Eating Disorder Symptoms and Effective Eating Disorder Treatment Don’t Have a Straight Line Connection
A Human Journey
Years ago, when my daughter was a girl, she and I sat atop a heavy black rock encrusted knoll in Dartmoor, in Cornwall England on a lovely spring afternoon.
The Territory
The vista before us was Cornwall in its glory. Before us unfolded the moors, forest and hills, meadows, streams and a river, a few tiny villages, pools of glittering water that might have been small lakes.
The Goal
We picked a point in the distance, she what appealed to her and I what appealed to me. Taking turns we discussed how we might reach our goals.
First Quick Plan
“How could you get there?”
Stretching out her arm to follow her gaze, she said, “I’d go over there.”
“But there are no roads. How could you even get down this hill to the other side?
A bird could fly over everything and get there, but how could you?”
Developing Realistic Plan
Pause. Narrowing eyes. Little wheels turning in the skull under that shining long dark hair.
“I’d need a rope and strong shoes to climb down the rocks on this hill. And jeans too. Otherwise the rocks would hurt my knees. (She was wearing shorts.)
“Mmmm,” I replied. “So you would need equipment.”
“Yes.”
Strategy
What followed was a lengthy analytic discussion of what we would need to transverse the magnificent territory before us.
We looked at the details of a river and discussed whether we would have to go miles above to where it was less broad or if we could swim it or build a bridge across it, or maybe use the rope to swing over. Ah, but nothing was there to tie the rope.
We had to evaluate our strength and swimming skills deciding that we couldn’t’ make the final decision until we were closer because we had to take the current into consideration.
Risk Factors
Was it worth the risk of using our resources to get to the river close at hand if we couldn’t cross it and had to trek beyond to find an easier crossing?
We factored beauty into our calculations. Looking at how the river gracefully curved through the forest and meadows we decided that a long walk, even camping along side that river, even though it took us off course for a while, would be worth it.
We could double back on the other side and cross the meadows beyond. Cows? Okay. Ponies? Okay. Sheep? Okay. Bulls? No. We’d have to determine the challenges we would be facing and which we could deal with and which we could not.
Possible Assistance
Maybe we could get help along the way? Possibly. We could check at a village to get a better understanding of our course, maybe get supplies. Maybe even get a guide for part of the way.
What does this warm and lovely memory have to do with eating disorder recovery?
Eating Disorder Recovery Journey - Your Goal
You see your goal. No more eating disorder.
The straight line, as a bird flies, to your goal is to stop all symptoms. Then you are done. You arrive at your destination.
But you are not a bird. And you can’t stop symptoms of an illness through will power.
But you can decide to go for your beautiful goal of health and freedom.
Realistic Appraisal and Strategy
Then comes the evaluation of what you need as you proceed. That has to do with a realistic appraisal of your situation and your resources, who you can rely on, what unpredictable challenges you will meet, what tools and equipment you need to bring with you, how to recognize how to avoid danger as much as possible and how to avail yourself of help along the way.
Symptom End versus Health and Freedom
Descriptions of eating disorder symptoms abound in literature and across the Internet. Many of those symptoms are a danger to health and even life. But no one gets scared into stopping symptoms.
People do get scared into trying to modify symptoms, like only bingeing on healthful foods. But that’s no answer and no way to reach your goal of health and freedom.
Journey to Health
Effective treatment that leads to eating disorder recovery is a journey. You need trusted and competent companions, just one for starters. You need information. You need resources.
You develop resources as you go, like greater understanding and appreciation for what it takes to live in your own skin as you participate in the world. You develop particular skills learned in therapy but also learned in classes and life experiences.
You learn how to evaluate your situation, be considerate and respectful of your feelings. You then reflect on your awareness so you can take steps based on your strengths.
If your strengths are not adequate for a task you have learned how to recognize competent and trustworthy people so you can then ask for help and use that help.
Adventure
The journey to eating disorder recovery, like any adventure, involves fear and discomfort but also involves beauty and joy. The recovery journey involves the abiding pleasure of developing physical, mental and emotional strengths and knowing you can rely on your strengths in this world.
