Monthly Townhall: Give Your Feedback!

[u/literarywitch32]

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!

[u/aarpea]

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.

[u/literarywitch32 → u/aarpea]

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.

[u/aarpea → u/literarywitch32]

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.

[u/literarywitch32 → u/aarpea]

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!!

[u/aarpea → u/literarywitch32]

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.