Response to email questions

These questions came from a dear friend, wishing to know more about eating disorders in general, and how I'm affected by mine, specifically. I've decided to address them here, using simplistic, non-scientific responses, and I'm also enabling comments again, in the hopes that people will be kind regardless of their ability to understand. Also, you're welcome to add your opinion, but this is not intended to become a debate. If I happen to give incorrect information and you wish to correct it, please add a link to a reputable site so that all statements might be corroborated (p.s. I don't have to do that because this is my blog). Thanks.

1. What kind of eating disorder do you have?

I hate to answer this. For someone like me, having an eating disorder is humiliating and frustrating. However, acknowledging I have one is important or I won't be able to recover. There are many types of eating disorders, and many different definitions given them. Basically, an eating disorder occurs when one begins to focus in an unhealthy, often psychotic way on food intake (or lack, thereof). Most commonly spoken of are Bulimia, which involves binge eating and purging, and Anorexia, which involves extreme calorie restriction or starvation. Both can be accompanied by excessive exercise and a person might suffer from both conditions. In my broader views, I consider excessive overeating to be an eating disorder. To me, basically anything which causes one to be unhealthily obsessed with food intake falls into that category.

Now that I've given the long definition of eating disorders, I'll answer your question. I have Anerexia Nervosa.

2. How did you "get" your eating disorder?

Disorders develop for many reasons. In our society today they often occur in young women in their teens and twenties, trying to conform to an impossible body ideal. The emphasis to be thin is ever present in all types of media. Those young women who are desperate to achieve that ideal are usually ones who suffer from low self-esteem, and/or abuse, and/or toxic family relationships. Because they feel out of control in so many areas of their lives, they focus on the one thing they can control (food intake) and become so caught up in it that they lose the reality of what is happening to them.

My disorder began when I was twelve years old, not because I was trying to achieve a body ideal, but for several other reasons:
a) Initially, I was unable to eat because I was extremely unhappy, confused by the experience of being raped, wanting to talk about what happened, but finding it impossible to feel safe or to find the words to express any of my experiences.
b) Going without food caused my parents to be concerned for me. I desperately needed to be cared for. By starving myself, I was able to get their attention, and in some measure, fill that need.
c) After a prolonged period of time, during which I restricted my food intake, I felt powerful. I felt I didn't need food like everyone else did. I felt I was special. I no longer wished to eat. I needed to feel empowered. Starving myself gave me the illusion of being in control of myself and my life.
d) My mother spent most of my teen years telling me not to eat or I would become fat. It seemed easier to skip meals than to try to fight her about this. Interestingly, my sisters all have a memory of me being overweight throughout high school. I was five-feet, two-inches. I weighed between 85 and 97 pounds. I wore a size 2. It was often too large for me. I find it fascinating that because of the emotional and physical abuse factors that existed in my home, my sisters were somehow influenced to believe I was larger than I actually was.
e) Restricting my food intake caused my menstrual cycle to cease or operate sporadically. I hated having periods. Seeing blood in that particular area caused more flashbacks than I was able to cope with, and inspired terrifying nightmares. If I ate very little and exercised a lot, any period I had lasted only about two days. I averaged two or three cycles annually.

3. What did you do to start eating again in the period of time you said you were in "remission."

Actually, I did very little. Mentally and emotionally I began to feel better after I married Darrin. We lived with his mother for a year and she is a rather amazing cook. She collected cookbooks and tried many new recipes. Her father was from Spain, so she introduced me to Spanish food, and her mother was from Germany, so I was exposed to food from that country, as well. Because I was interested in what she was doing, I became distracted from the eating disorder. It helped immensely to be away from my home (and mother), and in an environment where people believed I was wonderful. Darrin's family has always treated me with respect and addressed me in such a way that I felt I was beautiful, intelligent, strong, and capable. Living with my mother-in-law was not always easy, but it was good for me to be in a place where I received validation and was never criticized. By the time we left her home, my bouts of starvation were nearly non-existent.

The other factor that helped me eat healthily was pregnancy. I never experienced morning sickness, but I was hungry! Almost all the time. And if I didn't eat when the hunger began, I truly felt that I would die. At no other time in my life have I felt such a desperate need to eat food.

4. Why do you think the eating disorder has become difficult to manage now?

I don't know. I suppose, if I'm honest, many of the things that were causing me to use the eating disorder in the first place were suppressed after I got married. There were too many other things to navigate--like finances, schooling, sexual intimacy... I just pushed everything else out of the way until I could cope with it. Now that I'm trying work through the things I've buried, there are many coping devices from my past that rear their ugly heads. This just seems to be the most unmanageable one.

5. Does it help if I tell you that I love you?

Yes. So much. Because the most horrifying part of knowing I don't want to eat, is the insecurity that I'll appear to be a freak, and anyone who has loved me in the past will stop loving me, and I'll be alone. And my impulse is to run from everyone before they can reject me, so each time you tell me you love me, I want to stay just a little bit longer. I want to hope that you'll keep loving me when I'm certain you cannot. I want to believe that I can figure out how to be healthy again. I know it's asking a lot--but please, if you love me, I hope you'll remind me whenever you feel that you can. And please know that I love you, too.