Welcome!

It can be so difficult to know how to support someone suffering from an eating disorder. I’ve compiled a bit of a list of ideas that help me, and that might therefore help others, to give people some ideas and assist them in reducing the feeling that they are ‘helpless’.

Get them out of the house or around company, even if it’s just to run errands or study together. This gets them out of their head and into things that are productive and not centred around food (and being productive means there is inherent value in your actions – important).

Let them know when something they say is disordered. It can be really hard to differentiate between one’s own thoughts and disordered thoughts at times, so it is helpful to have someone say hey that’s the ED talking.

Reminders that: how they feel is temporary and will pass, they deserve and need to eat, their value is not dependant on weight, they need to recover to achieve all the dreams they have for their lives, they have survived all of their worst days thus far etc.

Message them when you’re eating and remind them that it’s a meal time and they must eat because their body needs it.

Call them! You don’t have to talk about how you/they are feeling in life, but even just hearing what people are up to and talking about the good things in your week and yarning about the latest life dramas can be really calming and distracting because it feels so ‘normal’.

Talk their thoughts through with them. This one is pretty intense so never feel obliged to do it, but sometimes taking the thing you are worried about and (metaphorically) showing it to someone else helps you put that worry into perspective in terms of importance and realistically look at how you can tackle it.

Get them talking about something they are passionate about to flood their mind with something so positive!

Steer conversations to a new topic when others start talking about diets/weight loss/other things that are likely to be very triggering.

i know it’s hard some times, but

JUST.

KEEP.

Relax, you will be okay.

Just start.

True Love - Loving is my favorite thing to do in life. I like to make others happy and I like to look at someone who looks back at me, seeing who I am. Ya know, like really looking into you. This is being truly connected. 

Passion - This hits on love to some degree, but you can find passion in all facets of life, like your work, your friends, etc. It’s the passion-filled pieces in life that make it worth living. 

Meaningful Conversations - These help you feel understood. You need to be understood in life. You need to be around those that see you for who you are and care about what’s going on inside your head. Being misunderstood is very lonely.

Honesty - This is how you tap into everything on this list. Be honest with what makes you happy and what makes you sad, who you like and who drains you. We often let friends and family tell us who we are and though they want what is best for us and know who we are pretty well, at the end of the day, no one knows you better than you know you.

Many people can go through awful things without developing trauma based disorders as long as they receive compassion and support in processing those events as they happen. The most common factor in developing something like ptsd is emotional neglect. And emotional neglect on it’s own can be enough.