A client has written a personal blog entry about her journey in overcoming an eating disorder—or, rather, “ordering her eating”—as she powerfully puts it. In the entry she discusses our work together and how hypnotherapy made a difference. She has generously given me permission to repost her entry here.
I should mention that before we began our work together, and with the client’s permission, I spoke with the practitioner who diagnosed her condition to make sure that hypnotherapy would complement and not contraindicate her existing treatment plan.
Beauty and the Beast: My Victory over Eating Disorders and Why I Love My New Voluptuous Shape
It all started when I was a very little girl. For some reason, I was never really big on eating. I rarely had an appetite, and I often saw sitting down to eat as something that was an inconvenience that interfered with doing other, more “important” things (like playing with my sister or friends, talking on the phone, singing, getting into trouble, etc.). When I was very, very young, I didn’t understand the physiological need behind food and often questioned my parents’ and grandmother’s authority, “Why do I have to eat if I am not hungry?” I would often ask. It didn’t make sense to me. I won’t get into all of the drama of old wounds – I’ll just say I went through a lot as a child, and there were times where my nutritional needs were not met, and this only complicated my already distorted relationship with food and caring for myself through eating properly. I forgive the adults in my life for the mistakes that they made when I was very young. I can only think that they had similar experiences and did not know any better. I feel fortunate to have “woken up” from the cycle of things and to have become aware of this unhealthy pattern so that I will not pass this on to anyone in the future.
As a teen, my body image and relationship with food worsened. Even when I was 92 pounds, (and a little over 5′, or 1.524 meters tall), I thought I was obese. Yes, OBESE. I was so critical of myself and saw someone fat when I looked in the mirror. Nowadays, I still cringe when an occasional photo from my teen years resurfaces (there aren’t many out there, but my mother does have a few). My cheeks were so sunken. I was so emaciated. My skin tone was even a little bit yellow. But I thought that trying to live on 600-1500 calories a day and limiting my fat intake to under 20 grams per day was the healthy way to go, and I literally starved myself for many years.
All of it, it turns out, was an unattainable attempt to be perfect and to have control over SOMETHING in my life. In so many ways, my life felt out of control. I ended up in a girls group home for teenagers, and my father died when I was 16 of AIDS, and my mother and I did not get along. I developed OCD, which fed into the need to have everything a certain way and to obsessively count calories and track fat intake. Controlling what I would and would not put into my mouth, subconsciously, was my mind’s way of trying to exert some sense of control in what I thought was otherwise an out of control life.
In my early 20s, I met the man who I thought would be my prince charming. It was with him that I tried Taco Bell for the first time (which to this day is a guilty pleasure, lol). In fact, I began to eat meat (which I hadn’t done since I was much younger), and I went buck wild. I ate everything I wanted to, whenever I wanted to, and I enjoyed every single second of it. It was like I was making up for all that time of self-deprivation when I thought I was the one who was in control. Then I began to gain weight. Lots of it. I went from about 98-105 pounds at the time to 130 pounds. I barely noticed as it happened, but my ex sure let me know. He said things all the time about it and drew my attention to the cellulite I had on my legs (I’d never had cellulite before). I felt bad about it but told him that he either needed to love me whether I was skinny or heavy, or else I didn’t need him. We broke up for other reasons, but I am so glad that I took that stand for my body.
Since then, I have had episodes of anxiety where I have completely lost my appetite. In fact, a few years ago, I was just so not interested in food that I ended up losing a lot of weight and went down to 103 pounds. That’s when my boyfriend (who I am with to this day) told me I needed to get help. I sought out therapy and followed their suggested regimen of counseling and medication. Eventually I got well, but I would have repeated incidents over the years (luckily not to the same extreme with the excessive weight loss).
If you look at some of my YouTube videos, you will see that there is a drastic difference between my weight in May of 2009 when I started on YouTube, to the present. That’s because in December of 2008, I had one of these episodes. I lost complete interest in eating and just could not bring myself to eat a healthy amount of food to take care of my body. This time, I realized that I really, really needed to get to the root of the loss of appetite and address it directly, or else the source would keep causing these symptoms and episodes to resurface. I decided that, in addition to checking into a daytime hospitalization program and meeting 1-2x a week for intensive counseling, that I would also try medical hypnosis. I found a woman who is certified in hypnosis and arranged a consultation. The work we have done has been amazing, and I have since been able to handle the episodes when they begin to arise. I remind myself that at one time, my body/mind reaction or impulse not to eat served my best interest for survival (in the abusive settings I experienced and when there were times when I went hungry from lack of food). My mind now needs a new “tape” to pop in when it is triggered by stress or uncomfortable situations.
Now I love myself through such episodes, which now last a maximum of 3 days, and I am able to function just fine during those days. I eat whatever I feel in the mood for – and I monitor calories, but for a DIFFERENT reason altogether from the reasons I did earlier in my life. I watch to be sure that I am caring for my body well and taking in enough nutrition to nourish my body and keep me in optimum health.
If you ever suffer from loss of appetite for any reason, here are some foods that I have found helpful during these times. They are dense in calories (so you get more energy/calories while consuming less actual food), so if you are not really in the mood to eat, these can help until your appetite is restored (always check with your doctor before embarking on any dietary changes. I am not offering any medical advice here. I am not a medical professional.)
Almonds – plain and also the honey sesame seed ones that you can get at Trader Joe’s
Trail Mix – I like the ones with nuts (almonds, peanuts, cashews) and little chocolates that are like M&Ms. I also get these from Trader Joe’s
Peanut Butter – the best is the natural kind that only contains peanuts and salt
Whole Grain breads and pastries
Thin crust pizza
Apple Juice
Milk
Ensure
I also think it’s important to take care of ourselves emotionally at this time. Sometimes we have to address our inner child and re-parent that frightened child within…reassure her that you will not allow yourself to neglect or abuse yourself…that you will care for yourself and eat well despite how you feel. Reassure her that your appetite will come back, and in the meantime, ask her what SHE would like to eat, and if an ice cream sundae is on that list, let her have it, no questions asked.
We may also be finally ready to deal with the root causes of the disordered eating and bring some order to our eating and eating habits. For this, I suggest looking into finding a professional, certified hypnotherapist with your doctor’s go-ahead. Here you can get into a very relaxed state and allow resistance to healing and change to drop as you identify what your goals are and how to focus on being healthy and healing from the root cause.
It took me several sessions before I finally found the root cause. But now that I have, there is no turning back. I now know what my inner child needs to feel safe and cared for. And, I feel secure in knowing that I have empowered myself by choosing to engage in this type of treatment, and that my hypnotherapist is available for a tune-up should I feel like I need one (the subconscious is complicated and will try to do whatever it thinks will work to help you survive, sometimes even going against your own body’s instincts, so you may have to reinforce it – though some people completely recover from issues like mine, as well as overeating, smoking, etc in just one session).
If you will be in the San Francisco Bay Area and would like to schedule a consultation with an excellent hypnotherapist, send me a message and I will give you the referral information.
So, back to body image. I feel a little bit funny that I have a muffin top these days…that my pants no longer quite fit and that it may be time for me to get a few new articles of clothing…but I *love* my rounder, fuller face…and I love that I have curves, and to keep this PG, a little something on top. I love that I don’t feel pressured to be perfect – to be what I see on the billboards or on television (which I mostly avoid). I am happy to be me and to finally be taking care of myself in all ways.
PS I now love to eat and care for myself on a mind, body, and spirit level.
Let’s all remember that the most important thing is to be HEALTHY, no matter what your size.
