---
title: Friends and Family
description: Series of articles relating to family dynamics, changes in friendships and achieving quality relationships.
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language: en-GB
date: 2012-09-11T01:07:34Z
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---

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[*![bandelier 55654 340](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/images/bandelier-55654__340.jpg)*](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/images/bandelier-55654__340.jpg)*Where do you go when you go into your eating disorder? What are you looking for?*

### What you show the world

When you have an eating disorder, you skate on the surface of being present with others. “How are you?” a friend asks. You answer, “Fine.” Yet you live in a deeper, darker world your friend knows nothing about. It’s full of pain where you use private, intense, ongoing strategies to bring you to peace and security and an encompassing love you crave but haven’t yet discovered.

### Your secret world

Suffering from an eating disorder is a lonely business. You have to pretend to be happy, competent, and fine without letting the people around you know about your desperation. When you come right down to it, just about every action that stems from an eating disorder is an act of desperation. The binge, restriction, denial, purge, starvation, exercise, and controlling behaviors - these are all unhappy and desperate activities that you try to keep secret. When you have so many secrets, your loneliness increases to the level of despair.