Eating disorder awareness week

It’s eating disorder awareness week! I’m glad this is a week designated to spread awareness and hopefully support people living with eating disorders and getting a better understanding. Although caring and understanding should always be there, this week hopefully boosts everyone’s understanding and hopefully helps those of us who are all too aware (“:

Some things to remember when spreading awareness for eating disorder awareness week:

• Showing your unwell body/ you at your worst (this includes before and after photos) is not going to help others with eating disorders. This could potentially trigger others and invalidate people. It also feeds the stigma that eating disorders are all about weight and gives people trying to understand better, an unrealistic depiction.
• It doesn’t matter how long you’ve struggled for, what interventions you’ve needed (if any), or what diagnosis you have (if you have one). Your struggles are ALWAYS valid and pushing yourself down is unlikely to help or motivate you. All of these things shouldn’t impact when you start recovery, you don’t have to decline more before committing to recovery. This just takes away more of your life spent without your eating disorder/disordered eating.

It’s important to remember you are not alone! It may feel like you are the only one struggling with specific things and that nobody can help or understand, however I’m almost certain someone somewhere will have experienced this or will try to understand. I think this is good that eating disorder struggles aren’t usually “unique” in a sense, as it makes me personally feel less alone.
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To finish off, I hope that this was a helpful reminder in thinking about what may/may not be helpful to share if you’re wanting to share during eating disorder awareness week. I hope that this week helps give those who want to learn, a better understanding!
-Leah