The Voices of Bulimia

Kelsey · Apr 17, 2010

My character is plagued with the voices of bulimia! Having never experienced this myself, does anyone know of any good resources that might discuss the self-deprecating voices many sufferers of eating disorders experience? I've Googled it, but I'm finding a lot of the same information.

Smish · Apr 17, 2010

Actually, I just finished reading Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson today. The main character has an eating disorder (and so did her friend, who died because of it. By the way, that's not a spoiler, since you learn that on the very first page). It's very realistic and well worth reading.

Smish

backslashbaby · Apr 17, 2010

I don't know of a resource, but from personal experience with it as a teen, I can tell you that they are just generally awful things to call someone:

I'm so stupid... fat... an idiot... useless... etc, etc.

The term 'ruminating thoughts' might help you search. Good luck

Kelsey · Apr 17, 2010

Smish ... I'll be picking up that book tomorrow. Gracias

Backslashbaby .... Is it accurate to say that one can become obsessed with these thoughts? As in they're constant. I feel like I would be walking a fine line between bumming my reader out / being annoying with the possibly repitition, and staying true to the character and her motivation.

backslashbaby · Apr 17, 2010

They were too darned constant, yes. Everything is so tied in to food and how 'well' you do that you dread any mealtime coming. Which is most hours of the day.

Just a constant state of thinking about food and being 'bad' [binging or puking] and how low that all really is, and it goes round and round. So much of the time, yes.

Smish · Apr 17, 2010

Kelsey said:
Smish ... I'll be picking up that book tomorrow. Gracias

Backslashbaby .... Is it accurate to say that one can become obsessed with these thoughts? As in they're constant. I feel like I would be walking a fine line between bumming my reader out / being annoying with the possibly repitition, and staying true to the character and her motivation.

Good! I hope you like it.

And for what it's worth, in the book, the MC is very obsessed with those types of thoughts. In fact, she has a sequence of words that constantly repeat in her mind. I can't remember what they are exactly, but it's something like: stupid/ugly/stupid/fat/supid/loser/stupid/bitch/stupid/baby/stupid/lost.

shaldna · Apr 18, 2010

I suffered bulimia for six years, and even now I regress sometimes when I'm stressed etc. It's not 'voices' that you hear. It's thoughts that you think.

And it's very rarely about you're weight.

It's about control, and the actual act of being sick is a sort of release for you. It puts you back into the situation where you are incontrol of your life and your body. You are the one who decides what you do and don't eat.

The thoughts you think are often 'I can't belive I just ate that' rather than 'I'm so fat'

They dont sound that different, but they are.

Shady Lane · Apr 18, 2010

Shaldna pretty much nailed it. There's a big pattern of a loss of control and the subsequent fight to get that control back by purging.

So the voices are really "oh, fuck it, I'm fat/stupid/worthless anyway, I might as well eat the whole kitchen" and "oh my God, what have I done, I have to fix it."

~*Kate*~ · Apr 18, 2010

Wasted by Marya Hornbacher hits it pretty dead on. I wouldn't recommend it to someone in recovery though. SomethingFishy.org used to be a good resource too.

Shady Lane · Apr 18, 2010

Oh, Wasted.

~*Kate*~ · Apr 18, 2010

Yeah. I never got the image of her having a tail out of my head.

Shady Lane · Apr 18, 2010

haha, I'm with you there.

Wasted does a very good job of diving into her particular viewpoint, but...eh, I don't know. I didn't find her particularly sympathetic, and I do NOT say that because of her eating disorder. Just...because of her attitude about her eating disorder.

~*Kate*~ · Apr 18, 2010

ITA. Even at the end, there was still ... almost a pride in it. The book is good at being shocking, but ... I don't know. I've never been able to verbalize what I feel about that book, except that I don't ever want to read it again.

Shady Lane · Apr 18, 2010

Absolutely. Absolutely.

CheekyWench · Apr 18, 2010

If you're on livejournal and search anorexia, you'll find tons of first hand info... there's groups for recovering and then those who say they're recovering, but it's just seems like a cover for them to talk on the sly about their 400 calorie days.

HorsebackWriter · Apr 18, 2010

Check out bulimia.com for information. It's a sort of clearinghouse publisher of eating disorder material, founded/run by a woman who recovered from bulimia and wrote the first book on the subject (she printed up a book herself and handed it out, and later published it traditionally).

Em

The Voices of Bulimia

Kelsey

Book Slut

Smish

Reads more than she writes.

backslashbaby

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Kelsey

Book Slut

backslashbaby

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Smish

Reads more than she writes.

shaldna

The cake is a lie. But still cake.

Shady Lane

my name is hannah

~Kate~

brings the random.

Shady Lane

my name is hannah

~Kate~

brings the random.

Shady Lane

my name is hannah

~Kate~

brings the random.

Shady Lane

my name is hannah

CheekyWench

O.o

HorsebackWriter

Dream at a gallop!

The Voices of Bulimia

Book Slut

Reads more than she writes.

~~~~*~~~~

Book Slut

~~~~*~~~~

Reads more than she writes.

The cake is a lie. But still cake.

my name is hannah

brings the random.

my name is hannah

brings the random.

my name is hannah

brings the random.

my name is hannah

O.o

Dream at a gallop!

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