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Original poster

supporting my friend with eating disorder?

27 replies

Xmasdaft2023 · 08/01/2025 20:16

How does one support a friend with eating disorder?
apart from being at the end of my phone 24/7 I’m not sure what else I can do. i’ve had a rough few weeks myself and I’ve done and encouraged as much as I can and I don’t know what else to do?
she’s starving herself (talking about 4 days no food!) or binging when she has to (I front of others) and forcing sickness?
I’ve encouraged talking to ED helplines, I’ve been blunt at her weight loss and her needing fuel herself but I’m just lost. Do I approach her husband/family/friends that know her much more than I do?
really struggling with what to do. I can’t agree with her not eating?
help!! Struggling friend that just doesn’t know how to help 😞

OP posts:
Original poster
Xmasdaft2023 · 09/01/2025 13:07

pumpkinpillow · 09/01/2025 13:02

binging when she has to eat in front of others" really made my spider senses tingle. Binging is a problem in eating disorders. What it is not is eating more than you want to in front of others. I've only ever seen the two conflated in explicitly pro-ana spaces.

This alarmed me as well. Bingeing and purging is normally a very secretive and shameful behaviour.

I believe she is starving herself, half can of juice a day but I know as a front for Xmas she ate at someone’s house and then was sick (this is what she told me) so that it looked like she was..

i believe it to be anorexia but is this bulimia?

the last week has been very much “4 days no food, 1/2 can fizzy juice a day” and “I need to get to X weight”… I think she’s already surpassed that I’m sure 😞

OP posts:
Original poster
Xmasdaft2023 · 09/01/2025 13:11

CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau · 09/01/2025 12:48

OK. To continue, I also have experience with people who message at any time with that sort of thing and I've known OF people who behave like that about their eating disorder.

To answer in order: 1) would you be a total bitch if you texted her husband? Others may differ, but I would say from a moral/ethical POV the only thing that would make this an objectively bad or harmful thing to do would be if you have any reason to suspect the husband is controlling and/or abusive. I won't go into why, but that would be really damaging and abusers often weaponise that stuff if they know about it. Otherwise, I don't think it can do any harm. She's proactively sharing worrying details with you, and you can draw an analogy with priests, doctors, teachers etc who actually have a duty to break confidentiality if they have reason to be concerned. Restrictive eating disorders in particular also speak for themselves. If she's looking worrying and losing weight, you probably aren't telling the husband anything he doesn't know if he's paying attention at all, apart from the fact that his wife is putting huge and unfair emotional pressure on you, is struggling more than he thinks, is hiding things etc. It might also add incentives/pressure to actually go to these appointments.

  1. she probably will think you're a bitch and react badly, which doesn't make that true. Particularly with her behaviour, what she wants is to keep it a dirty little secret with someone who will give her a shoulder to cry on and validation of what she sees as progress. Again, this is particularly young or new eating disorder survivors, and those who don't see their behaviour as damaging to others or dangerous to themselves, but sufferers often get the mentality that they are fighting some sort of war with the ED and their (I hate this word as well) enabling friends on one side and everyone else on the other. By the way, this sort of attitude also makes accessing help really unlikely and difficult. I was actually on a recovery forum elsewhere the other day and someone posted that they had been purging for two weeks and were consciously creating an eating disorder, I responded that they needed to fight and get help ASAP so it didn't turn into a real and entrenched eating disorder (you need symptoms for a month to be diagnosed) and reminded her of the medical risks. This was a teenager who had just started behaviours and the earlier you get treatment the better. Next thing I knew I was being told "people like you make me sick" and how dare I not validate and encourage her. This was a pro-recovery space! So I won't sugarcoat it, she won't welcome you reaching out to her husband or others at all, and usually you shouldn't go behind people's backs. But this is in the end a matter of life and, if not death, ill health and misery. Her behaviour is also duplicitous and secretive, and like addictions, eating disorders thrive in the dark and are allergic to sunlight. If she continues to resent you for it forever, I'd suggest she's possibly a friend you're better off without (that sounds very cruel but again I can completely understand why people have had to step away from me). If she's someone who will be a good friend long-term, she will realise you've got her best interests at heart and might come to be conscious of the effect she's having on you.

