Eating Disorders Today

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?

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

Death, Tragedy and the Wounded Soul

        A young anorexic woman died in Ireland because her psychiatrist mother drowned her daughter in the bath. It's a tragic story of Gothic proportions going back who knows how many generations. The mother couldn't bear the daughter's anorexia.  The daughter refused treatment.  The mother had an eating disorder.  The grandmother committed suicide.  The story in "This is London" stops there, but the human story has got to go back who knows how far.

       I'm haunted, as many people must be, by the horror, the extremity, the tragedy, the ignorance, the blindness, the waste and the ongoing and spreading suffering of this event.

       Eating disorders go deep into our souls.  Personally I think that they go deep into the souls of the individual with the disorder and also deep into the soul of our society.  Something powerful in our current human condition is bringing up a terrible despair that eating disorders are making public.

       If we can a bring thorough recovery to people with eating disorders, and embrace effective ways of preventing anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder and all the rest, we will also be finding a deep cure for the problems in our society that spawn eating disorders.

       I hope this sad and profound tragedy will spur people to look more deeply into both the psychological and cultural forces contributing to sustaining eating disorders in our midst.

       Wounds of the soul are showing.

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

What a Healthy Relationship with Food Looks Like - a lesson from children

            Two little girls, sisters, 5 and 7 years old, were spending the afternoon with me in my home.  We are great friends.

            We had been painting in my studio and running in the grass counting Buddhas (I have a lot of Buddhas in my garden).

            Suddenly the five year old announced, "I'm hungry!"
      
            The more demure seven year old gave her sister a look that said, not so loud and impolite, please while she looked at me and nodded, "Me, too."

      I said, "Well, let's go look in the refrigerator and see what I've got."

      They both grinned and ran into the house.  The content of other people's refrigerators is fascinating to children.

     We found a kind of apple they had never tasted, a fuji.  Five said "no.".  Seven said, "Try it.  It might be good."

     I peeled the apple.  This was a task so totally expected and assumed that no verbal request was given.  Five wordlessly handed me the apple with a most effective facial expression and automatic gesture that clearly informed me of my job.

     They decided the apple was good.  We also found some cottage cheese and carrots. So we peeled the carrots. I sliced the apple. We dished out the cottage cheese and sat in the dining room for lunch.

      I put on some Mozart because we had been discussing the theory that listening to Mozart made children smarter.

      The girls ate with gusto and no talking.  Then they started talking a little as they ate more slowly.  Then they talked even more and ate less.  At one point the seven year old described how she felt listening to the music and wondered if she were getting smarter. 

      She then got up and danced.  The five year old joined her.  The remaining food on the table was forgotten as the girls leped and jumped to Mozart's music.

      My experience?  My imagery saw each child with a transparent fuel tank on her chest. When the fuel tank was empty they immediately felt hunger and knew it.  The thought of food was exciting. Looking at the food, making decisions about it, preparing it was thrilling.  Eating it was glorious. 

      As the gauge on the fuel tank registered an increase, their eating slowed.  By the time the tank was full they had lost complete interest in the food.  Not only that, but the burning fuel released energy to their minds and bodies and that energy turned into joyous dance.

      I smiled at my cavorting little friends, thinking, This is what the absence of an eating disorder looks like.  This is what a healthy relationship with food looks like.

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

Emergency Hospitalization, Eating Disorder, Coming Home

       Yes, you can help your eating disorder recovery by ordering your environment. 

       Jeremy asks in his blog http://jeremygillitzer.blogspot.com/ if bringing his home into order will help him stabilize after his emergency six week hospitalization for eating disorder recovery.  To me, it sounds as if his emergency escort to the hospital was a rescue mission, and that he is lucky he got his life saved.

       Now it's time for him to take over and rescue his own life.  That's true for everyone with an eating disorder. The big questions are what to do? how to start? when to start?

       When to start? Answer: ASAP, with now being best.

       How to start?  Not as easy but the answer is usually right before our eyes.  As old school 12-step says, "Do what is in front of you to do."  Then follow it.  If it's a paper clip on the floor, pick it up and then see what's next.  If it's a phone call to make or hair to wash and comb, or a diaper to change, or a bed to make, or dishes to wash, or an appointment to keep, do it.  Then you'll see what comes next.

       If you can see what's in front of you to do and take healthy and practical action regardless of how you feel you are on a good road.  But maybe you can't see it.  Maybe you're so flooded with so many tasks and feelings that you are immobilized.  What then? That's when people ask, "What should I do?"

       Jeremy asks, should I clear out and organize my home?  I say, Yes!.

       Living with an eating disorder in control of your actions leads to chaos in your life and environment. Creating a healthy structure that will hold your life securely even when you feel insecure is the insurance you need to keep your life and your relationships intact.

       What's above reflects what's below and vice versa. Inner chaos creates outer chaos in your home, your file system, you closets, your kitchen cupboards, your closets, your work, your relationships. Everywhere you look you see the chaos theme reinforced.  That view goes in your psyche, and you feel hopeless and overwhelmed.

     You know where those feelings lead: binge, purge and more.

       So, by putting some order in your outer life you can give your psyche the signal of order and personal empowerment than can influence your state of mind.

       Yes, Jeremy. Clear the clutter out of your house.  It will help you clear out what's unnecessary in your mind. Get rid of what doesn't work for you, especially if it's broken.  That will help you get rid of your reliance on old ways of thinking that don't work for you. Put some beauty in your home.  That will help you smile and be more comfortable in your own skin.

       House organization is certainly not a substitute for ongoing and deep psychotherapy that is necessary for recovery. But, following the principles of Feng Shui in the home can help you bring more balance and health to your life and help your stabilize on your path to eating disorder recovery.

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

bulimia, anorexia, binge eating, compulsive overeating recovery work. www.poppink.com