Over the course of my cross-cultural blogging experience, I have gained a considerable knowledge for the “practice” of anorexia nervosa. I was forced to put myself in a situation where my understanding and beliefs were challenged. The past two months have enabled me not only to rethink my position in the world, but also to value and appreciate the breadth of knowledge available to me.
My culture site, Anorex1aNerv0sa, is a site where anyone can go to understand why people participate in the disease. It is a place where true answers and evaluation take precedence over negative thinking and connotations. I have learned that anorexia is not something people want; but instead, something people need. In order to gain control of their lives, these people must find an instant euphoria and for them, it is found through the practice of anorexia. Although most cases have a tragic result, it is important to look at the large number of patients who have fully recovered. They have stepped outside of their skin and into a new body. In most cases, they have found a means to help others in similar situations.
From investigating this cultural practice, I have recognized a chain reaction that takes place in each recovered individual and in the anorexic community as a whole. I have learned that in order to overcome this hardship, you have to know that someone else has succeeded in dealing with the disease; you have to realize that nothing is impossible. Through research, interviews, and first hand experience, I have engaged with my culture site and learned the reality of what it takes to be a part of this practice and to be a part of its past.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Final Notes on the Recovery Process
In accordance to the previous blog, “Recoveries in Language,” I thought it prudent to conclude with the main difference between Struggling Recoveries and Full Recoveries. What I found in the same article was that “these two genres are consequential for the women’s experience of recovery, since it seems that the telling and retelling of an empowerment (full recovery) narrative, with its clear beginnings, turning points, and felicitous, institutionally condoned endings may well be critical for recovery to remain a stable condition in life.” As far as the Struggling Recoveries are concerned, talking about their experiences is hard, and sometimes uncertain. They don’t know how to make sense of what happened, and fail to put their experience in a step-by-step process.
I couldn’t help but relate the idea of story telling to the experiences of organ donor kin. In Leslie Sharp’s book, “A Strange Harvest,” the same idea that one must talk about an experience is crucial to the healing process. The more we talk about a situation, the more it becomes flat and free of repressed emotion. Making this tie helped me to realize that anorexia is similar to many hardships in life. It is not as individual a disease as we think, and shares similarities to a number of diseases and disorders. What makes anorexia so scary and different from other disorders is the numerous symptoms it holds in combination with “the notion [of] recovery…is not just an outcome to be measured in terms of symptoms but entails a narrative process that links past, present and future visions of the self in relation to others.”
I have learned, through this information and from self-experience, that getting to a stage of full recovery is a lot harder than shown on the surface. The stages we experience on the way to the end make it seem like we will never find closure. It takes the strongest of wills to overcome such a hardship like anorexia but it is those wills that make it to the end that show us that the experience of anorexia becomes merely, a piece of the past; an utter experience that happened to the previous self no longer attached to your present self.
Citations
Shohet, Merav. "Narrating Anorexia: 'Full' and 'Struggling' Genres of Recovery"
ETHOS Vol. 35, Issue 3, pp. 344–382, ISSN 0091-2131 online ISSN 1548-1352. © 2007 by the American Anthropological Association.
I couldn’t help but relate the idea of story telling to the experiences of organ donor kin. In Leslie Sharp’s book, “A Strange Harvest,” the same idea that one must talk about an experience is crucial to the healing process. The more we talk about a situation, the more it becomes flat and free of repressed emotion. Making this tie helped me to realize that anorexia is similar to many hardships in life. It is not as individual a disease as we think, and shares similarities to a number of diseases and disorders. What makes anorexia so scary and different from other disorders is the numerous symptoms it holds in combination with “the notion [of] recovery…is not just an outcome to be measured in terms of symptoms but entails a narrative process that links past, present and future visions of the self in relation to others.”
I have learned, through this information and from self-experience, that getting to a stage of full recovery is a lot harder than shown on the surface. The stages we experience on the way to the end make it seem like we will never find closure. It takes the strongest of wills to overcome such a hardship like anorexia but it is those wills that make it to the end that show us that the experience of anorexia becomes merely, a piece of the past; an utter experience that happened to the previous self no longer attached to your present self.
Citations
Shohet, Merav. "Narrating Anorexia: 'Full' and 'Struggling' Genres of Recovery"
ETHOS Vol. 35, Issue 3, pp. 344–382, ISSN 0091-2131 online ISSN 1548-1352. © 2007 by the American Anthropological Association.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Recoveries in Language
After my interview with the nutritionist, I thought of some new questions regarding the recovery process. There must be a difference between someone who is fully recovered and someone who is on their way to recovery, or even someone who believes they’re recovered but really aren’t. It was my good fortune when I came across the article “Narrating Anorexia: ‘Full’ and ‘Struggling’ Genres of Recovery” by Merav Shohet which, through a narrative process, explores how “women treated for anorexia reframe their illness and recovery experiences.”
