Everyone wants to know exactly what is the cause of an eating disorder. As a present-day psychotherapist with nearly a decade experience recovered from my own eating disorder, you would think I would have a good answer to that question.
I don’t.
The truth is that no one thing led to my eating disorder. Contrary to old school thinking about women and eating disorders, it was not because of my mother. Though she too was a woman, like most, who struggled with food, her body, and the mirror.
Contrary to my father’s belief at the time, it was not my high school star-athlete boyfriend’s fault either, even though he spent his extra time either training or frantically figuring out how to get more protein into his diet.
Contrary to some of my therapists’ implications, my father was not to blame, either, for competing in triathlons during the sliver of spare time he had away from his demanding international corporate job.
I can’t blame my anorexia on the media, because I was not the only one who had subscriptions to fashion magazines and watched MTV. It wasn’t all about being a third-culture kid either, because if that was the case, everyone with expat parents would have landed in rehab along with me.
Did these factors contribute? Probably. But I don’t find it wise, helpful, or accurate to point the finger of blame at any one of them.
One of the most helpful metaphors that I heard during the hundreds of hours of therapy I have partaken in is that an eating disorder is a “perfect storm.” A whirlwind of factors, individually benign, combine in such a way at such a moment in time that an illness with the magnitude of a natural disaster strikes.
No matter the specifics of any one person’s “storm”, it boils down to a violent manifestation of biopsychosocialspiritual illness.
Some of these specifics we understand and are somewhat control. We can intervene earlier, provide preventative measures, help people process trauma sooner, and (maybe?) teach kids to not bully one another.
Other factors are slightly more out of our control. Like the psychological impact that the nutrition wars have on us. People are not anytime soon going to stop having conflicting ideas on what and when and how to eat. We are flooded by each other’s nearly religious beliefs about food all day long. There’s mountains of “information” to support whatever you ultimately want to believe. While some facts and way of viewing the issue are more credible than others, the way we choose to eat is deeply personal and often goes far beyond what makes the most “sense.”
Even more beyond our control in the formation of eating disorders… I’m going to get existential for a sec, because that’s what I do best. How much control do we really have over any of the challenges we face in life? I have a hunch I was going to have an eating disorder even if every single one of the details about my upbringing I just mentioned was flipped on its head. And if it wasn’t an eating disorder, it was going to be something else. Because we all get dealt shit we need to face and choose to overcome or not. Was this my past life karma? Was I destined to have an eating disorder? To recover from one? At the end of the day, what do we really know about the tough times we fall on.
What I do know, however, is that I could sit here and think about what happened until the end of time. I could be mad. I could go mad being mad. Pointing out all of the injustices that brought my life to a screeching halt at the time it did. Or. I could put all of my energy into getting better. And that’s exactly what I did. For each road that supposedly led me to death’s doorstep at age nineteen, there were at least ten I wandered down to recover the basic freedom to live my life. And then some.
That’s what this story and exploration are about. Not so much the eating disorder. Frankly, I don’t think the world needs another detailed account of what it is like to live with one. There was nothing sexy or inspiring about the anecdotes of anorexia, though people always seem to want to know more. How much I weighed, what I ate, what I didn’t eat… Those details are not only invasive, but they also miss the point.
It was not impressive or a feat of willpower to live with an eating disorder. The hard part was deciding I was done doing so. The hardest part was sticking to that commitment. That’s where I really started to learn what I am made of. What we are all made of.
I have come to learn that people are designed to persevere. The world does not have to get right for us to do so. The way I see it today, an eating disorder was something I GOT TO overcome. What I’m interested in sharing are more subtle mindset shifts like this that helped me get there. The small and big decisions I leaned into. The ways I opened my heart to let feeling both in and out. The many, different, some effective, some ineffective ways I have gone about learning to listen to the remarkable intelligence of my own body. Everything that eventually encouraged the tide to turn in my favor.
So we’re going to fast forward. Both in memoir and all the way to the present. If you’re already subscribed, you’ll start to receive newsletters. In these newsletters I will share about what I am actively learning and implementing as a therapist. As well as a human. I’ll discuss and share tried and true elements of lifestyle that work for me as well as ones I continue to explore. A lifestyle that continues to support not just recovery from my eating disorder, but also the bigger picture life I dedicated myself to when I decided I was done being sick. When I decided I was ready to Taste Freedom.
For those of you also staying on this memoir train, we’re going on a journey. If you read my first two posts, you have met me at the beginning of this story 12 years ago within the four walls of a treatment center for eating disorders. Where we are headed is far beyond. While my nine-month stint in rehab was no walk in the park, it pales in comparison to the challenges I faced once I left. No longer in the strange, yet safe cradle that full-time care afforded me, I was unleashed to face a frightening and endlessly triggering reality. Without the company of my loyal, albeit deeply toxic companion, the eating disorder. I was due for some serious reprogramming. The journey to unlearning is exactly where we pick up.