I'm curious who has heard of these Pro Anorexia (Pro Ana) communities for anorexic and bulimics. In the past, I had heard of these types of communities and even viewed one of the Pro Ana sites. I had forgotten about such sites until looking for an article to blog about this week. I was trying to find more information on motivation in relation to anorexia and ignoring the physiological need for food as discussed in, I believe, chapter 1 or 2 of the textbook, and I came across this article. It is a run down of what a Pro Ana community is and it's purpose. They are controversial sites that actually exist to motivate people to NOT eat and "stay in control." It is bizarre and tragic to me that there are sites that directly promote and encourage eating disorders. While I was reading the article I thought about how "motivation" is a word that usually has a positive connotation (e.g. motivated to work out, succeed in school, be successful in the workplace, etc.) but in this case, people are being motivated to do something very detrimental to their health and bodies.
The wording in this article was disturbing to me. An example would be people who "strive to develop an eating disorder." It also goes on to explain that skinny anorexics have the "upper-hand" in the community because bulimics or those still "striving" to develop anorexia do not exude the same willpower to resist food and "idolize" the anorexics.
One of the most troubling things about this article is the pledge from a community, Thinnest of Them All, which I have pasted below.
"I believe in Control, the only force mighty enough to bring order to the chaos that is my world.
I believe that I am the most vile, worthless and useless person ever to have existed on this planet, and that I am totally unworthy of anyone's time and attention.
I believe that other people who tell me differently must be idiots. If they could see how I really am, then they would hate me almost as much as I do.
I believe in oughts, musts and shoulds as unbreakable laws to determine my daily behavior.
I believe in perfection and strive to attain it.
I believe in salvation through trying just a bit harder than I did yesterday.
I believe in calorie counters as the inspired word of god, and memorize them accordingly.
I believe in bathroom scales as an indicator of my daily successes and failures
I believe in hell, because I sometimes think that I'm living in it.
I believe in a wholly black and white world, the losing of weight, recrimination for sins, the abnegation of the body and a life ever fasting."
Your thoughts on this behavior or these communities? I couldn't find the Thinnest of Them All community, but feel free to share any Pro Ana communities you know of or come across.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1257083/pro_ana_community_underground_community.html?cat=5
*This blog is not in support of these communities or eating disorders. If you or a loved one has an eating disorder please seek help.
The wording in this article was disturbing to me. An example would be people who "strive to develop an eating disorder." It also goes on to explain that skinny anorexics have the "upper-hand" in the community because bulimics or those still "striving" to develop anorexia do not exude the same willpower to resist food and "idolize" the anorexics.
One of the most troubling things about this article is the pledge from a community, Thinnest of Them All, which I have pasted below.
"I believe in Control, the only force mighty enough to bring order to the chaos that is my world.
I believe that I am the most vile, worthless and useless person ever to have existed on this planet, and that I am totally unworthy of anyone's time and attention.
I believe that other people who tell me differently must be idiots. If they could see how I really am, then they would hate me almost as much as I do.
I believe in oughts, musts and shoulds as unbreakable laws to determine my daily behavior.
I believe in perfection and strive to attain it.
I believe in salvation through trying just a bit harder than I did yesterday.
I believe in calorie counters as the inspired word of god, and memorize them accordingly.
I believe in bathroom scales as an indicator of my daily successes and failures
I believe in hell, because I sometimes think that I'm living in it.
I believe in a wholly black and white world, the losing of weight, recrimination for sins, the abnegation of the body and a life ever fasting."
Your thoughts on this behavior or these communities? I couldn't find the Thinnest of Them All community, but feel free to share any Pro Ana communities you know of or come across.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1257083/pro_ana_community_underground_community.html?cat=5
*This blog is not in support of these communities or eating disorders. If you or a loved one has an eating disorder please seek help.
There are so many things about this that don't sit well with me.
What would motivate them to do that? I have never been anorexic or bulimic although my friend has. But why would they form a community of anorexics? I guess support, belonging (but from their pledge it seems like they don't deserve that)
What is going on in their brain that makes them want to stop eating and "strive for an eating disorder"?
I suppose everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, so who am I to judge, I won't be able to change theirs just as they won't be able to change mine. I believe in eating food and they do not(to put simply)
The "Thinnest of Them All" pledge is a rather troubling. It seems a bit unreal to me that anyone would read that pledge and seriously believe it. The beginning of it that reads "I believe that I am the most vile, worthless and useless person ever to have existed on this planet, and that I am totally unworthy of anyone's time and attention," may be the part that I have the most trouble with. I find it ridiculous that someone wrote those words and than people actually read and believe them.
I understand that from time to time we all doubt our worth, but to have a community of people who all believe that they are "vile, worthless, and useless," is incredibly sad.
While I have never suffered from an eating disorder, I do understand that the motivation behind ignoring the physiological need to eat can come from the need to control something or wanting to be thin. However, I don't understand the motivation behind someone writing the pledge and then posting it for anyone to see. No one should want to feel that way about themselves or make others feel that way about themselves.
When I saw the title of this post, I thought that you were talking about actually communities - like they live together - as opposed to online communities. I am not sure which would do more damage. Online anyone can write anything, but in person there would be someone who could forcibly stop you from eating.
I was unaware of these websites, but when reading your post, I couldn't help thinking about the websites on the internet that explicitely tell someone how to go about killing themselves. I think the internet has done many great things-- and shows different views to an array of topics, but some are the farthest from being positive/healthy.
You can literally find anything on the internet-- but is this considered freedom of speech? There are certainly other organizations out there many people don't agree with-- but should this information that is basically self distructing be allowed on the internet with the ease of access it has?
