In the last couple of weeks, I have been working on trying to get different groups of people who have openly talked about their eating disorder struggles on social media together to take part in different conversations; however, this has definitely been a struggle. I have reached out to around 50 people, or more, and a couple have gotten back to me. Some of them have been resistant, which I completely understand. Still, it is hard to plan and get people together; however, today I was supposed to meet with two people. They both confirmed, but one didn’t show up, which was stressful; still, I had a very interesting conversation with the other person who did and got a lot of insight. I will talk about this person in a later post. However, I have another meeting this afternoon where about 5 people are going to join for a conversation. However, when I realized many people might not be open to talking or might not have the time, I decided to create a panel so a larger group could interact and share different points of view. I will also be having, or am trying to set up, other focus groups in the coming weeks; it is just very hard to get people together to discuss this subject. Some things go beyond my control because people might say they are showing up and then, last minute, express that they do not feel safe or do not want to connect and don’t let me know; however, I have started to realize that this is a part of the process, and I will continue working on it. This weekend, I am also going to try a field study in the town of Medellin, trying to get people to participate and share how they see this issue. Still, I am moving forward and will keep trying to create different forms of intervention. This has been a very hard process because I have needed to be very careful when talking to these people since they are such a vulnerable group. There are a lot of barriers when talking with them; for example, many are still sharing their journey. Still, they might not be fully recovered, so I have had most of them talk to their therapists. Some haven’t been able to participate or haven’t felt comfortable; others don’t want to talk in a group and have asked me to contact them privately, which I have been doing to make sure they feel safe and not exposed in any way, shape, or form. A lot of them have flat-out said no, and I have thanked them for their time and for responding, wished them luck in their journey, and some people haven’t answered at all. Still, I have tried to stay in the lane of the people who are open to talking to me and trying to make sure that there are no triggers and it is a conversation they feel comfortable with.
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