In the case of the Full Recovery Genre, Shohet explains, there is a process by which one must transform their debilitated self into a self more capable of overcoming life’s unforeseen events. Alternatively, the Struggling Recovery genre tells of a past, present, and imagined future self continuously in conflict with each other, where no stage experiences true progress toward a new self. Sometimes, the person considers herself an agent or driving force to become healthy, but other times remains an experiencing patient unable to free herself from the disease and transcend into a new self.
Although full and struggling recoveries represent different aspects of the process as a whole, both suggest that recovery is equally an individual and social process. In these processes, I recognized that language plays a leading role in determining, from an outsiders perspective, what recovery stage the person is at. While the full recovery patients spoke with certainty and affiliation with institutional narratives, the struggling recovery patients spoke with weak cognitive verbs and without certainty. A few examples of their speech are as follows:
Struggling Recovery: So like whenever I feel like the expectations[…]
And(.) and… that was my way of sort of…getting out of it.
So that was my way our, I think.
Full Recovery: But I know the nature of my…being, being… obsessive compulsive
disorder, perfectionist nature, divorced family, alcoholism, addiction, all that… I was a prime candidate.
As you can see, there is a direct difference between the language the full recoverer uses and the struggling recoverer uses, which enables us to see a difference in the stages of their lives.
Citations
Shohet, Merav. "Narrating Anorexia: 'Full' and 'Struggling' Genres of Recovery"
ETHOS Vol. 35, Issue 3, pp. 344–382, ISSN 0091-2131 online ISSN 1548-1352. © 2007 by the American Anthropological Association.
In the case of the Full Recovery Genre, Shohet explains, there is a process by which one must transform their debilitated self into a self more capable of overcoming life’s unforeseen events. Alternatively, the Struggling Recovery genre tells of a past, present, and imagined future self continuously in conflict with each other, where no stage experiences true progress toward a new self. Sometimes, the person considers herself an agent or driving force to become healthy, but other times remains an experiencing patient unable to free herself from the disease and transcend into a new self.
Although full and struggling recoveries represent different aspects of the process as a whole, both suggest that recovery is equally an individual and social process. In these processes, I recognized that language plays a leading role in determining, from an outsiders perspective, what recovery stage the person is at. While the full recovery patients spoke with certainty and affiliation with institutional narratives, the struggling recovery patients spoke with weak cognitive verbs and without certainty. A few examples of their speech are as follows:
Struggling Recovery: So like whenever I feel like the expectations[…]
And(.) and… that was my way of sort of…getting out of it.
So that was my way our, I think.
Full Recovery: But I know the nature of my…being, being… obsessive compulsive
disorder, perfectionist nature, divorced family, alcoholism, addiction, all that… I was a prime candidate.
As you can see, there is a direct difference between the language the full recoverer uses and the struggling recoverer uses, which enables us to see a difference in the stages of their lives.
Citations
Shohet, Merav. "Narrating Anorexia: 'Full' and 'Struggling' Genres of Recovery"
ETHOS Vol. 35, Issue 3, pp. 344–382, ISSN 0091-2131 online ISSN 1548-1352. © 2007 by the American Anthropological Association.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Evidence versus Experience Continued
“All my life I was trying to improve myself. It wasn’t until my mother told me I was pudgy when I took a turn for the worse. It’s not that my mother didn’t accept me, but it was only in my mind that I wasn’t perfect.” She didn’t commit herself to athletics or try to make healthy food choices, but instead she suppressed her caloric intake. When she realized that this was an extreme challenge, she turned to the drug methamphetamine. She said, “I used to shoot drugs to stay skinny, they would naturally suppress my appetite. I found pleasure when I would see the bones jutting out of my body. I saw beautiful because I was in total control. I felt so beautiful, so beautiful…you have no idea. Everybody else had to eat to survive; I could do without it.”
But I soon learned that this beauty she saw was the furthest from confidence. She said, “It’s a weakness. You’re not confident because you’re only holding on to the false illusion of confidence through your control of weight. When in fact inside, you’re starving and crying for love. And I’m telling you, you cure it with self-love. You don’t cure it by finding others to love you.”
So my next question is where did this self-love come from? Every situation is different she said. “Most people have to go to rehab for years, but to be honest…they are usually never cured. People aren’t doing it the correct way. It is those practices that involve biology, psychology, and nutrition that will succeed. You can’t just send an anorexic to a psychologist and expect them to get better, they won’t.”
I asked her about herself…what is it that makes her recovery process different then the typical anorexic? She said no one would believe her if she told them, but it was a great yogi teacher that guided her to strength.
As the interview wrapped up, I came to understand why she engaged in the process. She did it because it felt good. “There is something that releases chemicals in the brain when you have an empty stomach. There is a euphoria when you are in the starving phase. “ There is something that really drives anorexia…it is biological and psychological. Psychologically, you are in control and you feel like you are on top of the world. When you can control your eating, you have actually mastered one of the four primitive fountains of life. Everyone needs to eat, and if you can control this, you can control your whole life."
But I soon learned that this beauty she saw was the furthest from confidence. She said, “It’s a weakness. You’re not confident because you’re only holding on to the false illusion of confidence through your control of weight. When in fact inside, you’re starving and crying for love. And I’m telling you, you cure it with self-love. You don’t cure it by finding others to love you.”
