Women who purged more frequently were more depressed and anxious, and were also more likely to have been diagnosed with a personality disorder, the researchers found.
"Using multiple purging methods as a marker of eating disorder severity could provide more meaningful distinctions among women who purge than our current diagnostic system," the researchers conclude, adding that further studies should look at the effect of multiple purging method use on response to treatment and remission.
SOURCE: International Journal of Eating Disorders, September 2007.
treatment and remission: I wonder what those words mean?
How do you "treat" the despair of someone in depression who is trying to die of malnutrition? Taking a close look at the methods of purging means we don't have to see the unbearable pain of simply being alive that drives some people to choose to live on the verge of starvation. Antidepressants put a lid on the pain. I want to get it into the light and understand it.
A diet that releases you from cravings is great, but for anyone with an eating disorder it is pure hell. Once the additictive eating, or starving or purging is ended, the pain will swell up and become overpowering. To a food addict, the addictive behaviour feels as if it is enabling you to survive another day. Alcoholics say this, and it is true of food addicts also.
We cannot treat despair by counting laxatives.
No one found my laxatives
No one saw the brown, churning scarce-digested food
Spurt from me
Ejected in a burst of flatus
Stench of acid - rejection - dejection.
I cleaned the brown- stained pan, sprayed the air and opened the window.
I gently wiped my sore and painful anus
Red and swollen, vulnerable to touch
A little part of my inner membranes,
Exposed and red and weeping….
No one noticed how soon I left the table
To lock the door
To sit and strain in secret
Fearful that Someone would come and see me
And reveal this act of betrayal.
No one knew that in my room I worried
That this meal, this fragment of food
Forced upon me by society' s wish
Would betray the thing I hold most dear.
I will soon be there, in that place I yearn for.
I will soon get there, through this constant act
Of supreme self sacrifice.
If they will only let me die, I will send my soul
To the distant place where I can be reunited with myself!
If they would only let me starve
And become a frail, lost and vague memory
Of someone who used to be:
An insubstantial presence, hardly evident in the world
Hardly noticeable by its absence.
A wraith.
I will get there, slowly and by degrees.
They may make me eat, make me grow
Develop fully with chubby baby cheeks
But they will never find my laxatives.
They will always remember me as an angel-
A slow and starving shadow, a thing of innocence
Who thinks none harm, commits none harm…..
They will never find the angry and offensive
Inner parts of me that fart and squirt
And reject the food of this world!
They must never find my laxatives:
They must never know how wrong it is
That I must live.
I must fade away and become invisible.
I must not die, but live on in endless twilight
Yearning for the dark.
Spurt from me
Ejected in a burst of flatus
Stench of acid - rejection - dejection.
I cleaned the brown- stained pan, sprayed the air and opened the window.
I gently wiped my sore and painful anus
Red and swollen, vulnerable to touch
A little part of my inner membranes,
Exposed and red and weeping….
No one noticed how soon I left the table
To lock the door
To sit and strain in secret
Fearful that Someone would come and see me
And reveal this act of betrayal.
No one knew that in my room I worried
That this meal, this fragment of food
Forced upon me by society' s wish
Would betray the thing I hold most dear.
I will soon be there, in that place I yearn for.
I will soon get there, through this constant act
Of supreme self sacrifice.
If they will only let me die, I will send my soul
To the distant place where I can be reunited with myself!
If they would only let me starve
And become a frail, lost and vague memory
Of someone who used to be:
An insubstantial presence, hardly evident in the world
Hardly noticeable by its absence.
A wraith.
I will get there, slowly and by degrees.
They may make me eat, make me grow
Develop fully with chubby baby cheeks
But they will never find my laxatives.
They will always remember me as an angel-
A slow and starving shadow, a thing of innocence
Who thinks none harm, commits none harm…..
They will never find the angry and offensive
Inner parts of me that fart and squirt
And reject the food of this world!
They must never find my laxatives:
They must never know how wrong it is
That I must live.
I must fade away and become invisible.
I must not die, but live on in endless twilight
Yearning for the dark.
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