My Twisted Eating Disorder - Vol. 1 Ch. 11 - I hope this makes you feel a little better

[MangaDex]

 

[SUPER7X]

I did end up buying this for completion, but I'm still quite unsettled by it. At the end of the day, she's only harming herself, which she is free to do!, so not immoral and she continues getting my money.

 

[rmrs]

Thanks for the series TL. Nice to read a very different sort of Manga than the usual stuff, definitely a thought provoking series for me at least.

 

[tamarakko]

I figured it'd end in some kind of positive note but I sure wasn't expecting this lol well who am I next to an eating disorder specialist. Thanks for the translation

 

[malu]

Nope, nope author-san is clearly an unreliable narrator on this, assuming that eating a whole tray of defrozen food ( defrozen on a very questionable way, you need to defreeze stuff on you fridge for food safety reasons) is the peak happiness or that '' margarine container are made a certain way so people would dip sweet bread on it ''

so what i believe is that she picked one ''eating disorder specialist'' ( whatever this means in japan, you know how mental health is badly treated everywhere and in japan, it's even worst) a long time ago ( when ? like 10 years ago ? 5 ? last year ? ) who said something probably not knowing how bad thing are, probably ommit to mention all the other doctor telling her '' well, you are gonna rot your teeth out and eventually you are gonna get cardiac problem because of the purging'' it's just some cherry picking if you ask me

'' as long as you don't suffer from it '' yeah sure and also she clearly said she don't want to talk about the '' paintfull thing'' linked to her eating disorder ?

girl, i don't need anything hopefull from you, your story is fine, it's paintfull and depressing but it's fine at is it because it's your story, don't try to push me some kind of happy ending to it because your editor told you to, i've read story about terminal cancer less depressing than your life

maybe i'm wrong and author san is really happy this way, but hey, i'm not buying it, i've been into eating disorder too, and there is something i agree with her with a nuance, it's not about accepting it, it's more about '' living with it''

 

[tamarakko]

Nope, nope author-san is clearly an unreliable narrator on this, assuming that eating a whole tray of defrozen food ( defrozen on a very questionable way, you need to defreeze stuff on you fridge for food safety reasons) is the peak happiness or that '' margarine container are made a certain way so people would dip sweet bread on it ''

so what i believe is that she picked one ''eating disorder specialist'' ( whatever this means in japan, you know how mental health is badly treated everywhere and in japan, it's even worst) a long time ago ( when ? like 10 years ago ? 5 ? last year ? ) who said something probably not knowing how bad thing are, probably ommit to mention all the other doctor telling her '' well, you are gonna rot your teeth out and eventually you are gonna get cardiac problem because of the purging'' it's just some cherry picking if you ask me

'' as long as you don't suffer from it '' yeah sure and also she clearly said she don't want to talk about the '' paintfull thing'' linked to her eating disorder ?

girl, i don't need anything hopefull from you, your story is fine, it's paintfull and depressing but it's fine at is it because it's your story, don't try to push me some kind of happy ending to it because your editor told you to, i've read story about terminal cancer less depressing than your life

maybe i'm wrong and author san is really happy this way, but hey, i'm not buying it, i've been into eating disorder too, and there is something i agree with her with a nuance, it's not about accepting it, it's more about '' living with it''

As a standalone work this indeed feels hell of a nonsensical conclusion but when you read this as a complementary piece as a behind the scenes thing amid all her other problems she depicted previously, I feel it's more of a "this form of self-harm is how I'm able to cope with my bad mental health, if I feel like shit any more than I already do I might as well end it so I should try to make peace with it to make myself feel less shit".

I completely agree that it might have been way too casual (?), that it lacked more detailed warnings for what bulimia does to the body but the big underdiscussed elephant of the room is what triggered (and potentially continues to trigger) Nagata Kabi into purging, which isn't touched upon neither here or in any of her other autobios. Someone here said it might not necessarily be fatphobia but knowing how girls literally starve to get what is considered the ideal weight in Japan compared to other countries I don't really think it's unlikely (and honestly, as someone of the same height as her, what she considers "acceptable" is definitely underweight lol).

 

[KamikazeKaitouMaron]

If you compare her current mental state to what she's been doing in the previous volumes, I agree that it's an improvement. I felt so terrible seeing her punch the volumes of her first novel until her hands were bloods because she felt so bad about displaying the bad relationship with her family the way she experienced it. Makes me wonder if her family really has improved or if she just doesn't dare express those feelings anymore. Compared to drinking herself to death, this form of self harm is at least not as self destructive.

 

[SeverTheArmsOfYourLover]

I refuse to try and psychoanalyze the authors life through the lens of a manga, so instead I'll say it's somewhat refreshing to hear that "you just have to live with it".
Too often I hear that one will "eventually get cured" of their illness, when sometimes it's just something you have to stick with for the rest of your life.
It can be a horrifying idea knowing that you may stay like this forever, but I personally wouldn't have it any other way. Thanks for the tl, of course ^^

 

[kittyterrific]

"As long as you throw up without suffering that's all that matters." .

Is terrible advice from a counselor. How is that helping your patient? You're just enabling her. Shouldn't you be trying to teach her to stop doing this instead.

 

[kittyterrific]

.

 

[bean_sprugget]

Her attitude to her eating disorder reminded me of this:

Spoiler: Wall of text

The Hair Dryer Incident was probably the biggest dispute I’ve seen in the mental hospital where I work. Most of the time all the psychiatrists get along and have pretty much the same opinion about important things, but people were at each other’s throats about the Hair Dryer Incident.

Basically, this one obsessive compulsive woman would drive to work every morning and worry she had left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn down her house. So she’d drive back home to check that the hair dryer was off, then drive back to work, then worry that maybe she hadn’t really checked well enough, then drive back, and so on ten or twenty times a day.

