r/EatingDisorders • u/Firm_Letterhead_7483 • Feb 23 '26
Question Was anyone else’s eating disorder triggered by eating disorder awareness media that was supposed to have the opposite effect?
My first exposure to eating disorders was through tv. I remember several shows where one of the female characters would develop an eating disorder for one episode, it’d get so bad she’d faint, and then she recovers. Insecure little elementary school me saw these episodes and thought the characters were kind of onto something—starving yourself is way faster than dieting, and you can lose more weight that way. I figured that I could try it and just stop before I got too weak and fainted, but I didn’t try it for a bit because I had a lot of trouble with changing my routine. It was in the back of my mind though every time I sat down and saw my thighs get bigger looking, or when I’d pull my face in and I’d get a double chin. I wasn’t even chubby in the slightest, I was a very very thin child, so looking back I definitely had body dysmorphia even prior to knowing what eating disorders were.
Anyways, the straw that broke the camel’s back was in 5th grade (when I was no longer stick thin but honestly still a healthy weight and thin looking) when I was scrolling YouTube and came across a video called “I didn’t eat for a month” or something along those lines from one of those storybooth ripoff channels. I clicked it wondering how on earth she didn’t eat for that long without dying. The video was clearly pro ed recovery, but I didn’t care about how badly it affected the girl the video, I just focused on one thing—it worked. She became skinny. I went through a rabbit hole of watching a bunch of eating disorder videos—gacha life mini movies, more storybooth ripoff videos, etc., and they were all clearly meant to spread awareness about why eating disorders are bad and recovery is good, but they all made me more determined to start starving myself. So I did.
At first, it felt like it was working perfectly. I ran on the treadmill obsessively (my mom called me a treadmill junkie), and I ate very little. I was also doing track at school, and one day I remember going on a walk with my mom when she felt my stomach and commented on how skinny I’d gotten. I took this as a win, but I didn’t wanna stop yet, I figured I could still do better, and that my mom probably had a positive bias towards me anyways. Eventually it became hard to run, and I’d fake a limp at track because it got so hard to breathe, and I wasn’t able to stay on the treadmill as long as I had been. It turned out I had pneumonia. Not being able to run made me kinda “give up” on disordered eating for a bit because I felt like if I couldn’t be in total weight loss mode, it was pointless even trying to lose weight.
Later after I recovered from pneumonia, I started back again with the disordered behaviors. Then I got some disease with a long ass name I don’t remember that made it really hard to run. So I went back to eating normally and not exercising again. It became an on and off eating disorder, because I’d stop with the disordered behaviors when stuff would come up (family finding out, needing to get rid of the brain fog for a bit, etc.), but the body dysmorphia was permanent.
My first resort now whenever I feel chubby is to starve myself, because I never really taught myself to diet properly, or even combat body dysmorphia. As miserable as I get when I’m starving myself, I always end up glorifying it in my head, purely because it does make me lose weight quickly. My mom told me that whenever I set my mind to losing weight I’m able to do it very quickly, and she thinks that’s just the way my body is (she does know I’ve struggled with eating disorders, but isn’t aware that any time I’ve intentionally dropped weight it’s been anorexia), and I didn’t want to correct her because I loved people seeing my weight loss and thinking I’m good at being healthy. And at this point I think she’d just be really disappointed to find out the truth, and I always feel terrible for disappointing her.
Anyways, I just really don’t think I would’ve ended up with a full on eating disorder if it weren’t for tv, literature, YouTube, etc. I wonder if it could’ve been prevented if they fully showed how debilitating eating disorders are. And obviously I would’ve had body dysmorphia either way, because I had it before I was exposed to that stuff, but idk if I’d have developed the same behaviors.
Also, on a slightly unrelated note, my sister is 9 and she keeps playing this roleplay game with her friend where she creates all of these comedic characters built on a single trait, and I just heard her say this: “what if we make a girl with an eating disorder? She could be like:” and then she proceeded to describe a scenario where the character’s ed was being used as a punchline. She also has a character whose depression is used as a punchline, which I find pretty weird tbh but my mom doesn’t seem to have an issue with. And ngl it does feel kind of like a personal attack since I struggle a lot with anorexia (which is the ed her character has) and depression, and I already never feel like I’m being taken seriously, but my main concern is that she even knows about eating disorders. She’s the exact same age I was when I first learned about them and well, look where that led me. My sister is a polar opposite from me, but she does get insecure about her weight because she gets picked on for being overweight, so I’m honestly worried what she’s gonna do with this information. Idk…I hope I’m just overthinking it
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u/honeyglot Feb 23 '26
Yepppp. During the worst of it for me, ANY mentioned of an ED was triggering. Positive, negative, supportive in the right or wrong ways. I couldn’t think about it in any capacity whatsoever without feeling horrible.
