What to Do If You Suspect Someone Close Has An ED

Be Empathic And Understanding. The first step and most important thing to remember throughout your experience with a loved one who suffers from an eating disorder is to have empathy. The best way to describe empathy is that it is like standing in someone else's shoes. Empathy is an effort to understand someone's experience as they experience it and to convey that understanding. The only way to do this is to not be invested in changing the person or in getting her to change her perspective; that can come later. Before a loved one is going to be able to see another perspective, they will need to know that someone recognizes the legitimacy and importance of theirs. Don't worry that empathizing is not enough and that you need to do something or get your loved one to do something. It is true that if you stop at empathy you can love and understand someone with an eating disorder to death, but empathy is a necessary first step and must be continually maintained. Once a person knows you understand and are not going to try and take over or take the eating disorder away, then you can begin helping in other ways such as getting information, finding specialists, making appointments, reassuring, and even confronting. Just remember that all of this needs to take place after a person first feels understood and accepted. Asking for help is usually one of the hardest things for those suffering from eating disorders to do. They need to learn that asking for and receiving help is not a weakness and they do not need to handle everything alone. Ultimately this helps them to learn that they can reach out to people instead of their eating disorder behaviors to escape from their pain. Even if there are limits to what you can do, they need to know you can help.