stepstomarrow
When granddaughter, Jada, was born with leukemia, a donor-match was located and Jada made a miraculous recovery. In honor of her grandaughter's health, Jeanna has decided to walk across the country (in the dead of winter) to raise awareness and build support for the bone marrow registry (all that's required is a cheek swab). Follow Jeanna's remarkable journey as she travels the United States by foot.

Anyone read the book "Skinny" by Ibi Kaslik? I just finished it and I found some of it triggering but for the most part I found it a little "out there". While I have a very severe eating disorder, the girl in the book seemed to be struggling with something almost schizophrenic. However, this may just be a thought I'm having because I don't have a person in my head I talk to? I've heard of that and I understand that. This girl's "person" materialized though. Like she could see her and describe her clothes and would touch her and stuff. Has anyone else experienced this in their eating disorder or is this part of the fictional aspects of the book to make it more "real"

It's a bit of a read,so i put it behind the fake link. I felt good when I woke up, as if i had worked out some great confusion. It is a bit disjointed, as I wrote it down quickly after I awoke.
tl;dr  i give myself dream therapy and feel good about it.
( caution, no graphicness, but may still be triggering )

So today was my birthday.
(Well, technically yesterday since it's past midnight.)
Either way, I'm now 19.
My guy best friend took me to dinner and shopping. XD

I hung out with a new guy the other night. He made some moves, but I deflected all of them. And he tells me that he really respects me saying no. So I guess I'm gaining some self control.

I guess struggling to stop my SI habits helped me control other areas of my life as well. Who'da thunk it? SI WAS my control. I never expected it to work backwards, never thought that learning to live without it would teach me something new.

Breakthrough? maybe.

Stay strong.

i am planning on going to walden behavioral's residential program starting jan 1 and am scared beyond words. i did their inpatient program about 4+ years ago and only lasted a week and a few days (didn't have a terrible time with the food thing but my depression got the better of me and i cried pretty much every day i was there. being dropped off there brought up some abandonment/separation anxiety issues i had as a kid, a huge contributor to my developing anorexia in the first place. the thing is, i have "lived" with this illness for 17 years and am scared that they won't be able to help me (my therapist, of all people, even mentioned this as a possibility- i've since stopped seeing her for the meanwhile, so i have had a terrible time dealing with the prospect of this treatment lately). anyone been in the residential program and can ease my mind a bit? tell me what a typical day is like? i am also a very picky eater (don't even eat salads...curiously enough, my diet consists of a lot of "no-no" foods for your typical anorexic). what will make this treatment even more difficult for me is the fact that i am a grad student in psychology and wrote a dissertation on how these programs fail clients. i am so trying to keep an open mind...but need some help.

Just wondering about peircings and tattoos and stuff. Do you guys see that as a form of self injury? I just started gauging my ears, and I've been enjoying the way it stings. I haven't intentionally cut in a while, but I still enjoy pain. I'm just gauging because I think it looks cool, not just for the pain, but it still makes me think. Does this count? Any thoughts?

taste_buds
Holidays provide a built-in excuse for indulgent entertaining. This all-purpose foodie community covers everything from homemade hangover cures to dinner party menus. Need quick advice? Get five-minute snack suggestions, low-fat ingredient substitutes, and even measurement conversions. Delicious recipes garnished with humorous advice. Yum.

naturesbeauty
Always on the lookout for compelling images, we were delighted to discover this flourishing community of artists who share a love of nature. Honoring the subject with photographs, paintings, sketches, prose, poetry, and other creative works, you'll be simultaneously riveted to your monitor and inspired to run helter skelter towards the nearest wooded dale.

I am so sick of being sick. I'm sick of wasting my life worrying about food and weight. I want to live a happy life and look forward to everything life has to bring. Right now I am always thinking about food and weight, I am always obsessing over eating disorder websites, I have no energy to do anything. I know my career is suffering and I have shut out my friends. They know something is wrong, but they don't know what it is. I want to recover, but no one knows there is even a problem. Is it possible to recover without treatment of any kind? I found the Eating disorder Anonymous website and thought about working through their 12 step program. I'm just afraid that I will go right back to the ed behaviors and thinking after one day; if it even lasts that long. I always feel like I really want to recover and then something will go wrong or even nothing goes wrong, but I just change my mind set back to "I need to starve, I need to binge and I need to purge." I think I am going to start working through the 12 steps and see what happens. It can't hurt, right?