The key to eating disorder recovery is not to focus on how terrible the symptoms are. The key is to focus on the life of freedom and health you want. Then you can advance on your journey to the goals you have chosen based on your mind and your heart.
It’s not a straight-line journey. But it is a grand journey.
Eating Disorder Recovery and Nourishing Your Right Hemisphere
Misunderstood Nourishment
Food is nourishment. This is an obvious fact. But eating disorders aren’t about nourishment, at least not nourishment for the body.
If you have an eating disorder you eat too much or too little or of types of food that provide little or no physical sustenance.
You know, and so much on the Internet repeats, that you eat or starve for emotional reasons, for soothing, for going numb. You eat or don’t eat in order to treat your body as if it were a thing whose shape and size you can control (or can’t control).
But what does using food this way actually mean? Why use food, which is supposed to sustain life, in a life destructive manner?
Suppose You Can Find Real Nourishment
Will you suppose with me?
Suppose you need nourishment of a kind you don’t recognize.
Suppose the right hemisphere of your brain, the source of intuitive awareness, emotional intelligence, creativity and emotional wisdom concerning self and others is neglected and ignored.
Suppose this half of your very existence is denied.
Suppose deep yearnings that come from this side of you are experienced as irrational, illogical, neurotic, childish, inefficient, and probably part of some anxiety problem.
Suppose then, you attempt to squelch all that yearning by overwhelming it with bingeing, purging, starving, compulsive eating activities that go along with an eating disorder.
Suppose you are substituting physical nourishment for the nourishment you actually need because you don’t know how to honor yearnings coming from your right hemisphere.
Granted, this is a lot of supposing.
But what if you were “looking for love in all the wrong places?”
A Personal Experiment in Nourishing Yourself
I propose, that as an experiment, you give some nourishment to your right hemisphere.
For starters, read some fairy tales. Go to the library or a bookstore and get the old unabridged as close to the original as possible versions. The Yellow Fairy Book is a nice place to start.
If you have one or more favorites from childhood, read them again with the adult mind you have now.
Read The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.Lewis,
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (the original version), by Lewis Carroll,
The Moonintrolls by Trove Jansson,
Peter Pan, by James Barry,
The Little Lame Prince by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (watch out on this one. The original is wonderful. The picture book and other new versions drain the story of its depth and significance).
Give your right brain some nourishment, some attention, some images and stories to sustain and strengthen you.
Read some poetry.
Walk slowly through an art museum and place your eyes in front of some master works. Even if you think you are not interested, give yourself this opportunity. Your left hemisphere may not be interested in art.
However, your eyes have access to both side of your brain and the nourishment from the art will get in to your right.
You might be surprised at your ability to be present in this world in a more expanded way when you give yourself the kind of nourishment you didn’t know you craved.
Dreams
Pay attention to your dreams, especially when you are giving your right brain the nourishment and images to speak through your dreams in ways you may more readily understand.
Keep a dream journal, and see what happens.
Eating Disorder Recovery
You may not know keys exist in your right hemisphere. They yearn to be used to open doors to your more full and complete life. If you nourish your right brain you have an opportunity to satisfy those yearnings you know so well.
Moving into recovery from an eating disorder doesn’t mean stopping the behaviors. It means learning to truly nourish yourself. It means shedding those eating disorder behaviors as the real, complete and self sustaining you emerges in the world.
Do I believe fairy tales and art can cure eating disorders? Of course not. Do I believe that all of you is worth nourishing well and that real nourishment is needed so false nourishment can be dropped. Yes, I do.
Eating Disorder Recovery: Amazing Day
Today has been quite moving and confirming. It seems that when I begin to wonder if I’m making any headway in my work I get gifts.
Los Angeles Hong Kong Healing Bridge
Someone asked for help in getting eating disorder treatment in Hong Kong. Then a post arrived from a clinical psychologist in Hog Kong who specializes in treating eating disorders. She was thanking me for my work and asked for my list of in-patient programs. I could match them up. wow.
