Posts Tagged ‘eating disorder’

The Excessity of Relationships

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Relationship excessities aren’t always of a sexual nature. Sometimes, the excessity relationship I see is between parent and child. It is a disturbing distortion of the natural bonding that should occur, where one appears unable to detach and function without the other.

Bonding becomes bondage.

This kind of enmeshment between mother and daughter often manifests itself in an eating disorder — the daughter’s symptom of the mother’s relational stranglehold. I have also seen it in opposition defiant disorder between a father and son, where the son assumes a constant position of hostility in order to avoid the suffocation of his father’s need for control over his life.

Relationships can also become an excessity when it is the fact of the relationship, not the face of the relationship, that matters most.

I’ve seen people jump from relationship to relationship, refusing to grow and learn from each other, in order to perpetuate a deep-seated pattern. For these people, the faces change but the circumstances do not.

He’s forever looking for someone who needs him so much she’ll be afraid to leave. She’s forever looking for someone who is wounded more than she is so her hurt won’t seem so bad. I’ve seen people who needed to be in a relationship so badly — who could not tolerate being alone — they compromised just about everything.

If you keep looking in the mirror when it comes to relationships and say to yourself over and over, “I can’t believe I keep doing this!” it’s time to determine if being in relationships has become an excessity in your life.

SOURCE: Chapter 2, “Examine Your Excess,” in Gotta Have It! by Gregory L. Jantz, PhD., founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources Inc.

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Affirming Action for Eating Disorders: Are You Ready to Give Your Body to God?

Friday, February 26th, 2010

As National Eating Disorder Awareness Week comes to a close, I would like to share with you the end-of-chapter Affirming Action from Chapter 10, “Reclaiming the Gift of Health,” in my book, Hope, Help and Healing for Eating Disorders: A Whole-Person Approach to Anorexia, Bulimia and Overeating:

Consider these verses: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him: for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).

How long has it been since you considered your body a temple? Have you ever thought of yourself that way? God does. He considers your body as sacred. So sacred, he considers it an appropriate place for his Spirit to dwell.

In this world, you are also God’s hands and his feet. You are part of the body of Christ.

Up to now, you have considered your body your own. You have decided that you can treat, or mistreat, your body however you choose. You may have given God your heart, your mind, your soul, and your strength — but you have withheld his sovereignty over your body. You have chosen to continue to conduct your eating disorder on a body that does not truly belong to you any longer.

Are you ready to give your body to God? Are you ready to submit to his will concerning your body? And what is his will? For you to recognize your body as his temple, sacred to him.

I am learning to trust my body to function and heal as God designed it to. I am learning to accept and love all of me … my body included.

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Validating the Pain Behind Your Eating Disorder: Accept the Past, Heal Today

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Instead of denying the pain behind your eating disorder, you can learn to accept it. And what better time than now, during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week when I am blogging excerpts from my book, Hope, Help and Healing for Eating Disorders: A Whole-Person Approach to Anorexia, Bulimia and Overeating:

It is possible to replace your faulty coping mechanism with healthy skills for withstanding the stress of life.

It is possible to feel anger without feeling rage.

Through counseling, you can learn to understand and accept your childhood and its pain. If you can weather the storm of finally learning the truth and giving up your ideal image of the “perfect” family, your pain and hurt can become like parts of a puzzle, fitting into place and giving you greater understanding of why your parents do what they do. Once you understand the way, you can begin the process of filling in the void in your life with healthy choices: with laughter and love, with family and friends, with good things, and with God.

Verbal and/or emotional abuse leaves no visible scars, so the tendency to deny that these events happened can be very great.

Often the parent will remember the circumstances from a very different perspective than the child. Your child-self recalls one version of events, and your parent another. Which is right? They may both be. When you were a child, you remembered things from the perspective of a child, often unaware of the larger picture. Your parents may never have considered how their actions looked from the other side. Take that into consideration when examining the past. You will need to accept their vision of what happened, and they must accept yours.

Finding the truth and working with your family will not be easy, but it can be extremely illuminating and rewarding. It can mean the reconciliation of relationships. Or you can gain an understanding of the type of relationship you can realistically have with your family as an adult. Much will depend upon the hurtful behavior and that person’s willingness to accept your pain.

Egregious physical or sexual abuse, by its very nature, may lead to outright denial by the abuser.

The more valid the memory, the more vehement the denial. Because societal and religious condemnation of such acts is so great, the person who abused you may never truly admit what he or she has done. The abuser may believe that if the abuse is denied outright, you may begin to doubt that it occurred at all. In spite of this, you need to realize you were hurt. Sometimes it really doesn’t matter if memories are totally clear or recalled; you still felt hurt.

The next point is so important, I want to put it in bold type to make sure you don’t overlook it:

Your self-destructive behavior did not come about for no reason. Most people who develop a severe eating disorder have had some history of abuse, and I encourage you to believe in what your past reveals. You must be determined to examine your past and accept the truth that is revealed. You must take the truth of your past and put it into perspective as an adult.

Don’t allow denial, your own or others, to halt your journey toward healing and recovery  from your eating disorder.

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The Detour of Denial: Burying the Pain Behind Anorexia, Bulimia and Overeating

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

In support of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, below is an excerpt from Chapter 6, “The Detour of Denial,” from my book, Hope, Help and Healing: A New Approach to Treating Anorexia, Bulimia and Overeating:

Individuals with an eating disorder – be it anorexia, bulimia or overeating – are often unaware of the source of their pain. I believe this is God’s way of protecting us. In order to survive as children, we block our abusive behavior. But somewhere along the line, the adult must discover the wellspring of pain from the past. Denial is a significant detour in that quest.

TWO TYPES OF DENIAL

The first is your own denial of what has happened to you. This may take the form of doubting that what you remember ever took place. Because the abuse has been denied, it may take on an unreal quality when remembered, almost as if it happened to someone else. If the abuse is remembered, it is often seen through a prism that “explains” why the abuse wasn’t really abuse at all.

Denial enters through self-talk. These are the messages we repeat over and over to ourselves as we try to deal with the pain and the eating disorder. Thoughts of “nobody’s home is perfect” or “it could have been worse” or “it wasn’t that bad” or “there’s nothing I can do about it now” allow you to minimize the damage. “I should be strong enough to deal with this on my own” or “everyone turns to food when they’re down” increases frustration at the inability to bring the eating disorder under control. But denial, this minimization of the pain, is merely a coping mechanism to keep the pain at bay.

Denial is the ticket that allows you to transform life-altering pain into that limbo state of “not that bad.” If it’s “not that bad,” you believe you can find the strength to go on.

The other form of denial comes from the person or people who hurt you. They may deny that the abuse ever took place or that there was anything wrong with what they did. He or she may accept that the event or events happened but deny responsibility or minimize the damage. This can happen regardless of the nature of the abuse. Whether the abuse ws a single, specific event or a pattern of hurtful behavior carried out over a number of years, this person may refuse to accept the ramifications of his or her actions.

This person may even attempt to make you feel responsible for the abuse itself or responsible for your “version” of the events. They may deny the damage by calling into question your natural response to the damage. It is to his or her benefit if denial goes both ways — their denial of the event andyour denial of the damage done. They may resist acknowledging your eating disorder, because acknowledgement means recognizing the abuse or pattern of hurtful behavior behind it. So the responsiblity for the abuse itself and the resulting eating disorder could be shoved back at you, increasing the stress surrounding your eating disorder, escalating its progression. As your eating disorder escalates, it becomes easier to focus your attention solely on its progress, diverting your attention from the root cause.

Tomorrow: Accepting the pain of your past.

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