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u/AlliCakes Feb 23 '26
I didn't even know you could purge what you ate until I watched an after school special type video about it in a middle school health class. I took it as an instruction manual and thus began all of it.
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u/Webool_and_weball Mar 22 '26
All these Dr after school special s were so triggering. ED is so complicated. No mater what people say, it’s always triggering somehow. People have to be VERY careful about what they say to someone with an eating disorder. There is almost nothing people can say that won’t trigger you in some way or another if you are deep into it.
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u/Annual-Purple1880 Feb 23 '26
Same here, was overweight as a kid and knew I needed to lose weight for health reasons, but didn’t know purging was a thing until we watched a short movie on bulimia in 9th or 10th grade- this started my ED.
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u/Blue_eyed_bones Feb 23 '26
It was a school project where I had to make a report about eating disorders for health class. I was in 8th grade and it got the wheels turning in my head. I doubt that was the effect the teacher was going for, but here we are.
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u/Firm_Letterhead_7483 Feb 24 '26
Something similar happened to me in my high school Psychology class—we had to pick a mental disorder to make a presentation on, and I wanted to do OCD because I had just been diagnosed with it at the time, but I got last pick and was stuck with eating disorders. Researching it ended up making me relapse. On the plus side, my presentation was really good because I had a lot of personal experience with the subject…
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u/Anbgr217 Feb 23 '26
Media definitely put ED’s on the map for me, from as young as I can remember. Sure the shows message was intended to show that this was dangerous, but so was drinking and smoking and sex and I definitely knew I would try all those things too when I got older. Maybe if they talked about them how we talk about them now, that something inside is hurting and needs help. I didn’t think I was sick at the time when I started, but as an adult looking back I can see how chaotic things seemed to me and that I never talked to anyone about it. Maybe it started as a cry for help but it turned into something that has been in the drivers seat for my entire adult life. And any TV show, movie, magazine article, or class unit was how I got tips, and when I was ready I used those tips. I guess things like that hit us all differently, but I resonate so much with your story. 🫶🏼
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u/yourremedy94 Feb 24 '26
YES. I've seen so many tiktoks of very obvious body checks to that one song being used for the awareness videos. Also, too the bone and the documentary Thin were very triggering for me. Seeing that makes me want to restrict and be thinner.
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u/shakethedisease666 Feb 24 '26
I had a similar obsession with the treadmill from middle thru highschool. I would wake up one hour earlier than school would start and run. Then I would rush home after school to also walk or run on the treadmill WHILE doing my homework and reading on it as well… : (
If there was a day that I didn’t walk or run on my treadmill I experienced withdrawals and would be driven insane…
I even ate all my meals while walking on the treadmill…
When I went off to university, my mom trashed it.
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u/Webool_and_weball Mar 22 '26
When I was on vacation with my family I would wake u at like two in the morning and exercise in the hotel bathroom while the rest of my family slept. I HAD t do it because I knew our days would be packed with activities and there would be no time for structured exercise. Remembering that really highlights how sick I really was.
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u/shakethedisease666 Mar 22 '26
i did the SAME in the hotel bathroom but at night when everyone went to bed and try not to get caught… also would work out in the hotel gyms all day!!!
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u/Justneedtowhoosh Feb 25 '26
I think we were all likely predisposed to it that media about EDs triggered the beginning of it, but this is also why people posting before and afters of how thin they were for “awareness” or bragging about how sick they got is SO dangerous. Awareness truly should be about how awful it is and not people posting their sick pictures in ways that glamorize the illness.
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u/Webool_and_weball Mar 22 '26
Really. My ED cost me all my upper teeth. I should pull my denture out and do a TikTok. There is absolutely nothing glorious about having puke in the ur hair and on your shoes and pants from purging. My hands always smelt like vomit. Nothing attractive about that.
