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Eating Disorder Quotes

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Eating Disorder Quotes

“Did you ever think about boys?' I say, staring up into the dark. 'There wasn't room,' she whispers, and her voice is unbelievably sad. 'At first, after Connor, I was just waiting. I was going to get a new boyfriend soon- as soon as I was prettier or better, more perfect. But after a while there was no room for anything else. If I though about kissing or sex, I just started feeling ugly, too awful for anything good.”

WaitingBoysSadGhostDialogueBest FriendsEating Disorder
Book:Paper Valentine
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“Why couldn’t I find one action that would make the need to binge automatically disappear? Because there is no magic action to make that horrible prebinge feeling go away. The cool thing is that we are designed so that the feeling will pass through us on its own—in time. All we have to do is sit there and feel what is going on inside of us. We must experience the feelings. To help us deal with the feelings, we can call someone on our support team. We can also express the feelings by focusing on our breath or even hitting a pillow. The important thing to remember is that no matter how terrible, feelings do pass. It takes patience and trust—not food . . .”

FeelingsTrustEmotionsStressPatienceRecoveryEating DisorderBingeing
Book:Life Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too
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“In the past, my brain could only compute perfection or failure—nothing in between. So words like competent, acceptable, satisfactory, and good enough fell into the failure category. Even above average meant failure if I received an 88 out of 100 percent on an exam, I felt that I failed. The fact is most things in life are not absolutes and have components of both good and bad. I used to think in absolute terms a lot: all, every, or never. I would all of the food (that is, binge), and then I would restrict every meal and to never eat again. This type of thinking extended outside of the food arena as well: I had to get all of the answers right on a test; I had to be in every extracurricular activity […] The ‘if it’s not perfect, I quit’ approach to life is a treacherous way to live. […] I hadn’t established a baseline of competence: What gets the job done? What is good enough? Finding good enough takes trial and error. For those of us who are perfectionists, the error part of trial and error can stop us dead in our tracks. We would rather keep chasing perfection than risk possibly making a mistake. I was able to change my behavior only when the pain of perfectionism became greater than the pain of making an error. […] Today good enough means that I’m okay just the way I am. I play my position in the world. I catch the ball when it is thrown my way. I don’t always have to make the crowd go wild or get a standing ovation. It’s good enough to just catch the ball or even to do my best to catch it. Good enough means that I finally enjoy playing the game.”

FoodStressRecoveryGood EnoughPerfectionismEating Disorder
Book:Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life
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“What am I doing here?” she demanded, bewildered. “You’re having dinner,” her little brother said. “Stop it! I’m not hungry. Stop it!” John held the spoon in front of her. His cherubic face was dark with anger. “You said you wouldn’t leave me.” “What are you talking about?” Mary demanded. “You said you wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t leave me alone,” John said. “But you tried, didn’t you?” “I don’t know what you’re babbling about.” She noticed Astrid then, leaning against a filing cabinet. Astrid looked like she’d been dragged through the middle of a dog fight. Little Pete was sitting cross-legged, rocking back and forth. He was chanting, “Good-bye, Nestor. Good-bye, Nestor.” “Mary, you have an eating disorder,” Astrid said. “The secret is out. So cut the crap.” “Eat,” John ordered, and shoved a spoonful of food in her mouth. None too gently. “Swallow,” John ordered. “Let me—” “Shut up, Mary.”

DinnerHungryAloneMaryShut UpEating DisorderLeaveEatJohnAstridLittle Pete
Book:Hunger
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“Controlled mentalization, identification and understanding of emotional reactions, and emotional regulation are significant problems for eating-disordered patients. In general, bulimia nervosa patients show problems in emotional hyperarousal and flooding. The opposite, a dominance of detached and flattened effect, is typically seen in patients with anorexia nervosa.”

PsychologyFoodEatingDietEating DisorderBulimiaFatBingePsychopathologyPurging
Book:Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders
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“…interoceptive confusion and body image distortions are forms of impaired embodied mentalizing and expressions of pre-mentalistic thinking. For example, psychic equivalence demonstrates how patients’ painful self and affect states are expressed though extreme body hatred and the mistaken belief that being “skinny” will bring them self-acceptance, "confidence," and agency. The teleological stance explains the obsessive drive for thinness as a method to obtain self-acceptance and the approval of others. In short, subjugation of the body is a confused attempt to gain mastery and control over feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of self-worth.”

