

I'm glad not everyone wants me to leave because last night I know I probably sounded like I was just looking for attention or something but I just needed to express how I felt and unfortunately there aren't many other places I can do that.
I guess 900 calories might be ok but I can't predict how I'll feel afterwards because it's different everyday; some days 400 cals feels like a huge failure and some day 1000 cals is fine.

Feel free to vent, I agree that it is good to have a place where you can say exactly what you feel and be relatively anonymous.

1000 cals is not fine for you. You would still starve to death eating 1000 cals a day, but it would take a few months longer. You need to be eating at least double that. Also like we talked about, paleo-style eating is more calorie intensive - it seem the calorie numbers are just higher for food in general. Probably not surprising as calories aren't real, but still everyone assumes calories are fixed in size and they clearly are not.

I always regret cutting but I've never been an aggressive person so I don't think I'd be very good at aggressive sports.

I agree that you don't seem like a very aggressive person in your dealings with others. But you are being very aggressive to yourself - pushing yourself too hard to study, starving yourself, cutting yourself. So you must have some aggression in you, just not very well expressed.

I know you would not be very good at aggressive sports. But the reason to do them is not because you want to do well at them - it is to get you used to directing aggression outwards. You would want to explain it to the instructor - don't go into too much detail, but just say that you have had eating disorder issues and some self harm, and you need to do this to get out of that - to help you be more aggressive, or at least express it better. Actually you would get the most value from it precisely because you are not likely to be very good at it.

My parents don't make me eat anymore as long as I'm not going to bed having not eaten all day. But if I just have something small then they don't notice the size because they assume it's enough. But I'm sure I will ask for help, I'm just not ready yet.

I think it is very important for you to go to bed with a full stomach every day. It will help you sleep and put you on firmer ground in the morning. Don't count calories for it - just eat until you are full.

The thing is, you are asking for help already, just here and anonymously. Maybe you could send someone who knows you an email? Doesn't have to be a long one. You just need to get over the barrier of not wanting to talk about something embarrassing. No aunt? A favourite teacher? Someone at school?

I just need some time to sort out exactly why I have this problem and how to fix it because if I tell them before I have a plan it'll become their responsibility and they won't trust me to make my own decisions anymore.

Heh. You are on the cusp of adulthood, where you have a lifetime to make your own decisions. But in your current starved state you won't be able to plan anything, or work out anything, because starvation drives people crazy.

So currently you don't need to worry about people trusting you to make your own decisions any more. Currently you don't want to be making your own decisions - at the moment you have accidentally got caught up in a deadly mental illness that will kill you if you make your own decisions. Save that for when you are feeling better in a few weeks time. Don't even try at the moment - or focus your own decision making on things not to do with food, like starting a blog or an outdoor sport or whatever. If you look at the example of Gadsie you'll see it didn't take him very long to get out of an anorexic state once he started eating loads and loads - was about two weeks, I think. If you read through his old posts you can see a marked change from being very anxious (like you now) to today being very happy and confident.

Sorry about your mum
I don't think I need help with the cutting because I don't do it that often anymore. But if I go to a counsellor I might bring it up and see what they say.

Make sure to mention it. It is good that you mentioned it here. I think it is the same sort of thing as anorexia. Both involve harming yourself and directing aggression and stress inwards instead of outwards.

Sorry, I'm not sure how that's relevant, could you explain please?

Yeah, I didn't see the relevance of what Chatty said either. I think you can safely ignore her. She obviously doesn't believe you. You seem pretty real to me.

[Ribbons]

+1, Very excellent advice here! Follow it! Don't wait to figure out how you're going to do it because you likely won't and it will progress and get worse! There is no easy way to do it, but it needs to be done nonetheless. Ask for help now. Stop trying to avoid the issue. There is nothing shameful about needing and asking for the help. That's what professionals are there to do. They have their positions specifically for this reason. If you don't feel like you can talk to your parents, talk to a teacher, guidance counselor, other family member, nurse, doctor, etc, etc. You have the resources to get the help, but you are not taking them. Your health is more important than grades. You may think that it's not, but it really is. You may think that getting the help that you need will make you more stressed out, but the opposite is true. Telling someone, in person, what you are dealing with will help relieve some of the stress you are feeling. I know, I've been there.

If I tell someone I'll be stressed because I'll have to worry about them judging me or telling me what to do. I can deal with that but not right before exams because it'll make it even harder to concentrate.

My story:
I used to have Trichotillomania (didn't consume though). Read a bit about it here so that the rest of the post makes sense. Trichotillomania - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Although it's not something that I could die of, some aspects can be related.