It’s a pretty typical case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it was really interfering with her life. She worked some high-powered job – I think a lawyer – and she was constantly late to everything because of this driving back and forth, to the point where her career was in a downspin and she thought she would have to quit and go on disability. She wasn’t able to go out with friends, she wasn’t even able to go to restaurants because she would keep fretting she left the hair dryer on at home and have to rush back. She’d seen countless psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors, she’d done all sorts of therapy, she’d taken every medication in the book, and none of them had helped.

So she came to my hospital and was seen by a colleague of mine, who told her “Hey, have you thought about just bringing the hair dryer with you?”

And it worked.

She would be driving to work in the morning, and she’d start worrying she’d left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn down her house, and so she’d look at the seat next to her, and there would be the hair dryer, right there. And she only had the one hair dryer, which was now accounted for. So she would let out a sigh of relief and keep driving to work.

And approximately half the psychiatrists at my hospital thought this was absolutely scandalous, and This Is Not How One Treats Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and what if it got out to the broader psychiatric community that instead of giving all of these high-tech medications and sophisticated therapies we were just telling people to put their hair dryers on the front seat of their car?

But I think the guy deserved a medal. Here’s someone who was totally untreatable by the normal methods, with a debilitating condition, and a drop-dead simple intervention that nobody else had thought of gave her her life back. If one day I open up my own psychiatric practice, I am half-seriously considering using a picture of a hair dryer as the logo, just to let everyone know where I stand on this issue.

(Source: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/)

Basically, a woman with OCD was afraid her hair dryer was going to burn down her house, and instead of really "treating" her OCD, she just started bringing her hair dryer in her car to work.

Bulimia is definitely not the same thing, but if perhaps 50% of the harm comes from the stigma and shame, accepting will at least "cure" that 50%.

I wonder if a lot of these individual "miswirings" fall closer to "body building" or "competitive eating" than to "anorexia" or "binge eating": when is it a disease or disorder, and when is it a hobby or sport (or at least, fetish or special interest)? If there was a magic pill that made vomiting have zero negative health effects, would bulimia still be a disease?

 

[Zikeang]

Her attitude to her eating disorder reminded me of this:

Spoiler: Wall of text

The Hair Dryer Incident was probably the biggest dispute I’ve seen in the mental hospital where I work. Most of the time all the psychiatrists get along and have pretty much the same opinion about important things, but people were at each other’s throats about the Hair Dryer Incident.

Basically, this one obsessive compulsive woman would drive to work every morning and worry she had left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn down her house. So she’d drive back home to check that the hair dryer was off, then drive back to work, then worry that maybe she hadn’t really checked well enough, then drive back, and so on ten or twenty times a day.

It’s a pretty typical case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it was really interfering with her life. She worked some high-powered job – I think a lawyer – and she was constantly late to everything because of this driving back and forth, to the point where her career was in a downspin and she thought she would have to quit and go on disability. She wasn’t able to go out with friends, she wasn’t even able to go to restaurants because she would keep fretting she left the hair dryer on at home and have to rush back. She’d seen countless psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors, she’d done all sorts of therapy, she’d taken every medication in the book, and none of them had helped.

So she came to my hospital and was seen by a colleague of mine, who told her “Hey, have you thought about just bringing the hair dryer with you?”

And it worked.

She would be driving to work in the morning, and she’d start worrying she’d left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn down her house, and so she’d look at the seat next to her, and there would be the hair dryer, right there. And she only had the one hair dryer, which was now accounted for. So she would let out a sigh of relief and keep driving to work.

And approximately half the psychiatrists at my hospital thought this was absolutely scandalous, and This Is Not How One Treats Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and what if it got out to the broader psychiatric community that instead of giving all of these high-tech medications and sophisticated therapies we were just telling people to put their hair dryers on the front seat of their car?

But I think the guy deserved a medal. Here’s someone who was totally untreatable by the normal methods, with a debilitating condition, and a drop-dead simple intervention that nobody else had thought of gave her her life back. If one day I open up my own psychiatric practice, I am half-seriously considering using a picture of a hair dryer as the logo, just to let everyone know where I stand on this issue.

(Source: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/)

Basically, a woman with OCD was afraid her hair dryer was going to burn down her house, and instead of really "treating" her OCD, she just started bringing her hair dryer in her car to work.

Bulimia is definitely not the same thing, but if perhaps 50% of the harm comes from the stigma and shame, accepting will at least "cure" that 50%.

I wonder if a lot of these individual "miswirings" fall closer to "body building" or "competitive eating" than to "anorexia" or "binge eating": when is it a disease or disorder, and when is it a hobby or sport (or at least, fetish or special interest)? If there was a magic pill that made vomiting have zero negative health effects, would bulimia still be a disease?

I'm much more inclined to agree with this take. I've also heard a similar argument for cutting (which I'm strongly against but I kind of understand). Often times people who cut themselves aren't suicidal; they're just coping with stress in a way that works for them. Some people self medicare by drinking and smoking, some people work out excessively (me), some people punch things until their knuckles bleed, and some people binge and purge.

A lot of "coping" methods are just self harm that's just less harmful, somewhat productive, or just less stigmatized. It's all about doing what works for you and causes the least harm. If you find your outlet through cutting yourself, well it's not ideal and I think you should try something else, but at least you're not actually suicidal or self medicating.

Sincerely, a guy who's has this argument a dozen time with a ex who was a (I hope former) cutter.

edit: I'm sure people reading this will be immediately (and low-key rightfully) repulsed, but do try and challenge your instinct and question why you might be reacting with disgust the way I once had to.