I rarely work with eating disorders, if I can help it. My own history was so painful, shame-ridden and protracted, that I fear I will not have the patience or sufficient compassion to bear witness to its agonies. In my long life, I have seen progression in the larger world of food fads, diet and weight loss programs, “treatments” and often costly and lucrative products and regimens, claiming to be a magic bullet, for what in my experience was a trauma dysregulation symptom. I will start with the happy ending: that I have for the past 25 years or so, been blessedly free of the tyranny and the 24/7 nightmare of food obsession and compulsion. I am infinitely grateful. It is one of those things that I always remember how it was.
Beginning when I was probably three or four, I was always referred to as a “bad eater.” I did not like meat and it was a perpetual fight to get me to eat it. I remember scenes with my mother chasing me around the table brandishing a large serving spoon which she occasionally used to give me a whack. My great Aunt Gertrud, who took care of me when I was small, called me a “dickkopf,” which roughly translates to “stubborn mule,” for being so impossible around food. My parents both had histories of true hunger. My dad told us stories of “bread and worms,” and of how when he first got to the US he was overcome with awe and wonder at the abundance on grocery store shelves. He told us he could not stop drinking milk, simply because he could. Of course, I felt terrible guilt and shame about my privilege, and about my unreasonable insistence on eating and not eating what I wanted. In those days it was common to say to children “Clean your plate! Children are starving in Europe!” And like many kids, I wondered how eating all my food would help them…
By the age of 11, I discovered, unconsciously of course, that not eating was an effective way to numb out or even experience a kind of light-headed high. It was also 1966, when the super-model on all the magazine covers was Twiggy, the rain thin sensation. Her extreme androgenous skinny-ness and copious eye lashes, made her the icon of the “London look,” which was compelling to adolescent girls. So, besides the self-regulation which I never really noticed consciously, it was rather cool getting skinnier and skinnier. And because I was invisible anyway, no one noticed that made little body was rapidly disappearing…until quite late in the game. I had hit 79 pounds (5 stone, 9 pounds,) which on my then five-foot, four-inch frame was pretty Twiggy-like. Passing out in a public place was unavoidably conspicuous, and my parents were compelled to notice. I could not stand on my feet, let alone walk down the hall to the bathroom, from my bedroom where I convalesced for about a month. Then they were upset with me for doing this to myself, and to them. In those days there was really no awareness of anorexia or eating disorders. I scoured the library and the card catalog for any crumbs of information, and found one lonely book that had about half a page about anorexia, and from a psychoanalytic perspective. In effect, and certainly in my family, I was just a “bad girl.”
My mom had a little bottle of Sucaryl, tiny pills of low-calorie sweetener, that were taken off the market by 1966 for containing “cyclamates” which were found to be carcinogenic. Until then, I had no awareness of weight loss aids. In 1963, Weight Watchers (WW) came on the scene. My Aunt Irma was a champion of WW. For me, simple starvation worked “great.”
The confusing thing about anorexia, or my anorexia anyway, was that on the one hand it seemed like a miracle of “self-control,” except it was a completely out of control form of self-control, I really had no choice about starting and stopping. It was completely and utterly compulsive. And the terror of gaining weight was so extreme that it took over my mind, thoughts and behavior like a fierce and threatening dictator. The obsessive thoughts about eating and not eating, food and weight, was a full-time occupation. Amazing that I was able to do my school work. And I felt like some sort of an alien. On one hand I “did not need to eat” but on the other, I did not “get to eat” like other people did. I was fascinated by what was in their shopping carts and on their plates.
And then as mysteriously as the starving had begun, to my horror and shock, I began to ferociously binge. At night, standing at the kitchen counter alone, I would ravenously consume whole cartons, usually at least a half-gallon (about two liters,) maybe more. Mint chocolate chip, butter brickle, caramel swirl, it was my secret world, except somehow the freezer was always stocked. I guess my parents bought it, a grand unspoken collusion. And in the wee hours of the morning, I would sneak silently out of the house and run marathon distances through the dark streets, stealthily creeping back into the house, hiding my sweaty clothes in the back of the closet, and crawling back into bed as if I had never been gone. I was like a rat on a wheel. There was no getting off. I don’t know how many years this went on for. When I broke my leg with fatigue fracture, I turned to swimming, which I did not like nearly as much, and I could not keep it hidden. At the time, I had no idea about regulation and dysregulation, self-medicating and altering my state. But it worked. The sugar and the activity had me in my own, distant world.
