What is our body telling us when we have an eating disorder?
By Aimee Liu
Let’s say you cannot speak. You don’t dare ask for help, but you can’t resolve your problems alone. What do you do?
One strategy might be to act out your distress. You might go hungry, shaping your figure like an empty spoon, as hollow and lifeless as you feel. You might secretly stuff your body with food the way you’ve stuffed down fear and shame, and then violently purge, as if to get rid of those unspeakable emotions. Or you might just keep on eating more and more until the outside world seems to shrink by comparison, each new binge mimicking the onslaught of feelings too huge to contain within the mold of acceptable expectations.
When viewed as wordless cries for relief, the psychological pantomimes of anorexia, bulimia and binge eating make perfect sense. The mystery is why the afflicted so often misread the messages their ailments embody—as do the people around them. Eating disorders are often unrecognized or belittled by parents, teachers and doctors, misunderstood as choices made by girls and women obsessed with their weight. But they are mental illnesses, and they can be as lethal as guns—shaped by genes, loaded by culture and triggered by emotional pain and existential dread. Recovery must be measured not only in pounds, but also, crucially, in the discovery of a sense of self.
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