This blog was formed after I stumbled upon the maudsley forum,
www.aroundthedinnertable.org where I made the following post. The
post was promptly deleted with no explanation and the account
banned, just as promptly.
"I stumbled across this site while doing my
psychology homework, looking up Henry Maudsley. I saw this site and
my heart stopped. Doktur Freud would say that seeing this site
brought up some repressed memories for me. Well, the doktur was a
quack, but he might have been on the right track with this one. But
I'll start from the beginning.
Most people can't remember when their eating disorders started.
I do. I can pinpoint it. I was 15 years old, 5"2 and weighed
118 lbs; athletic and healthy. I remember seeing that number on the
scale while in the bathroom with my mother, who commented that I
almost weighed as much as she did. I did not hear that she was
saying this because she 'wished she could look as good' and
it did not register that my mother was only an inch taller than me,
and I ignored the fact that I have always considered my mother to
be one of the most beautiful women on the planet. I remember
thinking "I almost weigh as much as my mom." I started
getting on the scale every morning. My weight ranged from 117-119.
Sometimes, if I was feeling bloated, I wouldn't get on the
scale because I was terrified of seeing '120'.
At school I ate one less side dish at lunch. Then two less side
dishes. Then all the side dishes but no main dish. Then no lunch at
all. The bathroom revelation was in the fall. By winter I weighed
112 lbs. Still healthy, body and mind. But that didn't last too
long. By the time summer came around I was a mental wreck, looked
like a drowned otter, and weighed 102. That fall was a strange time
for me. I was 16. Durring late fall, I started to mentally recover.
I upped my calorie intake from 300 calories to about 800 - 1,000. I
kept loosing weigh, however. At this point my parents had already
confronted me. To me, it seemed as though they didn't care
about how I was mentally; they were more focussed on my body.
Looking back, it makes sense. They couldn't see my mind; but
they could see my body. The poo hit the fan that november. My
parents had discovered Maudsley. I think they may have even been
members of this site.
It's hard for me to describe that time in my life. It was as if
my parents had fallen for the age old misconception of 'just
give her a hot dog' cue for anorexia and had taken it to the
extreme. My body was not used to food. I distinctly remember laying
outside the bathroom, on the floor, in no small amount of
discomfort after eating a meal of meatballs and rice. My stomach
felt swollen, about to rip open. I remember feeling my abdomen, and
thinking it felt like my mothers did when she was pregnant with my
sister; hard, taut, and rotund. I felt like I might vomit at any
moment and indeed my mouth was watering like crazy. I also remember
that my parents ignored me. Probably they thought I was being a
drama queen, and I don't blame them. A) they don't really
have any medical knowledge in this subject and B) I was (and still
am) often a drama queen.
My mind during that time? I had a mind? I remember sitting on the
kitchen table for hours at a time, devoid of all thought. I think
this was a subconscious coping mechanism. I have always had an
incredible imagination, one that can scare the poop outa me (I
watch horror movies at my own risk). I think I subconsciously
'turned off' my thoughts because if I hadn't, I
couldn't have contained my self-hatred and rage against my
parents. And I did hate myself; ever aspect. This, of course, was
how I felt during my little flight with anorexia in the first
place. Yet before maudsley, those feelings had begun to subside.
Now they were back stronger than ever. The sur-reality of the
situation only intensified this. I felt as if this were some sort
of nightmare. Going back to school was tough. I remember having to
excuse myself from class several times to go cry in the bathroom. I
can honestly say I don't remember what I did during lunch. I
remember sitting in class, getting picked up and dropped off, but I
can't remember a single lunch period. Duktor Freud 1, Me
0.
There was no 'END' to maudsley. It was gradual. More like a
waning away. At the beginning I weighed about 97 lbs, and I came
out the other side weighing about 118. When all of the
maudsley-isms were gone from my life; that I think was the worst.
The maudsley method cures the body, but not the mind. And the mind
was the problem in the first place, now wasn't it? My mind was
a wreck and my level of self-hatred was just as it had been when I
was anorexic. Only this time I didn't know what to do, and my
body was messed up. I had gone from a year of anorexia to half a
year of maudsley and I didn't know how to feed myself. It's
shameful, but it's true. I didn't know how to feed myself.
