Healing Your Hungry Heart: Recovering from Your Eating Disorder - Softcover

Poppink MFT, Joanna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573244708 ISBN 13: 9781573244701

Publisher: Conari Press, 2011

Synopsis

10 million people in the U.S., including 1 in 5 women, suffer from eating disorders. While this issue has long been associated with teenage girls, doctors are now reporting that a growing number of women are also developing these disorders later in life or have hidden these problems for years. For women in their thirties, forties, fifties, and beyond, issues of loss from divorce, death, and empty nest syndrome as well as marriage and career pressures can trigger an eating disorder.

Psychotherapist Joanna Poppink offers a comprehensive and effective recovery program for women with eating disorders, based on her thirty-year professional practice treating adults with anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating. She shares her personal struggles with bulimia, along with stories from a wide-range of clients she has counseled. Poppink primarily addresses women who have been suffering with eating disorders for years while they manage their careers, marriages, and families.

Healing Your Hungry Heart offers a step-by-step program that identifies:

* Early warning signs

* Challenges to early recovery

* Triggers to emotional eating

* Impact on sex life and family relationships

The program includes journaling, meditations, exercises, quizzes, and resources to support and speed the recovery process. For women struggling with emotional eating, this book offers hope, understanding, and real solutions.

About this title

About the Author

Joanna Poppink, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist specializing in treating adults with eating disorders. She studied psychology at UCLA and the Saybrook Institute and received her master's degree from Antioch University. She lives in Los Angeles. Visit her at: EatingDisorderRecovery.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Healing Your Hungry Heart

Recovering from Your Eating Disorder

By Joanna Poppink

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2011 Joanna Poppink
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-470-1

Contents

Acknowledgments
CHAPTER 1 Unreal to Real: Snapshots of My Story
CHAPTER 2 Beginning to Free Yourself
CHAPTER 3 Early Warning Signs
CHAPTER 4 How Do I Begin Recovery?
CHAPTER 5 Boundaries: A Challenge in Early Recovery
CHAPTER 6 Secrets
CHAPTER 7 Challenges to Eating Well
CHAPTER 8 Contemplations on Eating a Meal
CHAPTER 9 Spiritual Depth
CHAPTER 10 The Great Terror
CHAPTER 11 Recovery Check-In
CHAPTER 12 Sex, Stalking, and Exploitation
CHAPTER 13 Family
CHAPTER 14 Triggers as Teachers: Staying on Your Recovery Path
APPENDIX A Affirmations
APPENDIX B Additional Exercises and Activities for All Chapters
APPENDIX C Facts About Eating Disorders and the Search for Solutions
APPENDIX D Recovery Journal Prompts
APPENDIX E How to Find More Help
Recommended Readings and References

CHAPTER 1

Unreal to Real: Snapshots of My Story

"Self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening."

—George Gurdjieff

I started making myself throw up when I was thirteen years old and didn't stop for thirtyyears. I hope that the snapshots of my story and other women's stories in this book,coupled with my own healing and recovery work with women for over twenty-five years,can help you find your personal path to recovery. Within the pages of these sharedexperiences, please look for what touches your heart, your memories, and your fears. Ifone story or one exercise delivers sudden understanding or amazement (because youdidn't know anyone else behaved like that), you have found your entry into your recoverypath. I hope this book supports and sustains you on that path to freedom. It can be done. Iwas bulimic for over twenty-nine years. I've been in recovery for twenty-six years. I'veseen and been part of the recovery of many women along the way.

My bulimia story began one summer in New York when I was thirteen years old. I wasvacationing at a Catskill Mountains resort with my parents. Guests could order anyamount of any food from the dining room menu. I remember men smiling at me and anolder woman saying, "Isn't it wonderful how you can eat all those desserts and remain soslim?"

I ordered and ate a sample of all the desserts at every meal. I knew I couldn't get fatbecause my mother wanted me to win the hotel beauty contest. I didn't want to lose theattention I was getting for my miraculous ability to eat so much, and I knew I had to pleasemy mother by making a good show in the contest.

One night I discovered a secret trick. I could eat heaps of chocolate rugula and tinycreamy pecan pies, and then make myself throw up. Presto! I kept the attention and gotrid of the calories. I was elated. I had found the solution to my problem.

