Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [95]
In addition to the emotional power of food, it has a chemical power that’s addictive as well. We all have experienced that sedating effect after Thanksgiving dinner. We feel sleepy and mildly euphoric. Sugar has particular power, and many women use sugary foods as a way to calm themselves and medicate away pain and anxiety.
In my experience, certain populations of women are most at risk for compulsive overeating. These are the women who are caretakers, whose life work is nurturing others. Nurses, for example, are notorious for having goodies in their nursing stations and eating when they are overworked and tired. Many develop into compulsive eaters.
Young women who eat compulsively have learned to use food as a drug that medicates away their emotional pain. This is harmful because they do not learn to deal with emotional pain and because they become obese, which sets them up for much more pain and rejection. It’s virtually impossible in America to be heavy and feel good about oneself. A vicious cycle has begun.
Compulsive overeaters are often young women with a history of dieting. They diet and feel miserable, then they eat and feel better, but meanwhile their dieting makes their metabolism grow more and more sluggish. Over time weight loss becomes associated with control, and weight gain with out-of-control behavior. They become more obsessed with calories and weight. Soon it’s not just their eating but their lives that are out of control.
Writer Susie Orbach distinguished between “stomach hungry,” which is genuine physical hunger, and “mouth hungry,” which is a hunger for something other than food—for attention, rest, stimulation, comfort or love. Compulsive eaters are mouth-hungry eaters. All feelings are labeled as hunger. Eating becomes the way to deal with feelings. Compulsive eaters eat when they are tired, anxious, angry, lonely, bored, hurt or confused.
Treatment for compulsive eating is similar to the treatment for bulimia. Young women need to identify their real needs and not label all need as hunger. If they are restless, they need stimulation; if they are tired, they need rest; if they are angry, they need to change or escape the situation that angers them. Of course, compulsive eaters need to learn controlled eating. Often they can benefit from a support group such as Overeaters Anonymous.
It’s difficult to be a healthy eater in this country. Unhealthful food is everywhere, and we are encouraged to consume without thinking of the consequences. Support groups help women stay focused on long-term goals, not immediate gratification. They also give women a new way to deal with painful experiences: They can talk about them.
Violet was living on the streets when we first met, but soon after she moved into a shelter for homeless young women. She had a more difficult life than many compulsive eaters, but she shared essentially the same issues. Compulsive eating, unlike anorexia, is not primarily a problem of the middle class, but an equal-opportunity problem. Violet associated food with love and nurturance. Like many compulsive eaters, she was a good-natured, hard-working people pleaser. Violet was good at caring for others, but when she needed care, no one was around. Food was her pain medicine.
VIOLET (18)
I met Violet when I worked at our local homeless center. During the day homeless people and transients came there to shower, use the phones, pick up mail, escape the weather and play cards. As a volunteer, my job was to make coffee and put out trays of day-old donuts and rolls. I was to enforce the rules—no swearing, no alcohol, no obscenities and no weapons.
When I wasn’t busy, I played cards and gave advice about local jobs and services. Most of our customers were men, but increasingly in the last few years women and families have come to the center. Cigarette smoke fills the