Eating Disorders Today

Expect Some Dreamy Posts!

       “Dreams” is the title of the seminar I’ll be taking this week end in Santa Barbara with Marion Woodman (a talk) and Steve Aizenstat.

       Integrating a person’s inner life with her outer life in harmony and health has long been crucial, in my experience, for achieving eating disorder recovery.  Regardless of the specific diagnosis:  bulimia, anorexia, binge eating, compulsive overeating – and all the possible associated behaviors, like cutting, shoplifting, over exercising, over scheduling, under achieving, abusive and exploiting relationships greatly benefit from developing a healthy integration between mind, feelings and body.

       Marion Woodman is one of the early writers in the field of eating disorders.  She is a gifted Jungian analyst with a way of understanding and bringing healing opportunities to men and women and, from my perception of her, particularly to women with eating disorders. I listened to her audio tape, "Dreams" many times and often recommend it to patients. Marion Woodman understands women and the language of dreams!

       I plan to walk among the trees on the Pacifica campus, participated in the dream workshops throughout the days, speak and share with wonderful people, write down my own dreams, muse about the dreams of my patients and those collective dreams that speak for our culture.

       The nourishment from the people, place and theme I know will benefit my in mind, heart and soul.  From this will come new and surprising integrative thoughts and feelings that are bound to appear somehow in my blog posts as well as the rest of my personal and professional life.

       If you care to join me in this experience, take note of your dreams this weekend.  Write them down.  We can share them next week on this blog and see where our dreams lead us.

       Here’s a bit about the wonderful Marion Woodman (excerpt from the Marion Woodman Foundation website www.mwoodman.org

Marion Woodman, LLD, DHL, PhD, is a Jungian Analyst, teacher and author of The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter; Addiction to Perfection; The Pregnant Virgin; The Ravaged Bridegroom; Leaving My Father's House; Conscious Femininity; Dancing in the Flames (with Elinor Dickson); Coming Home to Myself (with Jill Mellick); The Forsaken Garden: Four Conversations on the Deep Meaning of Environmental Illness, Marion Woodman, Ross Woodman, Sir Laurens van der Post, and Thomas Berry, edited by Nancy Ryley; The Maiden King (with Robert Bly); and Bone-Dying Into Life. A visionary in her own right, Marion Woodman has worked with the analytical psychology of C.G. Jung in an original and creative way. She is the Chair of the Marion Woodman Foundation.

Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery, www.poppink.com

Awakening to Eating Disorder Recovery

       How does a person with an eating disorder take genuine action that will realistically create a solid recovery path?  How does she maintain her sense of purpose so she keeps to that path despite painful challenges?

       These are two of many vital questions I’m attempting to address in this blog. They are in the back of my mind always when I think about eating disorder recovery.

       I remember my first psychotherapy session with the psychotherapist who led me through the first years of my own recovery from bulimia.  She was the third person I ever told I was bulimic and the first who was not in a 12-step program. I was terrified. When I saw that she was still warm and interested in me and not overwhelmed by my revelation I thought I was free to breathe again.

       But then she said, “We’ll begin an interesting journey.”  I burst into tears.  She was surprised.  She wanted to know why I was crying.  Perhaps you who are reading eating disorder recovery blogs and websites will understand.

       My psychotherapist said we would begin a journey.  I told her, it had taken me years of hard work and despair to reach the point where I could sit before her.  And she called this the beginning.

       I cried because my beginning was such a long time ago.  I cried because I had come so far only to learn that this now was just the beginning.

       Of course, I didn’t have much recovery to work with then so I didn’t appreciate the concept of “new beginning.”  Now I realize that in recovery and in most or all areas of life, we always have an opportunity to see and live any and every moment as a new beginning. 

       But I was bulimic then.  I thought in terms of black and white, all or none, and I thought in a linear fashion.  I had no idea that my way of thinking was narrow and confining.

       Sometimes, on a dark night with heavy black clouds and pouring rain the world seems mysterious, powerful and almost invisible.  What you do see is distorted by slanting water, shadows and imagination.

       Then suddenly, from out of an unknown somewhere a bolt of lightning strikes out across the blackness.  The startling glare dispels shadows and brings the world up clear and vivid. The moment passes. The dark returns.  But your memory of the light remains. You got a glimpse of the presence beneath the cloak of darkness.

       Eating disorders are like that black stormy night, full of passion, fear and misguided distorted visions.  The stroke of lightning is the life force in us that gives us a glimpse of who and where we really are. We may not like what we see. 

       But if we can hold that awareness a little longer each time our inner lightning strikes, our awareness will grow. We can use it to build our way out of the darkness and into an opportunity of finding our healthy and distortion free life.

       What equips a person to get on and stay on her recovery path?  It has to do with keeping alive those many tiny glimpses of light and health that shoot through the eating disorder way of life. When you gather enough of those glimpses you have a compelling vision of a better life. 

       Lightning is raw energy.  A glimpse of the truth of your life comes from your inner life force.  That’s a kind of raw energy too.  The awareness leads you to your Recovery path.  The energy helps keep you on that path.

Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery, www.poppink.com