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

How women with eating disorders surrender their power to exploiters

      

       Often women with eating disorders feel generous, powerful in

their relationship with a man and at the same time they feel weak,

exploited, bewildered and afraid they will be abandoned.

In general, and we can talk in more detail if I see that you are

interested, in this all too common situation. 
                                    

       Again, in general, women with eating disorders are harsh

in their self-criticism.  They also do not use their gifts such as

creativity, intelligence, endurance, determination, resourcefulness,

education, or talents in the service of their own hearts desire. 

They feel like failures because they are not living up to abilities they

sense are within them.


       Other people (who may not even know they have a tendency to

use others), perhaps a romantic interest or friend or family member,

will see the abilities an eating disordered woman is not using on her own behalf. They

will applaud the woman for having such talents and resources.

 

      They will also invite her to be involved in their projects.

She will be delighted.


       They then feed her compliments that are deserved about her talents.

She will feel relief and pleasure at being recognized as the valuable person she is.

What she cannot give to herself, she gives to them.


       Examples include these scenarios: She helps them start or run a business.

She designs and perhaps also creates promotional material for them. She

extends herself financially to shore up their poorly handled money situations.

She entertains their friends and associates magnificently.  She fields their

phone calls making excuses or apologizing or lying for them. She smooths

their difficulties in work and personal relationships.  She tends to their

personal well-being.


       She can do this for any person she wants to please and hopes to make love her.

A certain type of person is happy to take what she is not using.  A few compliments

and a sincere looking smile, an expression of yearning and need will evoke in her a

hopeful joy that she can meet the person s needs and find appreciation and love.


       Once she is giving and feeling vital to another person's life she will feel good

about being competent and productive.  She'll continually postpone the effort required

to nourish and make real her own dreams because she feels strong in what she

accomplishes for the other person.
 

       Eventually she will like a weak failure in terms of her own life. But she sill convince

herself that the other person's life is her life and that she should get satisfaction

from this.  The other person by design or through the routine of this unbalanced relationship, will expect

the system to continue, has become an exploiter and will  build up that belief in her.


       This belief can become so strong that she becomes arrogant.  She may feel a sense of

superiority created by her self defined noble self sacrifice or contributions to the other's successes.

This superior attitude can be off putting to others who are shocked by her obliviousness to her

acceptance of being willingly used.


       At some point she will feel tired and drained.  She may protest or request

relief. Too often she will her fatigue as a badge of honor, as proof that she is

giving her all and proving her love.


       If and when she tries to put some of her energy into her dreams the

exploiter will speak in a supportive way but will actually attempt to sabotage

her efforts or become actively abusive. The exploiter may also accuse her of

being selfish and too sensitive for wanting to withdraw or limit her services

in any way.


     She will be terribly hurt and bewildered by this reaction and won't

understand how someone who has been so reassuring and full of praise could

attack her when she wants something for herself.


       Unfortunately she often thinks the other person is right, that she is selfish

and too sensitive. Then she does even more for the exploiter in an attempt to get

what she thought was a loving person in her life to be loving again.


       It can take years before she understands that the person will say and do

anything to keep her supplying his or her needs and ignoring her own.  Too often

she never understands and becomes a tragic figure when she is discarded.



     Her grief or eventually, rage will plunge her more deeply into her eating disorder.

  For some people, this kind of intense flood of emotional pain will bring them

to psychotherapy, perhaps for the first time.  They come for relief. If they

stay they have a chance to do their real recovery work.

Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA

bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery:  www.poppink.com