The reality and the symbolism of a traffic light is an image to keep in mind in eating disorder recovery, especially when negotiating boundaries.
We all need to learn the stop and go signals in our lives that represent concrete and abstractboundaries. We need to recognize when boundaries are somewhat blurred and to exercise caution and be alert for the unexpected.
Plus, we need to remember that if we stop sending power and attention to our boundary signals, the lights go out. When boundaries are lost chaos and danger are rife. We need to recognize boundaries in all aspects of our lives including eating behavior, relationships, our personal rights and the rights of others, health and time. This is a great challenge in eating disorder recovery.
Hundreds of people have asked me why people develop eating disorders. Of course, there are many issues involved, but as I explore this field, over the years I have concluded that there is one outstanding theme that runs through every person with an eating disorder I have encountered.
Early in their lives they experienced, on a sustained basis, relentless boundary invasion on every level. When a person's physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual, sexual, and creative boundaries are consistently ignored and penetrated that person experiences total boundary invasion.
When that person has no control or way to stop, protest or often even acknowledge such invasions, the person experiences helplessness, despair and a certainty that they are worthless to themselves or anyone else.
The consequences of such total invasion are vast. One consequence is an eating disorder.
Having had so many boundaries disregarded, the person has no knowledge or skills in recognizing or honoring boundaries herself. She will eat or starve for emotional relief. She may eat vast amounts of food for comfort value alone. She may deprive herself of food until her life is in danger. She has no internal limit setter that tells her when she has experienced enough. Being oblivious to any boundary means being oblivious to limits of any kind.
The compulsive overeater eats whenever and whatever she likes. Her choices are based on self-medication issues, not feelings of physical hunger.
The anorexic will not eat. There is no limit to her not eating. She will starve herself to death in search of relief from her emotional pain. She knows nothing of the experience enough. She couldn't say, "Enough," to an invader of her boundaries, and she can't say to it herself. The concept of enough has no meaning to her. She often feels that, if she "disappeared" she might find some permanent relief. I have heard countless anorexic young women talk ethereally, with a lost in a beautiful world of angels smile, of how wonderful it would be to be vapor or a light dancing spirit in the clouds.
Ah, such spiritual bliss, they imagine. In reality, it's the final self-protective act, to destroy their bodies and their lives completely. Then they can truly escape the complexities of being alive.
The bulimic will binge grotesque amounts of food. She will assault herself with more food than her body can tolerate. The compulsive overeater will, at last, have to stop eating if only because of the pain of her distended stomach. Her body sets a final limit. The bulimic has no such limit. She experiences (in her mind) no consequences from the food assault on her body. When her body cannot bear more, she will vomit it all out. Then she will continue her binge. She may reach her body's limits many times. Each time she does she can throw up and continue.
Eventually she stops because she is completely exhausted, or she is in danger of being discovered. "Enough" has no meaning to her. There are no limits and no consequences for her disregard of her boundaries.
Realistically, of course, there are plenty of consequences. Serious damage is happening to her body. Plus, each time she attacks herself with a binge and purge episode she destroys more of her spirit, soul, self-esteem, sanity, health and value to herself and others. Each violation deepens her ritualistic behavior, and she becomes more entrenched in her disorder. The consequence is increasing anguish and despair. Yet the eating disorder is not the cause of the anguish and despair. The eating disorder exists to numb her from her already existing psychological agonies. For a while, maybe a few years, the eating disorder successfully blocks her awareness of pain too difficult to bear. But eventually the protective device of the eating disorder becomes just another boundary invader, this time self-induced, that weakens and hurts her even more.
What do I mean by a history of boundary violations? Blatant and extreme boundary violations involve sexual molestation, sexual abuse and physical abuse. Much has been written about these areas now, especially in material exploring Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Use your search engines to find some quality information posted on the Internet in these subject areas.
However, there are other kinds of boundary violations, less dramatic, less discussed and more prevalent which are also devastating to a person's psyche. When, in the name of care taking, people in authority take over a young person's life, it constitutes boundary invasion. When she has no privacy, when her diary is read, when her things are borrowed or taken without permission, when her efforts in school or sport are overwhelmed by someone else's ideas, goals or personality, when her choices are disregarded or treated with disdain, when she has little or no choice where her personal life, clothes, foods, friends, activities are concerned, her boundaries are being invaded.
