thoughts on recoverytwt

this is almost entirely my opinion, but if you've had a similar experience while in ed recovery feel free to comment.

for context, i've had an eating disorder for a few years. i believe it would be classified as atypical anorexia because of my current weight. i've lost track of how long i've been in recovery, but i want to say i started all-in recovery around march? i'm not sure. that's how disconnected from my ed i've been recently, i guess.

i was active on edtwt (eating disorder twitter) for a long ass time; a place that would feed me "thinspo" and tips on how to further my weight loss. it was an incredibly toxic and harmful environment for myself and many others. ironically, i'm not advocating for the removal of edtwt and other eating disorder spaces. although they do offer a lot of disordered content, they also post a lot of harm reduction skills. it's better for people who are not ready to recover to have a safe space to engage in their disorder instead of being completely isolated. 

after realizing how much my disorder was affecting my health (and after some pressure from my girlfriend) i decided to fully commit to recovering from anorexia. however, i felt super lonely after leaving edtwt, feeling like i was losing my close friends (they were not close friends lol.) after some searching, i found recoverytwt. a seemingly lovely space where people who are recovering from restrictive/binge eating disorders can have a community of people like them. paradise, right?

very wrong. recoverytwt was a nice and welcoming place at first, naturally, but after some deep-diving i realized how wrong i was. eating disorders are very competitive, and having a community full of disordered people exacerbates this. likewise, having a community full of people recovering from an ed also creates a very competitive environment. no matter who you followed or who you engaged with, you would still see people bodychecking and crying about their weight gain. bmis and calories were thrown around like nothing, and people didn't seem particularly affected by the idea of triggering the people around them. i swear to god, every 10 minutes you would see someone posting about a relapse on the timeline. it was mentally exhausting.

twitter's new algorithm makes this worse, too. if your followers/following liked something, regardless of whether you liked it or not, it would show up on your timeline. a lot of people in recoverytwt would still go out of their way to interact with edtwt, leading to thinspo and starving tips ending up on my home page. honestly, i couldn't picture a worse environment for someone in recovery even if i tried.

i think what i'm getting at is, if you're trying to recover like myself, steer clear of recovery and eating disorder spaces unless you're absolutely sure they won't trigger you. surrounding myself with people who have a normal relationship with food and good body image has made me feel 100x better than recoverytwt ever could. being around sick people, even if they're also trying to get better, will usually make you worse off. stay safe out there!