Table 2 Additional quotes on AN in relation to identity
From: Externalizing your eating disorder: a qualitative interview study
AN is alien to identity |
“It felt as something from the outside, something that imposed all kinds of rules on me.”—Participant F |
“I would think “I couldn’t think clearly, so that could not have been me.” Or maybe it was, but then it was some kind of monster that had gotten into me.”—Participant M |
AN has taken over identity |
“The eating disorder has complete power over me, in such a way that my entire day is taken up by it.”—Participant D |
Participant F: “It’s kind of my identity” Interviewer: In what way, your identity? Participant F: “Often, I do not know who I truly am, what I am good at, what I want in my life. And with my eating disorder, it’s a way of life, sort of.” |
“At first, I was completely taken over by the eating disorder, because I was unaware of it.”—Participant K |
“On the one hand I feel as if the eating disorder has taken over control, that it’s not up to me anymore. But on the other hand, my thoughts and thoughts belonging to the eating disorder are so severely entangled that I can no longer see it as two separate things.”—Participant L |
“In the beginning I truly thought “I am my eating disorder,” and little by little, when I got better, it gradually became “I have an eating disorder.”—Participant M |
AN is intertwined with and incorporated in narrative identity |
“If I think of not having an eating disorder anymore, then I’m scared of feeling lonely, and that I would lose a great part of me. Because if feels like it’s something that I am, and something that belongs to me.”—Participant A |
“For me it is something from the inside out … and it feels like it is a part of me. … And they say, ‘you have an eating disorder, it is not something that you are’, but I find it difficult, because it feels as if we have fused together”—Participant J |
AN is an inauthentic side of identity |
“It’s an inauthentic part.. because somewhere I know that it’s not me. … But over time it has gotten more and more closely connected to me. … It’s not a part of me … it’s just something that is clinging to me.”—Participant L |
“I always thought that it was one entity, but I have come to realise that it’s actually two sides of me. … But there can only be one person in the end, so then it should be something inauthentic.—Participant E |
AN is an authentic side of identity |
“I think it’s two sides of me, two extremes”—Participant K |
“It’s not something that I am, but it is something that belongs to me.”—Participant N |