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Ask Amy: Friend has eating disorder

Friend has eating disorder Invitation to 'bidet party'

Amy Dickinson | Ask Amy

January 24, 2009

Dear Amy: I'm 20 years old and have a best friend whom I care for a great deal.

My friend has an eating disorder, and she also has a mother who tells her and her sisters that having a flat stomach is extremely important.

I have also struggled with my own body image, but I have learned to embrace my flaws (plus, I was raised differently).

When she criticizes herself, how do I as a friend tell her to start loving herself more? Her behavior is starting to bring me down, and it makes me sad that she's so negative about her body.

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—Concerned Friend

Dear Concerned: It's great that you have "embraced your flaws," but I'd like for you (and others) to question the very notion of "flaws." It's natural to compare your body with other bodies, but if you're healthy and fit, then your so-called flaws aren't really flaws. Your shape is not flawed––any more than your hair color is flawed. It's just you.

Your friend's problems go deeper than your friendship, and because you are vulnerable, too, it's OK to ask her to not talk too much about her body, weight or dieting. Don't leaf through magazines with her and point out various celebrities' bodies—because even celebrities don't look like celebrities in real life.

Shift the focus to more positive topics (so stay away from discussing the economy too).

Eating disorders can become extremely serious. Your friend's condition may grow worse with time, unless she gets treatment.

You probably won't be able to persuade your friend to love herself, but you should encourage her to get professional help for her eating disorder.

If you are in college, your school's health clinic would be a good place to start. You could learn more about eating disorders by doing a search on the National Institutes of Health Web site: nih.gov.

Dear Amy: A neighbor who is renovating her bathroom told me that she will be having a "bidet party" when the work is complete.

I'm sure she is excited about adding a bidet to her bathroom, but I find this invitation rather tasteless. It may be assumed that she is trying to be funny.

Do you think I could give her some elegant "open house" invitations, in hopes that she might use them?

—Trying to Save Her

Dear Trying: Please. Let this concept circle the drain and go down of its own accord.

Your friend's taste level and entertainment ideas are not your business. If her bidet party is an attempt at humor, and if you can't enter into the spirit of what is essentially a sad little punch line, then do not attend the event.

The whole idea of having a party to celebrate an appliance doesn't exactly put your friend into a Jane Austen plot, but these days, maybe we're all going to have to work a little harder to have fun––and find our champagne fountains where we can.

In the bathroom, for instance.

Dear Amy: I am responding to "Wheezing Friend," the woman highly sensitive to secondhand cigarette smoke whose friends are keeping their distance from her.

I can certainly understand her problem with smoke, as I share it. Five minutes or less around a smoker, and I lose my voice, my throat tightens up, my nose runs and I get a horrific headache.

I can and do control my own environment. I have a no-smoking house, a no-smoking car, and I don't visit friends or family who smoke, nor do I ride in their cars.

My friends and family are free to smoke, regardless of how it affects me.

In turn I am free to not visit them or ride in their cars. It's simple.

Do I miss seeing family and friends in their own home? Of course I do.

But my health is at risk, and it is up to me to control it.

If "Wheezing's" friends miss her visits, they will change their ways––or not––but it is not up to her to expect someone else to make the change. She has to make the change herself.

—Mardi

Dear Mardi: "Wheezing Friend's" letter brought a lot of responses––many from former smokers or others who are sensitive to cigarette smoke. Many echo your statements––that if "Wheezing" can't stand the smoke, she is going to have to stay out of her friends' kitchen. Whether they will choose to spend time with her in smoke-free environments is up to them.