The Perfectionism-Food Connection
I heard Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence, speak on Sunday night and Monday morning. A few take-aways and connections I’m mulling over:
We are created for empathy.
When two volunteers are hooked up to monitors and one is pricked with a pin, both people’s brains register the pain.
We are created for connection.
When two people spend even a few minutes together, the “more expressive” person’s emotions will be picked up by the other.
We are created for comfort.
When a child sees his mother crying, goes up to her and says, “I love you Mommy!” he has literally picked up her emotions, is feeling her pain, and is now doing his best to replace her pain with his love.
When relationships with people don’t work, we will replace them with relationships that do.
If you’ve read or heard my testimony, you know that I almost died of an eating disorder as a teenager. I’ll never forget my mother’s question, “Why are you doing this to us?” during our first counseling session when I was an inpatient in the Eating Disorder Unit at the Brea Neuropsychiatric Hospital the summer before I started college.
I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know what I was “doing this” to her. I didn’t even know why I was “doing this” to me!
But now, I do.
I was always a best friend kinda girl. I craved a close connection with one person who knew and understood me well. I now understand that my identity and sense of well-being became dependent on regular interactions with my BFF, at a brain-function level.
But in 3rd grade, Kimmi moved. In 6th grade, Marcia moved. In 7th grade, Suzie decided she hated me. And in 8th grade, Derek (who’d been my boyfriend since 4th grade) dumped me.
No coincidence that I’d been struggling with binge eating in junior high and developed a full-blown eating disorder during my freshman year of high school. Finding people too fickle to depend on, my brain sought a more regular source of need fulfillment. Food, especially the kind that could add “sweetness” to my life, was the perfect replacement for people.
For more than half my life, I’ve been ashamed of my eating disorder. Beaten myself up for being so stupidly “needy.” So un-self-disciplined. With millions of children starving around the world, wasn’t it the height of hypocrisy to starve myself? to binge and purge?
For decades, I’ve gone in and out of counseling, trying to find the root cause of my eating disorder, trying to get a handle on related issues (compulsive spending, isolating, depression). While I have some memories of an inappropriate sexual encounter in my preschool years, pursuing the details has proved far more frustrating than freeing. Maybe that’s “it.” Maybe it’s not.
But earlier this year, I learned an important detail about my life that I’d never known. My mother’s personality underwent a dramatic change after she moved from Boston, MA, to southern California.
Now that much of her memory has been lost to Alzheimer’s Disease, my brother and father keep commenting on how she’s “the happiest she’s been in 45 years.” While this comment gave them comfort, I found it unsettling until I finally realized why:
I just turned 45 years old. I was born 6 weeks before the move.
My mother has been depressed for my entire life, and I’m only just now finding out.
I was created for empathy…I felt what my mother felt.
I was created wired for connection…a connection hijacked by depression.
I was created for comfort...which I could never successfully give or receive.
So, I turned to best friends for comfort. And when they failed me once too many, I turned to food. When my life spun out of control, anorexia became a new “BFF” and brought it back under control.
But Jesus told him,
“No! The Scriptures say,
‘People do no live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'”
Matthew 4:4
One of the unexpected results of The PURSE-onality Challenge for me has been an increased ability to recognize when I’m “using” food and greater ease in shifting from food to God.
I’ll aim to write about that tomorrow (I’m already waaay over 300 words for today!)
Your Turn: I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences! Feel free to comment below or write your own blog post and leave a link in the comments!
Oh Cheri, Thank you so much for sharing this on Teagan’s Travels last week. Life was a bit crazed so I apologize for not responding sooner. I relate so well to what you have been through. It wasn’t until my 30s that I began to understand my reactions physically and emotionally to an absent, tumultuous relationship with my father. In addition, life was precarious due to my mother’s critical illness. Both passed this year and I finally got some sense of peace and closure though I miss them terribly. And I know I’ve been masking some of that pain with food. Thank you for reminding me to embrace what I was created for and to lean on God instead of food.
Big hugs! I hope you’ll be back again for the linky party going on now and the book giveaway (Liz Curtis Higgs’ new one)
http://teaganstravels.blogspot.com
Michelle Axton Kelly
I spent the weekend at a seminar and found out a huge truth about my mother’s life and mine as well. My greatest fears, my most limiting lies that I tell myself…they aren’t really mine. I adopted them all from my mother. My deepest need for approval was permanently damaged because when she became ill, the thing she no longer could give me was her approval. I think I’ve spent the last 15 years trying to regain her approval in other ways. I think perhaps I’ve been loyal to her fears (in a really sad way) and carried them on for her. This isn’t what she would have wanted and I’m working hard now to lay down those lies and move forward, hearing only God’s truth. There’s a blog post coming about this, but just wanted to reach out and say…I get it. (as usual).