How to tell people you have an eating disorder when you don't look like it?

[solexander]

Alright, so, I'm a transgender male (duh) with a history of both self harm and on-off disordered eating. Ever since my preteen years, I've had issues with both. And I'm sad to say, lately I've been relapsing pretty hard into both behaviors. The self harm has gotten a little better, or at least not cutting has, but for some reason my starving myself has kinda taken its place in a way. I'm really afraid, because what will happen that scares me so much about it is that I can feel totally FINE, but I still won't eat because I'm afraid of how I will feel after the matter, if that makes sense. Like, I'll be feeling alright about my body, go to eat half a sandwich, and then feel absolutely disgusting and want to die. The unfortunate thing is that I never know when it's gonna be okay and when I'm gonna get hit hard with self-hatred and try to force myself to throw up what little I managed to eat. Another bad thing is that sometimes I'm also prone to manic episodes, and when these happen I tend to overeat, and that makes the self-hatred SO MUCH WORSE and I end up purging hard later. I guess... something that worries me about talking about this in real life is that I'm technically a bit overweight, and every time I try and hint to people that I need help ("haha I haven't eaten all day and it's 9pm", "I'm sorry I'm not doing my best today, I haven't eaten since yesterday afternoon") they just wanna congratulate me on trying to lose weight. I dunno. I really wanna get help but nobody wants to take me seriously and I'm starting to feel really weak all the time and it's scaring me a bit. How do I tell people I need help overcoming this?

[eli77]

I'm sorry you are in a bad place. It can be bizarrely difficult to talk about eating disorders in our thin-obsessed world and have anyone take you seriously. I found that the only way for me was to not joke or hint. To just flat up say: I've had an eating disorder for X time, sometimes I relapse, please can you do X thing to make my life easier.

I mean, I struggle to stay at 140 lbs at 6'1" which is just barely in the healthy range, and that's where I am now things are good. And it's still kind of incomprehensible the way people treat that stuff. Unless I am very direct and very specific, inevitably people just feel envious or whatever, and I'm like NO I HAVE TO FORCE MYSELF TO EAT THIS IS BAD. So yah... It is such a >-bleeped-<ty thing to be in a position where you have to convince people you are sick, but that's how it is. You need help, so you have to screw up your nerves and just ask for it. Like this, what you posted here, that's what you need to say.

Do you have a therapist or anyone you trust enough to talk to about the self-hatred? It's super hard to fix an addictive behaviour when you feel terrible (periodically or not) about yourself. Having a way of letting some of that out can really help.

And all my respect for fighting this, man. It is takes a ton of work and courage and don't ever let anyone tell you this is easy.

[Bombadil]

I agree with everything Sarah has. You can't hint. People just don't get it. And even when you are direct, some people won't. If that's the case stop talking to them about this and reach out to someone else.  You have to keep talking and be very clear about what's going on and it's ok to ask for help and say something someone is saying is triggering you.

Talking to a therapist would be a great idea. Finding a nutritionist that specializes in eating disorders can also be helpful. I've had mixed results with that.