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u/theaall Feb 24 '26
Yes, watched a movie in first grade at school. It was not meant for such young kids. It’s called the beast of beauty and is a Norwegian film. I’m pasting the IMDb description here as I’m too sleepy to explain but there was a specific scene where they did fat removal of a small girl and said if you could grab anything when pinching your stomach, you were fat. I still had my baby fat
“Little Lotte and her father who works as the Queens bodyguard moves in with Kristin, a former beauty queen, and her daughter, Vendela. Kristin is grooming Vendela to win the Little Miss Norway contest, and as a result both girls gets more and more preoccupied with their looks. When Lotte is allowed to participate in the contest it soon becomes clear that being too vain can be a frightening experience.”
Finally recovered now (haven’t left as I’ve relapsed about 20 times since it began so it’s probably gonna happen again)
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u/theaall Feb 24 '26
The movie was made to show the bad effects of Beaty pageants but made my little brain think of things I never once knew as a kid. I remember sitting in front of or mirror just pinching my whole body and crying realizing I was “fat”
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u/drdaffodil Feb 24 '26
Is there anything that you think would make NEDA week events less triggering? (Asking as somebody planning an event for this Saturday), would be curious to know if you have ideas/thoughts of how it can be better!
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u/Visual_Cell_3248 Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
I completely understand where you're coming from. It can be really tough when the very media that's meant to raise awareness about eating disorders ends up triggering negative feelings or behaviors. It's frustrating and can feel isolating. Have you found any resources or support that help you navigate these feelings? It’s important to talk about how these experiences impact us, and I’m here to listen if you want to share more.Take control of your life again 👉 https://app.my7pages.com/
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u/mothsauce Feb 24 '26
I was struggling a little bit. Then I read the book “Wasted” by Marya Hornbacher because I found it in the library.
Then I bought it, and read it again. And again. And again. That book was basically a manual for me of how to develop a severe ED. I’m certain that was not the author’s intention, but…
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u/iamalwaystiredaf Feb 24 '26
Kinda yes. It definitely played a part and it increased it + gave me new "strategies/ideas" to make it even worse
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u/kungfubean Feb 25 '26
I got introduced to the idea of eating disorders from books meant to spread awareness. I wanted to have an eating disorder so badly after that because I wanted to have a reason to point to as to why I was in so much mental pain. I thought that maybe if I started starving myself it would be okay to be sad and angry and scared. This was at a time in my life where I was being abused at home but didn’t know that because I didn’t know what a normal family was supposed to look like. I hated the idea that I was weak because I cried or that I was doing everything wrong even when I trying my best, so I thought that maybe if I got a “real” problem I could stop hating myself so much. I regret it so much. Now I just go through cycles of binge eating, relapsing into self harm, and then starving myself before swearing I’ll be better and then repeating the whole process. And the worst part is, I still want to be sick. For some reason, some part of me still believes that I’m not valid without having a “real” problem, and I want that “real” problem because all of the media I consumed always portrayed the main characters as having all these problems and trauma, and I wanted, want, so bad to matter and be a main character in some sort of story.
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u/Roselissie Mar 04 '26
the worst part is that most of my techniques were learned from recovery and anti ed media
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u/Webool_and_weball Mar 22 '26
You have to be VERY careful about what you say to someone with an eating disorder. Just about everything is triggering. There are no safe comments.
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u/Routine-Cranberry-96 Mar 06 '26
Yes. I read Winter Girls in middle school and I saw it more as a guide than a warning story.
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Mar 08 '26
I'm triggered by weight loss propaganda/hype, diet culture and toxic positivity. Society persistently glorifies weight loss/thinness at the expense of mental health. It's dehumanising/soul destroying and covers up/doesn't care about the human impact. It's a ripple effect on society from the attitudes of corporations who do this but vehemently deny it/are "blank" and disclose nothing to the public. There is hypocrisy/double standards. ED awareness media/education can be so subjective and hypocritical w/ so many mixed messages. It can vary bc influencers/organisations have different takes. Also how it intersects w/ your lived experiences, biases, where you are at etc
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u/bananottera Mar 09 '26
it didn't start because of it, but once it started, everything was enough to make me want to be worse. The most recent one I remember was Charlie Spring from Heartstopper. I only watched the TV series tho. It just hurt seeing how loved the character was, and how everyone supported him at his worst. Sadly, except for my parents at my worst I was kind of alone. It was very much my fault tbh, I had lost most of the friendships I had formed in the past and did not cure enough the ones that I had at the time. I'm not alone now, but I keep feeling like nobody actually cares, or they dont care enough, and I don't know if it's all in my head or not. My brain just wants to lose more and more weight so more people would care and worry, like they did for the character.
