The Challenge of Helping

The principal reason why your good intentions may be misread is that individuals with eating disorders develop abnormal habits and beliefs that interfere with interpersonal relationships. Caring may be misinterpreted as coercion. Compliments may be felt as performance pressure. Attempts at discussion may be misconstrued as accusations. Your honesty may be heard as distortion of facts. What you say or do might be eating-disordered person or your need to control the situation.

Your attempts to see humor in the situation and there is humor might be perceived as trivializing the person’s struggle and the significance of the eating disorder. Not only can reactions such as these be frustrating, they can cut off communication at the outset if you are not aware that they are more typical than atypical.

There are ways to overcome these negative interactions and with practice avoid them altogether. If you are direct willing to state your opinions and explain what’s going on inside your head agree to disagree and acknowledge that hurt feelings are normal during such an intensely emotional time you will be more apt to put misunderstanding aside and be able to move forward.

Everyone must be willing to try again and again until communication flows smoothly and your trust base is unshakable. Although it’s easier said than done it is definitely possible. People who have eating disorders usually have a lot of self-doubt. Many come from backgrounds in which appropriate, productive communication is lacking or absent. As a result, they often don’t feel comfortable speaking up for themselves or might not think they have the right to do so. They might not even know how to clearly state their needs and expectations.

Even worse, some might have been punished when they tried and then stopped altogether. But needs and expectations don’t just go away because they’re ignored or repressed. After a long period of time, those unexpressed thoughts and emotions build up until the pressure becomes so uncomfortable it has to be released. An eating disorder is often the outlet.

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