Dear Blog Readers,
One reason people delay seeking help for an eating disorder is the belief that they are not sick enough to deserve it. That someone else needs the support more. That they should be able to handle it on their own. That they don’t qualify.
That belief is a symptom.
It is not a reason to wait.
Other reasons someone might delay reaching out for support.
Sometimes that voice doesn’t sound like logic. It sounds younger than that. It sounds like a part of you that learned, somewhere along the way, that needing things was too much. That taking up space was selfish. That part of you is trying to protect you. It doesn’t know yet that you’re safe. It doesn’t know yet that there is room for you here.
Other reasons someone might delay reaching out for support are not always easy to name. Maya is 24. She is self-aware and she can see exactly what is happening to her and still talk herself out of getting help before breakfast. Her piece is tense and honest and uncomfortable in the way that truth often is. We do not require you to be at your worst to walk through our door.
In today’s blog post, Maya writes about the struggle to take the next step in getting the support she needs. She is self-aware and can see exactly what is happening to her and still talk herself out of getting help before she even gets out of bed. Her piece is tense and honest and uncomfortable in the way that truth often is.
Here at Sheena’s Place, you are not required to be at your worst to walk through our door. There are groups for all places in your journal. I remember my first day at Sheena’s. It was terrifying. I stumbled over my own name introducing myself. I didn’t speak for a couple of weeks. I sat, listened, convinced myself I didn’t have an Eating Disorder, told myself stories about what other people were thinking of me, and noticed that others in the room were saying things I could relate to. And here I am now, years into recovery and moderating the Sheena’s Place blog.
You are enough, exactly as you are right now.
Be kind to yourself and remember to nourish your body, mind, and that place inside you that makes you who you are.
Your blog moderator,
Kira
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Not Sick Enough
by Maya
I don’t even know how to start this so I’m just going to start. Something is wrong with me. I’ve known it for a while but I keep telling myself it’s not a big deal. Like I’ll think about it and then I’ll just kind of talk myself out of it and then a few days go by and I’m thinking about it again. It’s exhausting honestly. The thing is I look completely normal. I go to work. I hang out with my friends. I went to my cousin’s wedding and everything was fine, nobody said anything, nobody looked at me weird. So it’s hard to explain why I’m sitting here at midnight writing this because from the outside nothing is wrong.
But there’s this thing that happens in my head. Like every morning there’s all this noise and I have to get through it before I can do anything else. And I cancel plans a lot, more than I used to. My friend Dani called me out on it last month and I said I’d been busy which is true but also not really the whole truth. I looked up Sheena’s Place. I’ve looked at the website a lot actually, like probably more than I should admit. They say you don’t need a diagnosis which is the thing that keeps making me come back to it because I definitely don’t have a diagnosis. I don’t think I’d get one. I don’t think I’m sick enough for that. That’s the whole problem I guess. I don’t feel sick enough to actually do anything about it but I also feel bad enough that I keep googling things at midnight so there’s obviously something going on. I just don’t know if it’s enough to like, take up space somewhere. Take a spot that someone else might need more.
I figured out it’s twenty-two minutes from my apartment. I don’t know why I did that. I haven’t signed up. I keep almost doing it and then I don’t. Maybe I will. I don’t know. I just needed to write it down somewhere I think.