Reader Benefits from My Writing
Then a reader wrote several posts telling me how much my writing has helped her and that a story in my online workbook (Triumphant Journey) described her childhood exactly. She said it was as if I had been an observer in the room seeing what was happening on the outside and also seeing her complex inner experience. She says that my writing has been essential in her recovery.
Former Patient Brings Health and Hope to Third World Country
And then, one more. A post came in from a former patient - so I can’t give you details - how I wish I could. She has become internationally famous for her heroic work in third world countries saving countless lives while often putting her own life on the line. She tells me that she loves her life now that it’s so full of meaning and that she is forever grateful to me for making this possible.
Gratitutde
I’m glad for my studies in Buddhism. That helps give me images to hold these feelings. I’m grateful that people write to me, sharing their rich experiences.
I’m in awe and reassured about my work and grateful to the healing life energy in the world and in me that can make what seems like miracles happen. Just when my skepticism about human nature was rising, I’m met with what makes human nature worthwhile and amazing.
I think I’ll sleep well tonight.
Healthy Eating - A Memorable Lunch
My neighbor, Jody, transformed part of her front yard into an organic vegetable garden. Two rectangles about 15’ x 6” bounded by wood framing are devoted to her “farmette”. The median between her sidewalk and the street has wooden supports for the tiny tomato plants that are starting to reach for the sky.
I walk past her house at least twice a day and sometimes four when I walk my dog, Winston. (He actually should take up more space in this blog because he is a co therapist in my practice as well as a friend in my life.)
Jody, who loves Winston (everybody does), and I chat when her gardening time and my Winston walks coincide. I love gardening too, but my garden is flowers, bushes, trees and citrus.
Yesterday, a golden spring day, brisk, clear and filled with gorgeous scents, Jody and I talked, she from her garden and me from the sidewalk with Winston in tow. (He’s what I am starting to call a “Corgier”. Trans. Mixture of Corgi and Terrier. 27 pounds of gold and white shaggy energy, proud curled up tail, big brown eyes and a grin that lets everyone know he’s looking at the bright side.)
Jody and I spoke of gardens, of the scent of her sweet peas, and the scent of my jasmine, honeysuckle and orange blossoms exploding in my garden. She asked if I’d like a bouquet of sweet peas.
I responded, “Yes, There’s no other possible response to that question.”
She cut about a dozen flowers and before she gave them to me asked, “Would you like me to cut you some greens for a salad?”
“Yes, please. That would wonderful.”
She said, “You can go on with your walk while I cut them. I’ll have them for you when you get back.”
I said, “I want to watch you cut them. That’s part of the wonderfulness.”
She smiled. I smiled. Winston continued smiling, but by now was lying down realizing our walk was at a pause.
In a small brown paper bag Jody tenderly placed red romaine, sorrel, radicchios, cilantro, green lettuce, spinach and fresh sweet peas. She laid the red, purple, white and pink flowers on top. She presented me with this gift that was full of beauty, caring and natural wonder.
I felt the life energy of the soil that nourished and supported the growth of these living things that were full of the nutrients for life. I felt the life energy of this woman who made the potential manifest.
I felt and thought about how all life supports all life. I thought about how all life must feed on life and how we humans need to embrace this fact with our hearts as well as our minds. I thought of the giving generous nature of soil and I thought, It’s about love. It’s about life loving life and offering our lives to one another for the benefit of all with no demarcation about species or form.
Feelings given words and validated by the blooming spring day continued. We humans need to expand our awareness of what actually is alive. The love and ongoing generosity of life giving to life includes the life force of air, sea, sun, moon, rock and stone. We need to cherish, honor and respect it all for healthy life and healthy eating to be possible.
My lunch from that salad was exquisite – an all encompassing experience in healthy eating.
Eating Disorders and Body Appreciation
An Exercise to Connect Your Mind, Heart and Body
What if we step away from body appreciation as an aesthetic consideration that relates to weight and appearance?
