Friends, employees, or relatives with anorexia — did you maintain a relationship?

[Anonymous]

I just learned a friend is anorexic.
And I’ve learned there was a lot of lying about the past. (Unexplained absences, many doctor visits, hospital stays, etc.)

Personality is very consistent with many other anorexics.

How many people have been able to maintain a functional relationship with an anorexic, whether a work or family or friend relationship?

I’ve heard it’s much like borderline personality disorder.

[Anonymous]

It's okay to try to maintain a relationship, and it's okay not to do so.

I have my own eating disorder history, and being around someone who has those issues -- and the associated fixations, denials, obsession with numbers, focus on feeding others, etc. -- is not healthy for me. I can't take care of it, and I can't help someone with it.

So I wish them well inside my own head and don't pursue maintaining it.

[Anonymous]

How much do you really know about anorexia? You seem unfamiliar with interacting with someone who has anorexia, yet you're making generalizations about how this friend's personality is like other anorexics.

It's possible this friend has borderline personality disorder, or that the way they deal with anorexia manifests in a similar way, but they are quite different as actual issues, and I don't know that there is a lot of crossover unless the person actually has borderline disorder separate from anorexia.

In general, people with anorexia lie to keep their food issues hidden. They might lie about already having eaten, for example. If absences or hospital stays were due to the illness, then they might lie about that to keep anorexia hidden as well. But they wouldn't typically be lying about other things and should be easy enough to get close to on other topics.

It's not easy being friends with someone who has anorexia because they are dealing with an internal battle. It might be about control, self-esteem, anxiety, fear of not being loved, etc. Either way, it's hard, and it's helpful to try to be compassionate. That doesn't mean you should get sucked into things that are bad for your own mental wellbeing, but also try not to drop them as a friend. They might really need you in their lives, even if in a limited capacity.

I suffered from anorexia, and what I wish most is that people in my life had talked with me about it when I didn't recognize what I was doing. Two people mentioned it to me and suggested I should get help - and I only knew each of them vaguely. None of my close friends brought it up, none of my teachers, neither of my parents. My doctor didn't believe me when I mentioned it and got huffy about having to do bloodwork to see if I was pregnant because I hadn't been having my period due to weight loss (instead of helping me). I didn't lie to people - I was just secretive. What I did lie about what to the two people who asked me if I was okay, and I said I was fine. But over time, it sunk in that I wasn't, and that was only because of what those people had said to help jolt me out of it. I'm grateful to those people to this day and have told them so repeatedly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just learned a friend is anorexic.
And I’ve learned there was a lot of lying about the past. (Unexplained absences, many doctor visits, hospital stays, etc.)

Personality is very consistent with many other anorexics.

How many people have been able to maintain a functional relationship with an anorexic, whether a work or family or friend relationship?

I’ve heard it’s much like borderline personality disorder.

This is totally false. I’ve suffered eating disorders and have great relationships with friends and family. I don’t see the correlation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just learned a friend is anorexic.
And I’ve learned there was a lot of lying about the past. (Unexplained absences, many doctor visits, hospital stays, etc.)

Personality is very consistent with many other anorexics.

How many people have been able to maintain a functional relationship with an anorexic, whether a work or family or friend relationship?

I’ve heard it’s much like borderline personality disorder.

This is totally false. I’ve suffered eating disorders and have great relationships with friends and family. I don’t see the correlation.

Eating disorders, or restrictive-type anorexia?

[Anonymous]

I am sorry to hear about these struggles. As a black person who has wrestled with binge eating disorder and orthorexia I can't helping noting the cultural differences. No one talked to you, everyone talked to me. Cultural pride may play a role too. I mean, trying to conform to mainstream (white) notions of attractiveness through extreme slenderness is never going to go down well among us. For a long time it seemed that the hope of getting skinnier was the most precious thing I had. The things people said to me about the damage I might be doing my daughter made me return to eating daily again.

