Eating Disorders and the Challenge in Asking for Help: An Artist’s Perspective
Stop Eating Disorders Welcomes Guest Blogger, Janna Stern, Gifted Artist and Great Friend
I’m an artist, an M.D., a wife, mother and grandmother with a passionate interest and concern for people who suffer from eating disorders. I feel honored to be asked to contribute some of my work as a guest on Joanna’s blog as I find her dedication to the cause and her work to be on target.
My painting: “In God’s Ear.” can be viewed at http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exhibitions/stern/.
My thoughts about how the image relates to eating disorders:
People look for a savior. Both the afflicted and those who love them or are trying to help them cry out for help.
They feel likes dolls at the mercy of some autocratic or whimsical owner. There is no clear path.
Nearly everyone acknowledges a superior being and tries to reach out to a deity for solace and direction. The doll looks so weary and helpless, as if it has been cast aside several times in searching for a savior that never came.
Most people with eating disorders only trust themselves and feel safe with their own system of maintaining control and order. When everything in the world is out of control, they ultimately are in control of what they do and where they seek comfort.
Janna Stern, M.D. artist
email: janna@jannastern.com
URL: http://www.jannastern.com
Facing Unseen Physical Problems caused by Eating Disorders
* “Obviously, my body doesn’t believe a word my brain is saying.” Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes Collection
The osteoporosis aspect of eating disorders doesn’t seem to be a concern to people in the throes of their eating disorder.
Osteoporosis doesn’t hurt and doesn’t show. Tooth enamel loss, hair loss, weight gain or loss, skin eruptions all show. The visual is what gets a woman’s attention. Unfortunately she tries to correct the visual without addressing the deep cause of her troubles, her eating disorder.
The unseen damage remains out of awareness for a while: osteoporosis, esophagus tearing, electrolyte imbalance, risk to heart, dizziness from blood sugar imbalance, organ damage, hormonal disruption and the impairment of judgment based on lack of sleep and lack of proper nourishment.
The unpleasant reality is that reality won’t go away. Any acting out of any eating disorder serves to numb a person’s feelings and dim her awareness of what is going on around her.
But turning off awareness does not mean turning off the fact. Living in a state of oblivion doesn’t halt the damage being done.
Oblivion needs to fail as soon as possible.
That failure and the vision of what is actually happening to her body is a terrible shock and brings up terrific anxiety. The challenge is to not use that anxiety as a trigger to binge or purge or starve or exercise to bone breaking lengths.
The challenge is to use that fear and anxiety, that glimpse of reality, to address the eating disorder realistically and start working with a mental health professional who specializes in eating disorder treatment. The challenge is to get even more awareness and get her healing work underway.
* quote from Calvin and Hobbes, p. 7 Scientific Progress Goes “Boink”, by Bill Watterson, Andrews and McMeel Press, 1991.
http://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Progress-Goes-Boink-Collection/dp/0836218787
Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery, www.poppink.com
Coping with Feelings after New Years
A Nourishing Treat for Getting Through This Week Well
As you move through this first week of the New Year, I recommend that you read or re-read Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces.
This is the classic that can guide your through your journey to eating disorder recovery. Even if you
don’t see the relevance, your unconscious will gladly take in the healthy nourishment Campbell has to offer.
I met Joe many years ago at an imagery conference at UCLA. We met in a big hall outside the workshops. Many of the speakers and workshops were good, but at that moment I was fleeing a bad presentation. Joe was also in flight from something he couldn’t bear as well.
We sat on a step at the bottom of the staircase and talked for well over an hour. The energy, honesty, humanity and richness of the man came through so well I can feel him today. He also had a twinkle in his eye for attractive young women which I enjoyed. After all, he was a most popular professor at Sarah Lawrence for many years.
Many books came later. His influence on the creation of Star Wars came later yet.
But give yourself a gift and a boost into healing by reading his first book, the book he wrote when he was a young man starting his own journey. Enjoy.
I encourage to discover how you already are the heroine of your life.
Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery, www.poppink.com
Hung Over or Exhausted or Frightened?
The week after New Years can be tough. Fantasies around New Years may be more powerful than Christmas wishes. New Years is often a time of hope for the end of eating disorder symptoms.
You hope for the beginning of a new and true love. You hope that at last, you can be your real self, be recognized as the quality person you are and welcome peace and opportunity in your life.
When all those wishes don’t come true as the New Year opens the disappointment can be intense. That disappointment can bring on a state of depression where you have low energy and just want to cry
alone with your best friend - bulimia.