The day of the beauty contest arrived, and I felt like a robot going through the motions.When I was on the platform in front of the hotel guests, wearing my white bathing suit,fishnet stockings, and black high heels, I was terrified and felt fat and ugly. Yet againstadult women, I won.

I didn't give up my miracle trick after the contest and vacation were over. I continuedeating and vomiting all through high school. Except it wasn't a miracle trick anymore; itwas something I had to do. It became a shameful secret. I became surreptitious to avoiddiscovery as I binged and purged.

At first I relied on food at home. I prowled through the refrigerator and ate from leftovercontainers. I disguised the remains of my secret foraging—leftover stews and pastas werebest for this. The uneven and chunky contents didn't show marks of my spoon, the way aslice out of a cake might. Large containers of pudding were also good for the samereason. Individual serving cups of puddings didn't work unless there were many cups. Ihoped no one would notice if one or two were missing.

My secret life that was to last almost thirty years had begun. I ate in secret and raided thecupboards and the refrigerator unseen. I took care to leave no trace. I had no money ofmy own to buy food, so I also had to find subtle ways to binge at the dinner table. I ateslowly and methodically with my family and excused myself in the middle of dinner. I wentto the bathroom, drank as much water as I could, jumped up and down to mix it all upinside me, kept the tap running to block my retching sounds, and threw up dinner. Then Irejoined my family at the table and continued to eat.

I struck gold when I started babysitting. The mothers of the children I watched weregracious. After a mother told me what to expect from her child and gave me emergencycontact information she would almost always follow with, "If you get hungry, help yourselfto a snack." Then she would show me cupboards packed with snack foods and arefrigerator stocked with treats. I believed whole packages of potato chips, crackers,cookies, and ice cream were set out just for the babysitter.

After I put the children to sleep, I'd go to the cupboards and eat everything. Then I'd lookfor opened packages of food, especially crackers or cereal or cookies. Candy was goodtoo, as long as I could throw it up easily. A limit for me was never opening an unopenedpackage. I remember once seeing a mother who was obviously startled when she noticedhow much food was gone. But no one ever said anything. And I was a popular babysitter. Iloved the children, played well with them, and was caring and attentive. They alwaysasked for me. It was when the children were asleep that I'd go into my binge/purgedramas.

My attempts to stop my binge purge episodes through willpower failed within minutes. Itnever occurred to me to confide in someone or ask for help.

I binged on fruit in an attempt to control my massive eating. I'd take six or more orangesdownstairs to the recreation room, turn on the TV, and settle in. First I would peel anorange with a sharp knife. Then, to postpone eating for as long as possible, I would cutthe peels into many tiny pieces. I'd cut the white from the orange skin. I tried to getsatisfaction from the cutting, but I always moved on to the binge. Looking back, it's curiousto me that I never cut myself, as many children and adults suffering from anorexia andbulimia do. That wasn't part of my pattern.

I started college at Northwestern University, where I majored in journalism. At my sororityhouse, Zeta Tau Alpha, only one bathroom offered privacy. I planned my eating andvomiting so I could use that bathroom when the adjoining room was empty. I binged andthrew up before dates in my attempt to appear as a normal eater in public.

I remember long and awkward times in public bathrooms. I risked discovery. If someonecame in, they might see my feet turned the wrong way in the stall. In a small publicbathroom I risked someone in the adjoining stall hearing me. I couldn't come out until theyleft. I wonder how much time I spent in bathroom stalls, waiting for people to leave?

My bingeing and purging remained a secret throughout my college years. My attempts tostop were secret, too. I had a sorority sister whose father was a doctor. He gave her aprescription for diet pills, and she often got more than enough to share with her friends. Iused amphetamines for two years.

The diet pills did not stop my bingeing and purging. They stunted my hunger pangs, but Inever binged or purged because I was hungry. The amphetamines helped me be moremethodical in my planning. But the planning itself got out of hand.

The first pill I ever took knocked me out for an hour. When I woke, I felt my blood vibratingin my veins and a new kind of energy that helped me feel unreal and intent on whateverproject I had in mind. I gathered my books, my notes, my pads and pens, and beganmapping out a complex way to do my work. I became so intent on creating a system thatby the time I was ready to actually study, I was too exhausted and confused to get far. Iused the pills to stay up all night for several nights in a row studying for finals. No oneseemed to think this was abnormal since many of the girls pulled "all-nighters." I wonderhow many of us shared similar secrets.

