Answer
Answer:
As-Salaam ‘Aleikom,
What you are describing about your eating habits and making yourself throwing up is not good at all. I will try my best to advice you, In sha’ Allah.
It sounds like you have an eating disorder. It can be Anorexia Nervosa or Bulimia Nervosa, or even mixed of them both. Girls and women are 10 times more likely than boys and men to suffer from anorexia or bulimia. When you suffer from an eating disorder, it can affect you psychologically and physically. The usual symptoms are the following:
Psychologically: Insomnia and sleeping bad, feeling depressed, becoming obsessive about food and eating, lost interest in other people.
Physically: Finding it harder to eat because your stomach has shrunk, feel tired and/or weak and cold as your body’s metabolism slows down, not grow to your full length, being unable to get pregnant.
Vomiting can make you lose the enamel on your teeth (it is dissolved by the stomach acid in your vomit), get a puffy face (the salivary glands in your cheeks swell up), notice your heart beating irregularly, palpitations (vomiting disturbs the balance of salts in your blood), feel weak, feel tired all the time, experience huge weight swings (see below), damage your kidneys, have epileptic fits, be unable to get pregnant.
Depression and self-harm can cause eating disorders. People often eat for comfort when they are upset, or even just bored. Whatever the reason for your self-harm was, is not healthy at all. You may not have any visible effects of disorder yet, but long term wise you will if you don’t stop making yourself throwing up. You are worried for your parents to find this out? You should first think of what you are doing to yourself? You are damaging yourself and your body by throwing up. Your parents will find out sooner or later about this, and when they do they will not be happy.
It’s forbidden for a Muslim to harm oneself. Our body belongs to Allah (swt) and we are its caretakers. So, it becomes our duty to protect this precious gift from harm and use it in the best way it can be. People who self-harm do it as a way of expression of their inner feelings sometimes called “inner scream”. It occurs when you are not able to put your feelings or emotions into words, and this seems the only way you can. You also feel ashamed or guilty for doing it and are embarrassed about it.
Imagine someone who has issues with controlling their anger (which many people do in today’s world). Would such people be able to justify their actions to Allah (swt) by saying that they just “couldn’t do it”? No, because they had the option of getting professional help or getting into anger management programs, but they didn’t.
You might argue that your problem is not harming anyone else. That is true, but just like when you hurt someone physically or psychologically you are harming something that also belongs to Allah (swt). Harming yourself is to damage what Allah (swt) has blessed you with.
Since until now you were not aware of it, in sha’ Allah, you will not be caught for what you didn’t know. Indeed, Allah (swt) is the Most Merciful and the Most Just. You need to get professional help in this matter and meet with a psychologist or a specialist who can help you find other coping mechanisms and find out the reason this all began. Also, you need to inform your parents as well since this is nothing to be ashamed of because it is not your fault. Most self-harming people are young females, almost your age, and they hide it from everyone because they are embarrassed or ashamed of it. I am sure your parents will help you and support you, and you need them.
May Allah (swt) ease you problems, in sha’ Allah.
Salam,
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