Eating Disorders Today

Miss America, Anorexia, Fear: Hiding in Plain Sight?

       Carrie, on ED-Bites wrote an indignant response to what I consider a rather cavalier column about eating disorders in the New York Daily News.

       Carrie said her own anorexia was based not on controlling weight or the external world but on controlling fear.  I agree.  Controlling everything a person possibly can control in an attempt to control what is uncontrollable I feel is at the root of most eating disorders.

       When that point is acknowledged the discussion goes away from food, fashion, weight, appearance, and even beauty and sexuality. 

       The discussion then becomes centered around the questions, Why are growing numbers of women at increasingly younger ages afraid?  What are they afraid of?  Why do they feel that their fears are justified and that they have no way of protecting themselves except through eating disorders?

       Addressing those questions takes courage and honesty.  In my experience as a psychotherapist, the attempt at reaching answers to these questions is the beginning of genuine eating disorder recovery.

       Fitting into what our culture defines as beautiful, even if that definition encompasses an unhealthy and dangerous physical condition, may well be protection women seek from their fears. 

       The authors of the Daily News column, Dr. David Moore and Bill Manville, end their discussion on a victorious note.  They describe proof of Kirsten Haglund’s  victory over anorexia in terms of her becoming Miss America.  Good grief. The woman found a great hiding place.  She is the epitome of what our culture describes as beautiful. 

       I commend Miss Haglund for her industry, her hard work, her outspokenness in terms of eating disorder recovery. I wish her every success possible in living a long and healthy life. 

       I hope she and supportive loving people around her acknowledge that she is 19 years old, only four years away from her past experience of severe anorexia and that achieving a high cultural standard of beauty and acceptance – an anorexic’s dream – does not represent recovery. 

       I hope she is alert to her inner challenges and is prepared to cherish and honor her healthy emotional and psychological developmental needs as her term of Miss America fades and she continues.

       Thank you, Carrie, for bringing up this issue and for letting your honest sense of indignation come through to all of us.

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

Eating Disorders and Body Appreciation

       What if we step away from body appreciation as an aesthetic consideration that relates to weight and appearance?

       An exercise or meditation to open up communication between mind, heart and body is this:
       1.      Let the mind relax with all the judgments.
       2.      Let the heart be free to love.
       3.      Let the body be and discover how your body feels when it is appreciated.

       Give yourself from a half hour to an hour for this exercise.  Slowly walk around a large room or garden or around the block.  Be sure you find a safe place to walk.

       Starting from the top of your head, let your awareness move through your body slowly. Thank you body as you go.

       For example:

       Thank you, skull, for protecting my brains so I can function in this world.
       Thank you brains for allowing me to think and for keeping my body working.
       Thank you eyes for letting me see as much as I can of this world.

       Move through your entire body, covering your neck, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, chest, back, spine, ribs, abdomen, stomach, genitals, legs, ankles, feet, toes,   Thank each part of your body for the work it does, and be specific about recognizing that work.

       If you do this on a regular basis you can go deeper.  You can thank specific organs, veins and nervous system. 

       You can thank your immune system for protecting you.  You can thank the mysterious and wonderful ability your body has for healing, for cell regrowth. You can thank your skin, the largest organ of all, for protecting you and providing you with sensations that warn you, sensations that bring you pleasure and sensations that connect you to other people.

       If you continue to do this exercise, over time you might feel that you want to do more than say thank you.  You might want to help your body with love and kindness to carry on all the taks that allow you to live in this world.

       This has little or nothing to do with weight or physical beauty.  It has everything to do with appreciation, health and love.

       Of course, some might believe that appreciation, health and love create beauty in this world.

       I do. 

       Do you?

Eating Disorders and Body Communication

       Much material I read and hear about eating disorders concerns how a person feels and thinks about her body.  But not much has come to my attention that relates to how the body thinks and feels.

      How the body thinks and feels may be a concept that requires a stretch for some or even many people until we open ourselves to understanding the language of the body.

       The body has no words.  Still, our bodies tell us when they need sleep or food or a change in external temperature.  Our bodies tell us when they need a more firm or cushioned bed or chair.  They certainly tell us when something is hurtful to them, like too much heat or cold or abrasion or puncture.

       Most of us have had a near miss when our eyelids blinked faster than thought to avoid a spec from flying into our eyes.

       Our bodies communicate potentially life saving information like when the hair on the back of the neck rises.  This is a primitive body warning of danger on a survival level.

       An aspect of eating disorder recovery involves giving respect to the body itself and learning not only its language but also how to heed what the body says.

       What if the anorexic woman listened to her endocrine system that cried out for nourishment as hormonal function shut down?

       What if the bulimic woman listened to her esophagus plead for a rest from the continuous flow of digestive acids?

       What if the compulsive eater or binge eater listened to a stomach that cried out for mercy and relief from the continuous need to stretch to the point of pain?

       What if, instead of war, we learned to make peace with our bodies?

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

Imagery and Intuition regarding Eating Disorders

       The Marion Woodman three day Dreams workshop was warm, challenging and wonderful. I’ve been wondering what to share with you.  Dream work is so personal, but then, so is eating disorder recovery.

       The most powerful image I had, toward the end of the second day, my intuition tells me is relevant to all eating disorders.

       Marion is in her eighties.  Her body is disintegrating.  She uses and needs a cane.  She conserves her energy as best she can.  She survived and recovered from a serious bout with cancer.

       But, when she speaks, her spirit is fiery. Her eyes glow.  Her voice is strong.  She beams warmth and assertive direction that makes us forget her physical frailty as we become inspired by her wisdom and passion.

       The image came through to me of a candle, but not a candle with a wick that burns on top. This white luminous candle contains a wick in the center that burns all the way from top to bottom within the wax.

       The fire within sends out heat that melts the wax from within.  So, for Marion, the image was of her inner fire melting her body away.

       I stayed with this image since Marion inspired it but was not it.  The image went much farther.

       The length of interior burning wick, if too hot, melts the wax encasing.  The candle is gone leaving only a line of fire.  Well, that could mean that the spirit burns brightly but is without a body.  This is an anorexic dream.

       Another version is this:  The length of interior burning wick is hot and melts the wax encasing. But, more wax is added on a continual basis.  This makes the wax thick and forever thickening so the heat of the fire doesn’t penetrate through the wax and into living space.  The candle keepsg getting bigger and the light is continually less visible.  This is the experience of the binge eater or compulsive overeater.

      What about bulimia?  In terms of my image, bulimia is tormented in a different way. In this image the wholeness of the fire and the wax is aware.  The fire burns and the wax melts beginning to reveal the blazing wick.  But the feelings that go with that fire are too intense to bear. Then the wax builds up thickly to bury the flame.  The dullness of that burial is too lonely and terrifying, so the wax is allowed to melt away until the terror of exposure forces the build up again. This is the in and out, here and gone grueling and endless repetition that is unaddressed bulimia.

       These are powerful and helpful images for me. They hold intellectual, emotional and physical understandings in a way that only intuitive imagery can pull together and allow to develop simultaneously.

       Where do you go with these images? 

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