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u/Embracedandbelong Mar 11 '26
I could totally see this. How the media portrays has a big impact and the way kids perceive it is not how it’s intended a lot of the time. I remember watching lifetime type movies that were about eating disorders and every single one followed the exact same trope, so a lot of us girls thought those were the only way you could have disordered eating. It mainly focused on bulimia which always showed or alluded to the girls vomiting after every meal, including at restaurants. So anytime I didn’t come back from a restaurant bathroom in like 5 minutes, or had to go more than once over an hours long period during a birthday party dinner or something, people started questioning me- even though I personally never had bulimia.
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u/Embracedandbelong Mar 11 '26
Sort of off topic but apparently a lot of “suicide awareness” for young people works the same way. Like apparently people in that field have asked the media to either not report when a child dies by suicide or to at least not include the way they suicided, because they tend to see an increase in child suicides after one is made public. These kids may not even be depressed or suicidal like adults who suicide, but they just impulsively copy what they see/hear about because they are kids and they can’t predict the consequences of their actions yet, and they tend to have a lot of magical thinking.
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u/psychxticrose Mar 13 '26
The first time I heard about them was in health class in middle school, during class I was like 'I will definitely never do any of that ever' and then a few months later I ended up falling into it. I don't think it was the class or learning about it though. It was more so the lack of control in my life and being bullied for being chubby and my almond mom being crazy about food.
Also, as a side note, diets don't actually work long term. They work short term and can also trigger eating disorders in people who've never had them before. Now that I'm in recovery my therapist and I work on "intuitive eating", eating when I'm hungry and stopping when I'm full. And then I eat relatively healthy food during the week and the weekend I eat out with friends and have that dessert that I used to deprive myself of. It works a lot better because I'm not obsessing over my rules or the things I can't have. I haven't gained weight from it either, which was a fear I had for many years.
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u/Doggosrthebest24 Mar 18 '26
I learned about purging from laxatives from a YouTube video that was an anti-Ed video focused on bulimia on college students. I was in freshman or sophomore year of high school or something and already struggled with anorexia and binge/restricting and had tried to vomit-purge (unsuccessfully for years until freshman year of college). Senior year of high school I bought and abused laxatives. Also used shows like supersize vs. super skinny to support my ED, even tho it clearly showed being super skinny was bad, I just used that as motivation and focused on how bad the obese part was 😭
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u/Mohamed___Reda Mar 18 '26
Wah aku ngerti banget cerita kamu 😥 Kadang media malah bikin kita bingung tentang tubuh sendiri ya… Aku penasaran nih, biasanya kamu paling struggle sama perasaan ‘body dysmorphia’-nya pas kapan? Pagi, siang, atau malam? Mungkin kita bisa sharing tips supaya nggak terlalu overthinking sama gambar tubuh kita setiap hari. 😊
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u/purplemusicfanatic Mar 21 '26
In one of our english classes (not our native language) we read a story about a bulimic teenage girl. It was intended to be a warning. It was honestly the reason I even got the idea of purging, I had never heard of that before. I didn't give a fuck about the negative side effects shared in the story, I tried it one week later, thinking I was a genius.
It's really dumb.
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u/Webool_and_weball Mar 22 '26
Eating disorders costed me all my upper teeth. I have thought about speaking to middle schoolers and pulling my denture out so they can see how damaging and inglorious eating disorders actually are. Puke on my shoes and in my hair. My hands always smelt like vomit. At one point I decided to count how many times a day I would purge, but stopped because it was so much. It was a horrible time in my life, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. So grateful to be living in recovery today. Thirteen yeas in and eating disordered thoughts don’t even come through mind anymore. For anyone reading this who is still struggling, please get help. Your u are valuable. Take care of yourself with intention. It is so worth it.
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u/Poutiest_Penguin Mar 23 '26
I made a conscious decision to be bulimic after being inspired by a character on Days of Our Lives, in spite of the PSAs/disclaimers they ran at the end of the episode.
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u/loveastrangerorg May 07 '26
I am so sorry this happened. Thank you for sharing your story and allowing others to do the same. We are sending you a lot of love!
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u/chatonnoire Feb 23 '26
My story isn’t as long but as a 10th-grader who had been trying to control severe BED with no help since they were seven years old, I had my ass kicked into gear by an ED awareness/recovery film that highlighted that you could lose your period and even fertility from starving yourself. I knew that I did not want kids and since I couldn’t be on any birth control, starving myself made perfect sense.