The Siren Songs Of Anorexia - Part 2

If you haven't already read the previous instalment of this blog post, you've jumped the gun. Toodleoo.

Without further ado, let's continue:

3. Anorexia numbs

The next of Anorexia’s seductions is its anaesthetic quality. When you are in Anorexia’s clutches, there is a hierarchy of where your attention is spent. The significance of most things falls beneath the tight management of food, exercise and the body. This is due to a combination of things, including the biological reaction to a low energy state, depression eroding emotional capacity, and a decrease in free time due to preoccupation with compulsive routines.

If you have experience with an eating disorder yourself, which I am assuming is the reason you are here reading this, you will know all too well how the cacophony of internal clamour anorexia induces means that noise from the universe diminishes in the periphery.

For, when food is scarce, nothing prevails over the thought of food. When in the throes of exercise addiction, nothing predominates over the completion of the movement urges. When body weight control (aka. Avoidance of weight gain or pursuit of weight loss) is the highest agenda of the day, very little preponderates over this concern.

Thus, whilst my friends spent their time worrying about banal inconsequential matters like boyfriends, party outfits and petty squabbles, I felt free from such dilemmas. My focus was on survival through the day. From the moment I woke right up until I could settle down for my night snack with satisfaction of a completed regime, I was on my rat run. Having the acrobatic hoop jumping of my ED routine in front of me each day meant that there was very little space for ‘human’ stressors, or time to contemplate the vast range of incomprehensible worldly matters. As I mentioned earlier, my time in survival made me feel like a creature unrelated to the human race. The absence of human stressors, and incapability to relate to them, further compounded that.

Waiting for a reply from a shitty boyfriend was not in my consciousness, but waiting for the correct minute on the clock to commence my snack was. Looking nice for a party meant very little. I would have to wear a puffer coat over my outfit anyway to keep warm and I wouldn’t stay long anyway. Besides, scared and starving mammals don’t dance well, gossip well or let loose. They return home to protect what little energy they have and enjoy their holy night snack - apparently. Disagreements with friends were few and far between too. It’s hard to find common ground and engagement in an energy-deprived state. Aside from a lack of emotional proximity to any other human, and a disengagement in any business that risked touching a nerve, I honestly just didn’t feel that bothered by anything. I voiced few strong opinions about worldly matters and had a mild response to anybody that did. I could regard things that intended to evoke empathy, like a charity advert or violent scene in a film and feel very little. Physical pain itself even dulled. The only thing I can strongly remember remaining was an intolerance to witness pain inflicted on animals. I strongly believe there is something significant in that affiliation I continued to feel with nature.

It must be great not to care about much, right? The petty tiffs nor the world’s true cruelty and idiocy?

Wrong. Preoccupation with survival does not truly allow you to remove your affinity with human desires and experience of human emotion, but rather merely submerges it. This deprioritisation results in those repressed emotions resurfacing every now and then in a catastrophic breakdown about being inadequate, unlovable, lonely, numb or meaningless. Even when malnutrition-induced apathy takes hold, there remains some degree of curiousity for a life beyond the one anorexia can offer - even if only fleeting and in the form of ‘wanting to want’.

I observe that many people are able to live with this ‘trade-off’ when anorexia is first taking hold or when a relapse tempts them back in, but that it is always impermanent. The denial of the reality stops becoming so easy and attempts to convince yourself that you aren’t missing out on that much are intersected with a painful inner knowledge that you are. On this note of the short-term nature of being able to kid yourself beyond doubt, is the progressing demands of the eating disorder in order to feel a new high. Much like other forms of numbing, like drugs or extreme sports, something bigger and better is soon required to provide that same bump. This usually results in disordered behaviours intensifying to further life-ruining degrees.

A withdrawal from life to the extent that one protects themself from having to feel the bad, painful and emotional parts of human existence, means that there is inevitably also a nulling of the good. The sad consequence of anorexia numbing the bad things of life is that this bubble also strips away the richness of human experience, the potential for meaningful passion, to love and to feel loved. What’s more, perpetually living in this numb state proves, through avoidance, that you could not bear or tolerate the world. And over time as the eating disorder drags on and areas of emotional vulnerability accumulates, the prophecy self-fulfils. You truly are left unpractised at coping.

Finally, within this bracket falls the (supposed) serene reassurance that derives from not having to make many daily decisions when working in Anorexia’s ritualistic and predictable matrix. Though not always disillusioned that the familiar hell of the Eating Disorder is not resulting in a joyful existence, a human nervous system most often urges us to lean towards behaviours that will provide us a known and measurable agony - over a potentially risky new pathway towards an unfamiliar heaven.

In comparison to an unstructured and free life, Anorexia is (fairly) ‘reliable’ and consistent in its answers and agendas. There is less openness, or space for interpretation. For, when the questions, what should I eator when should I eat are pre-determined, there is less thinking to do. An example that stands out to me to is the unwavering response that I gave being invited anywhere that involved food when I was in the depths of anorexia. There was no ‘should I go?’, ‘what restaurant should we pick’ or ‘what should I wear’. The knee-jerk response was always a resounding no without contemplation, communicated by something along the lines of ‘I’m so sorry, but I can’t, I’m busy. Next time though!’.

Some of Anorexia’s cajoling in this category may sound like:

Don’t recover…

·      What will you think about with anorexia?

