The Things We Say

Yesterday was a very tough body image day for me all because of what a co-worker said to me.

Let me back up just a little bit. As you all know I have an eating disorder and for those that I haven't seen me in a while you would never know. Why? Because there is this stigma that people with eating disorders "look" a certain way. While body image is a huge issue for me, these past couple of years I have slowly gained weight. I absolutely hate it. Of course I get comments from other people like, "You are so not fat" and "Quit saying that, it's not even true", but my internal struggle is very overwhelming. After fearing why or facing and health concerns for 2 years, I finally went to the doctor and got more blood work done. Not surprisingly there are some issues. The doctor seems fairly confident that if I follow his plan, my body will stop rebelling against me. This brought on many emotions as you can imagine. I was relieved because there was a reason for my body to do what it did. After that quick sigh of relief came anger. I was and still am angry at myself for mistreating my body so much that now it hates me. I am still very anxious and stressed about the whole thing and still have a lot of processing to do but all in all I feel a little better having an answer.

In the meantime, I go through each day triggered all day long and having to fight against the negative thoughts, images, etc that I experience everyday, whether it is internal or external. Which brings me to yesterday. I have a sticker on the back of my car that says..."Fight it until you bite it! Eating Disorder Awareness" It's been on my car for about 2 years now. Anyway, a guy co-worker asks me about it yesterday. He says, I saw your sticker on your car, did you go to a class or a group for over eaters?  Oh my goodness! Really? I won't go into detail about where my head went but wow! As I tried to tell him no, he over spoke me and just kept talking about how he has the same problem. I just plain old feel miserable about it. The crazy thing is that he doesn't even see me eat at work. When he has, it's been carrots to which he comments, what are you on the Karen Carpenter diet? Needless to say, things he says creates internal yuck for me.

I tell you this story because it makes me think about things people say. At first I wanted to write a list of what not to say to a recovering eating disorder girl but that would be an extremely long list and even then the list would vary from person to person. I understand his, and society's, ignorance to eating disorders. I understand that most people don't get that things you say can really really impact a person. You all know the old saying, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me", right? I am not sure who came up with that but how many of us hold onto the words of another and how long do we hold onto them?

Here's the challenge: really watch what you say and try to see things from the other person's perspective. It is a very hard thing to do because we live in such a self-focused world. I know I have said inappropriate things to others and wish I could erase it all, the ones I know about and the ones I don't about.

We can't take away our words so be careful with them!