  2. speaking of which, messaging you at all hours of the day and night is completely unacceptable. She's fishing for (what are to an ED sufferer) compliments, validation, constant support, sympathy and she gets what is effectively a diet buddy thrown in. This isn't helping her in any way, although it's probably making things more bearable. I one could probably forgive quite a lot more if she were messaging you frequently and complaining a lot but it was about the difficulty and pain of a sincere effort at recovery, or a request for friendly support in a purely emotional sense - I would draw my personal line somewhere around sharing that I was scared about serious medical consequences of my eating behaviours. Let's put this in dieting language - she's basically using you as a 24/7 weightwatchers meeting. Imagine if she were abusing alcohol and texting you every day about how much she'd been drinking and how she needed to black out for three days in a row and then would be happy! Nobody would tolerate that. Even other drinkers would probably not stand for even a day of that. Eating disorders are horrible, yes we need support, yes, friends can be a lifeline, yes, people who listen and are kind and loyal to sufferers through their darkest points are wonderful friends to be cherished. She's not asking that of you. She's using emotional pressure to get you to enable her disordered behaviour. The fact that there's an obesity problem and weight loss is lionised and imbued with moral significance in general does not change that. To be really blunt, if she wants pro-anorexia content she can go and get it online, she's a big girl, and not dress it up and milk it from her friend as she currently is doing.

  3. boundaries my friends have set? I'll give one example, which is my best friend. We communicate all the time and want to move in together, and they've visited me in hospital etc so are very aware of what I struggle with and the extent of stuff. He does draw boundaries more strictly than I'd like, but the main one is that I don't talk about things that are objectively harmful to me, and if I stray too close to something that worries him he will say that. "It makes me miserable when you say that" or "that isn't helping me and it's just making me upset". It is always explicitly or implicitly clear that it upsets him BECAUSE he cares about me and also because he doesn't think it helps either of us. As I said, sometimes it would help me, but he is allowed to draw that boundary and I understand why so I try to obey it. In your case I really can't see why it would help your friend at all to be supported in her weight goals and restrictive eating. I have another friend who started off with a professional responsibility for me and who therefore has the seniority to pull rank, but she will say things like "you can stay for dinner at (complicated explanation, but a community that I value) but you have to finish what you get or it's rude to the cook" which makes sense to me. If I can't eat that day I don't have to go. When I was told it wasn't an option to be too faint or weak to perform at such and such venue and therefore I had to eat even a little bit, I could work with that too.

About you getting support - have to run off so this will be short, sorry. But of course you deserve support and should be able to get it from your friendships in general and overall in this friendship. However, EDs are horrible illnesses and even if she weren't acting as she is (which you can probably tell I don't think is in an ideal way) your friend probably isn't in a position to support you even if she was in the frame of mind to want to do so or to have sympathy for you. You do deserve it though. I want to write more on that but as I said, really in a rush, I hope this conveys what I meant :S I'm really sorry you're in such a difficult position and you deserve care and supportive friendships too.

Final thing - as someone who did, in my teenage years, peruse pro-anorexia forums more out of curiosity than anything else (I never contributed and quickly worked out it wasn't a world I wanted to be a part of for many reasons) the reference to "binging when she has to eat in front of others" really made my spider senses tingle. Binging is a problem in eating disorders. What it is not is eating more than you want to in front of others. I've only ever seen the two conflated in explicitly pro-ana spaces.

Really hate to leave it here but have to run xx

Thank you so much for this!
I really appreciate your insight and hope to place some boundaries in place asap.. yet to decide on speaking to husband but I may approach best friend.
I really don’t want to lose trust.

you’re completely right about my own issues and do understand!

again, thank you!

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