Sometimes I spent hours going to stores and trying on clothes. I had no intention of buying them. I would load up the dressing room with piles of clothing of the smallest sizes, trying to figure out how big or small I was. Like the old Talking Head song belted out, “…Changed my hairstyle so many times, I don’t know what I look like!” Beset with shame, I would slink out of one store and move on to the next one. I had no idea who I was, and I was miserable.
Like every other girl and probably other genders as well, I watched the parade of books, programs, gimmicks and products, food fads and trends, and tried everything except the residential program, although I would have loved to. The idea of having someone else managing my intake, and being my regulator, was a perfect match for my longing for a real caregiver. I also learned that alcohol had a similar effect, so I could binge on that. The two analgesics became interchangeable. Thankfully I never tried to purge. When I finally stopped drinking, I started starving again. In AA they call changing from one substance to another, “switching seats in the Titanic.”
Flight
As I came to understand trauma and my trauma, and to study both, I began to learn about dysregulation, self-soothing, and flight. The first somatic work I ever encountered was in 1979 or thereabouts. It was called Self-Acceptance Training, and it combined sensory awareness with Gestalt. I don’t really remember much. But I remember sitting in those groups and hearing others talk about eating issues in the past tense, and could not imagine that could ever happen to me. Around the same time, I had the experience of being Rolfed. My very skilled Rolfer was able to help me recognize when I “went away.” I had no idea how dissociated I was. Just as I had when I was trying every imaginable diet and weight control approach, I tried, studied and practiced every new trauma and somatic approach. I was dogged. And as I went along, between an intensive, deep, long-term attachment-based psychotherapy, I gradually began to heal, in all the various ways, not just this one. My journey took many years, and a ton of hard work. But joyfully I became eventually quite free of the whole thing. I eat whatever I want, and seem to prefer good food. I have not eaten ice cream in maybe a decade. It simply does not call to me anymore. I have no “rules.” And some years later, with the help of a longtime beloved personal trainer, I was able to think of myself as an athlete, rather than my physical pursuits being nothing more than chasing calories.
Food is a complex substance: so wound in with attachment and regulation, there is bound to be something very integral about it, either hormonal or genetic. It is certainly a vehicle of regulation. I find cheese making and sourdough baking to be immensely regulating, joyful and yes, healing. Both are alive and growing. And I love the making, the waiting, the eating and the sharing. I truly have not understood my journey, but I have come to understand my eating history as very much a trauma story, and its healing being very much that.
Mysteries
When the new weight loss drugs burst on the scene, certainly in the US, I was skeptical and suspicious at best of pharmaceutical wonders, especially when there appears to be what might seem like a massive fortune to be made…by someone. Even more so about weight loss where I have seen miraculous snake oil of every ilk march by in fabulous processions, make millions for someone’s gain, and tons of weight lost and gained by the sufferers. This one, only the “blessed” few can afford.
I have been confused and mystified, hearing testimonials, even from people I know and respect, that with these new medicines “food noise” and compulsivity’s vanished, poof! The obsession…gone. Hard to imagine. The hitch being that like every other “diet” and remedy I have known about, like Cinderella, when the medicine is discontinued, one “turns into a pumpkin once again. So, one is chained to another costly ball, but at least it is a more pleasant one. Oh well, in this country it is the season of pumpkins!
So, I am mystified, or gobsmacked, as my British friends say. Having come to associate eating disorders, even though some families seem to share the propensity for them, as manifestations of dysregulation, or symptoms of incident trauma and attachment trauma, and serve the same kinds of soothing functions as many other compulsive behaviors and addictions. Although my healing was a protracted agony, I have not regretted it once it was behind me, as I understand this affliction better. But I never have quite understood the complexities of the physiology, chemistry and genetics, the interplay between body and experience. So, I surely don’t understand this! What do you think?
