HOW TO WEAPONIZE MENTAL HEALTH
This surely won't backfire on anyone
Picture this. You're having a terrible body day. You send a picture to a friend, hoping for reassurance that your body doesn't look the way you think it does (because it doesn't, it's just the disorder making it look a certain way in your mind). Your friend reassures you that you actually look good, and not at all the way you think you do. Crisis over, life continues, you remember the nice words and are in a better mood for the rest of the day
Or. Your friend has read online to not enable eating disorders, so they don't comment anything at all. Or they compliment the curtains behind you. They refuse to say you look small despite it being painfully obvious in the picture. So, of coutse your disordered brain says "Ok clearly I look just as hideous as I thought and that's why they're not saying anything" and you continue on feeling bad, feeling worse, spiraling out of control until everything is bad and you need to go harder at it to get to a point where someone, ANYONE, says ANYTHING reassuring to you. But they won't. Because making you feel better about yourself is forbidden, it's wrong, it's enabling. No one is allowed to say anything that would help. And they're patting themselves on the back for it.
You're definitely not making me feel better by making me feel worse about how I look, fun fact. My disordered friends understand this (thank god someone does) and comment on my weight loss.
"Good god, but then you're gonna lose more weight omg"
I was gonna do it anyway. I'll just either do it alone feeling miserable and isolated, or with my friends still around me. Don't ever make a disordered person choose between their disorder and you, either way you're hurting them. If you want out, just leave.
NOT EVERYONE IS OR WANTS TO BE IN RECOVERY
This surely won't backfire on anyone
Picture this. You're having a terrible body day. You send a picture to a friend, hoping for reassurance that your body doesn't look the way you think it does (because it doesn't, it's just the disorder making it look a certain way in your mind). Your friend reassures you that you actually look good, and not at all the way you think you do. Crisis over, life continues, you remember the nice words and are in a better mood for the rest of the day
Or. Your friend has read online to not enable eating disorders, so they don't comment anything at all. Or they compliment the curtains behind you. They refuse to say you look small despite it being painfully obvious in the picture. So, of coutse your disordered brain says "Ok clearly I look just as hideous as I thought and that's why they're not saying anything" and you continue on feeling bad, feeling worse, spiraling out of control until everything is bad and you need to go harder at it to get to a point where someone, ANYONE, says ANYTHING reassuring to you. But they won't. Because making you feel better about yourself is forbidden, it's wrong, it's enabling. No one is allowed to say anything that would help. And they're patting themselves on the back for it.
You're definitely not making me feel better by making me feel worse about how I look, fun fact. My disordered friends understand this (thank god someone does) and comment on my weight loss.
"Good god, but then you're gonna lose more weight omg"
I was gonna do it anyway. I'll just either do it alone feeling miserable and isolated, or with my friends still around me. Don't ever make a disordered person choose between their disorder and you, either way you're hurting them. If you want out, just leave.
NOT EVERYONE IS OR WANTS TO BE IN RECOVERY