My own Journey with Eating (disorders)

Clinical Case Studies

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
  • Being with my family
  • Or at least have people around me when I eat!
  • Eating enough (not restricting myself!)

Share your tips too!

Talking to Strangers (2019)

Review - books movies series

It took me a long time to finish listening to this book by Malcolm Gladwell because I didn’t finish it during the first two loans (3 weeks each, so total of 6 weeks) and the loan lapsed so I had to wait for quite a long time in between my readings.

Talking to Strangers: What we should know about the people we don’t know, by Malcolm Gladwell.

This is an audio book that definitely stands out from almost any other audio books you can find (other than children’s audio books). It was read by the author, with musics, and real clips and audios from some of those scenes that were mentioned. I almost felt like I was watching it rather than listening to it sometimes.

For the content, it’s the usual Gladwell I know, I often wonder how much research he has done in order to produce each of his book. Very informative and organised. It isn’t quite what I expected though, about “talking to strangers” on the front page. Nevertheless, definitely an important book to read for those who need to interact with strangers often and wish to understand strangers better.

The other Gladwell’s books I’ve read:

A conversation on Transgender Athletes

Issues & Debates

I wonder if any of you are like me, who sometimes wonder about transgender athletes competing in major sport events, especially when I’m watching Olympics, All England (badminton) or the very recent SEA games. I stumbled across this conversation led by one of my favourite authors Malcolm Gladwell and thought maybe you would enjoy being educated on this topic and learn what have been and could be done in the area!

Book: The Stranger (1942)

Issues & Debates, Review - books movies series

Sending your mother to care home when she’s old, not crying in your mother’s funeral, does these mean that you are not a human, mean that you are more likely to be a murderer?

The fact that you don’t cry because you don’t feel sad during the funeral, or the fact that you don’t even bother to pretend (to cry), which is worse?

A 17 years old teenager thinks many people just pretend, because this is what society expects. He wonders if the care and gratitude he has for his parents who were abusive was real or simply “to match the societal norm.” He wonders how he’d react or act when his parents die.

He read this book for his IB English class. He found a lot of comfort from the book, and is now reading it a second time.

But he also sees that the book isn’t all negative, “it’s about having the freedom to choose what you want to focus on, knowing that death will be here anytime for everyone.” So in the book, the narrator could do so even when he’s facing a death penalty and his appeal might be rejected.

This is a 20th century literature classic, written by French author Albert Camus in 1942. He was awarded Nobel prize of Literature at the age of 44 years. I don’t normally read novel these days (because I get addicted to them and can’t stop myself reading), but the fact that it’s only 120 pages and sounded really interesting the way the student talked about it, I finished it in two nights, on the Libby app. (Unfortunately this one hasn’t got an audio version).

The Stranger, by Albert Camus, captured on the Libby app.

So what??

Basic & General, Treatment Approaches, ,

What is your first reaction when I say a “So what?” attitude?

Was your reaction quite negative or positive? (Assuming that it can’t be totally neutral)

What if I say, it’s an attitude the grandfather of cognitive therapy, Albert Ellis, said we shall all adopt? Yes, he said we shall all live with a “So What?” attitude.

What do you think?

(I started all 4 paragraphs with the letter “W”, so what?)

I can’t do this, so what?

I look so anxious, so what?

I can’t sleep, so what?

I failed my exam, so what?

Nobody likes me, so what?

What do you think? How would you benefit from adopting such an attitude?

I might not benefit from it, so what?

Seeing clients and students in the west (including those Asians who have lived in the west) vs those who live in Asia (mainly Chinese, Malaysians, South East Asians), I noticed that the first receipt of such an attitude can be quite different, although eventually all accept it and see and experience how much they benefit from having such a “I don’t care” attitude.

But for many Chinese and Asians, their first reaction is almost like, “this is rude”, “this is not what I would do”, “this is wrong”, “this is not part of our cultures/values” etc

Of course we are not talking about people should not care about their life, their studies, their family, their hygiene, their job etc. But it’s when you care too much and it doesn’t help (and often this care makes things worse). This is especially so in social situation and interaction. We worry too much about what others might think, how we look like, we stop being in our experience and connecting with the environment and the world because we focus internally worrying too much.

Try to apply the lens of “so what” in your social interaction and see how it goes?

Movie: Just Mercy (2019)

Review - books movies series

I’d say anyone who cares about Justice should watch this. A great movie based on true story, taking you on an emotional roller-coaster, and looking at lives of people with colour living in Alabama.

Just Mercy (2019), directed and written by Destin Daniel Cretton

Couple of my favourite quotes, the first is by the Harvard graduate attorney Brian Stevenson, who is the main character of this film and the person who worked his ass off to make changes for many including Walter Johnny B McMillan who was sentenced to death for the notorious murder of a 18 year old white girl (which is the main case of this movie):

Through this work, I’ve learned that each of us is more than the worst thing that we’ve ever done; that the opposite of poverty isn’t wealth, the opposite of poverty is justice; that the character of our nation isn’t reflected on how we treat the rich and the privileged, but how we treat the poor, the disfavoured, and condemned.

And this second quote is from someone who was on death row for 30 years for a crime that he did not commit, eventually Stevenson got him out of jail:

You know what they said to me when they pulled me over… one of you niggers did it and… if you didn’t then you’re taking one for your homies

I have to admit that this resonates well with a lot of things I’ve been doing recently in the school, “fighting against” the majority for the minorities who are from the lower socio-economic, people of colour, LGBTQ+. It reminds me about how changes can be hard, and how we can’t just give up because we failed the first, second or third times, how it takes time and sometimes we have to do it even if we might not see what we want to see during our life time. Because someone, somewhere, have to start, sooner than later.