Dear Sara,

I am so sorry you have to live with so much criticism from your mother. And I assume it’s been always like that, your mother criticizing and judging you no matter what you do. In her eyes, you’re never good enough. I know the feeling since my mother was/is very judgmental too. And I too suffered from an eating disorder for quite a long time. My ED served several purposes, but the main purpose was to soothe the pain (at least temporarily) that I was always feeling as my default state: the pain of being unlovable (or so I thought) and not good enough.

My stomach, my arms, my thighs, I can’t look in the mirror without crying and wanting to purge and binge

You feel pain because of how you look (I felt it too), however the real pain is deeper – it’s the pain of being unlovable, the pain of not being loved by your mother. That’s the pain the ED is trying to soothe. Only it never can, of course, because it only makes it worse.

What truly helped me was to work with my wounded inner child and have compassion for that little girl who was judged so harshly and unjustly. But the first step is to develop a positive, compassionate voice within, to counter-balance the voice of the inner critic. Because I am sure you have a very harsh inner critic, which is berating you all the time.

So if you can find a voice inside of you, which is compassionate and accepting of that little girl, rather than judging and condemning – that would be a really important step. Tara Brach has good meditations on radical self-acceptance – you can check that out.

Self compassion has always been difficult for me. It is easy for me to be empathetic and compassionate to my friends and patients but be much more critical of myself.

I understand, it was hard for me too. But it helped when I could give compassion to the little girl that I was. This helped to develop self-compassion for the adult me as well.

There has been other cases of harassment from strangers much older than me which is so weird that this is normal in my cultural community. I honestly have religious/cultural trauma because of it. I am so uncomfortable in my conservative neighborhood.

If you’ve experienced sexual harassment, and you live in a conservative community, with conservative views on sexuality, that can all play a role in your relationship with your body, and consequently, your relationship with food. If you think it’s related, and you’d like to share some more, please do.