Bulimia Triggers Can Lead to Food, Isolation, Sex and Danger
This article is my attempt to bring understanding to this painful, desperate and all too common experience in the life of a bulimic woman. Please share your comments as we develop more understanding together. I also wrote this because articulating a burdensome secret can help the secret holder know she can be understood and accepted. She just might experience a new sense of validated hope.
Bulimia before recovery work
Trigger: Your roommate goes out of town for a week.
Action: Bulimic episode
Why? You don’t know. You don’t seem to have a choice.
Day One: You are on your own. You like the freedom. The apartment is all yours at last. You also feel the apartment is less familiar. You feel you are somewhat of an intruder and are getting away with something. You eat dinner in the living room in front of the TV. You don't clean up. You binge and throw up your roommate's ice cream.
Day Two: You continue to eat in the living room while watching TV. You leave your dishes on the coffee table and food wrappers on the floor. You drop your clothes and papers where they fall. You leave food and open food packages scattered on the kitchen counter.
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So are you saying that Bulimic Behavior is far larger than in the relationship with food? That bulimic binge and purge on sex? Relationships? Are you saying that it is a quest for "feeling" and desire to feel an elusive embodiment? There is a lot in your post - but I am not sure of the message here. Can you please explain further?
Dear Pamela,
Thank you for your questions. Deep work with a person caught in bulimia raises many questions. Bulimia is complex.
In my experience, based on over 26 years in the field as a professional and the many stories I've heard before that when I was in my own recovery I have seen and continue to see people with bulimia acting out their bulimia with far more than food. In fact, a phrase my patients and I will use when it's appropriate in our work together is, "You don't have to be bulimic about it."
It's a short cut phrase that people understand once they have more awareness and recovery work in them. It refers to their bingeing on people, possessions, shopping, sensations and then discarding people and things and activities quickly.
A bulimic person who can and must binge and purge 10 - 20 times a day and get caught in her home for days, unable to stop is pouring out a tremendous amount of unconscious energy. She's desperate to get something and terrified to have it.
She can, still in an unconscious way, channel this desperation into something else that seems to offer her the promise of safety and care... like a man. She can go to the lengths I describe in this article and more.
Women who binge and purge ocassionally, again in my experience, may serial date. These women, who are often bright and attractive, don't understand why their excursions into dating do not create a developing relationship. They do not understand that what they think is giving to a man is actually an attempt to consume him. She's bewildered and often self critical because he stops calling. She doesn't understand that she never gave him a chance to meet her. She gets into a posture where she did anything she thought "would work", that "men like", etc., but she isn't present. When he realizes that she is not really here, depending on the kind of man he is, he will use her or leave her. If he needs a woman who isn't present he may be the type of man who wants a codependent relationshp.
I don't think this is a quest for feeling. She is feeling plenty. Her feelings are flooding her. She wants relief and safety. And while the body is an essential aspect of bulimia, I think the last thing she wants is to actually feel present in her body. That would make her too vulnerable. She is looking for powerful sensation that will flood everything she does feel and will give her what she thinks will be relief. It's true that feelings exist that she doesn't know about. Her capacity to feel such feelings develops throughout recovery work.
Thank you again for your question, Pamela. I hope this response helps.s It may raise more questions than it answers.
I hadn't thought of a specific message I had for creating this article beyond the one which is, there's more to bulimia than people may realize; eating in a reasonable and healthy way is the beginning of recovery work; some aspects of the life of a bulimic woman are so private and secret that they don't come out in conversation or in media coverage. The big message, to the bulimic woman, is that some of us know, appreciate and understand these dangerous and painful episodes. The bulimic woman needs to know that despite her own shame, guilt, fear and disgust at herself, people do exist who do not share those judgments of her and that she can start her recovery work from wherever she is in her life.
That, I believe, is the theme that runs through Empowher and that I gladly embrace.
By the way, I like your picture very much. In it you look like you are listening and thinking about what you hear.
warm regards,
Joanna
You have given such a clear example, Joanna, of what goes through the mind of a bulimic! The intensity of feeling and the inability of being able to find "something" or "anything" to help one self-soothe. The desperation can be extreme. Bulimic women will not only use purging, sex and shopping as a way of activating their neurotransmitters, but they even more often gravitate to alcohol and/or drugs for the quick fix. 40-50% of all women with eating disorders are also substance abusers or have the potential to be.
The world we live in is dangerous enough without our madly trying to cope with life with these kinds of external coping mechanisms. Thanks again for your article!
Warmly,
Jeannie Rust, PhD
www.mirasol.net
www.edrecovery.com
Dear Jeannie,
Thank you for your comment. You add rich information that deepens the subject. My hope is that such information will help people more fully understand the depth of eating disorders and what kind of courage is required to move toward recovery.
We can't change the world, but maybe we can encourage more compassion for self and others. Your compassion radiates from your post. And compassion may be the key to helping people find their way to recovery.
warm regards,
Joanna
Thank you. I am finding this incredibly interesting. Especially the remark about women with bulimia "consuming a man" - and the reaching for intensity. I think that feeling embodiment - is incredibly important - massage therapy for example can soothe and give women a feeling of holding, sensation and calmness - and being in the body. And I wonder if it is used in therapy and your experience with that.
Thank you for your thoughtful answer.