Before You Jump In...
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, I am not a psychologist, I am not a counselor. The best treatment is intensive therapy or a stay in an eating disorder clinic. If there are any contradictions between myself and a professional, side with the professional.
How much you’re able to help a loved one with an eating disorder depends largely on how committed and willing to sacrifice you are. For a family member or extremely close friend, this degree of commitment can and should come effortlessly. For a mere concerned passer-by, acquaintance, or buddy, it could be taxing.
Co-dependency can also be a problem that rears its head over the course of treatment. Co-dependency is the need or desire to have someone depend on you; a feeling that you will cease to have worth if nobody needs you; a feeling of constantly being a martyr even though you are actually teaching others to use you and therefore are martyring yourself; a distinctly selfish sacrificing of yourself for another to give you the high of feeling like a good person/victim. A dying bulimic or anorexic can be like cocaine to a co-dependent, since these patients need so much. The co-dependent loves another person’s illness more than they love the person. So how do you know if your desire to help your loved one is actually co-dependency? Ask yourself two sets of questions:
1. Could you be close to this individual, and feel that you’re still a valuable person, even if you chose right now to leave your loved one's treatment to her family or to professionals and take only a minimal, supportive part in her recovery? Would the attraction you have toward this individual fade if this were the case?
2. Imagine nurturing this individual for months: being there when she’s sleeping, holding her while she eats, standing outside her bathroom door attentively. Now imagine it all stops; she recovers. She doesn’t need you, she’s now strong enough to stand on her own. Do you feel hurt? Do you love her less, or like her less, or feel less close to her? Do you feel a void, do you feel less important, do you feel like her independence is a slap in the face?
If these questions reveal your codependency to you, then it’s best that you not be directly involved in her treatment. The reason is that you would probably only subconsciously hold her back from recovery instead of helping her, because you’d want her to be sick so that you could play Mama. If you want to help and you are a co-dependent, you can find counseling services for her, or talk to her family and brief them on the seriousness of her condition. Also, going to counseling for yourself would help you to overcome your co-dependency, and once you’ve overcome it then you can be a more integrate part of her recovery.
It’s also important that you constantly take care of yourself. Either love or co-dependency can influence you to run yourself into the ground trying to help your loved one. But you matter too. And if you destroy yourself, how are you going to help her? You and your body are your only tools in the delicate surgery of treating an individual with an eating disorder. If you are emotionally drained, frazzled, or resentful, she will sense it, and the instant she senses it you'll find it extremely difficult to help her from there on. She'll feel too guilty accepting your assistance, and accepting your assistance will reinforce her disorder's assertion that she is selfish and hurtful.
If you likewise don’t care for your body with food, proper hygiene, and exercise, your immune system is going to go downhill. If you get sick, you’ll have to leave your loved one while you recover, because her immune system is already going haywire and a hard-core flu can kill some of these individuals. When you leave her she’ll be at the mercy of her eating disorder and will feel guilty. If you neglect your other relationships, then you might lose those relationships, and you desperately need the support network right now. Without it you could become stressed, and as noted before, she’ll sense that. Finally, you have to be a good influence. You have to show her what mental and physical health looks like, what happiness looks like. If you don’t have it, why should she trust you when you try to guide her toward it? So, take care of yourself; if not for you, then for her.
If you need a time out, if you have to suddenly drop everything and get some air, do so. She might be hurt, and the recovery process might be damaged, but a lot less so than if you did not take care of yourself and any of the above scenarios happened. Having someone else who is just as committed to your loved one to assist you will help greatly, as they can take over seamlessly when you need a break.
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Email: ericaherron@hotmail.com