Anorexia and bulimia, Alice: “It was the only way for my mother to look at me”

“Leaving the plate empty was the only way I knew of getting my mother to look at me.” To speak like this is Alice (invented name), entered in tunnel of anorexia as a teenager, as is almost always the case. And just as commonly for reasons that have nothing to do with food. In fact, it is rarely a diet that gets out of hand that triggers in the minds of girls the desire to stop eating. Rather, more or less serious psychological wounds that they decide to manifest in this way, hoping that someone will notice.

But the numbers are increasing. In 2020, according to the data provided by the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in Italy, the numbers are high. In the year of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is talk of 230,458 new cases in the first six months of 2020, against 163,547 in the same period of 2019. The increase concerns all of Italy and is also confirmed by the associations that welcome girls and families in difficulty.

Alice’s story

«My mother realized after some time what was happening, Fr.probably because she is used to not paying much attention. I’ve always been a diligent girl, never skipped school or got headshots. But I felt insecure and depressed because she was convinced that she did not love me as I desired or did not love me at all.

So I went down this tunnel with the idea of ​​making him pay. Being a career woman with an important job that took her out of the house all day, she didn’t know what I did in the afternoon. He didn’t take me to dance, he didn’t ask about my friends. He almost always came back at midnight while I was already sleeping. And seeing her only during meals I thought that those were the only moments I would have to get her attention.

So I started leaving things on the plate, then to select some foods rather than others. To divide everything into quarters by eating only one and in the end to hardly touch even that anymore. I already started from being very thin and I came to weigh 29 kilos».

When it comes to eating disorders, the focus is on food, while the headlights should be turned elsewhere. “After a while, the mind and body get used to living in that way, making little or no use of it. And paradoxically fasting doesn’t weigh too much either. – Alice continues. – The problem, however, is that plates that remain full and skeletal bodies are far more visible than an internal wound. So those around us are led to think that this is the problem, when instead it is only the way we have chosen to communicate it. Stopping eating means giving up the will to live and families are the first to ask themselves why».

The ABA and Fabiola De Clerq

Between these ABA, Bulimia Anorexia Association, founded by Fabiola De Clercq, writer who tried eating disorders firsthand, told in her book of several years ago, Tutto il pane del
world. “Since the end of the first lockdown, but especially since last summer, the phone started ringing even more insistently compared to the past. And the tones of the caller have become more decisive. If before the initial approach was to want generic information, now the request for help arrives immediately, as if the urgency was felt more than before ».

One of the causes of this trend change could be that, while in the pre-Covid era, parents spent many hours away from home due to work. For a year now, however, the time spent in the home. And therefore with the children under the eyes, it is considerably increased, increasing the awareness of what happens every day. “Undoubtedly the forced coexistence between family members who usually hang out for a few hours a day had its weight. In some cases it allowed pre-existing ailments to come to the surface, in others it represented the fuse that made them explode ».

The house, from a protective shelter, was then transformed into a cage, especially for the very young. They are, in fact, the most affected. To the point that despite the average age of those suffering from eating disorders is 17, the cases between 10-12 year olds are constantly increasing. Adolescent insecurities, bullying, sexual abuse, a sense of abandonment and inadequacy, the main triggers, to which social isolation has been added in the last year.

Psychological wounds which, according to Fabiola De Clercq, cannot be resolved with hospital admissions. In fact, it is only necessary to pass that way in moments of maximum crisis, during which life is in imminent danger. In all the others, however, it could even be counterproductive.

“In the hospital the girls meet peers in their same situation, with which to exchange tips on how to fast better without being discovered. I have seen 30-kilo teenagers stay in the ward for three months and don’t take a pound because they can even mock the doctors. TOparents, therefore, I say to consider other paths such as that of a psychological journey with experts, perhaps to be done together with the daughters ».