PsychologyFoodEatingDietEating DisorderBulimiaFatBingePsychopathologyPurging
Book:Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders
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“Hypermentalization, frequently seen in patients with bulimia nervosa, is when the patient is so outer-directed that she is prone to obsessively interpreting others' minds but not in an accurate way. Hypermentalized fantasies about another's mind is an effort to meet and satisfy that person's perceived desires and needs (Buhl, 2002; Skarderud, 2007), and based on inaccurate interpretations of self/other mental states because of attachment anxieties. Similarly, pseudo-mentalizing is when the patient appears to be expressing or talking about feelings and thoughts, but the narrative lacks emotional connection. instead, words and expressions are empty of meaning and serve to defend against feelings of worthlessness, insignificance, or desolation (Skarderud & Fonagy, 2012).”

PsychologyFoodEatingDietEating DisorderBulimiaFatBingePsychopathologyPurging
Book:Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders
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“In our current world, checking of cell phones is a commonly observed compulsive displacement act known to reduce anxiety. In situations where food or drink is available, eating and drinking could serve as a displacement act. It makes sense that, over time and with environmental support, these schedule-induced consumptions could become persistent, generalized habits. This process represents what many people report as -I eat when I’m bored-. Perhaps a more accurate descriptor is, -I eat when experiencing a compulsive need to so something during a period of minimal reinforcement-.”

FoodEatingEvolutionary PsychologyEating DisorderFood Abundance
Book:A Guide to the Psychology of Eating
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“Another cognitive fallacy, -dose insensitivity-, also was observed among participants studied by Rozin and colleagues. Dose insensitivity refers to our tendency to evaluate a food as equally healthy or harmful, regardless of how much was consumed. That is, something is harmful in large amounts, it if often viewed as similarly harmful in small amounts. Dose insensitivity undermines moderation and encourages adoption of fad diets that rely on strict adherence to or elimination of foods or sometimes entire food groups.”

FoodEatingDietsEvolutionary PsychologyEating DisorderDosageFood AbundanceCognitive Fallacy
Book:A Guide to the Psychology of Eating
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“There is no denying the fact that we humans are a voracious bunch of animals. Its almost as if our insatiable appetite is trying to fill a bottom less belly carved out by the past hungers our ancestors experienced. That’s why the most gluttonous survived. We are also a fickle and forgetful species. There’s one thing, though, we’ve never been able to forgive or forget, and that’s hunger. Even if we tried to forget, it wasn’t long before another famine came along to retell a very old story. Which is why we should all be excused for our rapaciousness -its literally been hardwired into our DNA.”

FoodEatingHungerEvolutionary PsychologyEating DisorderBingeing
Book:The Better Half: On the Genetic Superiority of Women
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“There is no denying the fact that we humans are a voracious bunch of animals. Its almost as if our insatiable appetite is trying to fill a bottomless belly carved out by the past hungers our ancestors experienced. That’s why the most gluttonous survived. We are also a fickle and forgetful species. There’s one thing, though, we’ve never been able to forgive or forget, and that’s hunger. Even if we tried to forget, it wasn’t long before another famine came along to retell a very old story. Which is why we should all be excused for our rapaciousness -its literally been hardwired into our DNA.”

FoodEatingHungerEvolutionary PsychologyEating DisorderBingeing
Book:The Better Half: On the Genetic Superiority of Women
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“I’m sitting here with my salty tears fal ing onto my plate of spaghetti, watering down the marinara sauce. Je was right. Normalizing my eating and neutralizing food is hard emotional work. The crying gets heavier to where my chest starts heaving. I get mad at myself for crying. It makes me feel dramatic. Out of control. Tears fal onto my worksheet and blur the ink. Fuck. I try to blow on the wet spot to dry it, but snot drips out of my nose and fal s onto the page and makes it worse. I crumple the worksheet into a bal and throw it across the room toward the trash can. It doesn’t land anywhere close. Jesus Christ.”

FunnyGriefNarcissismEating DisorderBulimia
Author:Jennette McCurdy
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“In more ancient times the life was simpler, but now the discovery of all these different medicines for curing dyspepsia shows that people are suffering from this disease. In this country we know that there are so many kinds of pills and medicines used. We even have those in India now. These things show that not only in America but in all the countries of the world we have to recourse to artificial means for necessary nutrients because people are not aware of right rules of diet. It is better to follow the right rules of diet in the beginning in order to avoid any kind of artificial medicines later on.”