When I realized I was dependent on amphetamines, I stopped taking them and wentthrough withdrawal without knowing the existence of the word, all in secret.

I married when I was twenty. I was living with my parents, and in my mind I was planningan event that was like a play with me in the lead role. I binged and purged three or fourtimes a day and went through the ceremony in a trance. Nothing seemed real—not thegroom, not my parents, not me.

My new husband was in the Air Force. We had little money, yet I had to binge and purge. Ibought two inexpensive packaged cake mixes at a time, usually lemon cake because Iliked it the least and hoped that would slow me down. One night, I baked a cake andserved it for dessert. We both had a serving. My husband had another later in the evening.

The next day, after I had devoured the rest of the first cake in secret, I baked the secondcake, frosted it, and cut out and ate the equivalent of the three pieces we had eaten thenight before so the cake looked the same to my husband. It was the cheapest way tomaintain my bulimia. I tried doing this with homemade bread too, but it was too difficult tothrow up.

By my early thirties, I was a wife with a teenage daughter, and my life was still unreal. Oneday, it dawned on me that when my daughter turned eighteen, I'd be forty. These numberswere culturally defined for me. Eighteen meant independence as a girl moved intowomanhood. Forty (for women at the time) meant being cast aside as irrelevant. Thevision of my life alone with my husband was bleak. I wanted my daughter to becomeindependent, but the thought of my life going on as it was without her to give it meaningwas intolerable. I knew I had to prepare myself for the day when she would be on her own,but I didn't know how.

I read classic literature. I volunteered in the community. I binged and purged daily,sometimes up to twelve times a day. My binge/purge episodes kept me busy but providedno relief. I often fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV to stop feeling. When I awokemy despair greeted me. Sometimes I would binge and purge for days, unable to leave thehouse.

I spent hours on the beach with my German shepherds, Rain and Charlie, because I didn'tbinge on the beach. I walked and often wrote, but I could not sustain any activity for long.

When I realized I could live this way forever, I knew I had to aim for something more. Mymarriage was lonely, my child was growing up, and I felt I was heading for forty and a dropinto oblivion.

I was thirty-two. I decided I would do something to make the day of my fortieth birthday notbe just good, but great. My goal was to wake up that morning happy about my life andlooking forward to the day. I had no idea how to make that happen. It never occurred tome that I could stop bingeing and throwing up. As I think back, I believe that day was thefirst time I had a sense of my own future. I could never imagine living more than sixmonths ahead. I believed I would choke to death during a purge. That day it occurred tome that I could take responsibility for my life.

One day, while checking my reflection in the bathroom mirror for any tell-tale spatter frommy purge, I thought "What if I used all the energy I put into my eating disorder forsomething else? What might I accomplish in life?" It occurred to me, for the first time, thatmaybe I had a choice about bingeing and purging.

From where I was I reached out to the thing that had been consistently reliable in my life—reading. It had always been my solace, my haven, my escape, and my source ofguidance. I enrolled in UCLA, majoring in psychology. I binged and threw up everyafternoon. I remember driving home from campus, gripping the steering wheel and sayingout loud, "I won't do it." But I always stopped at the market and picked up my chips, icecream, and Oreo cookies. At home, I ate it all and threw it up.

During my studies at UCLA, I was forced to create boundaries because I needed time andspace to learn. I tacked a yellow 8 ½ x 11-inch sheet of paper above my desk listing all thecourses I needed to take in order to graduate with a degree in psychology. It representedtwo and a half years of work. I looked at that list every day and knew that somehow I hadto check off every class if I were going to get to my new life.

Fear or courage, determination or feelings on the edge of despair, drove me on. I hadmany gaps in my education. I used grammar school, junior high, and high school mathtextbooks to get me through calculus. A required computer programming coursecompletely baffled me, but a friend helped me through with nightly phone calls and manyhomework emergency responses.

My life felt grim even as I met the requirements for my schooling, did internships, andstudied for licensing exams, while simultaneously experiencing financial loss, raising ateenage daughter, and carrying on a glamorous romance where I lived and breathed thefantasy life of a princess. By the time I was thirty-six and in graduate school, I knew mymarriage was over. I binged and purged, drank, and had affairs all throughout the divorceproceedings. This is bulimia in action. I was bingeing, not only on food, but on franticactivity and romance as well.

