Recently I’ve been seeing three teenage girls (as individual clients) for body image and eating related issues. This reminds me a lot about my own journey of eating disorder, which I wasn’t aware of back then.
It was during the years when I was still doing my undergraduate in the UK. I remember asking my friend who lived with me to keep my chocolate bars for me. For example, I could get a pack of 5 snickers bars, and asked her to only “release” one to me each day after dinner. I also remember chewing food and then spitting them out just so they don’t go into my digestive system and make me put on more weight. (I obviously love myself enough to not purge?)
This usually happens to people who are highly disciplined, or thought they have great self-control. So imagine how we feel when we can’t control yet another binge or compensation that follows. But the fact is, for people who don’t even care, they wouldn’t be worrying so much about working hard to compensate for the food that you just stuffed into your body. So no, it’s not about being disciplined and/or having self-control.
It’s also NOT about willpower. The physical and emotional restrictions (with your discipline and control) actually make them worse. I used to eat only 6 to 8 apples for the whole weekend (both Saturday and Sunday). As I was working so it’s easier to not focus on food. I remember feeling my heart beating very hard when I lied on the bed in the end of the day. I can still recall the feeling even today. These restrictions, likely lead to more binging later. From an evolutionary perspective, food was scarce back then, and when you starve, chances are your body wants you to eat as much as you can the next time you encounter food!
It is also double rewarding – when you binge you normally feel good and then right after awful and guilty, then you purge and feel great again. From a behavioural perspective, you are never punished but even rewarded, you are a lot more likely to do it again next time, and this is what makes it really difficult to change as over time it gets reinforced more and more strongly.
I wonder how many people suffered or have suffered from this and never talk about it (or realise it). If you watch the Crown you would have seen Princess Diana’s binging and purging behaviour too, and this definitely isn’t something people would do or share or talk about in public. The student that I am seeing wouldn’t tell anyone about it, not even to her mum whom she shares everything with (yet the mum was also always restricting herself and wanting to lose weight all her life). Another one was referred by the college clinic to see me, and it took her 4 months to eventually arrive at my room. And myself too, I don’t think I told anyone about this, although the thing is I wasn’t even aware that my relationship with food was problematic. And looking back, the problematic relationship started way earlier in my childhood, when I always ate with my older siblings who can swallow food in lightning speed!
I believe I would never properly recover from my bulimia if I weren’t a psychology graduate. Imagine me doing psychology learning about all the types of eating disorders but never thought that I was living one. I realised it much later. But my relationships with eating can still be unhealthy sometimes. Ultimately, what really helps me are:
Always taking time to savour food
Urge surfing
Postponing the wishes for another cookie or chocolate (As long as I managed to postpone it, I almost always forget about it later)
Physical activities, doing them in a not-for-compensation way
She’s only 15, and has been doing great academically in all the subjects all her life. It’s probably not wrong to say that she is one of the top students in her country, that’s also why she received a scholarship to receive better education in a different country.
Now being in one of the top colleges in the world, she is struggling to still be the best. But she doesn’t give up. She sacrifices her sleep just so she can catch up. After all this is a very different education system from the ones she was in.
After 6 months of persistent trying, she still doesn’t see much of any results. She cries. She feels like a zombie. She wants her family to be proud of her. She needs to be the best. She wants to be perfect, in all subjects, in her writing, in her presentation, in every piece of work that she produces. But it’s not happening…
She told me “I never see perfectionism a bad thing. I always thought it’s good. Why is it bad?” She believes she’s where she is today thanks to her perfectionist trait, or she wouldn’t have worked so hard and strived so hard.
But over time she starts to see that this trait is pulling her down, is creating a lot of self-doubts and criticisms in her mind, is affecting her work, is stopping her from functioning properly, is preventing her from enjoying studying that she always loves, is making her depressed and feeling hopeless.
I guess for many of us, we were all once there, weren’t we? I remember how I was like in high school, the lucky thing is I managed, and that’s mainly because I wasn’t studying in the top school in the world. But many students who do very well but come from an underprivileged background struggle when they receive scholarship and get into a top school. It’s hard for them to see that being top in their country might not mean anything once they are here. Some people give up, some people try persistently; some people see some results, some never.
Most people are usually rewarded as a perfectionist, at least initially, like in the first one or two decades of their life. So it’s natural that we see and experience the benefits and sense of achievement being one. But it’s either now, or later in the university, or when we are in the society, that we see how academic results don’t matter, how being a perfectionist alters your worldview and reduces how you could have enjoyed life and things along the way.
For the perfectionists, only the results matter. But life isn’t like that, because the ending of life is always the same, life is about the processes. Still, you can strive to be excellent, strive to become better than yourself yesterday, but not to be flawless…
A few years ago, I’ve heard from Mark that a colleague from the college in the UK works with people who suffer from “eco-anxiety”. It’s at least been 3 or 4 years. Back then, I was a little surprised and then I just shrugged. (Note: I don’t shrug at many things…)
I know a family member who wouldn’t have kids because they think the kids are going to suffer on this planet, again this was quite a few years back, yes they still don’t have kids today. I personally consider this aspect too whenever I think about having children.
