Healing Your Hungry Heart. Joanna Poppink
at the conflict between what you want out of life versus what is required to maintain your eating disorder. You want genuine companionship, praise, love, and respect from people, but you have to keep your true self and current way of living hidden. You use some of your eating disorder behaviors to give you the “look” you believe you need for companionship, but you continue to find fault with your appearance. You want to control other people's perception so they see an image of you that is perfection and not you as you perceive yourself. Yet you feel lonely when you can't share your genuine experience. You want to feel safe and relaxed, yet you live under the stress of anticipating that you could be discovered as a fake at any time. This is an exhausting way to live.
Yet, in the secret world you create with your eating disorder, you do find some pleasure and relaxation. You feel confident and competent when you arrange for privacy in just the right setting with all your favorite binge foods. It can be fun to put on your loose-fitting clothes and select TV shows or several DVDs to get you through your binge. You've given yourself hours of unscheduled time for your big date with yourself—a total binge-fest. No one is home to interrupt your bingeing. You can throw up as many times as you like without having to hide the sound by running water in the tap or shower.
Instead of a binge-fest, you might have a date with the treadmill and run, even through agonizing pain. These planned episodes may bring you relief from anxiety for a while. You have a feeling of accomplishment because you created the time, space, and items you need for your binge/purge or treadmill episode. But doesn't desperation come in quickly? Aren't you frightened when the movie or program ends and you are in the real world again, surrounded by litter from your binge, your bloated belly aching, worried that you might not be able to throw it all up, scared that someone might come home early?
Your eating disorder seems to promise to get you through the day, the night, or the weekend by taking you to emotional peace. It assures you that you'll be safe, beautiful, protected, and able to hide what you want to. It swears that it will soothe and comfort you, promises that you can stay on task when you are anxious. Further, it promises that you don't need anybody or anything as long as you have your eating disorder by your side. You are willing and eager to leave the reality of your life based on those promises. But does your eating disorder deliver on these promises in reality? Can you see how your eating disorder actually perpetuates your isolation and loneliness?
The beauty promise is something to explore. You can't identify someone with an eating disorder by looking at her body. Someone suffering from an eating disorder might be obese, moderately heavy, a healthy weight, moderately thin, or emaciated. Someone at all levels of weight, including obese and emaciated, may not have an eating disorder.
If you are striving for the body beautiful, is it your goal to be able to look great for an occasion or to look great as you go about your normal activities? Do you need to apply cold water or ice on your neck glands, swollen from purging, to look good? Do you wear makeup to hide your haggardness and poor skin tone from starving? What physical consequences does your eating disorder deliver? Is it making you beautiful if you have to pour money into dentistry, plastic surgery, orthopedists, and nutritionists? What would it take for you to rebel against this giver of false promises?
When you recognize the false promises coming from your eating disorder, you are getting ready to recognize false promises coming from people in your life and from our culture as well. Paying attention to the lies your eating disorder tells is the first step in freeing you from the yoke of false promises so you can build a substantial life in reality.
You cannot identify the hypocrisy and false promises your eating disorder offers if you continue to defend your actions. When you believe false promises, you keep your disorder a secret, deny its control over you, and, when confronted, protest that the concern is not justified. Your life is fine, you are in control, and you can stop any time you want and others should mind their own business.
You don't want to recognize the extent that lies and false promises cripple your life. If you did, you could be overwhelmed by debilitating shame. You've lost weight and regained. You've gained weight and lost it again. You've weaned yourself off the treadmill once, but now you're running yourself to the bone again. You're isolated because you know people will see your body and wonder what has happened to you.
As you approach your genuine torment, you approach your genuine recovery work. . . . You are afraid you will pass your eating disorder on to your children. You are weary of looking into the toilet bowl while you are retching. You want to stop worrying about breaking your bones, hurting your heart, ravaging your esophagus, and destroying your teeth. You want to stop having an eating disorder.
Paying attention to the lies your eating disorder tells is the first step in freeing you from the yoke of false promises so you can build a substantial life in reality.
Stop. Breathe. Instead of focusing on what you want to stop, focus on what you want to start. Ask yourself, “What could my life look like if I were free of this eating disorder?” Below is a list of possibilities. Check off what applies to you and add more that come to your heart and mind.
What could my life look like if I were free of this eating disorder?
1 I have no secrets.
2 I don't lie.
3 I'm at ease around food.
4 I say what I think.
5 I form friendships based on mutual respect.
6 I am confident and generous.
7 I let people see the real me.
8 I love sincerely.
9 I allow and accept love from other people.
With your eating disorder gone, ask: “What happens to my health?” You may not know specifically how your eating disorder affects your body and mind, but you know it must. A beginning list of possibilities could be:
How could my health improve if I didn't have an eating disorder anymore?
1 I think more clearly.
2 I have more physical energy.
3 I menstruate on a regular basis.
4 My teeth and gums are healthy.
5 My heart and digestive system function with less stress.
As you recover you will experience unexpected joy as your body reveals to you the benefits of living in health. Your physical symptoms come from malnutrition, excessive exercise, sleep deprivation, and lack of basic self-care plus the stress of maintaining your eating disorder. When this stress ends in recovery, you will find yourself more at ease with other people and in your own skin.
These may sound like false promises to you. Living with an eating disorder, you are accustomed to false promises. But, in time, you'll discover these benefits for yourself.
In the present, as you read these pages, your eating disordered mind asks, “What will people think if I don't have my eating disorder, and they see me for what and who I am? With that thought, the fears and fantasies that power your eating disorder rise up in a torrent of self-condemnations: “I am unlovable, ugly, stupid, boring, incompetent, inadequate, and unacceptable in all ways. Don't try to trick me with health. Health means being fat.”
You may be shaking your head at this and asking “How can I know that these harsh judgments are not true?” I know they are untrue because you have an eating disorder, and I also had one.
Look at what you've been doing to figure out and carry out the necessary activities for getting your binge foods, keeping your activities secret, having a private place to act out, gathering the financial resources to get your supplies, and creating appropriate and convincing lies when necessary. These are skills and talents that, unfortunately, you use against yourself. However, they are your natural resources, and you can use them for something else once you no longer need your eating disorder. That's how I know.
Let your wise voice support you as you twist and turn your way