To My Brothers: Body Image and ED

WARNING: Some of the stories and images may cause triggers.

I want to dedicate this post to the males out there who struggle with eating disorders and negative perceptions of self image. It's not often that the male struggle with self image is mentioned. I invite you, my brothers, who struggle with body image and eating disorders to share your stories or copy and paste links to your videos and blogs in the comments section of this post.

I saw a couple videos today about the search for beauty (male version) and two young males struggle with eating disorders. I was shocked. I did not realize the quest for the perfect body image was so prevalent in males. What I find most disturbing is how society down plays your struggle. Your pain and suffering is just as important as ours. So why doesn't anyone do more to get the information out there? Society's focus is on the perception of beauty from the woman's point of view. There's little room for discussion about the struggles males have with their own body image. I'm sorry that I too have been guilty of not recognizing your struggle.

More and more young males are suffering from eating disorders and body image issues everyday and starting and younger ages as well.

Do Men and Boys Develope Eating Disorders?

The young lady in the previous video doesn't think that males develop eating disorders because they look muscular in the magazines. She doesn't think they will starve themselves, but rather buff themselves up. Well, here's an example of how some males look so muscular in magazines.

One 13-year-old Boy's Struggle With an Eating Disorder

Male Anorexia Story

I'm so proud of the young men and women who have and are coming forward with their struggles with eating disorders and body image issues. Thank you for sharing. I pray that one day ED will be a thing in the very distant past for all of us.

Pretty Ugly

What is that thing about us that makes us judge ourselves so harshly?

Is there always the pervasive link to abuse or could it be something more costly?

Could it be an internalized need to compare one to another?

After all, we look through countless pages of magazines,

Idolizing airbrushed beauties as we dream...

Lusting for perfection.

Unobtainable beauty, 

Life's worldly possession.

In essence we ARE already that beauty,

 We so desperately long to be.

As seen through the eyes of a stranger

A gentler, kinder, prettier persona of me.

Bits and Pieces

My eyes are too buggy.

My forehead too big.

My hair is unruly.

It looks like a wig.

 

My breasts are not perky.

My stomach protrudes.

Thighs shaped like tree trunks.

Accompanied by dimpled glutes. 

 

My skin heavily scared,

And stretched so tight.

Over the bulky frame of my girth,

Nothing shaped quite right.

 

My feet are to small,

As if unable to stand at all.

Slightly on tippy toe,

I've learned to lean just so.

 

A lingering stare into a mirror,

Loathing every bit and part of me.

A living portrait of my own worst enemy.

What ever will become of me.

 

One day most assuredly,
I will develop a healthier perception of me.

And I will stare into that mirror...you see,

With a brand new ability to love the entire me.

 

 

 

Dealing with triggers: The Ugly Button - 5/15/14

I joined an online support group yesterday. I wasn't sure how I'd like it, but the experience has been good so far. The group is pretty large, but it feels small and intimate. I like that.


There were some wonderful responses to the short introduction I posted. Questions were being asked about NES and others even chimed in and said thank you for joining because they too suffer from NES and it's almost never heard of. Can I tell you...it was wonderful to speak with people who knew just where I was coming from. People who could describe feeling and behaviors that I was all too familiar with. Wonderful connections were being made. However, everything has two sides. For every good there is bad. The bad thing is nothing that's being done intentionally. What is it? Triggers. Triggers that occur when reading emotionally intense posts. It can't be helped. EDs, addictions, abuse, disabilities, life itself...all these things come with pluses and minuses. When we are invited to speak about our issues there's always the risk of triggering others. I don't see any way around it except to never speak. What good would that do? Silence is worse than the actual triggers themselves.


The people in the group are very nice and yes, some of the subject matter is very intense. I'm already feeling kind of weirded out by the fact that so many beautiful people aren't able to see their own beauty. I want to scream and take the whole feeling ugly thing, wrap it up and tuck it into a place where no one can find it. It's a reminder of how ugly I see myself. If I were to describe myself in one word it would be...leprous. I can except my own feelings of inadequacy, but I am not coping well will with others feeling this way. They are all so beautiful. I know...the way I'm thinking is not fair to myself or them. They have their reasons for feeling the way they do just as I do. Perhaps it's too painful to see the pain of others when I'm having trouble seeing my own.


The more posts I read the angrier I feel. Not at the people for feeling the way they feel, but angry about living in a society where we are conditioned to feel ugly if we don't fit societal molds.


HOW DARE society think they are doing us a justice by making a "conscious" effort to depict and appreciate what is already beautiful! HOW DARE it be an effort at all to show women with voluptuous curves or people with rich skin tones! What happened to us that so many of us hate what we see in the mirror? Why is there so much shame in having a pimple, frizzy hair, being chubby, thin or whatever other superficial what not we can come up with? How are we to feel good when everything tell us to feeling bad?


Confession: I used to be obsessed with wanting to fix other peoples problems.


Other peoples problems were a welcomed distraction. My issues were ever present, ominous, venomous and I needed an escape. I would retreat into myself, draw or read books, but my favorite past time was dissecting the problems of others and obsessing over finding solutions. I was the self proclaimed Trojan of resolution. Bring all your problems to me and I will help you solve them. I was about as useful as a snake oil salesman. Though I must admit, there were some benefits to taking a situation, breaking it down and presenting it in a way that may not have been previously explored. It sometimes opened the doorway for individuals to take another look at their situations and search for answers within themselves. That would be the most reasonable intent for my process, but instead, I took it up a few notches and bought into my need to be needed.


Thanks to being self aware, I put a lot of effort to undoing the need to be needed along with undoing the need for people to serve specific roles in my life. It feels so much better to simply enjoy people for the sake of enjoying them and not having them lined up like a list of to dos. Now that I am freed from trying to solve the world's problem I can redirect my energy into the healing process. I will have to periodically remind myself that I can empathize without giving into the impulse to fix or solve things. I will also work on allowing myself to feel pain and then release it.


I'm still eating rye bread for breakfast every morning. Today I had two slices of rye bread with a little peanut butter. Lunch was an egg and cheese frittata and dinner will be left over chili from last night's impromptu dinner.