What did real people eat? I didn't know. During that spring I
gained weight. At my heaviest I weighed 125 lbs. I know this
because I found the old scale my parents were hiding. I weighed
myself every day. That summer I had a minor relapse. I lost weight
and weighed about 110 lbs. That fall?
I don't know what happened. An eating disorder is a tremendous
effort, no matter how much you weigh. You can't physically put
any effort into other things without decreasing the effort you put
into your eating disorder. And there were a couple of things I
wanted to put effort into. A) My future career B) Future
college and C) a new boyfriend. Granted, I'd had boyfriends in
the past (mostly secret) but I actually felt connected to this guy.
Here's the only explanation I can give for my recovery: I found
something I loved more than my eating disorder. I had to make a
choice because I couldn't have both. Gradually, the behaviors
fell away.
Where am I now? I'm 18, and I can't really tell. I eat
normally. I think my body is pretty slammin (thankyouverymuch) and
I no longer have that crushing anxiety in my chest. Do I think
about food? Yes. Do I think about weight? Yes. But in a different
way. I'll think to myself 'nah, probably shouldn't have
another slice of pie' or 'good grief I can't eat
nothing but ice cream, I'll get fat' or sometimes
'Blech, these jeans make me look fat. Definitely not
buying.' In other words, I think just like your average woman.
My weight? I don't own a scale, so I can't say. My body has
changed, I know that. I think I'm doing what my mother thought
I was doing at age 15: Loosing my baby fat and filling out. Some
parts of me are slimmer, my breasts and butt are larger. More
'womanly' I guess you'd say.
Seeing this site brought back so many more memories than I can
write; but I do have some advice for the parents on this forum:
1. Remember, you are not a doctor or a nutritionist. A starving
body is its own enigma, and it needs to be treated differently from
a healthy body. Don't think that you know how it works. Please,
leave the majority of meal planning to a certified doctor or
nutritionist who (and this is very important) specializes in eating
disorders.
2. Don't ignore the mind. Again, that's your real problem.
Instead of shutting down creative outlets (like my parents did),
provide them in bounty. Buy lots of paper and finger-paint; make
animal masks out of paper plates, write a never ending story
together, make scavenger hunts, make crossword puzzles, write plays
and perform them, plant gardens, make popsicle stick houses!
3. There's really no way around it; your child will resent you
in ways you can never imagine. Be careful not to encourage
resentment by not acknowledging it.
4. Don't forget that eventually maudsley needs to end and many
of us have forgotten how to eat normally. Not addressing this can
lead to other problems.
5. Don't forget the stigma that comes with being anorexic or
bulimic. By making your childs illness public, you risk your child
being abused by peers and others.
6. Don't buy into stereotypes. I was in ballet before maudsley
and I can tell you right now that ballet was one of the few things
that made me feel beautiful! I felt graceful, beautiful, serene,
and I felt as though I was...alright. That I didn't need to
change. That I didn't need to lose weight because I already
felt this amazing. I looked in the mirror and did not see fat, but
instead was fascinated by movement. I was also never a straight A
student, was not upper-middle class, a girlie-girl, molested,
blonde, an aspiring model or actress or singer, and I did not want
to go back to being a little girl.
7. Don't blame yourself. Anorexia is not about, nor is it
caused by ONE thing. It is not about control because of strict
parents. It is not about being beautiful because of magazines. It
is not about being skinny because of dancing. It is much, much more
complex than that.
8. Don't expect to get the same child back. An eating disorder
is not like the flu. This is one reason why I refused to give mine
a name, not Ed or even Ana. It was not some infection in my brain.
I knew, even then, that it was a part of me. You
can't kick down deaths door and come back without scars. And
something made you kick that door in the first place. Anorexia was
like a parallel universe in my brain. A different perspective, if
you will, of the same mind. Also, one becomes obsessed with food
during anorexia (duh.). Before my eating disorder, my favorite meal
was 2 bean burritos from a fast food joint finished off with deep
fried cinnamon twists and washed down with a coke. That's not
healthy to eat on a regular basis. Coming out the other end, I knew
that. So I didn't eat that. My parents tried to get me to, but
I wouldn't. Also, on the other side, I had developed a taste
for broccoli, something I had always despised.
9. Lastly, don't give up. It's a long battle with
casualties on both "
Seems to me that these people, though they have good intentions,
are ignorant and could be causing much more harm than good
following an extremely ego-centric idiot named Laura
Collins.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
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