Inside Anorexia Nervosa: Myths

When I was fourteen I was clinically diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, coupled with obsessive compulsive disorder. For years, I tormented myself, my family, and my friends with my obsession with being thin, and I nearly killed myself in the process. But through a long and difficult struggle, I got through it, I got better. And having had anorexia nervosa, nearly taken to its worst outcome, and yet now managing to be here fully free of that destructive obsession, I feel that I am in a position to talk about this condition in a way that not everyone can, and would like to offer that to anyone looking to better understand this potentially lethal pattern of destructive thinking. In another article I will provide my personal story, but in this one I would like to first dispel a few of the myths and misunderstandings of anorexia nervosa that I have seen far too often, and that my own experiences can refute.

Myth 1: Only Women get anorexia.

Men can and do develop anorexia nervosa. I myself am a male, and I exemplified every characteristic assigned to the disorder, along with a tendency towards excessive anger and violence. While men are less likely than women to have anorexia nervosa, and it may even be said that they experience and deal with the condition in different ways than women do, there are definitely men with anorexia. During and after my struggles with the disorder, I have seen other men suffering through similar problems to my own. It is very much a myth that only women become anorexic, the condition affects men too.

Myth 2: Anorexia can never be cured, only suppressed.

The once anorexic, always anorexic rhetoric that I've heard way too many times is utter nonsense. And if someone tells you that they were anorexic but have been better for years, and you still walk on eggshells around them regarding food and weight, you will only serve to needlessly frustrate them. I haven't had one of those impulses in the last three years, and I know that I shan't have them again. In fact, in my experience I would say that the reverse of that rhetoric is true. Like a physical disease that in fighting off your body builds up an immunity against, in truly curing one's anorexia, one is less likely to have it come back rather than more. Because I have had anorexia, because I have seen the destructive effects it had on me and those around me, I can immediately recognize those sorts of thoughts, and could never allow myself to fall into that thought pattern again.

Myth 3: Anorexia nervosa can only be treated by medication or professional help if a patient is going to get better.

Don't misunderstand here. Anorexia nervosa is a serious condition, which can even lead to death if left to run its course, as it came close to leading to my own. And professional and medical help can very much be needed for someone with anorexia. I required hospitalization in a facility for treating eating disorders where I was made to eat and gain weight as immediate care to save me from starving myself. But while they healed my body, the only thing they did to help me eat once on the outside was make me terrified to go back to the hospital. And of course that was by no means a cure for the real problem, all the feelings were still there, and I would eventually start starving myself off and on again afterwards. If someone gets to the point where they need physical treatment, where they need to be made to eat so they don't starve, they should definitely get that care, to have that short term solution to saving their life. But long term, they need far more than that to make them well.

And of course, when people hear the term "mental illness" ascribed to anorexia, as with their response to bodily illnesses, this gives people in our drug-crazed world the idea that what are absolutely needed to cure anorexia are doctors with drugs. I had my fair share of drugs pawned off on me by doctors while I had anorexia, to treat my depression, to mellow my mood, to do things I was never even clear on. And looking back I can see how hard pressed my parents were to make me take them, even when they weren't doing any good or even doing harm.
It is true, that one should never dismiss the biological component of mental health, the electro-chemical mechanisms of the brain, the grand effect that imbalances in neurochemicals can have on one's thought processes, and the capability of drugs to profoundly change the state of one's mind. But far too often we place the deepest problems of our inner most selves in the hands of our doctors and our drugs. They can not solve all of our internal struggles by simply giving us the right pills to pop, nor should we want them to. Is there a chemical cause for the "mental illness" that I had, that others have? Yes, I would say so. But I would also say our thoughts and actions affect those chemical balances just as they affect our thoughts, and to remove that element is to remove our humanity and personal responsibility. Someone with anorexia nervosa has a mental battle to fight, which may or may not be aided by drugs, but certainly can not be won by them.

And in terms of professional help of the kind that isn't, or at least isn't always pushing drugs, I talked to my fair share of psychiatrists and psychotherapists too. And as good as some of them were at what they did, none of them did much good for me when it comes down to it. In no way am I saying that they can't be beneficial or that they aren't more helpful to others than they were for me, but I am saying that no more do they offer the panacea to mental illnesses than drugs do. Everyone needs someone who will listen to them, whether they have psychological issues or not, but often a friend is just as good as a therapist. When I actually started getting better, it wasn't taking any drugs, or seeing any doctors or therapists, it was with friends and family supporting me, while I worked through things on my own.

Myth 4: It's the parents fault for how they raise their children that leads them to develop eating disorders.

At least from my experience, anyone who places all the blame for children having anorexia on their parents, as there were those who blamed mine, are wholly off base. My parents were far from perfect, but in no way did anything they did push me into my eating disorder. And in fact, even when my behavior was at its most violent and erratic and my destructive obsession was no doubt frustrating and painful to witness, my parents stood by me, and were a key factor in helping me to get better. The most agonizing thing for parents with children that have anorexia nervosa, is that there's no way that they can simply make that person better no matter how much they want to (which is probably the main reason that they seek out doctors and drugs as an answer to their helplessness), but by not giving up on their kids, by standing by them, and staying calm and sane in the face of insanity, they do far more than what they may realize and what their own children may ever admit.