Her boundaries are also invaded when, in the name of caretaking, she has no responsibilities of her own and no consequences for her actions. When the child or adolescent can have anything she asks for without putting forth effort to earn such gifts, she learns nothing about personal effort, limits, consequences or what "enough" means. If she wants something, she gets it. That's all. If someone picks up her clothes, does her laundry, fixes her car, pays her bills, lets her "borrow" money or things and never asks for them back, she experiences no boundaries and no limits.
If she doesn't have to keep her promises, if she doesn't reciprocate with caring activities for people who care for her, she learns nothing useful about herself in relationship to other people. She certainly learns that there are no limits to her behavior or desires.
These boundary invasions are not loving acts nor are they "spoiling" a child through overindulgence. Quite the contrary, they are acts of neglect. Her taste, mind, capacity to learn, ability to grow and function as an independent agent in the world are unacknowledged.
When her identity as a unique and developing competent individual is ignored and she is flooded with the agenda of others, even if well meaning others, she feels as if a steamroller flattened out her psyche. She may learn to please, to manipulate, and to compete or control but she is unable to learn to be fully present in the world as her genuine self.
She doesn't learn that she has meaning and value. She doesn't learn that she can put that meaning and value within her to work to accomplish goals. For example, if she breaks something, whether it is a lamp or a car, her word or someone's heart, it can be up to her to make necessary repairs using her own resources and her own creativity. In such a process she would learn what effort means. She would learn what responsibility and consequences for actions mean. She would learn reasonable limits and reasonable expectations and develop the resources to make healthy and caring decisions in the future.
Without such learning all she does learn are the tricks involved in adapting quickly to the expectations of others or being manipulative to get what she wants. These are poor and insubstantial tools to rely on when building an adult life.
Somewhere inside, over time, she may gradually realize this. But, having no sense of boundaries, she will only become bewildered and anxious. She will accelerate using her eating disorder as a way to numb her feelings of anxiety. She will use her manipulating skills to get what she wants from whomever she can use.
As time goes by fewer people in her life will allow themselves to be manipulated. The quality of her circle of associates will decline as she seeks people she can control with her inadequate methods of functioning in the world. She will find herself in bad company. This becomes all the more reason for her to rely on food for comfort. The people around her are less reliable all the time. And finally, they tolerate her presence only because they can manipulate her.
She arrives at the total victim position. Her manipulative skills backfire. There are people in this world who are better at manipulating and using than she. She has found them. She has become their target and then their prey. Her eating disorder becomes her most valuable and trustworthy relationship.
Early in her development she learned through massive boundary invasions (which perhaps seemed ordinary and unimportant at the time) that she was helpless to assert herself. She learned that she had no private or sacred space to cherish and respect. She could not acknowledge -- even to herself -- that she was being thwarted, invaded, controlled, manipulated and forced to deny large aspects of her natural self. She had no recourse except to comply. In order to successfully be unaware of her natural tastes, curiosities and inclinations or be successful in restraining her natural tendencies, she developed an eating disorder.
Now that she's older and her manipulation skills are failing her she only has her eating disorder to rely on. This may be the most crucial time in this person's life. If her pain and despair are terrible enough and she is certain she cannot bear this way of living anymore she still has choices. One is to continue to rely on the eating disorder and by so doing take the path to self-destruction. The other is to reach out and get help.
This is a tough position for her. She's never known what enough was. Yet to choose to get help she has to recognize that she has had enough pain. She's never known what a limit is. Yet she has to recognize that she has reached her limit and must choose between death and life. She has only known about pretense and manipulation. Yet she has to be honest to reach out for genuine help.
She feels massive anguish and pain before she stretches beyond her life pattern into what might bring her healing and recovery. She's reaching for something she can't imagine. It's difficult for a person with an eating disorder to decide to get help and allow herself to trust someone with knowledge of her real personhood. She doesn't know that people exist who do respect and honor boundaries. She doesn't know that there are people who can and will honor and cherish her most private and sacred inner spaces. She doesn't know yet, that someday that trustworthy, respectful, steadfast and competent caretaker she needs so badly can be herself.
Her first move toward recovery requires all the courage she can muster. Her recovery begins when she, with fear or rage, rallies her courage to reach out for help. Difficult, yes. But what she doesn't know yet, is that she has been courageous all her life. She makes a grand discovery when she learns that she can apply her strength and courage to her own health, and at last, free of her eating disorder, be her genuine self in the world.
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