Psychosomatics vol. 6 – Anorexia – What does the body tell us?
A person refuses to eat because they don’t have the will to do so, and then dies from it, without ever having developed a sense of being sick. Families and doctors of such patients often have greater difficulty showing greatness. They all try their best to convince the patient of the advantages of eating and life, while reinforcing love for their neighbor to the point of clinical forced eating. Anorexia is found almost exclusively in female patients. It is typically a female disease. Female patients, usually during puberty, catch the eye with unusual eating habits, or “habits of not eating”.
They refuse to eat, which is partly consciously, partly unconsciously motivated by the desire to stay slim. Strict refusal to eat, however, from time to time also turns into the opposite: when they are alone and no one is watching or seeing them, they begin to devour enormous quantities of food. So they empty the refrigerator at night and eat whatever they can find. But they don’t want to keep the food, so they make sure to throw it all back. They come up with all sorts of tricks to deceive those around them about their eating habits. It is usually extremely difficult to get an accurate picture of what anorexic women really eat and what they don’t, when their hunger is satisfied and when it is not. If they do eat, they prefer things that hardly deserve the name “food”: lemons, green apples, pickled salads, that is, exclusively things with low nutritional and caloric value. In addition, these patients usually use laxatives to expel the little or nothing they eat as quickly as possible.
They also have a great need to move. They go for long walks and in this way burn off the fat tissue that they never accumulated, which is very surprising considering the patients’ often very poor general condition. The extremely high altruism of these patients is noticeable, which often reaches its peak in the fact that they are happy to cook for others and with great care. Cooking for others, serving them and watching them eat — this is not a problem for them, as long as they do not have to participate in the meal. Otherwise, they tend to be lonely and like to withdraw. Anorexic patients often do not menstruate, and almost always have problems and disturbances in this area. If we summarize this symptomatic picture, we will find in it an exaggerated ascetic ideal. Behind this lies the old conflict between spirit and matter, that which is above and that which is below, purity and instinct. Food builds the body and thus nourishes the realm of forms. Refusal of food in anorexic women is a rejection of physicality and all the demands that arise from the body. Their true ideal significantly surpasses the area of food: the goal is purity and spirituality. They would like to get rid of everything “heavy and physical”.
Anorexia and sexuality
The goal is sexual oneness and sexlessness. To do this, they must remain as slim as possible, otherwise curves will appear on their bodies that would declare them women. But they do not want to be women. They are not only afraid of curvy, feminine forms, but their fat belly also reminds them of the possibility of getting pregnant. Resistance to their own femininity and sexuality is therefore also manifested in the lack of a regular cycle. The highest ideal of anorexic women is called dematerialization. Against the background of such an ascetic ideal, an anorexic patient does not consider herself sick and has no understanding at all for therapeutic measures, which in turn serve the body, from which they want to distance themselves. Thus, they skillfully avoid forced feeding in clinics, throwing out all food unnoticed with sophisticated tricks. They refuse any help and stubbornly pursue their ideal of leaving all areas of physicality behind through spirituality. Death is not considered a threat – when it is precisely life that scares them so much.
They fear everything that is round, amorphous, feminine, fertile, instinctive and sexual — they fear closeness and warmth. For this reason they never participate in communal meals. Sitting down and eating together is an ancient ritual in all cultures, in which human closeness and warmth arise. But it is precisely this closeness that instills such fear in them. This fear feeds from the shadowy realm of these patients, in which the themes that are so carefully avoided in conscious life eagerly await their own realization. Women suffering from anorexia feel an immense hunger for the living, which they try to eradicate through their symptomatic behavior, for fear of being completely crushed by it.
This leads to secret gluttonous behavior. Conscious of guilt, they will then correct this mistake by vomiting. Thus, in their conflict, an anorexic will not find a middle ground between greed and asceticism, hunger and renunciation, egocentrism and devotion. Behind altruistic behavior, there is almost always excessive egocentrism, which is quickly felt in relationships with patients. They secretly long for attention and extort it through a roundabout way of illness. Anyone who refuses to eat suddenly holds in their hands an unimaginable power over people, who in desperate fear believe that they must force a person to eat and survive. With this trick, even small children in their families can be safely kept in check. An anorexic cannot be helped by force-feeding, but at best by helping her to be honest with herself.
The patient must learn to discover and accept within herself greed, the overwhelming hunger for love and sex, egocentrism and femininity with all its drives and charms. She must understand that earthly realms cannot be transcended by either denial or suppression, but only by integrating, experiencing and thereby transmuting them. It is not only anorexics who tend to suppress the fearful demands of their own physicality with a demanding philosophy, in order to lead a pure and spiritual life.
Based on Rudiger Dahlke’s book – Illness as a Path
*Key words: anorexia, eating disorder, illness as a path, psychosomatics, gestalt psychotherapy, somatic experiencing therapy, psychotherapist Zagreb
*Photo: GettyImages
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