It started in grade 12. I was able to hide it, but then, the disorder started to consumed me. I was worried about people finding out about it. People knew something was wrong because I was so preoccupied thinking about something, but no one knew what exactly. I was preoccupied in trying to keep the baldness hidden. That's all I thought about. (The patch was in the middle of my head where my ponytail would be). I was always worried about someone finding out about it. I didn't want to talk to anyone about it because I was so ashamed of myself. It was DEFINITELY stress related and happened during my high school years, as my parents also had very high expectations of me. I tried to stop on my own, but that didn't work. I needed professional help and I spoke with a psychiatrist about it. Having met with a psychiatrist, I now know how to basically prevent it from starting again. This is the help that you need. Aside from my psychiatrist, and now this forum, I have told no one else. My parents never found out and I never even told my best friends. In hindsight, I regret not getting the help that I needed sooner and regret not having talked with my parents when I needed the help.

Well I'm glad you've been able to work out a way to control it
And I can see how telling your parents and friends would have probably been beneficial for you.

Fact:
Anorexia Nervosa (AN) has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness – it is estimated that 10% of individuals with AN will die within 10 years of the onset of the disorder.
Sullivan, P. (2002). Course and outcome of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. In Fairburn, C. G. & Brownell, K. D. (Eds.). Eating Disorders and Obesity (pp. 226-232). New York, New York: Guilford.

I don't have anorexia. I'm pretty sure you need to be underweight to be diagnosed.

Exactly, the option is there if you need it. I think it is likely that pushing yourself to study is one of the factors making you ill. That is very common (like with Timothy Dwight above). Obviously your own health and life is much more important than going to university a year later. Combined with it being impossible to study effectively when starving, nor perform well in exams however hard you work, going back a year may be the single most beneficial thing you can do.
Feel free to vent, I agree that it is good to have a place where you can say exactly what you feel and be relatively anonymous.

I haven't been pushing myself to study much -- I mostly just try to forget that school exists and then when I remember I get stressed because I'm behind. But today I got a test back that I did last week and I got 100% for the first time this year so I'm happy.

1000 cals is not fine for you. You would still starve to death eating 1000 cals a day, but it would take a few months longer. You need to be eating at least double that. Also like we talked about, paleo-style eating is more calorie intensive - it seem the calorie numbers are just higher for food in general. Probably not surprising as calories aren't real, but still everyone assumes calories are fixed in size and they clearly are not.

I highly doubt I can lose weight on 2000 cals, no matter where they come from. And after last night I don't think I want to test it.

I agree that you don't seem like a very aggressive person in your dealings with others. But you are being very aggressive to yourself - pushing yourself too hard to study, starving yourself, cutting yourself. So you must have some aggression in you, just not very well expressed.

I know you would not be very good at aggressive sports. But the reason to do them is not because you want to do well at them - it is to get you used to directing aggression outwards. You would want to explain it to the instructor - don't go into too much detail, but just say that you have had eating disorder issues and some self harm, and you need to do this to get out of that - to help you be more aggressive, or at least express it better. Actually you would get the most value from it precisely because you are not likely to be very good at it.

I guess that makes sense. I could just punch a punching bag though.

I think it is very important for you to go to bed with a full stomach every day. It will help you sleep and put you on firmer ground in the morning. Don't count calories for it - just eat until you are full.

The thing is, you are asking for help already, just here and anonymously. Maybe you could send someone who knows you an email? Doesn't have to be a long one. You just need to get over the barrier of not wanting to talk about something embarrassing. No aunt? A favourite teacher? Someone at school?

A lot of the time I think I don't need help, like I can control it. I honestly don't know how much control I have though. But I will get help after exams (if I still need help). As much as I don't want to, I guess I'd tell my parents and/or a doctor.

Heh. You are on the cusp of adulthood, where you have a lifetime to make your own decisions. But in your current starved state you won't be able to plan anything, or work out anything, because starvation drives people crazy.

So currently you don't need to worry about people trusting you to make your own decisions any more. Currently you don't want to be making your own decisions - at the moment you have accidentally got caught up in a deadly mental illness that will kill you if you make your own decisions. Save that for when you are feeling better in a few weeks time. Don't even try at the moment - or focus your own decision making on things not to do with food, like starting a blog or an outdoor sport or whatever. If you look at the example of Gadsie you'll see it didn't take him very long to get out of an anorexic state once he started eating loads and loads - was about two weeks, I think. If you read through his old posts you can see a marked change from being very anxious (like you now) to today being very happy and confident.

I've been making my own decisions basically the whole time and nothing particularly dangerous has happened but I get your point. But being forced to eat seems a bit over the top since I still have a lot of weight to lose.

Yeah, I didn't see the relevance of what Chatty said either. I think you can safely ignore her. She obviously doesn't believe you. You seem pretty real to me.

Haha why would I make a fake account and talk about all this stuff if I was making it all up? It doesn't make sense.