Helping The Anorexic Who Doesn't Want To Be Helped...

Throughout my childhood, my mum always knew what I needed: She knew what cry meant that I was hungry, she knew what noise I made when I needed to be burped, she knew what face I made when I needed my nappy change, she knew what to say when a friend excluded me and she knew what to sing to make me fall asleep. But when I developed an eating disorder, she felt like everything she said either didn't help or made everything worse. It wasn't an error on my mum's behalf, it was anyone's problem who didn't have an eating disorder. They're profoundly intricate making them a big, sticky web that's nearly impossible to navigate. And they're annoyingly unique meaning that there isn't a blanket textbook to supporting somebody with one. But the best person to teach a loved one who wants to help is a person diagnosed with the bitch that is called an eating disorder.

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I felt drowned out by the noise of other people with eating disorder's coupled with society's assumptions. My friends and family were spending so much time trying to say what they thought would help me or what they thought was the right thing to say that they never simply stopped and asked 'What do you need?', 'What can I say to help?', 'How are you?' These simple questions meant so much to me because often, the things that other people shared online that helped, were detrimental to me. For example, others have shared online how they need other people talking to them during meals to distract them but for me, I need the headspace to focus on the daunting task in front of me and I can't do that whilst trying to maintain a conversation. Whenever somebody asks me a question, I value it whole-heartedly because they're recognising that I'm not a textbook, that my individual experience is exactly that and I still deserve their help.

You don't know what you don't ask, Dolls.

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Trust is one of the most conflicting components of having an eating disorder. If you really want to support a person with an eating disorder, it's not enough to ask them if they ate or to trust them when they say they will eat. It's also not enough to say you'll sit with them whilst they eat and then be distracted whether it be going to the bathroom or sitting there playing on your phone. Just like it's in the nature of depression to spend days in bed, it's in the nature of eating disorders to take every opportunity to not eat. I used to feel relieved when my parents or nurses would properly supervise me over a meal because the second they left or weren't watching, I had to be sneaky, I had to hide food and I had to throw it out because the voice of my eating disorder is so powerful, unkind, forceful and dominating. Just because someone doesn't want to be helped, it doesn't mean they don't want a break. One of the most supportive things you can do for someone who doesn't want to be helped is to properly supervise them. Ask them, do you want to talk? Or do you want me to just sit here and be with you? If you're properly supervising them, it might be the one moment in their day where they have the opportunity to simply eat, with the noise of their eating disorder at the back of their head. It could be the first time in days and it could be the first time in weeks. I'm telling you this, Shopaholics, because it's unlikely that any other person with anorexia can... In fact, even as I write this I can hear my anorexia getting angry, begging me to not allow any victim receive the help with eating. But it's one thing for me to disobey my eating disorder and it's another to disobey it at the cost of another girl or boy who deserves a moment of freedom.

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Now that you've adhered to my last two pointers, this is the most likely point that a sufferer is trusting in you... to talk to them, to listen to them, to hold the space for them and Dolls, this place is a place that needs to be treasured and nurtured. This space may be the only space a sufferer has to talk, truly and to be, truly, within the imperfectly perfect space that is the cohabitation of them and their eating disorder. Their eating disorder is their biggest secret, their deepest cause of shame and their most burdensome heartache so if you choose to be non-judgemental and assumption-less, you will learn from their individual experience and become privy to one of the most vulnerable things you may ever learn about this person whom you love. With this knowledge, you can do what my Mum and Dad did for me which to this date, is perhaps the gift that I treasure most because not one other person in the world could've given it to me and most likely, not one person other than you can give it to them. Overtime, my parents learned the things they said that did and didn't get me through all of the meals that I found difficult. And every saying, phrase and remark that worked, they wrote onto a palm-sized card so that I had a stack of personalised messages for all of the moments that they couldn't be there to sit down with me, hold my hand, rationalise and talk me through the struggle I faced. For example, three cards that they've written me are:

• 'YOU ARE CHERISHED'

• 'YOU DESERVE TO EAT'

• 'EAT IT TO BEAT IT'

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Dolls, I've been the person who doesn't want help and in that space I'd been hopeless and had given up on myself. Upon reflection, would I have wished that everybody else gave up on me, too? No. And in fact, just because I didn't believe in myself, didn't make it any easier when others didn't believe in me. Everybody can be helped, Dolls, even if they reject it at the time. I am one of the sickest people with Anorexia that I know so if I can respond to treatment and support, anybody can. Do not give up on the person you love because everybody who doesn't want to be helped, still wants you to care enough to try and help.

All my love,

COS x

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