As far as 12 or 13 years ago, I have a German friend who wouldn’t purchase the Kinder Bueno chocolate wafer bar at Tesco due to the wrapping, how each of them is wrapped, and then a pair of them is wrapped in yet another plastic. She would just get the bar of chocolate, all 100g in one wrap, even if she likes the Kinder Bueno.
I find myself being very conscious about plastics, anything that’s single use and disposable. I had my struggle when I came to live in Singapore. As a proud Selangorian, our grocery stores stopped giving out plastic bags 5 or more years ago, polystyrene has also been banned, I hardly see them in my daily life. But plastic bags and polystyrene are here everywhere in Singapore.
Fast forward one year living here, I realised that the climate and environmental related issues have crossed my mind much less than before. When I watch news of disasters, especially due to extreme weather, I still think about it, but then I consciously distract myself. Perhaps I’m denying it. I’m not sure if I will become quite anxious too if I go deeper to contemplate it.
Eco-anxiety. When is it becoming a problem? (Image from coloradu.edu)
But this post is to acknowledge the start of an era for us psychologists and therapists to learn about the matter, because I have seen two clients who came to me due to eco-anxiety in the past two months, both scored relatively high on the Hogg Eco-Anxiety Scale. However, it’s important to note that we shouldn’t be pathologising a normal concern or worry. At the moment eco-anxiety is not listed in the DSM-5, and I don’t think that it should. The reason people should seek help is when the anxiety gets persistent and overwhelming, and that it starts to affect their normal functioning and daily lives. The thing is, of course, if it’s affecting them in a positive way (e.g. being conscious about carbon footprint and plastic uses that the person stops flying on a plane or buying chocolate in a plastic wrap), then we would need to reconsider the person’s emotional state and perceived wellbeing when leading such a life. I remember my university international office lady that I used to work for doesn’t take flights, she would take trains to go anywhere she wants, however far it is. And I’d say she enjoys it, and it enhances her general wellbeing doing so.
However, here is some countries, it’s quite a struggle for the people who are environmentally conscious to live in a first world country who isn’t doing much, yet. Even the people and small business-owners are doing much more than the government I’d say.
Anyway, it’s a long journey. Any step is a step. I might write more about my clients when I have their permission to do so.
The obvious difference there is that one is public and usually widely accepted, be it by parents, family, friends, colleagues, general public and also the law, whereas the latter is secretive and usually not known by anyone else, and if known, is usually frown upon.
Public Relationship/Marriage
Secret Affair
Public & common
Secret
Widely approved
Frown upon
Bound by law & religions
No
Right thing to do (ethically)
Morally/ethically wrong but biologically?
No longer fun after the first few months usually
Usually more exciting and fun
Need to work harder to keep it going
Effort yes but make it even more exciting?
Involve more responsibility
Involve less responsibility from both
Might be wrong biologically but it’s to keep society going?
Not necessarily polyamory
The question here is, why do people keep going back for it? I have come across a number of times when people seek help for related issues. Like a recent client Mr Chin, who is married for more than 20 years with 3 almost grown up children, but recently was “dumped” by a girl 18 years his junior and had been together for the past 10 years. Yet according to Mr Chin, they have broken up a few times during the past 2-3 years, as the girl finally thought that she wanted a normal relationship and marriage and a family, then few months later, came back to him, saying that the “normal” relationship didn’t work. Mr Chin was very confused, because the girl knew from the very beginning that he wouldn’t be able to give her anything normal, their affair would always be secretive, why did she come back to him? Each break up took him at least few weeks of sleepless night, and as he was recovering, she’s back asking to be back together. Why?
I told him the answer is pretty simple, she will find no “normal” relationship that’s as rewarding as the one you have given her, and as long as she keeps comparing you with her “new” guy, she would come back to you. Secretive relationship is always more fun and exciting, involving much less responsibility, on top of that, he’s much older and mature, and much more financially stable than most likely any other guy she’s now seeing, it’s not difficult to guess why she comes back to a wiser and more mature and pampering man, right?
Normal, public relationships are mostly boring after the initial few months, we all know it. We have to work (quite hard) on it to keep it exciting and fun. Or we accept that this the normal routine, and we treasure the companionship and family love we have, as we grow old together. But for people who have been through long term secret affair, and are used to the excitement (like the celebrity always dodging the paparazzi, which actually makes the secret affair more exciting, more rewarding and even stronger), and then at some point hope that they can find a normal, public relationship like that, it’s just hard… People need to recognise that, and actively learn to be in normal relationship, and work for normal relationships to work… Or else, it’s hard for it to go beyond the first few months.
Whichever position you are in, speak to a professional someone (relationship/marriage counsellor/therapist, psychotherapist), it’d help! Mr Chin, if the situation permits, would tell you that he’s so glad to have spoken to me and how working together with me helps make sense a lot of things, and saving his marriage and general wellbeing.