Please, hold out. You might be hung over from too much of everything over the holiday. You might be exhausted from activity and tension. You might be frightened because of the sudden transition from holiday to quiet regular life.
Maybe you are experiencing all three.
Give yourself a chance to adapt to the shifts your mind, heart, body and emotions need to make after the holidays.
A big tip that always needs reminding, that all of us tend to forget:
Don’t get too hungry.
Don’t get too thirsty.
Don’t get too tired.
Hunger, dehydration and fatigue will play havoc with your emotions, your ability to think and your ability to perceive realistically.
Give yourself a few days of eating three healthy meals a day, drinking 6 - 8 glasses of water a day and
getting eight hours of sleep at night.
You will be happily surprised at how much better life looks.
This is not a cure for bulimia. But it is a way to catch hold of some health so you can take the steps
necessary for solid recovery. And wouldn’t that be a nice way to start the New Year?
Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery, www.poppink.com
Bulimia Emergency Tips for New Years
When your gut trembles and aches with fear, when your upper arms seem to vibrate on their own, when the back of your throat aches, when what you see begins to have an unreal quality you are experiencing raw vulnerability that is a prelude to a binge/purge episode.
If you suffer from bulimia the end of a holiday season can leave you in this fragile emotional condition. You may attempt to use rage to wipe out these feelings. You may try to control the people around you to
prove your power when deep down you feel powerless. You may want to hide under the covers or throw a full on tantrum.
Please remember these are symptoms of your illness. You can get through this.
After the holidays a quiet comes to town, which is difficult for a person with bulimia to bear. Generally people use the after holiday time to rest, clean up, see how much money they’ve spent and get ready
to go back to school or work.
A person with bulimia can’t move smoothly from high-energy conditions to a calm and even state.
Other people relax after an intense time. They rest and regroup. The bulimic person crashes and feels frightened and unstable.
This instability can set off one binge/purge episode or a series of binges and purges that can last for days or weeks.
If you are near this state, please remember to be kind and giving to yourself. Try these simple tasks:
1. Take a shower and wash your hair
2. Make your bed
3. Eat breakfast and immediately go for a walk
4. Go to an OA meeting
5. Call your therapist. If you don’t have one, start looking for one.
6. Go to an animal rescue shelter and volunteer to walk a dog
7. Go to the library and write thank you notes to anyone you can think of
8. Look at something you usually think is beautiful – even if nothing seems beautiful now.
9. Postpone your binge or purge. Start thinking about what else can nourish you.
10. Journal, journal, journal.
Find ways to put yourself in environments that nurture healing, creativity and learning. Someday you will create that for yourself. For now, stretch yourself in that direction because every moment of your life can be the beginning of a New Year for you.
Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery, www.poppink.com
Eating Disorder Recovery Tip: Greet the New Year with a Gratitude Journal
Why not greet with New Year with a gratitude journal?
You can start by putting a reminder note on your bathroom sink mirror that says, “Add one item to your gratitude journal, no matter how small.”
The “no matter how small” is essential. Looking in any mirror at any time for an eating disorder person can be a trial. Mirrors, like scales, bring out the ferocious and unrelenting inner critic, merciless and condemning.
Meeting that critic with a gratitude reminder can help prevent a person from spiraling into a bleak emotional state that could well trigger an eating disorder episode.
A gratitude journal can help all of us open our minds and hearts to the positive aspects of living and of our lives in particular.
You might think, “Well, I can’t do that because I have nothing to be grateful for. My life is a mess.”
If you are caught in that kind of downward thinking we need to find a way to reverse the direction and bring you up, not to elation but to a normal steady state that can perceive realistically.
So we get very basic. If you don’t like your nose you can still be grateful that you have a nose. Some people don’t.
If you don’t like your residence, you can still be grateful that you have shelter.
If you don’t like your body you can still be grateful you have a body that functions, however imperfectly.
If you are isolated and alone you can still be grateful that telephones, e-mail, pen and paper exist and you can make moves to connect with others when you are ready to make that choice.
Perhaps we could make a gratitude list on this blog with your comments. That might help people who are stuck in bleakness to get out into new and more happy possibilities.
Right now, I’m grateful for the Internet and the development of the blog. The blog gives me an opportunity to speak more directly to people with eating disorders and share what I’ve been learning all my life about what it takes to recover.
Gratitude can open a door to a more healthy and happy New Year.
We are right on time when we start our recovery work. Now is always the right time.
Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA; bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery, www.poppink.com
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