If anything was to blame for my problems, as much of an oft heard cliché as it may along with blaming parents, it was bullying in school. Even though it's talked about so often, still people underestimate the true potency of mean words or actions from vulnerable children trying to pump their own fragile egos upon other vulnerable children. Junior high is a rough time for all, and few come out of it unscarred, some deal worse than others. If you have to blame something for a teenager developing anorexia, blame the mental instability of the teen years, blame the cruelty of other teenagers dealing with their own mental instability in their own way, blame the stress of school and all the drives to be perfect, most of all their own, blame the nature of the human mind. But I would suggest not blaming anyone or anything, and rather focusing on listening to and helping the person for whose problems you want to place blame.

Myth 5: If a child decides not to eat meat, it's a sign they're developing an eating disorder.

Just because a child decides to become a vegetarian it does not mean that they're becoming anorexic, and just because an anorexic child happens to be a vegetarian it does not mean that the two are in any way related. This one may seem small to some people in comparison to the others listed, but it was a great irritation to me at the time I had my eating disorder, and I'm sure it has been to many other children. Yes, I was a vegetarian while I had anorexia nervosa. But I was also a vegetarian for years before I had any eating disorder, and have continued to be a vegetarian for years after getting well of my anorexia. It was a personal ethical decision I made when I was only ten years old, and that I have stood by ever since.

Adults often fail to realize how capable children are of making well thought and developed choices such as that, and make the major mistake of failing to respect those choices. And if parents don't support their children in their decision to be a vegetarian because they are concerned it might be a sign that they are developing an eating disorder or that it might be related to the eating disorder they already have, all that the parents will accomplish is the alienation of their children by making them feel that their ethical conscience or health choices are being undervalued. Luckily, I myself had supportive parents who never mistook my vegetarianism for a symptom of my anorexia. But I did, while I was an in-patient in the hospital for treatment for my eating disorder, have a doctor that insisted to me that such was the case, and deliver to me several times the phrase I still find outright offensive, that "meat is medicine," driving away any respect or compliance I could have had with that hospital's program.

Myth 6: People with anorexia literally see something different than everyone else when they look in the mirror.

While it seemed absurd to me then and still does now, I had a fair share of people, my parents included, who had this impression that I actually saw something different than reality when I looked in the mirror, that I was actually perceiving a bodily distortion every time I looked at myself. This was not my experience, nor that of anyone else with anorexia that I have known. People most likely thought of it this way because it was an easier concept for them to grasp and deal with. In the physical sense, I saw the same thing that anyone else did when they looked at me. I saw the protruding ribs, the concave belly, the sunken cheeks, I saw it all, but it just didn't seem thin to me when I saw it on myself. I could acknowledge that other people that had much more body fat than I still were thin, but yet I couldn't accept that I was.

There's intense cognitive dissonance occurring, a double standard blatant to anyone on the outside looking in, one which the person with anorexia may even, like I did, be able to see for him or herself on some logical level, but can not realize on the level it takes to make any sort of change in their outlook or actions, because they are so consumed by the obsession, and the twisted comfort that it provides in its consistency. From my point of view, people talk about this sort of "fun house mirror effect" occurring when a person with anorexia nervosa looks at themselves, because it's a way that they can make sense of something nonsensical from any outside perspective.

Myth 7: Anorexia nervosa is all about someone having a distorted body image and wanting to starve themselves to fit their perception of beauty.

This is the last, and perhaps most important myth that I would like to discuss. Anorexia nervosa at its heart is not about someone's concern with food, weight, body image, or appearance. It is about an underlying unresolved psychological issue, which as one's means of coping, manifests as this obsession. It is about having something that you can control when everything in life is out of control, about having something that you can focus on maintaining, or striving to "improve", when everything else is slipping downward. It is about losing yourself in the grips of obsession. And in the Western world where thinness and fitness are regarded as some of the highest of virtues, the development of an obsession focused on exercise, food restriction, and weight, seems an obvious one to arise.

It is important to understand that the same behaviors and coping mechanisms can come out of many different people with many different underlying problems. And for someone to truly be cured of a condition like anorexia nervosa, they have to confront not only the thought processes of the eating disorder, but everything that led them to become entrapped in that mind state to begin with. They have to realize that the obsession they cling to for protection, in this world they feel they cannot handle, is wasting rather than saving them, and then little by little make themselves let go of it, and face their fears and themselves on their own, without the false comforts of a destructive obsession.

Sources:

Abigail Natenshon, Anorexia Nervosa: Myths, Causes, and Cure, Empowered Parents

Sari Shepphird, Top 10 Myths About Anorexia, Encyclopedia Britannica Blog

Melissa Conrad Stoppler, Anorexia Nervosa Symptoms, Signs, Causes, Diagnosis and Treatment, MedicineNet.com