QuotesDiseaseMedicineQuotationsDietEating DisorderDigestionDyspepsia
Author:Virchand Raghavji Gandhi
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“Pierre Janet, a French professor of psychology who became prominent in the early twentieth century, attempted to fully chronicle late- Victorian hysteria in his landmark work The Major Symptoms of Hysteria. His catalogue of symptoms was staggering, and included somnambulism (not sleepwalking as we think of it today, but a sort of amnesiac condition in which the patient functioned in a trance state, or "second state," and later remembered nothing); trances or fits of sleep that could last for days, and in which the patient sometimes appeared to be dead; contractures or other disturbances in the motor functions of the limbs; paralysis of various parts of the body; unexplained loss of the use of a sense such as sight or hearing; loss of speech; and disruptions in eating that could entail eventual refusal of food altogether. Janet's profile was sufficiently descriptive of Mollie Fancher that he mentioned her by name as someone who "seems to have had all possible hysterical accidents and attacks." In the face of such strange and often intractable "attacks," many doctors who treated cases of hysteria in the 1800s developed an ill-concealed exasperation.”

ReligionFaithSpiritualityPsychologyMiracleMental HealthMental IllnessPsychologicalDissociative Identity DisorderStarvationFastingAnorexiaEating DisorderAmnesiaMultiple Personality DisorderParalysisTranceSpiritualismMpdSleepwalkingAnorexicConversion DisorderJanetMollie FancherFancherPierre JanetVictoria Medecine
Book:The Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery
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“The physical shape of Mollies paralyses and contortions fit the pattern of late-nineteenth-century hysteria as well — in particular the phases of "grand hysteria" described by Jean-Martin Charcot, a French physician who became world-famous in the 1870s and 1880s for his studies of hysterics..." "The hooplike spasm Mollie experienced sounds uncannily like what Charcot considered the ultimate grand movement, the arc de de cercle (also called arc-en-ciel), in which the patient arched her back, balancing on her heels and the top of her head..." "One of his star patients, known to her audiences only as Louise, was a specialist in the arc de cercle — and had a background and hysterical manifestations quite similar to Mollie's. A small-town girl who made her way to Paris in her teens, Louise had had a disrupted childhood, replete with abandonment and sexual abuse. She entered Salpetriere in 1875, where while under Charcot's care she experienced partial paralysis and complete loss of sensation over the right side of her body, as well as a decrease in hearing, smell, taste, and vision. She had frequent violent, dramatic hysterical fits, alternating with hallucinations and trancelike phases during which she would "see" her mother and other people she knew standing before her (this symptom would manifest itself in Mollie). Although critics, at the time and since, have decried the sometime circus atmosphere of Charcot's lectures, and claimed that he, inadvertently or not, trained his patients how to be hysterical, he remains a key figure in understanding nineteenth-century hysteria.”

ScienceHistoryPsychologyAbuseMedicineMental HealthMental IllnessPsychologicalDissociative Identity DisorderFrenchEating DisorderHysteriaAmnesiaVictorianMultiple Personality DisorderParalysisTranceMpdConversion DisorderConvulsionsMollie FancherFancherInvoluntary MovementsPierre JanetPsychosomatic IllnessCharcotJean Marie CharcotSpasmsVictorian Medicine
Book:The Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery
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“Emma cites the structure of the [Eating Disorder] Unit as being important to her decision to disengage from her illness, and the fact that she felt safe in it, and cared for. 'It was the first time I'd been in an environment where I felt comfortabe with all the people around me. I felt "I can be here and I can talk to anybody" and that was something that had been missing from my life'.”

AnorexiaEating DisorderBulimiaMental HospitalPsychiatric HospitalsAnorexia RecoveryBulimia RecoveryFeeling SafeEating Disorder CausesPsychiatric Unit
Book:To Die For
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“What started as a longing to be loved and seen for my physical beauty digressed into the warped belief that the illness itself was what drew the attention I so craved. I towed the line between longing for perfection and longing for pity. Using my body as a signaling flag, oscillating between peacocking in times where I felt beautiful, and waving distress calls in the depths of my sickness. I never used my words, and I didn’t know how to. I used my body.”

Eating DisordersAnorexiaEating DisorderBody DysmorphiaAnorexicBinge Eating Disorder
Book:Where the River Flows: A memoir of loss, love & life with an Eating Disorder
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“Fat bitch," Kessa murmured as the door scraped closed behind Mrs. Stone. "She meant well, Francesca. And you see, everyone thinks you're too thin." "Since when is Mrs. Stone an authority on appearance. I've heard you say a thousand times that she looks like an old hooker." "I never said anything of the sort. What I said was that she wears too much makeup and her clothes are indiscreet." "Which means she looks like an old hooker. Well, if that's the way a woman is supposed to look, I'd rather be too skinny." Kessa felt a flash of pleasure at the argument. Just let her mother try to push food into her now.”

