Eating Disorders are Illnesses of the Mind and not the Body

In a discussion with a young London-based student, who has decided on the pseudonym Alina to protect her privacy, she recalls her journey with eating disorders, the socio-cultural issues that they stem from, and their continuing effect on her present life.

Before my disordered eating behaviour even evolved, I was already struggling with body dysmorphia. Around the age of ten or eleven, before puberty, my parents were already making comments about the way that I ate and my body. We don’t talk about this enough, but I was exposed to porn a lot younger than most people, and it wasn’t from my own curiosity, but rather from older people in my life: not adults. Being exposed to that sort of media was scarring for me because it’s extremely detrimental to the way that we view women. I was nowhere near being fully developed physically, yet that’s when I started feeling objectified and dissociating myself from my physical body.

Body dysmorphia is the sense of feeling completely detached from your body and wanting to manipulate it because you want to pander to beauty norms. Sometimes I see pictures of myself and for a split second I can grasp what I look like, but when I look at myself in the mirror I can’t interpret anything; I don’t perceive myself. Body dysmorphia is pretty intrinsically linked to developing an ED because that’s where the desire for control comes from.

My ED started when I was about 15, right when my bulimia began. People often associate bulimia with throwing up, but I never actually did that. Later, there was this voice that people often describe that caused me to do a number of alternative things from throwing up. I’m not going to list these things because they are so detrimental to your health that it wouldn’t be fair to all the people reading this who are possibly struggling with EDs of their own. After some time, I couldn’t do it anymore; I couldn’t go through the binge and restrict; specifically, the restrict. So, I would just binge and that’s when things started to escalate.

For me, binge eating was a manifestation of pain and distress. There was one particular person in my life on whom I single-handedly blame my ED on. This personal trainer that worked at the gym I went to with my dad, one day, completely unprompted, put me on the scale and told me I was almost overweight, according to my BMI. For those who don’t know, the BMI is not accurate; I was not overweight. When I think back to that time, I realise how ridiculous that situation was, but because of my body dysmorphia, I had no perception of that. He told me I needed to track my food intake for a week to eventually put me on a meal plan. That’s when I was exposed to the concept of calories and started manipulating my diet in a certain way to gain a sense of control. 

Obviously, EDs are very complicated because they are disorders of the mind and not the body. A lot of the time, people’s EDs don’t necessarily manifest themselves physically, so people make the mistake of disregarding them and invalidating their experiences. I decided to tell my family about my ED, despite the fact that it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done because it was a cry for help. Basically, I had to force it out of myself, it was this awful feeling. It’s like that ball in your throat when you’re about to cry; it’s overwhelming and painful.

My mom’s reaction was a bit like an ‘I told you so’. For her, it was confirming and validating that her intuition was right. But, for me, I felt resentful because if you knew something was wrong, why wouldn’t you try to help me? When I told my sister, she completely denied it which is obviously worse. Since she was raised in a progressive environment, I was expecting her to be more understanding and to take it more seriously. But instead, she was just like “no you don’t”. The worst part is that even after I told them about it, no support was offered to me; no therapy, no sense of empathy, or even sympathy. I felt completely alienated because, at that point, my mom was trying to discipline me out of my mental and behavioural disorders. I would like to blame my family’s reaction on the fact that EDs and depression are taboo topics, but I think it has to do with the inability to feel empathy. I put myself out in the open. I commend myself for how open I was about it with them. 

In terms of my relationship with myself, I felt extremely dysphoric. I started avoiding social interactions, isolating myself, and losing energy; the very telltale signs of depression. That was just a period of time where I had to let it play out, I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t do anything about it. I felt very alienated and that’s what created this sort of toxic environment. My parents were fed up with the fact that it wasn’t going away by itself.

The reason EDs are such an epidemic among people my age is because our parents were part of a generation that was, in the 90s and 2000s, cruel to women in terms of body shaming. That gets passed down to us kids. This combined with the sometimes unreliable sources of accessible information that we have can be very dangerous.

I remember how I felt when I was binge eating. I felt the mysticism around food; like it was this elusive element that was prohibited and bad. That’s the mentality that set up my binge eating disorder. It felt so cathartic and a lot of guilt followed. Binging makes you eat past the point of comfort, but I don’t think people talk about how the fullness almost feels consoling. I felt alienated, isolated and alone during my ED and depression so that fullness was the best thing. Obviously, it’s extremely visceral and aggressive, but it also felt nice. 

I don’t know if I’ve fully healed. Sometimes I catch myself relapsing; it’s complicated and I have to address that it’s an ever-evolving thing. For healing, body neutrality and intuitive eating are important to let go of fatphobic sentiments. Feeling grounded and centred through meditation, journaling and reflection are very necessary. Personally, the major event that triggered my ED has to do with my family, so a lot of what I need to heal comes from them. Since they’re not very willing to take part in my healing, these are some of the other coping mechanisms that I’ve adopted; they are ever-evolving processes that you need in order to take care of yourself, to love and appreciate your body and your mind.

Article by Jade Mace, interview with Alina