Girls Who Are Vomiting and Not Eating
Dear L— [see ‘Eating Distresses and Parenting’ article by L—],
First, you must be a great mom. It’s so good that your daughter told you about this. She trusted you to help and be on her side [support her]. Really, that’s wonderful. And it’s moving [emotionally touching] to read everything you are prepared to do to support her.
I’m a mom of young adults and teenagers and have been an RCer since I was twenty years old. I myself wanted to be very slim and struggled with on-and-off eating from about age fourteen to my early twenties. I made myself vomit a few times, but mostly I had long periods of being very strict about what I ate and over-exercising if I had binged from getting so hungry. I was also preoccupied with scales (for weighing myself) and mirrors.
Looking back, I can see that a collection of things were hard for me in my early teenage years. School was an unkind place for a long time. I couldn’t tell [perceive] if my parents liked or loved me. I couldn’t tell if my friends or other young people liked me. There was a lot of unkindness and competition. No one anywhere seemed to like me very much. The world seemed a lonely place.
Then suddenly my body was changing, and there were expectations about how I should be and what I had to do as a young woman, along with lots of inappropriate sexual attention from boys and men. Also, feelings came up from an abusive sexual experience in my childhood. Then I was bullied at school. So there were lots of hard feelings, lots of aloneness, and no way of dealing with it. It was too much.
Trying to restrict my eating and be thin was an attempt to control the feelings and have some control in my life. It was also a way that I could try to make myself better—I felt like the struggles I was having were because I wasn’t good enough.
I couldn’t manage more than a few times to make myself sick. It is a hard thing to do. So is depriving oneself of food. I felt bad, but not bad enough to be serious about making myself sick. And somewhere I knew that it wasn’t a good idea. (I suspect it’s almost impossible to make yourself sick and deny yourself food if you are feeling happy, connected, and loved.)
My life was quite messy for a few years. It wasn’t just the eating and appearance issues. I did some risky things for a while. Then a few things began to turn it around [change it]. My relationship with my mom developed. She could see that things were hard. She spent more time with me. We drove in the car, or cooked, or did jobs together. She asked my opinion and listened to me, and I could tell more and more that she loved me and thought I was good. I was quite mean to her for a few years. I would get angry or otherwise upset with her about different things—never about food issues; it was more about the feelings underneath. We never talked about the eating issues, because at the time I felt that her worry and shock would be another thing I would have to handle. However, if I could speak to my young self now, I would probably encourage her to talk to her mom.
I also began to have some significant and trustworthy female friendships. My friends and I laughed a lot and talked about important issues in a meaningful way. And I learned RC. Learning about RC theory, young people’s and young adults’ oppression and liberation, and feminism made a big difference. I began to think about liberation and being empowered. I thought about how young people are mistreated and wanted a different world for young people—in particular, young women. Understanding oppression helped me see that I wasn’t the problem.
In my early years in RC, I had a few big physical sessions at workshops, and something changed. I also remember a session with an older woman in which she said that I could refuse the oppression, refuse to be controlled by the preoccupation with food. After that, it never had the same power over me. I’ve had to keep working on all the feelings underneath it—and I still have a way to go—but the connection to food, eating, and appearance has gone.
The better I felt about myself, and the more time I spent close with people or laughing, the more powerful I felt and the less preoccupied I was with eating or appearance.
I think things that can help are closeness, laughing, cuddling, and a feeling of being liked and good. Taking power and physical challenges are also great contradictions to the oppression of young women and the way it says that young women must turn their pain inward on themselves. I’ve found that anything that involves being loud, active, messy, outspoken, uncareful, bold, and physically strong is great.
I’m not sure that focusing directly on food or eating is helpful. That is what the distress pattern is trying to make us do anyway. And the problem is the feelings that are underneath and the oppression that young women are facing.
I know people’s situations are different, and support can vary. Personally, I am glad that I never got involved with the “mental health” system. I am glad that a label was never attached to me. I think it would have been hard to shake off, both externally and in my mind. For a few years in my teens, eating was a big preoccupation and I worried that I would never have a normal relationship with food. However, looking back, I can see that as I liked myself more and more, got more and more connected, and felt more empowered, the distress pattern became weaker and weaker.
Also, for me this distress pattern wasn’t more “serious” than any of the other things I was struggling with. I’m not sure how helpful it is to think of some distress patterns as more serious than others. They are all a collection of aloneness, feeling bad about ourselves, oppression, and so on, though of course there are times when we do have to take action as parents if the effects of a distress pattern are serious.
My experience is that some kind of preoccupation with our body is common as young women. In fact, many of us of all ages have struggles related to our bodies, food, and other connected issues. It’s a big part of the internalization of our oppression as women. I think it’s important for young women to have space to talk about this, to talk about how relentlessly it comes down on them, and to be really angry about it and refuse to be blamed for it or have it put on them.
It is great that your daughter has talked to you about it and that you and she can be allies in fighting the oppression together.
Finally, as a parent of young adults and teens, I’d say that it’s really common to have these kinds of issues come up. In our family, drugs, sexuality, pornography, alcohol, “mental health,” and difficult relationships have come up a lot so far, and it’s often messy! Luckily, I have abandoned any hopes I had of being a perfect parent or of us being a perfect family!
Our children live in messy worlds. If they can bring things up openly and honestly with us, and we can stay relaxed and loving, that is such a big help to them. Being relaxed and keeping on laughing as they tell me about the latest horror is my top parenting goal right now!
Thanks so much for bringing up these important questions.
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of parents
(Present Time 204, July 2021)