Triumphant Journey:
A Cyberguide To Stop Overeating and Recover from Eating Disorders
by Joanna
Poppink, M.F.C.C.
PART FIVE
The Creation of an Overeater -- Mary's Story
What follows is a synthesis of many overeaters' stories to convey
the nature of the secret-keeping strategy commonly used by people who overeat and/or
binge. This one is selected to show the complexity of what goes into creating and
maintaining an inner secret.
Four year old Mary sits cross legged on the gold-braided living room
rug looking up at the TV. Behind her on the big, brown couch sits her father reading the
newspaper. He grunts and shakes the paper.
She hears the sharp rustle and cringes, but stays seated on the
floor. He slams the paper down on the wooden coffee table. Her hands tremble, and her
heart pounds. She breathes short, fast gasps. She sits very still, trying to become
invisible.
He growls softly, deep in his throat. Her body stiffens as she
stares at the TV, focusing her eyes, ears, heart and soul on the screen. She hears a thud
as he jumps awkwardly to his feet. She keeps watching TV, trying to get inside the set,
the story, the figures on the screen.
He kicks the couch. She hears the wooden legs scrape against the
floor. Her body tight and unmoving, she tries to be as hard and still as the floor. The
colors on the TV screen seem to become more vivid to her. She tries to pour her entire
being into the screen, making the pictures and sounds her whole world.
He roars at the walls. "Nothing gets done around here. What
kind of mess is this?" Mary's eyes glaze. Her heart beats faster. Her mind is totally
absorbed in a soap commercial. Her body attempts to retreat into a numb calm. She ignores
the pounding of her heart.
From the coffee table her father picks up a small box of crayons and
throws it across the room. She breathes deeply and stares at the Bugs Bunny cartoon now
playing. She is oblivious to all but the cartoon. She has achieved invisibility and
nonexistence.
He bellows, "Nobody does a damn thing around here!" and
sweeps an end table with his hand, sending a lamp and ashtray flying. She has lost
awareness of her body, the floor, the room, sounds, sights, smells. To Mary now, only Bugs
Bunny exists. Her father lurches around the room, mumbling unintelligibly. In the cartoon
Bugs Bunny steals a carrot. Mary laughs.
Her father whirls at her. "What's so funny, you lazy
good-for-nothing brat, making a mess everywhere and laughing at me!" She looks up,
dazed. She doesn't know what he is talking about. She is so removed she doesn't know who
or what he is.
"Answer me, you worthless, no-good!"
He picks her up and throws her across the room. She crashes into the
wall. She may feel terror and pain. She may cry out, "No, Daddy, please," or,
"I'll be good," or "I didn't do anything," or "I'm sorry."
She may say and feel nothing. She may remain dazed and feel body
pain later. She may not remember this happened. She may remember the events but not the
feelings. She may remember body and emotional feelings, but not the event. Lack of memory
or partial memory shields her from the unendurable knowledge that she lives with a
dangerous person. This person can explode at any time, frighten her, hurt her for no
understandable reason, and she can do nothing to stop him or protect herself.
All she can do is blank her felt existence out of existence. For a
while, Mary does not exist to herself.
Mary found a way to protect herself as best she could from
unavoidable and intolerable fear and pain. Her pain comes from more than the physical
event.
Emotionally it is intolerable for Mary to know that her father can
and will terrorize her at any time and that her mother will not or cannot protect her. The
people she depends on for daily caretaking and protection are dangerous to her. She cannot
bear to live with that knowledge and so she finds a way to know as little as possible
about her true situation.
If Mary can blot these painful experiences from her awareness she
will be able to fearlessly love and trust her father. She can also depend on her mother to
care for her, and she can experience herself living in a safe world.
This has more to do with overeating than many people realize. A
child has few self-protective resources. If an inescapable, painful, fearsome or
humiliating situation exists, creative, strong children can put themselves into a trance.
In this way they can dull the horror of their experience.
Children can divide their minds into pieces so that they are not
present as a whole person during extreme torment. Different fragments carry different
parts of the experience so the children do not have to know or remember the episodes in
their entirety. In this way they make their experience manageable. Mary saved herself from
having to tolerate through knowledge or memory what is intolerable.
As Mary gets older she may not be able to put herself in a trance as
easily as she could as a child. Actual events and emotional memories may approach
awareness levels. She may reach for food to help her maintain oblivion. If food works, and
it does for many people, she will continue to use eating to help her achieve the trance
state she feels is necessary for her survival.