An exercise or meditation to open up communication between your mind, heart and body is this:
Just for a half an hour or less
1. Let your mind relax, and let go of judgments.
2. Let your heart be free to love.
3. Let your body be and discover how your body feels when it is appreciated.
Give yourself from a half hour to an hour for this exercise. Slowly walk around a large room or garden or around the block. Be sure you find a safe place to walk.
Starting from the top of your head, let your awareness move through your body slowly. Thank you body as you go.
Starting at the Top
For example:
Thank you, skull, for protecting my brain so I can function in this world.
Thank you brain for allowing me to think and intuit and for keeping my body working.
Thank you eyes for letting me see as much as I can of this world.
Move through your entire body, covering your neck, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, chest, back, spine, ribs, abdomen, stomach, genitals, legs, ankles, feet, toes, Thank each part of your body for the work it does, and be specific about recognizing that work.
Going Deeper
If you do this on a regular basis you will develop the ability to go deeper. You can thank specific organs, veins and nervous system.
You can thank your immune system for protecting you. You can thank the mysterious and wonderful ability your body has for healing, for cell regrowth. You can thank your skin, the largest organ of all, for protecting you and providing you with sensations that warn you, sensations that bring you pleasure and sensations that connect you to other people.
Love and Kindness
If you continue to do this exercise, over time you might feel that you want to do more than say thank you. You might want to help your body with love and kindness to carry on all the taks that allow you to live in this world.
This exercise has little or nothing to do with weight or physical beauty. It has everything to do with appreciation, health and love.
Of course, some might believe that appreciation, health and love create beauty in this world.
I do.
Do you?
Healing Imagery and Intuition regarding Eating Disorders
The Marion Woodman three day Dreams workshop was warm, challenging and wonderful. I’ve been wondering what to share with you. Dream work is so personal, but then, so is eating disorder recovery.
The most powerful image I had, toward the end of the second day, my intuition tells me is relevant to all eating disorders.
Marion Woodman as Teacher and Inspiration
Marion is in her eighties. Her body is disintegrating. She uses and needs a cane. She conserves her energy as best she can. She survived and recovered from a serious bout with cancer.
But, when she speaks, her spirit is fiery. Her eyes glow. Her voice is strong. She beams warmth and assertive direction that makes us forget her physical frailty as we become inspired by her wisdom and passion.
Inspiring Imagery
The image came through to me of a candle, but not a candle with a wick that burns on top. This white luminous candle contains a wick in the center that burns all the way from top to bottom within the wax.
The fire within sends out heat that melts the wax from within. So, for Marion, the image was of her inner fire melting her body away.
I stayed with this image since Marion inspired it but was not it. The image went much farther.
The length of interior burning wick, if too hot, melts the wax encasing. The candle is gone leaving only a line of fire. Well, that could mean that the spirit burns brightly but is without a body. This is an anorexic dream.
Another Version
Another version is this: The length of interior burning wick is hot and melts the wax encasing. But, more wax is added on a continual basis. This makes the wax thick and forever thickening so the heat of the fire doesn’t penetrate through the wax and into living space. The candle keepsg getting bigger and the light is continually less visible. This is the experience of the binge eater or compulsive overeater.
Bulimia and the Image
What about bulimia? In terms of my image, bulimia is represented as a different kind of torment.
In this version of the image, the wholeness of both the fire and the wax is aware. The fire burns and the wax melts beginning to reveal the blazing wick. But the feelings that go with that fire are too intense to bear. Then the wax builds up thickly to bury the flame. The dullness of that burial is too lonely and terrifying, so the wax is allowed to melt away until the terror of exposure forces the build up again. This is the in and out, here and gone grueling and endless repetition that is unaddressed bulimia.
These are powerful and helpful images for me. They hold intellectual, emotional and physical understandings in a way that only intuitive imagery can pull together and allow to develop simultaneously.
Expect Some Dreamy Posts!
“Dreams” is the title of the seminar I’ll be taking this week end in Santa Barbara with Marion Woodman (a talk) and Steve Aizenstat.