Has anyone else ever recovered without reaching out for help? Has anyone ever gone to an EDA meeting or done the 12 steps on their website?

Has anyone read "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle? I just finished it and it was a really inspiring book. I have been in recovery from anorexia for almost two years and I felt like that book addressed a lot of the issues that are underlying in eating disorders. If you haven't read it I suggest you check it out.

Hey all! I was on this community a while back, but I had to get off for a bit while I worked through some of my issues. I couldn't handle ANY extra triggers. Well... I'm happy to say that I've been si-free for almost 8 months. It feels AMAZING. So I'm here again for help and support! If anyone needs to talk, just let me know. I hope you are all doing well! I have hope for you all :)

Ok I had this like wow moment in therapy yesterday. We were working out a vague meal plan. It was kind of like instead of saying green beans we said vegetable. Things like that. Well it ended up with me listing the foods I eat and like. (Yes, even those foods that I think are "bad" even though they aren't) Well about thirty minutes in I had a list. It was tops 20 foods. I couldn't believe it. I've never ate anything out of safety zone. I've never had any other foods. When my boyfriend kept telling me I didn't like many foods I thought he was exaggerating but he wasn't. I have never tried anything outside of what I've been used to. Esp. since my mom has an ED to so what I was taught about eating was dead wrong.

I guess I just couldn't believe how little variety in my diet that this eating disorder has caused me.

backpacking
Want to embrace your wanderlust on the cheap? If you're tall on adventurous spirit, but short on funds, this community can help you plan a trip to anywhere. Offering plentiful tips on how to travel light, you can post about bargain hotels and hostels if you're into urban exploration or discuss camping gear and mosquito netting for the great outdoors. Hitch your backpack, pitch your tent, and carpe diem!

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands.

If you're struggling and it sucks, leave a comment.

<3 Stay strong.

Yesterday I posted an entry here about possibly going into relapse and last night was by far the worst night in a few years but I didn't cut, I wanted to so bad but I didn't. I couldn't. I feel happy with myself to know that I still have the fight in me to keep fighting on.
I tried talking to my friend yesterday and told her everything, she didn't think I was serious and still doesn't. She seems to think that I have all the energy in the world to keep my fight up but I'm not that way. I wish she would understand that. I don't know how to explain to her that in this matter it's not a "aww hug and talk it out" deal, it's much worse. But at the same time I wish it was. I really wish she'd take this more seriously, I don't think I should have not bothered to bring it up with her even though she's my best friend. She is more involved with seeing her boyfriend in 2 1/2 weeks.

Anyways yeah. So go me, but at the same time I just can't find the satisfactory of being successful. I plan on calling my dad this evening and talking to him. Mom is in Oregon at the moment for work and I can't get a hold of her, but I think I'd rather talk to dad this time, mom seems to make things seem x10 worse and will want me to move down there ASAP.

there are days when it feels like nothing is true anymore
that everyone is against me...
it's hard to breathe with them around

i so badly want to tell them ENOUGH

let me be.

Everything is falling apart. Of course during finals week.

My boyfriend is fed up with my eating. "This isn't' a game you're killing yourself". "Just eat". "I call you beautiful all the time and you never listen to me"

I told a really close friend about my eating and she talks to me about it. I think that pisses my boyfriend off I even told someone else.

Everyone keeps telling me I'm killing myself but I just don't see that I'm bad. Why can everyone else see it and I can't????I hate this. What am I supposed to do? I don't want to hide this problem it just makes it worse. But I can't get better over night. Fuck.

Hi all,

It's been awhile since I've posted here. I'm struggling, or rather, I have been for awhile now, and I'm just confused and not sure how to express any of this in words, but here goes.