Throughout her life she may feel body pain and emotional tremors
without connecting them to any outside incident. She may sometimes attribute these
feelings to physical illness or minor accidents. Gradually she will accept these feelings
as "the way she is."
Eventually she may be certain she has these feelings because she is
"bad" or "worthless." She may feel "special" in her feelings
of terrible faults and therefore feel she deserves special attention in the form of
punishment or abandonment.
Mary may feel the physical and emotional feelings she experienced
during the abuse she experienced as a child without connecting those feelings to her
history. Like many people who overeat or binge, she may not remember sections of her
childhood. Her memory blanks may be so thorough she will not know she does not remember.
Observing the adult Mary who chronically overeats and binges, we
notice seemingly inexplicable traits. She has limited and odd childhood memories. She
cannot remember the old living room, but she does remember the TV. She doesn't want her
children playing with crayons. She continually tries to please her father with gifts and
attention. She is angry at her mother most of the time.
She will not have furniture with wooden legs in her home. She
refuses to be in a room with any man, including her husband, while he is reading a
newspaper. She is afraid to laugh in public. She has many secrets. She may steal little
sweets in the grocery store or in social settings when she thinks others are not looking.
She will refuse to attend violent movies. Yet she may have sadism/masochism fantasies,
perhaps secret, perhaps acted out.
She may blank out at times. On careful observation we might notice
that these mental blanks occur when someone around her has body, facial or verbal
mannerisms similar to her father.
She has deep bouts of sorrow and loneliness where no one can cheer
her up. She feels alone, ugly, bad, scared and is the worst person in the world to
herself. She gets angry and sad when people will not change rules or behavior for her. If
they do change to accommodate her wishes, she will be briefly grateful but will feel the
changes are not enough. She surprises people by not remembering them or their kindness.
She doesn't remember needing people.
She overeats regularly. Sometimes she vomits on purpose. When she
feels familiar despair she will binge.
Mary is trapped in the overeater's prison. Mary exercises. She reads
diet books. She doesn't understand why she can't stop overeating. She believes she
overeats and feels bad because she is bad. She is certain that if she stopped overeating
her life would be fine, and she would be happy and a good person. She feels humiliated and
helpless because she can't stop.
Mary is not curious about her feelings. Her main concern is stopping
her feelings, not understanding them. Her lack of curiosity and her insistence on making
food her main point of focus are crucial in maintaining her ignorance about herself.
As long as her secrets remain unknown to herself, Mary will continue
to feel she is in constant danger. Because she is oblivious to the torture and heartbreak
she experienced in her past, she has not learned to recognize and avoid abuse in her
present. She may allow abusive people in her life, even invite them, because she doesn't
know she has more power than she did as a child. For her, abuse is more than familiar.
Abuse feels like home.
Someday Mary might become curious about herself. If she does she
might begin her triumphant journey.
Triumph actually begins with defeat. Once Mary knows that everything
she has tried has failed, she may open herself to something new. This is usually the
reason people seek 12-step programs, meditation, support groups, friendly and comforting
religious programs and/or professional psychological help.
Their pain, fear and despair is so intense that they are willing to
reach out to something unknown and perhaps frightening rather than continue their way of
life.
Overeaters also look for help when they feel they have no other
choice. Sometimes the overeating itself is no longer effective in blocking their feelings.
They feel overwhelmed with anxiety. They are alone with their secret without knowing what
it is.
This devastating feeling reduces all choices to one: meet your true
self at last. The possibility of freedom lies is changing direction, reaching out to
unfamiliar resources, examining your inner life.
What follows is a series of secret discovering questions,
preparatory activities and action steps to start you on your triumphant journey. Answer
the questions. Begin to discover your secrets. Learn how to build the inner strength and
knowledge base that will equip you to discard the overeating way of life.
Bon Voyage!
Return to Triumphant Journey Index
Proceed to Part Six
Copyright © 1992 by Joanna
Poppink. All
rights reserved
Joanna Poppink, M.F.T., licensed #15563 by the State of California in 1980
as a Marriage and Family Therapist. She is a private practice
psychotherapist in Los Angeles. She specializes in working
with people
with eating disorders and with people who are trying to understand and help
a loved one with an eating disorder.
Contact Information:
10573 West Pico Blvd. #20
Los Angeles, CA 90064
http://www.joannapoppink.com
(310) 474-4165 phone
joanna.poppink@verizon.net
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