Integration
Integrating a person’s inner life with her outer life in harmony and health has long been crucial, in my experience, for achieving eating disorder recovery. Regardless of the specific diagnosis: bulimia, anorexia, binge eating, compulsive overeating – and all the possible associated behaviors, like cutting, shoplifting, over exercising, over scheduling, under achieving, abusive and exploiting relationships greatly benefit from developing a healthy integration between mind, feelings and body.
Marion Woodman
Marion Woodman is one of the early writers in the field of eating disorders. She is a gifted Jungian analyst with a way of understanding and bringing healing opportunities to men and women and, from my perception of her, particularly to women with eating disorders. I listened to her audio tape, “Dreams” many times and often recommend it to patients. Marion Woodman understands women and the language of dreams!
Dreams and Intuition as Integrating Forces
I plan to walk among the trees on the Pacifica campus, participated in the dream workshops throughout the days, speak and share with wonderful people, write down my own dreams, muse about the dreams of my patients and those collective dreams that speak for our culture.
The nourishment from the people, place and theme I know will benefit my in mind, heart and soul. From this will come new and surprising integrative thoughts and feelings that are bound to appear somehow in my blog posts as well as the rest of my personal and professional life.
If you care to join me in this experience, take note of your dreams this weekend. Write them down. We can share them next week on this blog and see where our dreams lead us.
More about Mrion Woodman
Here’s a bit about the wonderful Marion Woodman (excerpt from the Marion Woodman Foundation website www.mwoodman.org
Marion Woodman, LLD, DHL, PhD, is a Jungian Analyst, teacher and author of The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter; Addiction to Perfection; The Pregnant Virgin; The Ravaged Bridegroom; Leaving My Father’s House; Conscious Femininity; Dancing in the Flames (with Elinor Dickson); Coming Home to Myself (with Jill Mellick); The Forsaken Garden: Four Conversations on the Deep Meaning of Environmental Illness, Marion Woodman, Ross Woodman, Sir Laurens van der Post, and Thomas Berry, edited by Nancy Ryley; The Maiden King (with Robert Bly); and Bone-Dying Into Life. A visionary in her own right, Marion Woodman has worked with the analytical psychology of C.G. Jung in an original and creative way. She is the Chair of the Marion Woodman Foundation.
Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery, www.poppink.com
Death, Tragedy and the Wounded Soul
Reflections on Tragic Death In Ireland
A young anorexic woman died in Ireland because her psychiatrist mother drowned her daughter in the bath. It’s a tragic story of Gothic proportions going back who knows how many generations. The mother couldn’t bear the daughter’s anorexia. The daughter refused treatment. The mother had an eating disorder. The grandmother committed suicide. The story in “This is London” stops there, but the human story has got to go back who knows how far.
I’m haunted, as many people must be, by the horror, the extremity, the tragedy, the ignorance, the blindness, the waste and the ongoing and spreading suffering of this event.
Eating Disorders Go Deep
Eating disorders go deep into our souls. Personally I think that they go deep into the souls of the individual with the disorder and also deep into the soul of our society. Something powerful in our current human condition is bringing up a terrible despair that eating disorders are making public.
If we can a bring thorough recovery to people with eating disorders, and embrace effective ways of preventing anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder and all the rest, I bellieve we will also be finding a deep cure for the problems in our society that spawn eating disorders.
I hope this sad and profound tragedy will spur people to look more deeply into both the psychological and cultural forces contributing to sustaining eating disorders in our midst.
What a Healthy Relationship with Food Looks Like - a lesson from children
Two little girls, sisters, 5 and 7 years old, were spending the afternoon with me in my home. We are great friends.
We had been painting in my studio and running in the grass counting Buddhas (I have a lot of Buddhas in my garden).
Suddenly the five year old announced, "I’m hungry!"
The more demure seven year old gave her sister a look that said, not so loud and impolite, please while she looked at me and nodded, "Me, too."
I said, "Well, let’s go look in the refrigerator and see what I’ve got."
They both grinned and ran into the house. The content of other people’s refrigerators is fascinating to children.
