Quotes & Sayings About Anorexia Nervosa

She was afraid of losing her shape, spreading out, not being able to contain herself any longer, beginning (that would be worst of all) to talk a lot, to tell everybody, to cry. — Margaret Atwood

Addiction, obesity, starvation (anorexia nervosa) are political problems, not psychiatric: each condense and expresses a contest between the individual and some other person or persons in his environment over the control of the individual's body. — Thomas Szasz

I had always liked my anorexic reflection. It meant seeing the parts instead of the whole. Each connection, each articulation of muscle, skin, and bone made explicit. Gert said that we all had distorted images of ourselves. Either fatter or skinnier than we really were. She said we hated our bodies, hated ourselves. I had never thought so. — Stephanie Grant

Looking down, she became aware of the water, which was covered with a film of calcinous hard-water particles of dirt and soap, and of the body that was sitting in it, somehow no longer quite her own. All at once she was afraid that she was dissolving, coming apart layer by layer like a piece of cardboard in a gutter puddle. — Margaret Atwood

Yesterday's dirt and mistakes have moved through me. I am shiny and pink inside, clean. Empty is good. Empty is strong. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Emma says her illness was a kind of self-hypnosis which obliterated the outside world, a way of escaping life and reducing its proportions to what she could manage. — Carol Lee

Then I took a shower, unlocked the door, and set out on destroying myself. — Emma Woolf

When in a state of hunger, one ought not to undertake labor. — Hippocrates

Forgive me for being chipper, but despair is desperately dull. — Marya Hornbacher

Deception' is the word I most associate with anorexia and the treachery which comes from falsehood. The illness appears inviting. It would seem to offer something to those unwary or unlucky enough to suffer from it - friendship, a get-out, or a haven - when, in fact, it is a trap. — Carol Lee

I think maybe they come out into the grounds in nightwear. But no, in typical anorexic stype they have read the fashion magazines literally. This is their version of thin girls in strappy clothes.
The girl in the petticoat talks to me, as Emma has done on occsasion, in a rather grand style, as if she is a 'lady' of some substance and I a visiting guest.
Do they chat much about clothes? I ask Emma in the car.
She shakes her head.
So, does she, Emma, see the difference between underwear or nightwear and 'going out' clothes?
'Yes,' she says, her voices strained again. 'But it's one of the things you don't know properly when you're ill and confused. You see these pictures and the people in the magazines are real for you. — Carol Lee

While she is still hospitalised, I take Emma out for strengthening walks, for her muscles and been under-used for a long time. She is sometimes breathless, I notice with concern, and there are other changes in her, either through a nerve her therapy touches, or through her illness, or both, which make her, quite often, disagreeable to be with. — Carol Lee

The reasons for Emma's illness and for her decision to allow life in, rather than die, are intertwined and involve the beginnings of her feelings of belonging, of safety and of competence to be in the world. — Carol Lee