·      You can’t cope with those pains

·      You don’t want to have to deal with those emotions

·      You are too tired to deal with those emotions

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4. Anorexia protects, excuses and ensures care

The last anchor to Anorexia that I wish to mention is someone allied to the previous point on numbness. For many people, the safety bubble of anorexia protects from expectation. The illness provides an escape route for anything undesirable, and when one’s self-worth is so low that they would find it difficult to self-assert in an overly-demanding situation, Anorexia can be ‘used’ as a safety net.

As illness duration extends, bringing with it low self-esteem, depleted energy reserves and poor boundary-setting capabilities, the need and use of this get-out-of-jail-free card feels increasingly vital. Paired with perfectionistic tendencies that are quite common in those who fall ill with eating disorders, the illness itself becomes a dependable justification for imperfection and inadequate performance.

When fears of being burdened with expectation meet anxieties of losing the care, attention and support that often comes with a diagnosis of an illness, the disorder asserts its maintenance as a protective solution.

This feeling is especially acute in individuals who have experiences where previous occasions of turmoil went unnoticed and they were left internally battling, unbeknown to anybody else in the world. If observably losing weight and or an exhibited inability to feed oneself sufficiently alerts attention (from family/ friends/ medical professionals) there on after forms a neural connection that a demonstration of struggle will result in an intense response.

Risking losing this care and replacing it with expectancy isn’t an ominous prospect because people with EDs are needy, attention-seeking or work-shy, but simply because they are human and do not wish to be in pain.

The most ironic thing of all of this, though, is that real life is manageable when one has enough energy and develops the confidence to self-assert in challenging situations.

If there are occasions where people expect more from you when you are fully recovered, by this point you will have developed to act only within the bounds of what is doable for you. Similarly, if your care needs are unmet post-recovery, you will also feel far more able to speak up and vocalise the struggle you are experiencing.

But, I get it, a life spent undernourished and self-abandoning generally doesn’t fill one with faith of competency. Furthermore, when energised, you can connect with old or new people who will offer you gentleness in absence of visible struggle. But, of course, this forging of connection is reliant on many abilities that are incompatible with being in a low-energy state.

Some of Anorexia’s sweet-talking in this category may sound like.

Don’t recover…

·      You will end up struggling alone again

·      You don’t want to have to do those things

·      You don’t have the energy / capacity to take on more

·      You won’t have an excuse for failing

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Conclusion

There are many stages that you may be at whilst reading this blog post.

My theory is that if you were still so ensconced by the illness that you are enamoured by all of its seductions without questioning, you might not be reading this blog. And so, my hope is that you have made the transition from feeling unequivocally charmed by the disorder and are now in the position of wanting to let go – even if that still involves greatly fearing to escape.

So, to you who is contemplating letting go but is petrified of doing so, please know that this most necessary first transition from honeymoon to awareness is a really good sign. Now that restriction doesn’t solely feel euphoric, and you have some insight of the limitation it puts on authentic fulfilment, you are on your way.

Above all, I have 3 main closing points:

1.        Hear me when I say, every single one of Anorexia’s persuasions and enticements comes with an expiration date. Your belief in its truth will wilt. 

• The dopamine bump of the hunger high is replaced by blistering anxiety and pain.

• The glorious peace of climbing into bed at night having played anorexia’s game perfectly is replaced by dread at the regime resetting tomorrow.

• Having money in the bank dwindles steeply in its satisfaction as internal wars about which of anorexia’s agendas – caloric value, price or macronutrient figure – matter more.

• If physique compliments do continue – (they don’t tend to as people become accustomed to this suppressed version of you) – they stimulate a surge of embarrassment, insecurity and vulnerability. As it turns out, you’d far rather they didn’t look at your figure and you were just a floating head. Scrap that, you’re critical about your face too.

• Meanwhile, any admiration of your lifestyle is met with internal horror at their ignorance. Do they not know what upkeeping this is costing?

• The haughtiness fades as you recognise there is no superiority in the comprehensive nutritional data you hold in your mind or restrained behaviours that you exhibit. Completely opposed to how you once felt in your wealth of knowledge and abilities of restriction, your internal response to seeing that stranger eating a croissant in a café with a hot chocolate is one of yearning. I wish I could be like them, you’ll think.

• And finally, the one I think stands out for me personally, is the sheer predictability of anorexia becomes a greater terror than the universe’s instability.

Ultimately, you are left without the possibility to deny that the eating disorder itself is responsible for a considerable amount of the pain in your life. No matter how many times you stick your head in the sand and try to convince you otherwise, you will resurface with desire for change. The question is only how much more time you will waste bobbing.

2.       You must stop waiting for these seductions to entirely go. Waiting for ambivalence to disappear leaves many people waiting until they are deep into old age.

I assure you, the you that is nourished and rewired is not something you need be concerned about. You will be enough. You will be self-asserting. You will be strong. And you will feel those things too. It is the illness itself (the malnutrition and behavioural matrix) that is the barrier to your life filling up very organically and limiting your capabilities.

I implore you: do not let any more time be lost. Do not spend more time attaining insight and delaying action. The time to begin is now, today.

3.        And finally, to close with total honesty. Being ‘in recovery’ will not immediately dispel your fears.

In truth, many of anorexia’s suggestions will even turn out to be true:

You will feel more emotion, and that might be very uncomfortable.

You will have more decisions to make, and that might be extremely fatiguing.

You will feel lost when you have departed one identity and have not fully formed the other.

And so on.

But, I can promise you with every single fibre of my being, not a single one of these things is anywhere close to causing the distress of an eating disorder once you are fully recovered. This ‘in recovery’ transition phase is not how things will ultimately feel. A full and free life holds the rich human experience that makes life worth living, and with a nourished mind, you can handle the good, the bad and the ugly.