Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [94]
Samantha nibbled on a carrot stick. “I was much better at dieting than Mom or my friends. I lost five pounds the first week and then three the second. Twice I fainted at school.”
“How did others react to your diet?”
Samantha smiled in memory of the time. “I got lots of compliments. My friends were jealous, but I made new friends. Guys who wouldn’t have considered me before asked me out.”
Samantha was at risk for anorexia because of her perfectionism and enormous amount of self-discipline. She could will herself into starving, but soon anorexia was running the show. Samantha became obsessed with food and weight. The most important time was weigh-in time, first thing in the morning. If she lost weight, she felt great, but if she gained, she was distraught. Nothing else, not grades or social success, had much effect on her well-being.
She learned to love the “high” she experienced from fasting. She began running three miles a day, then five and then eight. Even though this running exhausted her and depleted her limited energy reserves, she wouldn’t cut back. She devised tests for herself to prove her control over food. For example, she invited her friends over for a party and, weak with hunger, watched as they devoured lasagna and ice-cream sundaes. She baked brownies for her family and would not even sample the ones fresh from the oven. She watched other people scarf down food with their animal appetites and felt superior. Samantha did what many girls with anorexia do: She reduced her complicated life to one simple issue—weight.
Samantha reminded me of a brainwashing victim. She had her own rigid ways of thinking about herself and the universe and was impervious to the influence of others. She thought people who wanted her to eat were jealous of her thinness. Like most anorexics, she didn’t want to fight her anorexia. She had brainwashed herself into thinking that anorexia was her friend. She was in my office because her parents and doctors wanted her to fight. We were her enemy, not the anorexia. She lied, distorted and hid her eating to protect herself from those who wanted to help her.
Therapy must be a kind of reverse brainwashing. I attacked the anorexia, but not Samantha. As she finished her meager lunch, I asked her questions that I learned to ask from psychologist David Epston. “If anorexia is your friend, why is he making you so tired and weak? Why is he encouraging you to do something that has made your periods stop and your hair fall out?”
These questions surprised her and were not easy to dismiss. She said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
I asked her to take home questions to think about, to write about. “We will continue to explore the lies that anorexia has told you, the lies that are costing you your life.” I also told her I would work with her only if she agreed to stop her long-distance runs for now. I explained that these runs might trigger a heart attack. She resented my limits, but agreed.
Work with Samantha proceeded laboriously. I assigned her consciousness-raising work. She was to look at models and movie stars and ask, Who picked this thin, passive type as our standard of beauty? I asked her to think about women she really respected. Were they weight- and appearance-conscious?
With Samantha, as with most anorexic women, the biggest step was realizing that anorexia was not her friend but her enemy, even her potential executioner. After that, she resisted its claims on her soul. One day Samantha came in and said that she realized that anorexia had lied to her. She said, “He promised I would be happy when I was thin, and I’m miserable. He promised I would accomplish great things and I’m too tired to even do what I used to do. He promised I’d be healthy if I ran, and instead my bones ache from the pressure of my body. He promised me friends, and everyone is mad at me. Anorexia has stolen all the fun out of my life.” That day I felt Samantha would recover.
COMPULSIVE EATERS
In this culture we are all socialized to love food. Rich, sweet foods are connected to love, nurturance and warmth. We