“Sometimes societal expectations make me sick”

This status is loaded posted by a girl who is sick because of the expectations our society places on woman. The expectation to be skinny, because thin is beautiful – really?
If I drop a kilogram or two below my current weight I look awful and sickly, people literally come up to me and question if I’m eating or if I have an eating disorder. Now I don’t diet, I eat and drink whatever I want and really don’t worry about it, in addition to avoiding diet soda like the plague – if I’m drinking soda I want real sugar.

I am unable to identify with what goes through the head of a girl with an eating disorder – why she feels the need to eat excessively and the throw it up, or exercise to a point where she burns more calories than she takes in, avoids food altogether or diets excessively. Its just something I really don’t understand.

The irony of the girl who posted this is she’s anorexic, excessive exercise, bone thin to the point where she is bordering on being skeletal. She definitely has body dysmorphic disorder, when she looks at me and compliments me on being thin, when she doesn’t have an ounce of fat on her teeny tiny body.

An eating disorder is the scariest I’ve ever seen – to be so fixated on meeting a standard that you’ve set for yourself – a warped unattainable goal that will kill you because you’ll never reach it, because every time you look in the mirror you see fat and ugly. My heart breaks for her, especially as its not something anyone around her can fix she needs to fix it but she needs professional help to get it right.

I imagine it’s physically painful to be that thin and emotionally and mentally exhausting. The issues she deals with daily that make her stick to her regimented training and eating programme go beyond meeting a beautiful worldly standard. I don’t know what psychological forces drive her – acceptance, love, admiration, praise?

I’m at a loss, because I don’t understand it, I don’t know what drives her struggle and I’m not equipped to know how to help her – 4 years of studying psychology have clearly not paid off.