I have this problem where, I still don't know what in the heck normal eating is. I oscillate all the time from hunger to being too full: its an awful cycle I've fallen into, that I eat small amounts during the day because it feels safe. But I'm afraid to be hungry at night and maybe this has become a habit: but I tend to eat too much at night, and it usually turns into what feels like a binge or overeating, and then I'm uncomfortable and just angry at myself.

Can anyone relate to this? They restrict somewhat during the day, only to eat more at night, and the same cycle endures?

I'm also living alone, so as one can imagine, that creates problems. I know people are different with this - maybe some people actually do better in recovery when they eat alone - but i KNOW that for me, I'm an absolute mess when I'm alone - again, either restricting or binging, and I wind up doing both all the time. So I'm wondering if, until I get things under control, I should always eat around / with others.

Do you recommend doing anything else while eating, like reading or something to distract, or do you recommend 'mindfulness' eating, doing absolutely nothing else but concentration on the act of eating? This is what was taught to us when I was in residential treatment (they had a very DBT approach to things)

I don't know what to do, honestly. I don't know why I like to stay hungry or somewhat hungry during the day, or why I'm afraid to eat more during the day and why I end up overreating at night. I think a lot of it really is that fear of being hungry at night, and maybe I seek the comfort and craving of eating especially so, during this time.

well, i'm not new to livejournal, but i'm new to this community, bear with me. i'm only fourteen years old, but age to me is just a number. i've experienced alot more than you would ever guess in the fourteen years that i've been living, and i'd like to share. i don't personally care if people are reading this, but if you are, stay with me until the end. it'll make more sense, and maybe help you in your own way. a friendship could develop if given a chance even. so, i started cutting when i was around 10, such a young age now that i think about it. but at the time, i was being physically, emotionally, and verbally abused by my moms boyfriend. she moved in with him and left me for over a year. i only saw her only weekends, rarely. because i feared her boyfriend. i couldn't go anywhere except for my grandparents [my father left when i was three months old, never met him before] so that's hard too. i lived with them for a year, when my mom left that boyfriend we got our own house. ever since i was 8, my mom bounced around from boyfriend to boyfriend. my cutting and other forms of s.i. kept getting worse. i couldn't help it. finally, in 7th grade, after being a steady cutter for years, i snapped. the same boyfriend that had abused me now had my phone number and was harassing me. it was awful. he knew where i was and told me that if i told he was going to kill me, what do you do in that situation? he had already tried to kill me before so i knew that he would do it with little to no hesitation. so i kept it hiddne, until one day, i freaked out, in the middle of math class [classy huh?] i told the teacher who happened to be my best friends mom and it all goes crazy from here. the cops were called but since there was no proof [ the calls didn't show up ] he wasn't convicted, he's still out there to this day. in 8th grade, i had a hell of a time. my cutting was at its extreme and i was sent to two different hospitals for 7 days in one and 9 in the other. they were awful...it made me want to die even more, the places were filled with people like me but i felt so alone. i came out of the first diagnosed with anorexia and severe depression. i went into the second one that way and came out the same way i was before. i cheated the system the whole way through. i wasn't sure why i kept holding on, but i knew there was a reason. and that's why, to this day, i am in 9th grade and cut free. the urges come and go but i know i am still here for a reason and i know the plan God has in store for me will soon take place. the point of this post, long i know, and i'm sorry for that, but for the rare people that stayed with me i hope that in some way you take from this, i dont know how...but in some way. and for anyone that needs to talk, i know how to help, and i'd love to.

**FINAL EDIT Thu Dec 10 02:15:47 UTC 2009**

So there is the final update... Over the past day we have processed around 11 million jobs out of the 12 million that were in queue at that time. Please bear in mind that over this past day, more jobs for notifications are also created. So while the queue has been dropping, we are still not fully caught up at this point, due to backlog and new jobs. We have roughly 3 million jobs still pending that involve the notification system in some manner. We had hoped we could have fully cleared the queue in a day, but unfortunately we can't clear it too quickly, since we need the rest of the site to operate normally. From our current perspective on the amount of jobs that are left in queue, and how many it has processed thus far, we believe it will take around another 8 - 12 hours to process everything.

And finally some answers to some questions:

( Read More and Get Some Answers... )