Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [88]
She blushed. “It was harder than you would think. My body resisted, but I was able to do it. It was so gross that I thought, ‘I’ll never do that again,’ but a week later I did. At first it was weekly, then twice a week. Now it’s almost every day. My dentist said that acid is eating away the enamel of my teeth.”
Heidi began to cry. “I feel like such a hypocrite. People look at me and see a small, healthy person. I see a person who gorges on food and is totally out of control. You wouldn’t believe how much I eat. I shove food into my mouth so fast that I choke. Afterwards, my stomach feels like it will burst.”
I explained that bulimia is an addiction that’s hard to break. It requires enormous willpower to fight the urge to binge and purge. And unlike people with other addictions such as alcohol or cocaine, bulimic women can’t avoid their drug of choice. Heidi would need to learn controlled eating. Fighting the urge to binge is just one part of the treatment. She also needed new ways to deal with her own psychic pain. Bulimia, like all addictions, is a way to run from pain. Heidi needed to learn to face her feelings. I suggested Heidi record how she felt at the time of binges. Later we would examine her writing.
I asked about her family. Heidi’s father was a local pediatrician and her mother a homemaker who worked with the Junior League. She was the oldest of three children. Heidi said that she had a wonderful childhood. Her family took trips every summer—one year to the coast of Maine, another to Sanibel Island in Florida and another to Alaska.
She loved elementary school. She’d been busy with her family, church and gymnastics. She was the kind of girl other kids like—easy-going and energetic. Heidi paused. “I had the perfect life—great parents, good friends and my own bedroom with a canopy bed and a balcony. I had walls full of ribbons and trophies.”
I asked, “When did it stop being perfect?”
“After my thirteenth birthday things got tough. I graduated from my neighborhood school and moved into a consolidated school. I made friends there, but I felt under more pressure. School was harder; gymnastics was harder. I gained weight when I started my periods. Coach put me on a diet.”
Heidi sighed. “Social life got harder. The girls were competitive. I hated the gossiping. With boys, everything got sexual. I was friends with some of the guys in the neighborhood, but we stopped hanging out together. We didn’t know how to handle stuff.”
I asked how Heidi felt about her appearance and wasn’t surprised to hear that she had felt ugly in junior high. “Appearance was all we talked about. I tried not to get caught up in it, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to be pretty like everyone else.”
As is often the case, Heidi’s bulimia began with anxiety about weight gain. She was in a high-risk category—women who make a living or have an identity based on being thin. This category includes gymnasts, dancers, actresses and models. Many acquire eating disorders as an occupational hazard. However, once bulimia is entrenched, it functions, like alcohol or other chemicals, as a stress reducer. Young women binge to relax, and afterward they feel better, temporarily.
We ended our first session with a talk about expectations. Heidi felt pressured to be attractive, athletic and popular. She was amazingly successful at meeting these expectations, but she was paying a big price. Her perfectionism was taking its toll on her physical and emotional health. She needed to strive to be ordinary and to cut herself some slack. Eventually, unless she conquered bulimia, she wouldn’t be athletic, attractive or popular.
Next session Heidi came with careful notes