In this podcast you will hear an audio recording of an account of a treatment facility from a person in recovery.
Treatment Stories: Being shamed for wanting more food
In this podcast you will hear an audio recording of an account of a treatment facility from a person in recovery.
This happened to me as well, and I developed an association between hunger and depression, because I was made to feel that my desire for more food was excessive for my body and therefore shameful. In fact it was not, and only years after treatment when my weight stabilized did I learn to understand that it was ok to trust my body signals. I still have that neural wiring though that links hunger with a sense of hopelessness, when all it really means is that I need a little more food. I am still fighting against that message I received from treatment centers.
And THIS is why I’m very glad I never went to treatment and recovered on my own.
Plate the other patients’ food? That’s really odd, and clearly everyone is going to be comparing!
I can’t relate to the exact story but I’m currently in a situation where I too, am inpatient and restricted to a meal plan with way too little food. I’ve never had much weight to gain (not according to myself, I want to allow my body to find its set point, i mean according to the bullshit BMI scale and my delusional doctors) and have already gained some of it. My weight is still going up but I KNOW I’m eating too little. My hunger is constant, both mental and physical, and the past few nights I’ve had trouble falling asleep due to it… But like I said, my weight is going up (I suppose because my body is a clever bastard and is in the process of saving as much as it can allow itself to, from what it’s getting, right) and that’s all my doctors care about…
What sucks is that I currently am viewed as the mentally ill person, which means that nobody finds me to be a reliable source of information. My doctors can easily write my ideas off with the excuse that I have an eating disorder and “when it comes too food I therefore can’t be trusted”. I bet a lot of people have this problem and as treatment is holding them back, they struggle with recovery even more and therefore may not even get to a place where they’re recovered and concidered trustworthy by treatment centers and treatment providers. But some do and I hope the amount will increse because we all deserve real and full recovery. Also sharing stories is great, I think (and I guess that’s why I’m commenting as well) because it shows us that we’re not alone and we’re not just imagining our hunger etc.