So maybe I am just being too 'sensitive' or something, but oh well. I am taking a Research Methods in Psych class, and we have to write a research paper. Mine was on Psychoactive Drugs in PTSD. But that isn't the point. We don't actually do the experiment, but we get fake data and we have to analyze it and we present to the class.
So of course someone had to do treatment of Anorexia and Bulimia. And of course that was the one day I was eating something in the middle of class (pretzels). Dammit. And of course, there is this girl who I KNOW has something. But that isn't the point either.
So don't you just love it when people overgeneralize (read: sarcasm)? This girl doing the presentation gets up and explains to us what AN and BN are. She says that people with anorexia weigh (insert RIDICULOUSLY low number here) pounds and eat (insert tiny number) calories. And people with bulimia binge and purge and will eat around (insert huge number here, wayyyy more than what is defined as a 'binge') calories. WTF, mate? If I had been in my eating disorder, I would have gone for a tailspin ("Wait I weigh more than that, and I ate more calories than that today...I must not really be sick"). Well maybe not quite that bad, but it would have triggered me and feel like crap and I probably would have acted on my eating disorder the rest of the day.
It just really annoys me how people get these pre-conceived notions about what a 'real anorectic' and a 'real bulimic' look/act like. And they are the extreme cases, ie the woman who has had AN for 124 years and weighs 12 pounds. You know? This is why I want to break the stigma and talk about eating disorders, what they are about and what people think they are that is just screwed up and not true. I mean, yes there are people who are just like what society sees as anorectic or bulimic, but it's not just a mold, if you aren't like that doesn't mean you are hurting any less or any less sick than someone who looks like they have an eating disorder. I guess just get pissed b/c of crap people have said in the past.
Augh.
Well, on a lighter subject, the same girl was talking about previous studies and was saying something to the effect of, "Jones et al did a study where they used flu...fluox...", and she was looking at me, or at least in my direction, so the pharmacy tech in me had to say, "It's fluoxetine. That's Prozac." She looked at me a couple of other times for what the trade names for meds were and I was just like I dunno, they were tricyclic antidepressants, which I don't know of the top of my head, they aren't prescribed much anymore ;-p
So anyways, I found it humorous, maybe just because for once in my life, I actually knew what I was talking about. Haha.
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2 comments:
I don't think your being sensitive at all! Sometimes I think people are really stupid when it comes to ED's and have no idea what they are talking about. They have this idea that a person should look like this or eat this, but they really have no clue. When I took Intro to Psych, I did my project on anorexia and used my personal experience with it. People were amazed, because they had no clue that I was struggling with an ED at the time. And some people still think that its a "woman's" disease also. Or a young girls.
It seems like she just pulled her information off of one website, and not a reputable one, which i hope the teacher can pick up on. it worries me when teachers of psych. classes allow these reports and don't correct the misinformation. i assume teachers should know what AN and BN are, and i always forget that a lot of them, unless they've worked with these illnesses, don't know.
yeah for knowing the meds!
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