In Chapter 14 of the textbook, the authors go into detail about Freud's two categories of biological drives- the second one consisted of death instincts-- which Freud suggests comes from aggression. When one focuses this aggression on the self, it results in self-criticism, sadism, depression, suicide, masochism, alcoholism, drug addiction etc. - you get the point. These websites have such a negative impact on people-- if they already think this way, it just help justify their actions. I'm not sure how this could be stopped-- maybe with every "pro ana" and the "suicide promotion" websites they could put a little blooper about the 'other side'- aka the healthy side or the side that values life. Are there laws against these types of websites yet? If not, are they looking into it? Or would this devalue our freedom of speech?
This is truly disturbing. Anorexia is already such a debilitating mental disorder, and groups like these are obviously very detrimental to anorexics. Could you imagine being an anorexic trying to get better, and then come accross a website such as this ENCOURAGING anorexia? Anorexia is clearly an important pyschological disorder, one that is exteremely difficult to treat. I agree with you Jaclyn that it would be great if websites like this could be controlled in some way, but sadly, I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon.
Our textbook doesn't really talk about anorexia, other than anorexia being one of the few motives that has no biological need. Like all behaviors, the environment and biochemistry create motivations. In this instance society tells us that thin is "beautiful" (environment). People that develop anorexia must release neurotransmitters (possibly dopamine?) from looking "beautiful" when they see themselves as thin. It's hard to convince people to seek help for eating disorders when there are groups out there that encourage anorexia.
Sadly, access to this kind of info is far too easy. I simply googled "anorexic" and this link was one of the first ones to pop up. It's a website on "how to become a better anorexic." Whoever wrote it clearly sick, and the website is incredibly disturbing.
http://everything2.com/title/How+to+become+a+better+anorexic
there is the website
I think you said it perfectly when you described this as "disturbing."
I know what a restricted calorie diet is proven to increase your life span, but that means somewhere around one third less calories than normal - not as few as possible.
Here's more information on that: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=52404
I would definitely say that these eating disorders are a place where people with emotional needs or damage ban together for support from a community. However, when the entire community is reinforcing a dangerous behavior, things have gone too far.
Being skinny and having no body fat is not what's attractive. With having a slim, fit body - you're subliminally telling potential mates that you're athletic and health. That you can not only produce children but very healthy ones, too. One of the troubling things about anorexia and females is that it will eventually effect their menstrual cycles until they eventually stop having periods altogether. For the ones who have this horrible misconception that being skinnier than the next girl will make you more beautiful is a load of crap.
I remember from my introduction to psychology class, two years ago, something about weight that blew my mind. To make this easier to visualize, let's imagine a longitudinal scale of dashes, zero through 10. Zero is as skinny as you can be, and 10 is as fat as possible. Researchers asked men and women to indicate the least and most amount of weight men would find attractive for a woman to have.
The women would have chosen 2-3 and the men would have chosen about 4-5 (remember, these numbers are made up and are being used just as a visual aid in this explanation - those aren't the real amounts.) In the women's opinions, the most amount of weight that men would still consider to be attractive was still LESS THAN the least amount of weight men claim they find attractive.
I constantly tell this my girl friends (friends that are girls) when they start claiming that they need to lose weight. Whether they mean it or just want someone to affirm that they are skinny, I point this out on the off chance that they hold that same absurd idea that you have to have almost no fat to be attractive.
Fat is natural and like all things, in moderation, it's PERFECTLY FINE!
I have never heard of the Pro Ana communities until I read this article. I believe that “bizarre and tragic” as the author of this blog called these communities is a perfect way to describe how I felt after reading this. It is awful to think that many people who are involved in the online community to support bulimics and anorexics are motivating others to do something that is so detrimental to their health.
I had a friend who diagnosed with anorexia and now, two years after she got help, she said she would not want anyone to go through what she did. It was an emotional rollercoaster. She was stressed about many other factors of life and not eating was how she dealt with it. The fact that these people who are motivating individuals to not get the proper supply of nutrients their bodies’ need and/or puking what little they do have back up have become role models to the people in this community is wrong.
It said in the article that the anorexics are the highest up on the totem pole socially because they can resist food. That is the goal that all the others are striving for. It also said that the term “wanorexics” is used to describe people who are “overweight” and trying to be anorexics in this community. These people’s motivation is that they want to be idolized and adored online like the anorexics are because they probably do not get that in their everyday lives.
The Thinnest of Them all Pledge is probably what disturbed me the most out of this article. One of the lines, “I believe in hell, because I sometimes think I am living it” makes me wonder why the men and women who are reading this want to become bulimic and anorexic when it is so obvious that these people are not happy.
I have actually heard of Pro Ana communities from my Abnormal Psych teacher last semester. He went online and showed us a website for it, and it disturbed me. However, I hadn't read the pledge that was found on this particular website. I must say that I'm horrified. I've struggled with low self-esteem myself over the years, and recently completed therapy to help me see how valuable I am, but never, even at my lowest point, would I agree with the statements posted in the pledge. Perhaps part of this is my religious background. I've always believed that even if others don't love and accept me, God does. I have to wonder if the majority of people who believe these things about themselves have a religious belief. If they do, I can't believe that they accept the tenets of their religion as it relates towards themselves, as all religions that I know promote loving yourself, accepting yourself, and even though changing yourself is emphasized in most religions, it's changing yourself by becoming a better person and doing the right thing. If you love yourself, starving yourself is not the right thing. Although I believe we as a nation eat too much (and that includes me, I love food!!), I don't believe that we should go the other way and never eat. Another part of the problem, I believe, is that we as a society (especially women) are taught to value thinness. It's equal to beauty according to the stick-skinny, on drugs supermodels many girls try so hard to look like. Until we as a society encourage HEALTHY weight and not just thinness, I'm afraid this trend will continue.