I Develop Anorexia

Background

I developed anorexia nervosa almost by accident. In early September 1958, I finally escape the unhealthy situation at home when I went away to Wells college—free at last! However, the insidious nature of the effects of my being the target of my father’s voyeurism played out almost immediately upon my arrival at college For the most part, I simply cut way back on my eating for, at the time, unknown reasons.

A precipitous decision

On my second day at college, I celebrated my freedom in a most unusual manner – one that would have almost life-long consequences. Innocently, I stepped on a scale and noticed that I had “lost” half a pound. So I said to myself, “I think that I’ll go on a diet.” At the time, I had no idea where that thought came from; it was a completely new idea for me. Nevertheless, those words, voiced so carelessly in my head, ended up dictating my dietary habits for most of my life. From that moment on, I consciously avoided eating fats and, for a time, most carbohydrates. In college I would allow myself to eat meat, vegetables, fruit, eggs, cottage cheese, and dry cereal, as much as I wanted; but my dietary peculiarities resulted in my not taking in enough calories.

Result

Eventually, I lost 25 pounds, going from 114 lb down to 89 lb, which resulted in the cessation of my periods. I was hungry all the time, but I believed it was indigestion that I was feeling, not hunger.

Underlying Motive Not Understood

If anyone had asked me why I had curtailed my diet so drastically, I wouldn’t have had an answer. No, I was a healthy weight when I arrived at college, and the need for a diet was never mentioned at home or with my friends. Even now, looking back at it, it made no sense for me to go on this crash diet. It seems to me like a perfect example of my inability to think about what I was doing or, especially, why I was doing it. Yet I stubbornly adhered to my idea. I was very rigid about what I would or would not eat.

There was a reason for my decision, of course, but I certainly did not understand what it was at the time. No, it involved the fact that, during my last year at home, I was the only child home. Once I came home from school, I would jump in the shower and wash my hair. My father would come home during my showers, come in the bathroom, pull back the shower curtain, and watch me. He would murmur to me “you have a beautiful body!”

I felt so powerless with my father that I never tried to stop him from watching me. But once I was free, I could destroy, or change, my beautiful body—and that’s exactly what I did!

Concern by Others

My unnecessary, unplanned weight loss attracted attention. Jamie, for instance, kept making me promise to gain weight. I may have pacified him by agreeing, but I never gained anything. The worst was when I went home. My parents reacted badly. My father’s solution was to write the Dean of my school and request that I be weighed every week. The Dean and I complied. The nurse weighed me faithfully on schedule, but nobody talked to me about my diet or asked me “Why aren’t you eating?” I don’t know what she would have done if she had asked the question, and I had no answer. My family was looking for someone to blame. My father blamed Jamie, as did my sister; but I knew that it had nothing to do with Jamie.

Being an early victim of anorexia means I don’t have to watch my weight carefully..

No diagnosis offered

I was seeing doctors at that time, but they neither asked me questions nor gave me a diagnosis. In fact, I had developed an eating disorder known as anorexia nervosa, which is defined as a potentially life-threatening disorder found primarily “in girls and young women in whom the extended refusal to eat leads to severe weight loss, malnutrition, and cessation of menstruation” (Barker, Robert L., Social Work Dictionary, NASW Press, Silver Spring MD, 1991). The usual medical criteria include the loss of one-fourth or more of one’s body weight. But the fact is that nobody in this country was talking about eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa, at the time. When I went home that first summer, my parents made me eat, which happened simply because I was not up to arguing with them about it. I remembered clearly how violent my father could be, and I wanted none of that. So, I gained several pounds with them, then lost it all when I went back to school for my second year.

The connection between sexual abuse and anorexia

I learned much later that there is a substantial amount of research available that confirms a distinct causal link between child sexual abuse and eating disorders like anorexia. This was a surprise to me as I had never made that connection. Most of the research linking sexual abuse and eating disorders seems to begin with eating-disordered clients, who were then queried about earlier sexual abuse. For instance, a study by Mary Anne Cohen, head of an eating disorder clinic in New York, discovered that some 40-60% of the people in her clinic had been sexually or physically abused.

In Cohen’s 1995 insightful book “French Toast for Breakfast,” she observed that the sexual abuse and eating disorder link is forged by the survivor’s feelings of “. . . guilt, shame, anesthesia, self-punishment, soothing, comfort, protection, and rage” (Cohen, op. cit., p. 62). She notes that emotional eating refers to the use of “food to distract, detour, or deny inner problems; to anesthetize oneself to protect from pain. It is safer to achieve intimacy . . . with food than with a partner” (ibid., p. xv, p. 53).

She continues, noting that the anorexic who is “incapable of discharging her hostility directly . . . unconsciously initiates a process of slow suicide. Her starvation becomes an aggressive act to punish the parent . . .” (ibid., p. 75).

Doesn’t that make sense!!

Published by Susan on August 6, 2021August 6, 2021