For parents/carers .... IF you really knew me...

I found this on a recovery website before might help some careers understand and give some insight into the hidden suffering of ED....

If You Really Knew Me, You'd Know That...

1.I desperately want to be accepted
2.I am afraid of not winning this battle
3.Just now I am figuring out who I am
4.I have a hard time with the concept of forgiving
5.I smile all the time because I don't know what else to do
6.I am starting to/struggling to become comfortable with the idea that I am ordinary and that there's nothing wrong with that
7.My eating disorder is not the problem; it's the symptom of my real problems
8.Sometimes I just want you to listen, not talk, not interrupt, not offer advice or suggestions. Sometimes all I want is you to sit there and listen and to feel like I have been heard
9.Sometimes the weight of my sadness is bone-crushing, like the pressure of water down deep, like its drowning me from the inside out....
10.I hurt myself because it's the only feeling (pain) that I can stand to feel

11.I am terrified of not being a good enough mother/daughter/sister/brother...
12.At the start of the next day, before I even brush my teeth, I worry about whether i will be able to stop myself from hurting either myself or anyone around me
13.I'm deathly afraid of growing up and dealing with all the things a grown-up must think about, even though I'm technically an adult
14.There are so many things I wish I could say
15.Words and actions hurt me even though they weren't meant to
16.I cry when you hug me because of the emptiness and pain I know I'll feel when you finally do let me go
17.I am so incredibly mean to myself. I wouldn't talk to any other person on earth the way I talk to myself
18.What I want right now more than anything is love from myself. If I had more self love, the criticisms, the negativity, the thoughts, the low self-esteem, the self-doubts would all cease
19.I sometimes need your help, but I'm not sure how to tell you this
20.I really do care about you, more than you could even imagine

21.I cry when no one is around
24.I hold back from full recovery because I hang on to anorexia as an excuse to not chase after my real goals. im afraid of success or life without ed, of letting go.... this is all i knew for so long.
25.I don't like the eating disorder, I just am having a hard time disliking it
26.I felt too ashamed, too dirty, too embarrassed and too scared to tell you that I couldn't cope without hurting myself
28.I want to make a difference in the world
29.I am unable to see my potential right now but it helps me to hear you when you tell me it's there. similar to my beauty....
30.I'm afraid to know myself and understand my feelings and wishes

31.As I'm smiling and laughing, I have voices screaming and degrading me in my head
33. I am at a crossroads. For years I have tried to be someone else. I have sweat, cried, screamed my way out of my skin, i still want to crawl out of my skin, but i am becoming ok with the idea of being me...
35.When I laughingly say I don't want to grow up, I'm not joking. I really am terrified
36.I believe that everyone's flaws should be accepted and forgiven except for mine
39.I would give anything to get out of my head and into my body when I am being intimate with my boyfriend/at a party/at work, to not live in my head all the time ......
40.I'm always in a state of obsession. My mind is always going a mile a minute and my ED is ALWAYS berating me for something. I never have a moment of pure peace or silence in my head

41.I'd love to escape to somewhere by the beach, eat, drink, dance, without a care in the world
42.I lied my way through treatment and I'm now paying the consequences
44.I miss having a relationship with my family like mad
45.I feel there's an empty hole in me
46.Some days I feel like the old me & it feels so liberating
47. More than anything I long for a mother who loves me and listens to me and to go home and feel safe
48.I feel guilty about all the pain I feel
49.I hate, absolutely hate, feeling vulnerable and I will do almost anything to avoid it
50.I feel nothing most of the time and I wait to see your reactions before I know how to respond/reply/react myself

51.I am really sensitive although I appear unfeeling
52.I'll lie to everybody to keep them from being hurt or from hurting them
53.I feel like a complete failure
54.What I want most is to just hear that I am ok just the way I am even if my natural state isn't common, normal or cool
55.I worship the ground my big sister walks on and she doesn't even know it. I compare myself to everything she does
56.What you said/did hurts
57.Sometimes I feel like I don't belong anywhere and I feel like an alien and that I don't belong in this time because my outlook feels so foreign. sometimes i feel lost in an empty void completely disconnected from life and people in it.
58.I don't like myself right now and I need support, but then when I get that support, I'm scared to let go of it again, scared that I'll lose it
59.I still sleep with a stuffed animal
60.No one could berate me more than I do myself

61.I hate being needy and yet I long to be taken care of, its like wanting help and then not wanting it. we want it thats us the rest is the ed.
63.Without this mask I don't really know who I am
64.I'm not trusting of anyone esp myself
65.I simultaneously crave both fitting in and standing out. I feel like a failure when I'm different, and I feel like a failure when I blend
66.The ED was the only constant in my life, the only thing which felt unchanging regardless of what external events happened. The ED was the only guarantee, the only certainty, the only thing loyal to me throughout everything that came my way
67.I wish that I didn't hate myself but at the same time, I don't know how it would feel to like myself
68.I am so afraid of being in an intimate relationship with a man, and I fear I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life

70.I wear my weight like an armor
71.The bigger my smile, the larger my pain, my eyes will never lie, i wont look you in the eye to hide my pain and tears.
72.I use my body to convey what my words cannot
73.I always feel like a burden but usually I hide that
74.I don't want you to give up on me
75.I have big dreams and wish that I believed enough to make them become a reality
76.I don't even know myself
78.For years, I longed for someone to know my secret, in the hope they'd stop the pain and stop me from hurting because I didn't care enough about myself to stop myself
79.When I do something stupid, and remember it later, the "me" in the memory always looks fat and ugly
80.I have no confidence in myself or my abilities

81.I struggle to believe in myself at times and fear being hurt by criticism but I am courageous and don't shrink back from those things I am gifted at
82.I will not show that I am mad at you. In fact, I probably won't even feel mad at you, unless someone else reassures me that it IS something to be mad about
83.I want to find something that will make my parents proud of me
84.I don't really give a rat's ass about how I look. I only talk about it so much as a way of verbalizing all the fears inside me that I don't know how to identify
85.I love you even when you don't think I do
86.I pray that I will still be able to have children someday
87.I'm so, so sorry for all the times I lied to you/hurt you,the fights/ the ruined family events
88.I am scared because I don't know what to do with my life and I cannot cope without direction/control/plans
89.I only pretend to be immature: I'm scared to show you just how serious and deep I can be
90.I need help believing in myself

92.I don't know who I am or what I'm all about
93.I don't feel that I deserve your unconditional love
94.Even when it doesn't look like it, I am trying, and I'm doing my best in the moment
95.I won't ever measure up to "you"
96.I harbor an immense amount of guilt over my actions and this prevents me from telling you, as I don't want you to shoulder my pain and my burden, or know my shameful secret for what it is
97.I am really afraid that I could really exceed beyond my wildest dreams. But I have never let myself try, because what if I succeed then fail miserably
98.I'm scared that this will kill me
99.I might seem really happy and postives behind that smile or humoir lies a deep darkness and i am simply trying to convince myself good things exist....i am a pro at masks and when i feel my worst like im dying inside i cant seem to turn off happy i have got so used to pretending, and wanting to see you happy

This is what i thought before treatment and a lot now, but if carers read this they might understand the our silence a bit more.... understand why we are the way are but that its not really us....