I need reassurance that my childhood anorexia trauma is "bad enough".

My brother was violent and aggressive when I was little, but I don't remember most of it because I was too young. He made me insecure about my body. I was only two or three when I started thinking I was fat, because of him. I always feel afraid to tell people that I had body dysmorphia as a toddler because it feels so unbelievable. Maybe I'm making it up. I don't know. But for most of my very early childhood, I spent all my waking hours thinking about how fat I was. I didn't know weight loss existed until I was six, and I immediately started running around and exercising. Whenever I wore my coat I would pull it down because if I didn't then it would puff up and make me look fat. My family made fun of me for holding it down. I never told them why I did it. I sucked in my stomach for years. I definitely overdid it because my ribs were visible whenever I did it. When I was seven, I barely ate at all. I often doubt myself and think that it wasn't a real eating disorder because I ate junk food and "recovered" quickly - I'll get into the "recovery" bit later. I only took a few bites out of each meal. The only foods I ate more than a few bites of were the foods I really liked (the aforementioned junk food) but even then, most of the time I wouldn't eat all of it because it was "unhealthy". My brother stopped calling me fat but started teasing me for avoiding food. I ate really slowly because of the ED, which my family also made fun of me for. I got anorexic farts (yes, those are a thing) which I didn't really have much control over. My family made fun of me for it. They made fun of me for a lot of things. I also had frequent panic attacks when I was 7. I remember one time, my dad just suddenly decided we were going out to a restraurant and I started sobbing and panicking. Mom just thought I was crying because it was unexpected. I knew I was crying because I feared food. Because of the starvation, I was awful at physical activities, for which I was bullied at school. I thought that I was just bad at running because I was fat. Whenever my parents gave me a snack, I was crushed inside because I didn't have the courage nor the social skills to refuse said snack, so I just felt obligated to eat whatever snacks I was given. Whenever I ate even slightly more than usual - for example, a meal - I was in pain. I thought fullness was just the feeling of pain, because that was what I got whenever I ate. I had constipation and couldn't shit for days at a time and it always hurt when I did. I didn't get help for the eating disorder. My parents decided to take it into their own hands. They would often tell me things that would happen if I didn't eat, such as my stomach shrinking so much that it would hurt when I ate. They didn't know that that was already happening. Once, my mom told me that she was going to tell the dinner ladies at my school to watch me and make sure I ate my food. Obviously, I didn't see anyone watching me at lunchtime, but I still obligated to eat my lunch and then I felt horrible. There was one day that I still remember because it was the turning point for a lot of my parents' behaviour. We had a paddling pool and we were playing in it and my mom took a picture of us while I was still sucking in my stomach. She then showed me the picture and pointed out my bones. I just couldn't believe that I was skinny though, because obviously my bones were only visible because I was sucking it in. She said she wouldn't let me leave the room until I'd eaten a certain amount of food. So she made me eat my dinner and, although I didn't like apples, I still had to eat one. And then they just kept making me eat, every day, they made me eat. I won't use the FF word because they scared me out of using it but they made me eat. They also always pointed out how skinny I was. One time my mom gave me a milkshake and while I was drinking it she said to my brother "she's really skinny, she needs fattening up". No words in the English language can express how it feels to be an undiagnosed anorexic child hearing those words. Jesus Christ. When I was 8 I would just chew food and then spit it all out, because I got so bad that I couldn't swallow. But still my family would just scare me into eating by telling me how sick I could get if I didn't eat, so eventually I just succumbed to all of this because my parents' words were scarier than the voice inside my head. I used to say "I have no idea how I got better" because I thought I'd got better. For so long I thought I'd recovered just because I started eating again. But that was no recovery. My symptoms were just repressed. That's why I relapsed when I was 12, and then later when I was 14, and then later when I was 17. The behaviours changed over the years but the mindset has always been there. But still I invalidate the body horror I experienced as a little kid. It wasn't as bad as a real eating disorder, I ate so it couldn't have been a real eating disorder. If I'd had the choice, I wouldn't have eaten at all. So I think the fact that I ate makes it worse in a way, because I had no choice. My parents could have handled it better, I know that. But I'm doing it again. I feel like I'm lying about them. When I was 13 I wrote a post similar to this, detailing my eating disorder trauma, and they saw it and thought I was accusing them of abuse. I didn't even know it came off that way. Fuck. I'm doing it again. I'm writing The Post again but worse.