We found a kind of apple they had never tasted, a fuji. Five said "no.". Seven said, "Try it. It might be good."
I peeled the apple. This was a task so totally expected and assumed that no verbal request was given. Five wordlessly handed me the apple with a most effective facial expression and automatic gesture that clearly informed me of my job.
They decided the apple was good. We also found some cottage cheese and carrots. So we peeled the carrots. I sliced the apple. We dished out the cottage cheese and sat in the dining room for lunch.
I put on some Mozart because we had been discussing the theory that listening to Mozart made children smarter.
The girls ate with gusto and no talking. Then they started talking a little as they ate more slowly. Then they talked even more and ate less. At one point the seven year old described how she felt listening to the music and wondered if she were getting smarter.
She then got up and danced. The five year old joined her. The remaining food on the table was forgotten as the girls leped and jumped to Mozart’s music.
My experience? My imagery saw each child with a transparent fuel tank on her chest. When the fuel tank was empty they immediately felt hunger and knew it. The thought of food was exciting. Looking at the food, making decisions about it, preparing it was thrilling. Eating it was glorious.
As the gauge on the fuel tank registered an increase, their eating slowed. By the time the tank was full they had lost complete interest in the food. Not only that, but the burning fuel released energy to their minds and bodies and that energy turned into joyous dance.
I smiled at my cavorting little friends, thinking, This is what the absence of an eating disorder looks like. This is what a healthy relationship with food looks like.
Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery, www.poppink.com
Emergency Hospitalization, Eating Disorder, Coming Home
Yes, you can help your eating disorder recovery by ordering your environment.
Jeremy asks in his blog http://jeremygillitzer.blogspot.com/ if bringing his home into order will help him stabilize after his emergency six week hospitalization for eating disorder recovery. To me, it sounds as if his emergency escort to the hospital was a rescue mission, and that he is lucky he got his life saved.
Now it’s time for him to take over and rescue his own life. That’s true for everyone with an eating disorder. The big questions are what to do? how to start? when to start?
When to start? Answer: ASAP, with now being best.
How to start? Not as easy but the answer is usually right before our eyes. As old school 12-step says, "Do what is in front of you to do." Then follow it. If it’s a paper clip on the floor, pick it up and then see what’s next. If it’s a phone call to make or hair to wash and comb, or a diaper to change, or a bed to make, or dishes to wash, or an appointment to keep, do it. Then you’ll see what comes next.
If you can see what’s in front of you to do and take healthy and practical action regardless of how you feel you are on a good road. But maybe you can’t see it. Maybe you’re so flooded with so many tasks and feelings that you are immobilized. What then? That’s when people ask, "What should I do?"
Jeremy asks, should I clear out and organize my home? I say, Yes!.
Living with an eating disorder in control of your actions leads to chaos in your life and environment. Creating a healthy structure that will hold your life securely even when you feel insecure is the insurance you need to keep your life and your relationships intact.
What’s above reflects what’s below and vice versa. Inner chaos creates outer chaos in your home, your file system, you closets, your kitchen cupboards, your closets, your work, your relationships. Everywhere you look you see the chaos theme reinforced. That view goes in your psyche, and you feel hopeless and overwhelmed.
You know where those feelings lead: binge, purge and more.
So, by putting some order in your outer life you can give your psyche the signal of order and personal empowerment than can influence your state of mind.
Yes, Jeremy. Clear the clutter out of your house. It will help you clear out what’s unnecessary in your mind. Get rid of what doesn’t work for you, especially if it’s broken. That will help you get rid of your reliance on old ways of thinking that don’t work for you. Put some beauty in your home. That will help you smile and be more comfortable in your own skin.
House organization is certainly not a substitute for ongoing and deep psychotherapy that is necessary for recovery. But, following the principles of Feng Shui in the home can help you bring more balance and health to your life and help your stabilize on your path to eating disorder recovery.
Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist, eating disorder recovery specialist, Los Angeles, CA
bulimia, anorexia, binge eating, compulsive overeating recovery work. www.poppink.com
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