I’m convinced I am taking up too much space, eating too much, wanting food too much. I’ve often felt that I was too much emotion, too much need, too loud and demanding, too much there, if you know what I mean.
+ needy + too much + room + excess + big + eating disorder + not enough + enoughness + space + food + wanting + emotion + anorexia + bulimia + retreat + invisible
Emotions are regarded as troublesome or frightening. Anger is to be avoided, sadness eliminated as soon as possible. In order to survive in this world, she must deny or downplay them. She quickly learns that in order to please others around her, she must present a pleasant, happy face and hide any other feelings. She feels like she is just going through the motions. There is a certain emptiness in her life an emptiness she tries to fill with food.
+ eating in the light of the moon + eating disorder + please + people + emotions + feelings + deny + suppress + happy + hide + empty + food + anger + sadness
For many people, food is a means to communicate thoughts and feelings they don’t know how to communicate directly. Then we become like “one-trick ponies” doing the same one thing over and over again to get love, to cope with emotional stress, to communicate our anger, to bear our sadness.
+ eating in the light of the moon + eating disorders + communicate + express + food + cope + stress + anger + sadness + feelings
There is an empty spot in many of us that gnaws at our ribs
and cannot be filled by any amount of food. There is a hunger for something
and we never know quite what it is, only that it is hunger, so we eat.
The bulimic will absorb the food and then reject it, she will agree to internalize her emotions, then reject them. She wants to feel loved, and at the same time she fears that people won’t notice what is happening inside of herself. She lives in fear of what others think.
By looking to food rather than people to meet self-object needs, the eating disordered individual tried to circumvent the need for human self- object responsiveness and to avoid further disappointment and shame. Food is seen as trustworthy, while people are not.
+ bulimia + external + empty + internal + needs + food + void + people + shame + trust + disappointment + relationships
A person with an eating disorder believes her needs are illegitimate, and therefore finds it difficult to seek care or engage with any care she does manage to seek. But because her needs are yearning and pressing she must find some way to express them: she puts into body what she cannot put into words. Her eating disorder serves as her voice, her attempt to express her needs and desires without directly asking for anything”.
+ sensing the self + bulimia + needs + expressing + food + yearning + engage + voice + need
A bulimic person’s shame may lead her to try not only to hide her eating- disordered behaviors but also her basic needs and yearnings. She may wish that her needs and desires did not exist and may try to act as if she does not need or want anyone or anything. when that attempt inevitably fails, she may wish others could magically read her mind and respond to her needs and wants without having to ask for anything. To avoid shame of expressing her needs and desires, she turns to food rather than relationships, for comfort. Instant gratification, that you can’t find in other places.
+ sensing the self + bulimia + needs + yearnings + shame + eating disorder + hide + need + want + desires + food + relationships + avoid + expressing
I began bingeing and purging. I ate because it had a numbing effect and I purged because to me the food was still evil, so I had to get it out of my body. From that time onward, my eating disorder was constant. There was no rest periods in between. It was an unending assault on my body.
+ bulimia + binge + purge + evil + food + eating disorder + assault
