I am not, by nature, a very confident person.  I doubt myself.  For that matter, I doubt everything.  And so, like many people with eating disorders, I doubted my ability to get better.  For years, I thought I was too messed up to ever return to anything called normal.

I was lucky.  I had family and friends and a treatment team who believed in my ability to get better.  As much as I hated being strong-armed into treatment, I realize now that it was a sign of how much they believed in my ability to overcome anorexia.  They (rather smartly) didn't try to make me become a prima ballerina because the odds that the class klutz could manage a pirouette were pretty slim.  I think they knew, deep down, that I could get better if I had the chance.

There were many things that made a different in my recovery, but I think that was one of the big ones.  I needed someone else to believe in me until I could believe in myself. I tried to get better numerous times, but I could never shake that monkey on my back.  And so each effort, I had less and less belief that it would actually work.  Not surprisingly, each effort had less and less effect on the ED behaviors.

Some of the clinicians I saw doubted my ability to get well.  I was "chronic" and "long-term" and "unlikely to recover."  I had no reason to disagree with them.  But those treatment providers who did continue to believe in me provided me with a ray of hope.  That ray of hope wasn't enough for me to kick anorexia on my own.  I had to be strong-armed into treatment one last time, but nonetheless.

It's hard for people to balance their confidence in your ability to get well and the extreme difficulties that getting better actually takes.  The Pollyanna-ish "Oh, you'll be fine, dear" struck me as rather fake.  An eating disorder isn't a cold.  It's not a take two and call me in the morning illness.  Yet in order to do the hard work, to go to therapy week after week and take your pills and eat the damn food (all that damn food!), you need to know that, somehow, you will get well.

I think people underestimate the effects of confidence.  I finally have confidence in my own recovery, after years of doubt and disbelief.  By giving me no other choice that complete wellness, I could finally get healthy enough to see that recovery was possible.  It sounds almost paradoxical, but it's true.

When will the insanity stop? Why was this mother criminalized for having two ill children?

Mum's agony as anorexic daughters are taken into care

The 47-year-old mum, a nursery nurse employed by the same council, said: "I asked for some home support but instead of getting the help I needed, my daughters were snatched from me. Anorexia is an illness not a welfare issue."

{snip}

"I took [my oldest daughter] to the doctor straight away. But I'd to fight to get her seen by a specialist. While my youngest daughter was still in hospital, my other daughter was cutting her food down to virtually nothing other than a small handful of cereal."

When her youngest daughter was re-admitted to the hospital, social workers required that the mother turn over care of her two children to the state.

It is the health system that is neglecting this family, not the mother neglecting her children. I can't even imagine how much damage has been done. This is just so, so sad.

...our very own Kate Beckinsale.

Let me take a moment to introduce the Smooshy Cat and Pretty Kitty Awards. The Smooshy Cat is based on this photo

and basically involves any news article, research, or person who makes me want to beat my head against a desk until I look like the cat above.

The Pretty Kitty award goes to those who give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside, usually those people who not only have a brain, but actually use it. The Pretty Kitty award is named after my lovely little furball, Aria.

Thusly, we have Kate Beckinsale who "regrets being candid about her teenage eating disorder troubles because now she is always asked about anorexia in interviews."

This comment alone would not earn her a Smooshy Cat award (though not being underweight would probably help with all of the anorexia questions). But Kate has a few more pearls of wisdom out there:

Beckinsale feels confident her own daughter won't become an anorexia victim - because her home life is a lot happier than her mother's was in the years following the untimely death of her father, actor Richard Beckinsale.

Glad to hear that, Kate. However, I'd like to give her a little newsflash: Families don't cause anorexia. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with a good home life, or that her bony figure will cause her daughter to develop an eating disorder, but a good home life (including my own...mostly) doesn't mean you won't develop anorexia.

Again, this probably wouldn't warrant any more of my usual attention because it expresses misconceptions about AN that are (sadly) common. It's not all that whacked out, really. However, in the last paragraph of the article was seriously the Hope Diamond of ridiculous comments:

Really, now.

I didn't expect her to say that AN could be triggered by dieting from little fun factoids found in popular magazines, or by expecting your body to look like (insert name of current celebrity suspected of having anorexia here). Those don't cause anorexia. But heaven forbid someone take responsibility out there and say enough is enough.

I'm beginning to understand why anorexia is sometimes confused as a "control issue." It goes something like this: people with anorexia are afraid of food, afraid of what it will to do their bodies, afraid it will make them fat. It looks like control because the person is trying to control their fear of food. A person who is scared of elevators tries to avoid situations where they might have to ride in them. When I was afraid of germs, I would avoid situations where I might get "dirty." People with AN aren't controlling their food intake- that they are completely out-of-control is blatantly obvious. What they ARE trying to control is their exposure to the thing that fears them: food. Specific foods, especially. Foods that are (typically) high-fat and high-calorie, though I've seen plenty of others.

However, I would also like to give a Pretty Kitty Award to Miss Olivia Newton-John for her comments about her daughter Chloe's battle with anorexia:

'All the therapists in the world can't help if the parents aren't present, loving and pro-active.'

Thank you, Miss Newton-John. Thank you for being so incredibly sane.

This concludes the first ever episode of the Smooshy Cat/Pretty Kitty awards.*

*No cats have been harmed or killed in the presentation of these awards.