“I just wanted to look beautiful”

I am a psychologist working with “The Smile of the Child”. I met M. when she was 17 years old…I never thought a person could be so skinny… I could actually see her bones.
As her friends told me, she used to be very beautiful. She always paid attention to her looks. This was the reason she was living for. She always paid extra attention to the garments she wore, her hair, everything about her appearance. She always thought she was not very clever, or really good at something, so she believed that her looks was the best thing about her. Of course, this is how she was raised… “Don’t get fat”… “Girls should look pretty”. It is not that difficult for looks to become a top priority for someone who is not very self-confident. 
Eventually, she decided to lose a couple of pounds. Unfortunately, this was only the beginning… the weight loss she achieved was not enough for her; she wanted to lose more and more pounds. She kept on losing weight… And when her boyfriend left her, since he wasn’t attracted to her anymore, she set a new goal: to lose more weight. As there were things in her life she could not control, she thought that by having control over her weight made up for it. To her, skinny meant beautiful and too skinny meant extremely beautiful. But that was not true for her family and friends, who were getting more and more worried. The more they stressed out that what she did was dangerous for her health, the more aggressive she became. But she could not see in the mirror what everybody else saw; she actually thought that she had to lose weight. Sadness and stress took over her life. She was now sick. She stopped having her period. All day she would complain about her weight and would self-induce vomit after every meal. Her mother told her how worried she was but –to her surprise- she responded aggressively. Until one day, she fainted and was taken to the hospital.

That’s where I first met her… right now, I am standing in front of a girl whose image is completely distorted. At least now she realizes that she is sick.

Her parents were there, following the doctors’ advice. They were very concerned; they felt that they should have intervened and ask for help and support, the moment they had realized that the situation was out of their control and out of their daughter’s control. Of course, they didn’t know…

M. talks to me about her lost dream… her beauty. I try to explain to her that now she is on the right path to be beautiful again. Such problems can only be treated with medical intervention.

She is very upset and cannot understand how things turned out… it is really difficult for someone to comprehend. It is also very difficult to understand that the actual reason for all this is not just that: “I WANT TO BE BEAUTIFUL”. The true reasons are different for each and every one:

“I WANT PEOPLE TO LOOK UP TO ME”
“I WANT TO FEEL IMPORTANT”
“I WANT TO BE DISTRACTED FROM THE THINGS THAT HURT ME”

There are many girls like M. with similar desires.
But things do not have to turn out like the story we described. They can share their thoughts with us…

The National SOS Helpline for Children 1056 operates

-On an everyday basis
- 24 hours a day
- Without any charge

Children can call anonymously, without worrying that they or their actions will be criticized.