[Anonymous]

It's not like a personality disorder, but if is not uncommon for it to co-occur with a personality disorder according to some research I saw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not like a personality disorder, but if is not uncommon for it to co-occur with a personality disorder according to some research I saw.

I had a close friend in college with bulimia, this was 30 years ago. She canceled plans a lot, and tended to minimize the severity of her illness until it came to a head in a crisis, whereby i really saw the degree of her illness and the way it overlapped with what could be a rigid personality. I denied a lot of it too. At the time I was not mature enough to work it through with her, plus her unreliability and secrecy contributed to my resentment. Now as an adult I see that she was struggling with her own demons and I also see that her battle did make her self pre occupied (understandably) and therefore she was a limited friend in some ways but great in other ways. I wish I could have had the maturity to not personalize her illness. For a long time we were close and then the ed wore me down. We were both very young and immature although we did not realize it. It takes two to make a great friendship. She was a great friend overall.

[Anonymous]

It’s an illness, so you deal with it with as much compassion as possible while protecting yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just learned a friend is anorexic.
And I’ve learned there was a lot of lying about the past. (Unexplained absences, many doctor visits, hospital stays, etc.)

Personality is very consistent with many other anorexics.

How many people have been able to maintain a functional relationship with an anorexic, whether a work or family or friend relationship?

I’ve heard it’s much like borderline personality disorder.

This is totally false. I’ve suffered eating disorders and have great relationships with friends and family. I don’t see the correlation.

Agree. Recovered anorexic here. An eating disorder is nothing like borderline personality disorder and full recovery is possible. I’ve done it, one of my own friends did it.

[Anonymous]

Why wouldn’t you? It’s a sickness. Nothing to do with you, and lying about doctor’s appointments is not your business.

[Anonymous]

OP, people are different. Some people with anorexia do not have personality disorders.

That being said, it is more common in people with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) -- see below. It just is, on the population level, and that's not any sort of commentary on the people posting in this thread.

The Connection Between Borderline Personality Disorder and Eating Disorders
"Up to 53.8% of patients with BPD also meet criteria for an eating disorder (Salters-Pedneault, P. (n.d.)."
https://www.clearviewwomenscenter.com/blog/BPD-eating-disorders/

and, as well as many more:
https://jeatdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40337-020-00314-3

So someone with anorexia might have this problem, or they might not. If they do, they might be able to work with it and maintain healthy relationships, or they might not. Same as if they do not have BPD. But having both means treatment and prognosis is more complicated.

You get to decide who you want in your life. You don't have to make a case for not being around someone, you don't have to defend the choice, and you get to make that choice. Figure out what works for you and is healthy for you, all things considered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why wouldn’t you? It’s a sickness. Nothing to do with you, and lying about doctor’s appointments is not your business.

For me, it was that a co-worker was obsessed about food. She almost seemed to want to fatten other people up. And she had a LOT of emotion invested in "just being genetically this way" while we could hear her throwing up after parties, or see her gulping liters of bone broth. It's not pleasant to be around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why wouldn’t you? It’s a sickness. Nothing to do with you, and lying about doctor’s appointments is not your business.

For me, it was that a co-worker was obsessed about food. She almost seemed to want to fatten other people up. And she had a LOT of emotion invested in "just being genetically this way" while we could hear her throwing up after parties, or see her gulping liters of bone broth. It's not pleasant to be around.

Then don’t be around her. Problem solved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why wouldn’t you? It’s a sickness. Nothing to do with you, and lying about doctor’s appointments is not your business.

For me, it was that a co-worker was obsessed about food. She almost seemed to want to fatten other people up. And she had a LOT of emotion invested in "just being genetically this way" while we could hear her throwing up after parties, or see her gulping liters of bone broth. It's not pleasant to be around.

Then don’t be around her. Problem solved.

I think that's what everyone did. The question was "Why wouldn't you?" Because it's sometimes very unpleasant, especially when someone uses you as an object to act out their psychopathology.