Lost Connections
I have had the privilege of speaking with over eighty guests on our podcast.
I never intended to set up a podcast or write and talk about them. When I finally left therapy, I had zero interest in anything eating disorder related. I just wanted to get on with my life.
Bored with analysis and the psychotherapeutic discourse around “why” to the point that if eating disorders were mentioned on the telly/radio or they came up in conversation, I’d switch channels or people.
Being bored was a healthy place to be. My inner world felt peaceful, balanced.
My internal voice, said things like,
I feel well today.
I am content.
These jeans are nice! On me!
I could go “out into the world” and live - withstand the knocks that came my way.” I’d also learnt about being vulnerable living with an open heart.
Here’s the thing. I needed that time off to allow the process to, well, process. It was during those intervening years that I was able to make sense of my eating disorders.
I’ve always been someone who needs to know why.
Why is it a privilege to interview our guests?
Partly because I ask personal and probing questions and they respond with candour and insight. I do get a vibe of who's willing to go there with me, and some choose not to, which is okay, but I'm constantly amazed at how generous people are and how willingly they share themselves.
It’s very humbling.
Because it was only something I was able to do once my eating disorders were firmly not while I was “in it.”
Eating disorders are on the rise.
Particularly in young people. But what about the silent ones, or the older ones, who’ve suffered for years and see no way out?
My shame that I couldn’t stop kept me rooted to the spot. I knew what I was doing but I pretended to be sorted. My attempts were like hammering a nail with a sock.
Our world is currently turbulent. Whatever is going on, it’s true to say that we are living in transformational times.
Talking with guests affected with eating disorders or the many experts who work tirelessly in this field (it’s not easy work) makes me think about our reasons - not feeling good enough, an inability to express our emotions and feelings, high anxiety levels and trauma. The list is long but shame, guilt and fear sat on my top table hogging the limelight.
Now I view life in terms of us and we rather than I and me. Instead of the solipsistic lens of the eating disorder mind.
I wonder if eating disorders aren’t just a perfectly nuanced response to the era we’re living in. We consume, voraciously, don’t we?
Whatever we can get our capitalist mitts on and who cares about the consequences, who and what we harm and who cares if so many have nothing; as long as we have, everything.
Are eating disorders collective grief in disguise?
Are we mourning lost connections?
Not only to ourselves and each other but to something greater than us?
The something that, to my mind, is clearly running the show with an innate and infinite intelligence?
We only have to look at the natural world or, for that matter, a fingertip to know life is miraculous.
My question really is are eating disorders our collective response to something that is not yet fully understood or been made conscious?
Maybe, maybe not?
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