My patients and readers live their own lives with their own agendas and values leading the way.
However, I am not neutral. I want, with all my heart, for them to live long healthy lives. I want them to be well, to have love, joy, satisfaction, confidence and a genuine liking for themselves as they proceed onward to a feisty, interesting and healthy old age.
I especially do not want anyone to break her own heart.
People who come to my psychotherapy practice or writings need a reason to make that entry. Primarily, they come because they have an eating disorder. They also come because a person with an eating disorder is in their intimate circle. They also come because they know someone who benefited from my work and want the same benefits.
Mostly, they come because they experience emotional pain and frustration in their lives and have a spark of hope that maybe another way to live exists.
Ending an eating disorder is a step, a major step granted, but still a step toward creating and living a better life.
In my practice, my focus is on the whole person sitting in front of me. I see the energy poured into the eating disorder. I get a glimpse of what might be possible for this person if that energy were directed toward living a more full life. When we share that glimpse we become a team of two with the goal being to send life energy to life. That means dismantling the eating disorder mechanism and removing the need for the protection given by the eating disorder.
Our mutual goal becomes creating a psychological, emotional and spiritual normal that allows a person’s genuine life potential to unfold.
My job, as I see it, requires me to state my bias and let the person know that her best choice is one that comes from her beliefs, not mine. She also needs to know that I will support her living based on her values, not mine.
A free and healthy person will face difficult choices in life. If an eating disorder doesn’t exist, then an automatic and artificial guiding system doesn’t take over the decision making by default.
For example, someone doesn’t stay home and binge instead of meeting with friends. Or someone doesn’t binge and throw up before meeting a potential employer and therefore meet that person in a partially numbed condition.
If an eating disorder isn’t there then decisions about school applications, career choices, pregnancy (to conceive or terminate), relationship choices (positive or negative), commitments of any kind, are based on personal agenda and personal values. These must belong to the individual, not me.
I do my best to make my bias clear so that the person is free of any sense of obligation to please me. More importantly, my stating my bias helps the individual sort out what she thinks she is supposed to choose based on the agenda and values of others, including the entire culture, as opposed to what she deeply values.
After all, in the end, she lives her life. And a satisfying life is one that is based on living according to her own true agenda and values.
Sometimes self sacrifice is based on deeply held and honored values known and appreciated by the individual alone. I believe a person needs to be free to make such a choice.
However, if an eating disorder is in the way, choices involving self sacrifice can be blurred or seen as required with no possibility of flexibility, change or even a vague sense of the option to say, “No.”
If she is oblivious to her own values she can make a choice that will immediately or eventually break her own heart.
While an eating disorder fades the person is challenged more and more to listen and learn her own truth. Whether her truth is mine is not the issue. I stand for her listening and honoring her own unbuffered self, mind, spirit, body and heart. When she can do that, she is on her way to
living her real life, and that is a joyous and satisfying way to live.
Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery, www.poppink.com
It's such a hard balance to strike in this busy world. While I appreciate your bias, I find that my own distortions get the better of me, despite "knowing better" after years of work, self-exploration and the torture of all aspects of eating disorders.
I thought I had a pretty good handle on it until I got engaged - a big step for a single 40+ female - to a man that is less than perfect and totally embroiled in his own self-discovery. Amazing how all the old, bad coping mechanisms come back. I'm so unbalanced and it's not doing me well. What becomes the single, fundamental starting point? I am too busy to be distracted by my type A personality goal of doing it all. What does your bias dictate?
Thanks.
Posted by: Cathnpets | March 05, 2008 at 08:42 PM
Dear Cathpets,
Your post touches my heart. I'll do my best to respond.
The single fundamental starting point, according to my bias, is the place where you honor your own essential truth and health - mind, body and spirit.
Whenever that fundamental is compromised, life unfolds based on that compromise and usually consists in increased suffering.
Honoring your essential self is not so easy because, while you need to be aware of what you truly value, the continual first step is honoring the genuine core of you that emanates that awareness.
I can appreciate the work you have already done in recovering from an eating disorder. Congratulations and well done.
Still, the work continues because the eating disorder served to fill in developmental blanks. As you grow and reach new challenges, like committing to a relationship with a man for the first time, sections of your psyche are touched that were insulated and protected.
You will most likely be exquisitely sensitive to the ramifications of the commitment and not be able - yet - to meet the challenges. More growth and healing are required.
In fact, for people with a history of an eating disorder, more growth and healing is required periodically throughout life, whenever new challenges present themselves.
So called "relapse" occurs because the person hasn't developed the substantial layer of health, strength and knowledge to support the genuine self in the new situation.
To me, the return of your "old, bad coping mechanisms" is a signal that you need to grow some more. The old way comes in to take care of you because you don't have another way - yet.
Yes, it's a busy world. No matter how busy, for you to extend your life into new possibilities you need to make time to make your own developmental journey the top priority. Otherwise you will not be able to progress beyond your current level. It's a choice - your choice.
If you choose to move beyond where you are, and for you this seems to mean into the territory of marriage and perhaps family, then you need to find ways to create a healing environment that is both safe and confronting.
Before you can fully commit to your relationship you need to be able to commit fully to your own true self. It's amazing how gracious, patient and kind we can be to imperfect people when we acknowledge without punishment our own imperfections and develop our own strength, wisdom and compassion.
Thank you for writing. I appreciate your comment and question. I wish you every success in finding your path to you. By all means write again.
Joanna
Posted by: Joanna Poppink, LMFT | March 06, 2008 at 12:32 AM