There are many serious health and mental health issues that people deal with everyday in every part of the world. Many sicknesses and diseases are well known and understood by people while others remain mostly undiscussed and misunderstood. Having an eating disorder is one of the conditions that is rarely understood by most people.
Struggling with an eating disorder is hard because it is a sickness that is not often recognized until it is fairly serious. People begin showing signs of having an eating disorder for many reasons. Some people are unhappy with their current weight or with the way their body looks. Others suffer the verbal abuse of a spouse or friend that makes hurtful remarks about weight or beauty. Still others who start having an eating disorder do so as a means of controlling a part of their lives when the rest of their life seems out of control. Whatever the reason that an eating disorder begins, it is an extremely tough sickness for people to conquer and be free of.
Having an eating disorder is an extremely isolating thing to live with because it is not always noticable to the people around you. Most people who struggle with an eating disorder find a strange mix of comfort and angst in this. On one hand it is great that their problems can be kept secret from the ones around them, but on the other hand many times an eating disorder is a cry for the help and intervention of others.
The isolation many people experience with an eating disorder becomes a trap that keeps them struggling longer and harder. They feel unable to seek help and yet unable to handle the pressures of the eating disorder on their own so that even those who have deep desire to be free from their eating disorder live for weeks, months or even years without the ability to see freedom as a real possibility for them.
If you think you may be struggling with an eating disorder, the best thing you can do is get help. Fight through the hardness and awkwardness of sharing your secret struggle. Trust that opening up to someone you love and trust about your eating disorder will help save you in the long run even if it feels easier to keep your problem a secret now. Make sure that you take the problem to someone that can really help you or at least find you the help you need. An eating disorder, while it is extremely tough to deal with, does not have to mark the end of your dreams or your livelihood. Getting help is a necessary first step to finding healing and hope.
