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
Mothers with eating disorders
Women with eating disorders can be mothers. Some come to my practice
because they want to heal for the sake of their children. They do not want
their children to have eating disorders or suffer because their mother
is ill.
These often are women who could not rally themselves to put their own
well being first and get help earlier. Maternal love pushes them to be stronger
and more courageous and determined than they dreamed possible. They
seek recovery for the sake of their children.
At a garden party last week end where most of the guests were new parents
I heard one mother voice concerns I hadn’t considered. I felt startled and humbled
by my own thinking deficit. She spoke to me about a situation I am not likely to
see in my practice.
Her child is three years old. One of her child’s best friends from school is being
raised by a mother with an obvious eating disorder. That three year old child is
concerned about carbohydrates and about getting fat.
The mother I was speaking with didn’t t want that influence on her three year old
daughter and was struggling with the idea of breaking up the friendship between these
children. She is probably going to put an end to play-dates with the child from the
eating disorder situation.
I can appreciate the mother’s concerns for her child. Eating disorder thinking
and behaviors are beginning in children at increasingly younger ages.
My hunch is that the mother with the eating disorder would be horrified to learn
that her illness is apparent and already having a powerful effect on her young daughter’s
emotions, thinking, behavior and social relationships.
Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA
bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery: www.poppink.com
Symptoms are not people
People with eating disorders often don’t know the difference between their
symptoms and who they authentically are. Our culture doesn”t help. Women and
men are often applauded for some symptoms and criticized for others because our
culture doesn’t recognize the difference between a symptom and a healthy human
being.
Long before I became a psychotherapist I read the book, Captain Newman,
M.D. The book made a powerful impact on my developing sense of being human
with other human beings. One scene in particular, stayed with me then and
remains a vivid image today.
Captain Newman, M.D. was made into a movie starring Gregory Peck, Angie
Dickinson and Bobbie Darrin. I wondered hopefully if my favorite scene would
make the editor’s cut. It did.
Peck, in the title role, was a psychiatrist in the army in charge of a ward full
of PTSD soldiers.
At one point Peck is with a seriously disturbed patient, played by Darrin.
Darrin is wildly upset and Peck is shouting.
Later the nurse, Dickinson, expresses her disappointment and horror with
Peck saying, "How could you shout at your patient like that?"
I can still remember the flood of new awareness and compassion that filled
me at that moment in the story.
Author, Leo Calvin Rosten, gave me an early lesson in how to perceive as a
psychotherapist. Symptoms are not people.
This theme will come up often in my blogs. A powerful and profound
aspect of eating disorder recovery occurs when a person with an eating disorder
discovers that she is a valuable human being with untapped riches that are blocked,
not by her character or basic nature, but by symptoms.
When a person even gets a hint of this fact, she feels a surge of hope and
renewed dedication to getting well.
Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA
bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery: www.poppink.com
Early Inspiration in Eating Disorder Recovery
Eating Disorders define a person’s life. An eating disorder requires
intelligence, strategy, commitment, endurance, strength, organization
and secrecy, money, acting skills, ability to influence, persuade and
manipulate others repeatedly. I’ll go Into more requirements to sustain
an eating disorder in another post.
An inspiring question that often helps an individual get on
her healing path is this:
"If I used all the time, energy, skills, strategizing, intellectual and
emotional involvement I devote to my eating disorder to something else,
what could I do in life?"
This is often a staggering question, and people are shocked by
the answer that occurs to them. Answers come in many forms, usually in a
low murmuring voice with a hand over the mouth where I can barely hear
and actually need to ask for repetition.
support myself and my children."
"I could write my book….make my film…..design
my clothes…..start and run my business…..
create a school….."
who has been living a limited life controlled by all that an eating
disorder involves.
And maybe those possibilities are real. The point is that when a
person genuinely looks at everything she does, thinks, feels, says in
a day that involves her eating disorder and then thinks about what she
could do what that energy and those skills if she were free she gets a
glimpse of a new world.
world if she were free.
She doesn’t know what she would do or how, but she gets an
emotional and physical sensation of freedom, just for a moment.
She gets a sense of what might be possible if all her resources could
be channeled toward something that would make her life worth living.
Sometimes people ask that question of themselves, and the revelation
leads them to psychotherapy. Sometimes people need to be asked.
When I bring that question to people with an eating disorder I see
faces change. Eyes fill with tears. Voices quaver, so afraid to speak what
seems too good to be true A feeling of bewilderment and hope permeates
the room. This momentous shift in awareness and sense of possibility
always touches my heart.
It’s a long road between that moment and full recovery, but that
moment of awakening can be the start of a deep and rich healing journey.
Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA
bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery: www.poppink.com
Professional Confidentiality and Blogging
Blogging is public and psychotherapy is private.
Sharing my knowledge with you is a challenge.
but from intimate meetings with courageous and determined people who
have given me their trust. The work takes place in what I consider sacred space.
patients and I share is impenetrable to others and solid for us.
So please understand, when I give examples I am describing people who are not
and never have been patients or I am creating a fictitious person who represents
what I have seen and heard over many years of being in the field of eating disorder
recovery.
will be honoring the confidentiality of my patients - past and present. I hope you
understand and can appreciate this aspect of my blog.
Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA
bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery: www.poppink.com
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