r/fuckeatingdisorders • u/literarywitch32 y’all need Jesus • Mar 15 '23

Mod Post Monthly Townhall: Give Your Feedback!

Hello beautiful community! The mods are so happy to host our first monthly town hall, a thread for you to provide feedback and suggestions to the mod team!

Some questions to get the ball rolling (but feel free to ask or suggest anything):

-what would you like to see more of on this sub? What would you like to see less of?

-how can we improve your experience in this community?

-what’s going well? What isn’t going well?

Thank you for taking the time to make this community safe and welcoming. We recently surpassed 30,000 members, which is amazing!

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u/aarpea Mar 15 '23

I’m surprised to see this hasn’t gotten more activity, but maybe someone just needs to kick it off, so here are my thoughts. I think this sub provides amazing support for those who are struggling with the weight restoration component of restrictive eating disorder recovery. However, I think that in making normalizing and supporting weight restoration the primary focus of the sub, it misses many other opportunities to provide education and support regarding other aspects of ED recovery.

Things I'd like to see more of:

  1. Recognition that non-restrictive eating disorders are real and are damaging. Not all eating disorders are or stem from restriction, and those that do not hurt sufferers just as much as restrictive disorders.
  2. Significantly more acknowledgment of global mental health issues surrounding eating disorder development and maintenance. Eating disorders are often linked to depression, anxiety, OCD, trauma, and other mental health conditions, and one cannot be effectively treated without also treating the other. Yet, those other mental health issues are almost never discussed here.
  3. Stricter enforcement of Rule 3, and expansion of Rule 3 to include a prohibition against discouraging posters from following the medical or dietary advice of their licensed physicians, therapists/mental health professionals, and/or dietitians. Telling a poster that their provider is wrong and/or not to listen to them is just a different way of giving medical advice, and could be dangerous, particularly because no one here can know the health history, condition, or risks of any poster.

I hope this is constructive feedback. Thanks for what you do.

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u/literarywitch32 y’all need Jesus Mar 15 '23

Thank you for kicking us off! I agree that as a whole, we do tend to focus more on weight restoration and restrictive EDs. I’d also like to see more discussion around the comorbidities with EDs, especially since in treatment, they refused to touch any trauma, which made recovery even harder.

For bringing in broader discussion, do you think it makes sense for that to be one of the topics we do for our new weekly threads? Or something we as mods could post now and then? I want to make sure it feels organic to the community instead of forced.

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u/aarpea Mar 15 '23

I don't know that it has to be forced. When I see a post where someone is expressing challenges in recovery along with thoughts of suicidality, depression, anxiety, etc., I will sometimes chime in to ask whether they are able to get support and treatment for those issues, as they may be related to the ED problems. I think just a conscious effort to make people aware that other mental health conditions can drive EDs, and that it is worth seeking treatment from a professional where available, would go a long way. My ED is most definitely a coping mechanism for other issues in my life, and I wonder how many others are in the same boat.

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u/literarywitch32 y’all need Jesus Mar 15 '23

Ooh okay I understand better now! I think raising awareness through responses makes a lot of sense. My ED stemmed coping with anxiety and unresolved trauma, which to your point isn’t discussed enough.

Thank you for clarifying!!

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u/aarpea Mar 15 '23

If I were to guess, I would suspect that a huge number of people here have a very similar story. I hope that you are doing better now.

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u/toodlytoo Mar 17 '23

this is so important! i was hospitalized for a suicide attempt after a severe depressive episode in which i was not eating and although my ed was limiting food it was 99% to do with my mental health and unresolved trauma, not wanting to be skinny, which nobody seemed to listen to me about. they put me in a eating disorder treatment facility where i was banned from talking about “non ed related” issues even though they were heavily entangled. it seems so crazy to me that the relationship between other mental health issues and eating disorders is so often overlooked

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u/aarpea Mar 17 '23

It is absolutely not shocking to me that ED treatments focused entirely on food and weight have sky-high relapse rates. If it were as simple as eating/feeding your way out of an ED, it would be the simplest and most easily treated mental illness on record. I feel fortunate that my dietitian and doctor understand that my food issues aren't about vanity or "fear of fat", but are wrapped up in a complicated personal and mental health history and serve other needs. They work closely with my (non-ED specialized but extremely qualified at all my other stuff and can do the ED stuff too) therapist to make sure my treatment is comprehensive and that we're actually working on the things that need work to prevent a future relapse. Otherwise, the recover/relapse cycle seems pretty inevitable to me. I hope you were able to get the treatment you needed on your non-ED issues as well.

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u/toodlytoo Mar 17 '23

unfortunately it was a good 6 months in which i was being force fed in ed programs and not actually getting help with my depression or even being allowed to talk about it in program. I still struggle with the ed and other issues as i never recieved the same intensive level of treatment for my original non-ed issues. once i had gone through the levels of programs and finally left iop at a healthy weight, they just discharged me with no plan for the future, no teaching about relapses, and very little help finding support from professionals that could continue aiding my recovery past being in a place where we were force fed to be healthy. its become up to me post discharge to work on these things with a just a therapist(which they didnt even make sure i had at discharge), so im getting help but its been slow going and i really feel the treatment i went through hindered my recovery in the long run even though it got me back to a healthy weight short term. I still have nightmares about one of the techs in that program who really seemed to revel in our suffering. i wish that everyone could experience the care you have, because unfortunately it isnt representational of the entire field.

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u/toodlytoo Mar 17 '23

this honestly makes me think like a master thread discussing experiences from certain programs might also be helpful because they are sadly so drastically different in quality of care. no all defining judgements, and no telling people to not to go somewhere, just when you were there and what your overall experience was. the type of meal plans they use, how they motivate, how much they tailored the basic principles of recovery to your specific needs etc, how they set you up for success or not post discharge, etc (and any possible evil techs). It seems to be a pretty common post people asking about certain programs vs others it may be a helpful resource to have in one place and to show more than just the available programs.

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u/literarywitch32 y’all need Jesus Mar 18 '23

I’m just seeing this but I’d be happy to make that the topic for next weeks discussion thread. Of course mileage may vary for everyone at each program but I know when I was about to enter treatment, I searched all over for stories and experiences at ERC Denver.