ArgumentFightAnorexiaEating DisorderFatBitchHooker
Book:The Best Little Girl in the World
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“Eating disorders are prevalent among women who were sexually abused as children. They seem to have components of other symptoms such as obsessions, compulsions, avoidance of food, and anxiety, and they primarily include a distorted body image and feelings of body shame. For some women, eating disorders are related to the loss of control over their bodies during the sexual abuse and serve as a means of feeling in control of their bodies now. Eating disorders can also be indicative of the developmental stage and age at which the sexual abuse began. Women with anorexia and bulimia report that they were sexually abused either at the age of puberty or during puberty, when their bodies were beginning to develop and they felt a great deal of body shame from the abuse. By contrast, women with compulsive eating report that the sexual abuse occurred before the age of puberty; they used food for comfort.”

HealingAbuseTraumaRecoverySexual AbuseBody ImageTriggersChild Sexual AbuseAnorexiaEating DisorderBulimiaComfort FoodChild RapeBinge EatingEating Disorder CausesBdd
Book:Healing from the Trauma of Childhood Sexual Abuse: The Journey for Women
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“And so, as if signing up for some new religion or entering into some cult, I indoctrinated myself as a member—I was and would be, Anorexic. I carried shame around this decision for a long time. As if in the choosing, I wasn’t qualified for actual sickness. That because I chose Anorexia, it was not a disease I fell ill to. That because I decided to stop eating, it was my fault, my responsibility, and a disgrace to the real people suffering from Eating Disorders that I even considered myself to be one of them. So even in my illness, I allowed myself to believe I wasn’t ill. I convinced myself it was temporary—a two-week free trial that I would cancel before getting charged. I would use and absorb the skills of Anorexic-others, then get out as soon as I’d reached my ideal weight. This, I later learned, was a lie my Eating Disorder would tell me for the rest of my life.”

Eating DisordersAnorexiaEating DisorderAnorexicBinge Eating Disorder
Book:Where the River Flows: A memoir of loss, love & life with an Eating Disorder
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“As time went on, the line between my Eating Disorder and my self became so blurred that I could not see my Eating Disorder as something separate from me. I lost touch of what it felt like or looked like to eat “normally.” I didn’t know what hunger felt like—because I only knew what hunger felt like. I didn’t know what feeling satisfied felt like, because I only knew what full beyond physical comfort felt like. I had no idea what other people ate or didn’t eat, how often or when, how much or in what combination. My body became such a confusing place to live inside, and I often didn’t recognize it as my own.”

Eating DisordersEating DisorderAnorexia NervosaAnorexicBinge Eating Disorder
Book:Where the River Flows: A memoir of loss, love & life with an Eating Disorder
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“En dat was precies de vruchtbare bodem die mijn eetstoornis nodig had om zich te beginnen ontwikkelen. Ik was extreem onzeker, had ernstig trauma doorstaan, vergeleek mezelf continu met mijn klasgenoten, had last van een verlammende mate van perfectionisme, had gaandeweg een intense zelfhaat ontwikkeld en walgde van mijn eigen lichaam. Niet lang daarna begon ik mijn lunch op school weg te gooien. Weer wat later stak ik voor de eerste keer mijn vinger in mijn keel. En zo evolueerde mijn eetprobleem tot een eetstoornis, die elke dag een beetje meer grip op me kreeg.”

AnorexiaEating DisorderEdBinge Eating DisorderEetstoornisEetgestoordHoofdzakenMentale GezondheidPsychische GezondheidBoulimia
Author:Charlotte Simons
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“My brother, my little brother, he's soooo perfect, but he's - he doesn't like food, like, literally doesn't like food, or, I don't know, he loves it. He loves is so much that it has to be perfect all the time, you know?" "And then one day he got se fed up with himself, he was like, he was so annoyed, he hated how much he loved food, yeah, so he thought it would be better if there wasn't any food." I start laughing so much that my eyes water. "But that's so silly! Because you've got to eat food or you'll die, won't you? So my brother, Charles, Charlie, he, he thought it would be better if he just got it over with then and there! So last year, he-" I hold up my wrist and point at it- "he hurt himself. And he wrote me this card afterwards, telling me he was really sorry and he didn't mean it to happen. But it did happen.”

AloneEating DisorderSelf HarmManicRelapse
Book:Solitaire
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