First off, this was an incredibly courageous share... it might sound a bit trite, but there tends to be a measure of healing in the telling of something painful.

Inner demons are powerful things that show up at unfortunate times, often catching us off-guard.

I empathize with what you're experiencing — and have experienced — having grown up with a mother who (most likely) suffered from some kind of body dysmorphia. As a young woman, she was a runway model in New York... mostly to symbolically "spit in the face" of her own mother who brought her up to believe that she "would never amount to anything."

When she and my dad returned to Denmark to start a family, she brought her impossible appearance standards with her, and "inflicted" them on everyone around her. Within our immediate family, we experienced that as everyone in the household having to go on a diet because she had gained a couple of "vanity pounds" over the holidays, or while on vacation, or whatever. Imagine how that feels when you're a growing, athletic teenager who needs LOTS of healthy food.

She wrestled with those demons till her death... although she never admitted that there was anything unusual about her behavior... she came from an older generation where anything such as "disorders" simple wasn't a thing.

I'm grateful to be a generation removed... although, am I entirely removed? To this day, I still catch myself buying street food/snacks while running errands and eating them "while out," perhaps a throwback to a youth where I never could be sure whether I'd return home from an afternoon football game to be met with a "diet dinner."

You're not alone.