Between college and graduate school, my husband, daughter, and I went on a familyvacation to Cornwall, England. On the trip that was meant to be a bonding experience, Irealized I could not pretend there was any life left in my marriage. My husband leftEngland for Los Angeles as we had originally planned. I stayed with my daughter foranother week. That's when I met John.

I was still actively bulimic when John made his elegant advances. He fulfilled a bulimicdream I often see in many of my patients as they struggle to open themselves to the firststage of eating disorder recovery. Bulimic fantasies are not compatible with a life inrecovery.

John and I had a long distance relationship. I didn't realize he was an alcoholic, eventhough I noticed his destructive patterns. He didn't know I was bulimic. We saw each otherwhen we were both at our best, and we believed the lies we told each other.

I adored him, and he needed adoration. He treated me royally, which alleviated my terriblefeelings of anxiety and worthlessness. We were happy. No, happiness only comesthrough recovery. We were ecstatic and psychologically merged as only two addicts canbe.

He took me on extravagant trips around the United Kingdom and through California. Westayed at beautiful hotels, dined on gourmet foods, and built a make-believe future forourselves. He supported me emotionally through my divorce and the pressures of mygraduate studies and professional licensing. I supported him through his medical crisisand a triple bypass heart surgery.

Our relationship fell apart when the fantasies collapsed. Seeing each other intermittently,with all the yearnings and dramas that culminated in sporadic fulfillment, allowed ourfantasies to flourish. They faded as we had increasing brushes with the reality of whowere on a full-time basis.

Feast and famine is an underlying theme of eating disorders, and it applies torelationships as well as food. With a healthy commitment to reality, there is no room forrelationships based on fantasy and ecstasy. (But, I must admit, I do smile when Iremember the ecstasy.)

I binged and purged through all of this. My hair was falling out, and my menses weredisrupted. I had a burning discharge the doctors could not diagnose. I look back on thistime as the days of peanut butter sandwiches purchased on a flimsy credit card andexquisite lobster dinners in fine restaurants. The contrasts in my life were severe.

Yet, I learned I could get through this (not yet understanding that "this" was my earlyreaches toward eating disorder recovery). I still didn't know I was bulimic or that eatingdisorders existed. I knew I had a terrible secret that proved I was a terrible person. Butdespite seeing myself as a terrible person, I still had managed to shed a bad marriage, getan education, travel, create a better home for my daughter, and keep my promises to her.My daughter stayed in the same high school throughout this time, keeping her routinesand friends.

What if I used all the energy I put into my eating disorder for something else? What might Iaccomplish in life?

What's remarkable to me is that my compulsive behavior was still a secret. Years later, myhusband was shocked when I told him that I was recovering from bulimia during gradschool.

The only person who knew was my daughter. Bulimia didn't have a name when I was ill,but my daughter knew when I binged. She knew it was odd for her mother to eat bags ofpotato chips and sour cream for breakfast in bed. She heard me throwing up in thebathroom sometimes and would knock on the door, asking, "Mommy, Mommy, are youokay?" When I felt dazed and unreal, she felt abandoned.

I did abandon her when I was in those bulimic hazes. I abandoned everyone andeverything during those times, including myself. Eating disorder recovery has a lot to dowith being present in this life no matter what you have to see, know, and feel. Part ofbeing present now is acknowledging how my oblivion hurt people I love.

Throughout my entire recovery saga runs the ever-present thread of my love for mydaughter. Her existence has always been an inspiration to me. One afternoon, long beforeI was in recovery, I was hiking in the Santa Monica mountains with a young woman whowas more wood sprite and mountain goat than human. She led the way through whatwere familiar trails to her. She was far ahead of me and out of sight when I came to afearsome place. The trail turned into a tiny stone ledge running between the cliff wall anda drop that was not survivable. I had to put my back against the wall and inch my bodyalong the ledge until I was back again on solid ground. I was sure I couldn't do it.I would have to go back.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Healing Your Hungry Heart by Joanna Poppink. Copyright © 2011 Joanna Poppink. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Conari Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573244708
• ISBN 13: 9781573244701
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 244