finish food that is partially eaten, like a container of ice cream. Then you replace the carton with another that is the same size, brand, and flavor, eating from it until the amount of ice cream matches the original before you took any.
You may pour hot sauce or hot spices on your food, not because you like the spices, but so the food will burn your mouth and throat and stomach. You hope that the pain involved with every bite will slow down your ability to binge or stop you completely. If any of these examples sound familiar to you, you have an eating disorder.
Eating disorder indications take many forms. You cut food into many tiny pieces. You feel busy, thoroughly occupied, and safe for the moment while you are cutting because you are close to food but not eating. When you are eating with others you spit food into your napkin and hide it under your plate. You are angry or anxious if someone comments on what you are eating.
Appetite control drugs won't stop this kind of behavior, because you are not reacting to food on the basis of physical hunger. When you see what may be your own episodes articulated, you are more likely to sense the anguish and almost blind fear and desperation behind the behavior. Awareness of proper nutrition and portion size for a healthy body is irrelevant to your needs on these occasions. Strict dieting only pulls back these urges like a sling shot. As your fears and tensions build, you snap back into an even more voracious binge episode with or without purging.
If you are anorexic, you may starve for long periods of time and then break through with a binge that would amaze even a bulimic woman. The purging afterwards can bring up blood as well as food. You might pass out.
Internally, you may feel like you're warding off an incoming dark, rolling thundercloud that could destroy you unless you reach for your eating disorder behavior. Recovery is about developing ways to cope with such feelings without resorting to self-destructive behavior.
I often tell a new client that I'm not going to take her eating disorder away from her. I can't.
I often tell a new client that I'm not going to take her eating disorder away. I can't. I don't know how, and even if I did know how, I wouldn't. It's serving a purpose. To strip your eating disorder away would leave you exposed and vulnerable to your unbearable fears with no protection. It would be like taking off your armor in the middle of a battle. Yes, the armor is heavy. You are hot and sticky in there. You can't move quickly. You could drown in a stream. You can't touch another person or feel another's touch. But the armor does protect you from arrows and spears that are coming at you from all directions. You take off armor when you can take care of yourself. Then the benefits of your defense outweigh the discomforts and risks. You seek recovery work when you realize the eating disorder you rely on to soothe you is causing more suffering than you can accept. Or you seek recovery when your eating disorder fails and you can no longer use it for emotional relief.
As you recognize symptoms and situations that relate to your eating disorder and understand that they are not fundamental to your nature, you develop more distance and more curiosity about them. This helps you be more gentle and patient with yourself. When your self-criticism diminishes, you are free to take new recovery steps.
You may discover you have unusual attitudes about food. Some foods may seem to have the power to call out with emotional messages, memories, promises, threats, joys, or dangers. Perhaps pasta, pancakes, Asian noodles, popcorn, or ice cream seem to promise you a safe haven. You can eat these foods and be comforted. Perhaps chocolate kisses or chocolate-covered cherries or thick grilled cheese sandwiches, or bananas with peanut butter, or whole jars of olives, or bread heavily laden with melted butter were family favorites and indulgences when you were a child. Perhaps your family had lovely private times together while eating these foods. Thus, they call to you when you are craving safety or intimacy—or maybe they frighten you for the same reason. The glitch in your system that creates the eating disorder is that you go for the symbol rather than the real thing. If you don't know a realistic way to bring safety and ease into your life, you may eat or starve to reach your personal safe haven.
You may have a loved one in your life who also has difficulties with food. He or she may encourage you to eat more than is healthy and satisfying for you or less than is adequate to sustain a healthy weight.
Nora, fifty-five, has suffered from compulsive overeating since she was a teenager. When she was a teen, her mother criticized her for being fat during the day but secretly gave her deep-fried peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate shakes at night when everyone had gone to bed. Nora liked the experience of kindness and intimacy with her mother during those times. Now, without realizing it, she tries to reclaim that sense of being loved through food.
The glitch in your system that creates the eating disorder is that you go for the symbol rather than the real thing.
Sylvia, twenty-three, said she had no control or influence over her finances and lived with her aunt, who locked the refrigerators and cupboards and carefully monitored Sylvia's eating allowance—small portions of inexpensive food—while the aunt ate normally. Sylvia, very thin, suffered from a kind of anorexia. She was caught in a system that perpetuated the eating disorder. Away from that environment, when a friend offered her food, she was afraid to eat, afraid of being punished for disobeying the rules she believed she must live by.
One afternoon, while I was grocery shopping, I saw a young woman I knew shopping with her mother. Martha was EDNOS with strong anorexic symptoms. She didn't see me, and her mother didn't know me. The pair was hovering over a fruit display. I saw Martha caress apples, bananas, and mangos and look questioningly at her mother. Her mother frowned and shook her head. Martha, carrying an empty shopping basket, like a beggar woman hoping for crumbs, walked alongside her mother as she filled her cart with food that was destined for a locked refrigerator.
Martha, though intelligent and creative, didn't have a sturdy enough psyche to create a life of her own where she could earn her own money to buy and eat her own food. She was well educated, but she had been sexually molested regularly and was physically abused as a young child. Her mother, perhaps unaware of her jealousy and rage, treated her like an unwanted captive. Her distant father considered her a sexual toy. The young woman's heart, spirit, and ability to be her true self were locked away in a psychological prison long ago. She didn't have access to a way out yet.
Martha haunts me. I wonder how many women are like her. What doorway or window, or glimmer of light, could reach through her interior prison so she could begin to move toward recovery as I hope you are doing? Maybe she is reading this book.
Cooking masses of food for family and friends or as a caterer, yet not eating anything yourself, is another warning sign. Carolyn, forty-seven and a working professional, watched friends eat food she longed to eat herself. She used all the control she could muster to deny herself the nourishment she craved and her body needed. She felt proud of her success in not eating.
Carolyn needed to maintain a sense of superiority over other people. She believed she could live without what she considered to be mundane needs for physical nourishment. She felt others were stuck in heavy body prisons while she was moving beyond the need of her slight frame. She was striving to be perfect, a pure spirit with no need for the gross consumption of food. She used the words, “It will make me fat” frequently, but her real fear was that food would make her solid and present and part of the human community. If that happened, she wouldn't be able to find safety through her pursuit of being light, untouchable, and perfect. This issue of striving for self-defined perfection will come up again in future chapters.
Cleo, forty-two, looked at foods with a sauce as dangerous because they might taste good. She feared that if she took one mouthful of a food that tasted good to her, she would have no control, eat too much, and get fat before she left the table. Cleo behaved as if her imagined fear was a real threat. She believed if she reached for something
