Doctor Doctor

What do we need from our doctors when anorexia or any other eating disorder is threatening our health and possibly our lives?

This topic is a difficult one for me. Why? Well, the medical professional who should have looked after me was my father and he neglected to help me the entire time. Thinking about that today brought up a number of conflicting emotions. Was he too close to see what was happening? Was he helpless? Was he not educated enough?

Whatever the reason, he didn’t give me the help that I needed so very much.

So, the number one answer to this question is a single word long: HELP.

When we go to see a doctor, we’re already terrified or so deeply affected by an eating disorder that we need to doctor, be it a mental health or general professional, to take control and start to act for us.

I think that most general physicians still don’t know how to handle people with eating disorders and are inadequate to see signs that suggest they need help.

Often times, we keep our eating disorders a secret for way too long and wait to get help until we almost hit rock bottom. I wish more physicians saw the early signs and had the information needed to get a patient the treatment he or she needed.

Another wish I have towards physicians and therapists is to take us and our problems seriously. My therapist ones laughed me in the face because of something I said. Granted, it may have sounded ridiculous to him but for me the fact that I was “wasting calories” when eating something I didn’t want to eat was a major problem.

He should have known better than to ridicule this.

The last thing we all need is compassion. When you’re in recovery from an eating disorder, you’re in a very vulnerable place. The more compassion we get, the stronger we become and the more chances we have to heal.

What is it that you need from the medical professionals that treat you?

Doctor Doctor is a post from: Fighting Anorexia