That’s one of the most important things you can hear when you’re struggling with recovery, Mysko says. From my own experience as a survivor, I know she’s right: Finding a place where I could be myself, sharing the struggles and fears I was often too afraid to say out loud to friends, was powerful.
This is what makes the Internet so complicated when you have an eating disorder—it’s an enabler and a life preserver. LiveJournal fed my dangerous appetite for thinness. But it’s also where I finally found my safe haven, when not even my closest friends knew what I was going through.
Jenny, the founder of the eating-disorder recovery group I found on LiveJournal, had that goal in mind when she created it in 2005. “I started it at the age of 16 in the hopes of creating a closed online community where people could make honest connections without anonymity,” the now 30-year-old says. “I wanted to create something that was nuanced, something that accepted the realities of mental-health issues—such as relapse and chronic behaviors or thought patterns—without judgment, while also genuinely caring about the well-being of the person behind the story.”
Like many other eating-disorder survivors, Jenny, who has struggled with restricting and bingeing/purging behaviors on and off since she was 12, had also been enticed by the pro-ED content quietly spreading across the Internet. “I was a preteen and I wanted to lose weight and suddenly these online communities were…offering advice on how to be ‘successful,’” she says. “The experience was intoxicating for a young girl.” In part, this is what led her to create an antidote: a place on the Internet where recovery was an option, where we could freely admit we were sick.
Olivia*, 32, was part of the same LiveJournal group. Unlike in-person therapy groups she attended for her eating disorder, her online network never made her feel judged. “I felt connected to what felt like a group of other whip-smart, sad, sick girls who were also still figuring out how to live, how to want to keep living,” Olivia says. “I also remember having really strong feelings about wanting everyone else in the group to be OK—I was often afraid other girls there would get sicker or die—while at the same time fearing that people would recover and leave me there.”
Eating disorders are visceral and detail oriented, and so much of the illness involves numbers and rituals, that it can be difficult to speak candidly about them without triggering someone else. Even social media communities where people find recovery and support can be filled with pro-ED landmines. “Any sort of ED group talk is always going to be a mess,” Olivia says. That’s especially true without the presence of a trained therapist to guide the conversation, as you’d typically find offline. (“When sharing your story with other survivors, the best and most helpful thing you can do is to avoid mentioning any specific behaviors you engaged in,” Mysko advises.) And online groups may not be curated based on where people are in their recovery. “Not everyone was interested in getting better,” says Melissa, another member of the LiveJournal group. “We all fluctuated in our recoveries over the years.”
Living With an Eating Disorder in the Age of Social Media
Today I tend to avoid prominent Instagram influencers who post “fitspiration” or pictures of transformational weight loss, knowing my own triggers. Jessica, 30, an anorexia survivor, employs the same strategy. “I try to follow women on Instagram who I admire for reasons other than their bodies: inspirational women like Jane Goodall, funny women like Jameela Jamil or Julia Louis-Dreyfus,” she says. “But the content about thigh gaps and hip bones showing will always get through, regardless of whether I seek it out or not.”