So my next question is where did this self-love come from? Every situation is different she said. “Most people have to go to rehab for years, but to be honest…they are usually never cured. People aren’t doing it the correct way. It is those practices that involve biology, psychology, and nutrition that will succeed. You can’t just send an anorexic to a psychologist and expect them to get better, they won’t.”
I asked her about herself…what is it that makes her recovery process different then the typical anorexic? She said no one would believe her if she told them, but it was a great yogi teacher that guided her to strength.
As the interview wrapped up, I came to understand why she engaged in the process. She did it because it felt good. “There is something that releases chemicals in the brain when you have an empty stomach. There is a euphoria when you are in the starving phase. “ There is something that really drives anorexia…it is biological and psychological. Psychologically, you are in control and you feel like you are on top of the world. When you can control your eating, you have actually mastered one of the four primitive fountains of life. Everyone needs to eat, and if you can control this, you can control your whole life."
Evidence versus Experience
As my blog research has continued, my desire for answers concerning this difference, or whatever you wish to call it, continues to grow. I no longer want a better understanding of why women engage in this practice, I need a better understanding. What does it do for them, and how does it allow them to see themselves? What is it they truly see behind the bones jutting from their skin?
In my efforts to find deeper understanding, I came across a certified nutrionalist who earned her PHD from Colombia University. Of course it was great to learn the perspective of a nutritionalist, but it was even greater to learn that of a nutritionalist who once allowed herself to be a part of the disease. Yes, the woman who graduated from Colombia University was also anorexic for the first three years of her undergraduate schooling. Ironically, her infatuation with anorexia directed her towards psychology and anthropology and ultimately resulted in her PHD and career in nutrition. As she was so willing to share with me some of her deepest secrets, I must respect her wishes to remain anonymous. The interview that I thought was going to bring me dry scientific reasoning actually brought me to greater understand this psychological mystery.
The first thing she made clear was that at any point someone with an underlying self-hate can become an anorexic. They need not be aware of their psychological discord in order to feel a need for control in their lives. “For the most part,” she said, “anorexia results from a very deep need to feel perfect or accepted. It results from self-esteem issues, most likely originating from a dysfunctional family, but not just your average dysfunction, it is very particular.” It was at this point in the interview where the nutritionalist I was speaking to turned into a real person; a person with experience. She said, “My mother was a control freak. She wasn’t a very nurturing mother, and she was very focused and driven on task orientation…emotions were never important to her. You are usually lacking a good mother when you have anorexia. You know, one that is nurturing.” When she came back from college, she said, her mother told her she was getting pudgy. The once state-ranked athlete was turning “fat.” She didn’t know about dieting, or eating foods with high nutritional value, so in college she ate like she did when she was a competing athlete. How her mother told her she was pudgy is still a mystery to me. She weighed 118 pounds and was 5’4”. Those are extremely close to my dimensions, and to think of myself, as being fat seems completely ridiculous. But even with the body of a healthy 19-year old, this woman was starting to see herself as obese. She actually looked in the mirror and saw fat. She poked at the curves in her body and saw hate. She hated herself.
In my efforts to find deeper understanding, I came across a certified nutrionalist who earned her PHD from Colombia University. Of course it was great to learn the perspective of a nutritionalist, but it was even greater to learn that of a nutritionalist who once allowed herself to be a part of the disease. Yes, the woman who graduated from Colombia University was also anorexic for the first three years of her undergraduate schooling. Ironically, her infatuation with anorexia directed her towards psychology and anthropology and ultimately resulted in her PHD and career in nutrition. As she was so willing to share with me some of her deepest secrets, I must respect her wishes to remain anonymous. The interview that I thought was going to bring me dry scientific reasoning actually brought me to greater understand this psychological mystery.
The first thing she made clear was that at any point someone with an underlying self-hate can become an anorexic. They need not be aware of their psychological discord in order to feel a need for control in their lives. “For the most part,” she said, “anorexia results from a very deep need to feel perfect or accepted. It results from self-esteem issues, most likely originating from a dysfunctional family, but not just your average dysfunction, it is very particular.” It was at this point in the interview where the nutritionalist I was speaking to turned into a real person; a person with experience. She said, “My mother was a control freak. She wasn’t a very nurturing mother, and she was very focused and driven on task orientation…emotions were never important to her. You are usually lacking a good mother when you have anorexia. You know, one that is nurturing.” When she came back from college, she said, her mother told her she was getting pudgy. The once state-ranked athlete was turning “fat.” She didn’t know about dieting, or eating foods with high nutritional value, so in college she ate like she did when she was a competing athlete. How her mother told her she was pudgy is still a mystery to me. She weighed 118 pounds and was 5’4”. Those are extremely close to my dimensions, and to think of myself, as being fat seems completely ridiculous. But even with the body of a healthy 19-year old, this woman was starting to see herself as obese. She actually looked in the mirror and saw fat. She poked at the curves in her body and saw hate. She hated herself.
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