Table 1 Participant quotes related to the first theme "Living with internal coercion"

"I realize that it's myself who coerces me to like do the told things that the eating disorder … all that it involves, right? I feel it like … enormously tiring and hard and I feel it is … not at all as if I have a life. Not a good life, not very much joy and that is only because I myself live out the actions and do what the eating disorder like … yes, is about."

"… one thing was that I didn't eat anything, but also was … didn't sleep very much and was always standing up and … had well, like exercised involuntarily or had compulsions about everything."

"Um oh well … for instance … it [AN] has forced me to self-harm, um … it has forced me to run away quite a lot and it has forced me to walk, well, 14 km many times a day and such … there have just been so many … patterns and such things that it has forced me to do, where you really … I didn't want to self-harm, I didn't want to walk either because I was extremely tired. But like that … it has just forced me to that I had to."