Vulnerability is an emotion that affects individuals suffering from eating disorders in a multitude of ways. It is the opposite of being in control and a state of mind not particularly comfortable for people suffering from this mental health issue. Feeling vulnerable is an uncomfortable feeling for many of us, but even more so for individuals suffering from an eating disorder. Not feeling in control often acts as a trigger that begins the destructive cycle of disordered eating. A trigger is any input that a person receives; either from their environmental or an internal thought that creates an uncomfortable feeling.
It is important to note, for these individuals their eating disorder is what allows them to cope with emotions. As a whole, individuals suffering from an eating disorder tend to view things in black and white terms; meaning their behaviors and thoughts are either right or wrong/good or bad. This strict thinking pattern leaves little room for ambiguity. Ambiguity is not only part of being vulnerable, but also part of everyday life, so it is important to learn how to navigate through it. (more…)
When a baby is born the process of Separation/Individuation begins. First, baby and mother are one. Mother has the wish to love and protect her baby. She wants to keep her from physical and emotional harm. She bonds with her baby and these loving and protective feelings give mother pleasure as she enjoys the closeness and the wonderful feeling of oneness (symbiosis). Baby thrives with this oneness and is blissful. As baby grows and develops, the oneness will become twoness in which baby suffers the reality of a separate mother who no longer responds to every need. Mother also suffers from the loss of her own blissful feelings of oneness. Over time, as the child separates and individuates, both mother and child begin to experience the rewards of a mutual relationship between two different and separate individuals. When this process goes awry, the developing adult may find herself in conflict. She wants to be independent but also likes being taken care of. She may be concerned that asserting her individuality would result in her mother being hurt or upset. This may also lead to fear that mother’s love and approval could be jeopardized. These kinds of conflicts can interfere with the child’s becoming a person who feels she knows what she wants and how to get it.
This article is part II of a three-part series. Part I introduced the first phase of healing, the safety phase.
As you pass out of the first phase of healing, you may feel as though you have a new lease on life and want to step out of your healing journey.
While you have more than every right to do this, the first phase is ultimately not sufficient to bring whole and complete healing. The real and perceived safety that you established within the first phase of healing—within yourself, with the people in your life, and in your physical environment—becomes the foundation that allows you to grow into the second phase of healing. In this second phase of healing, the actual traumatic experience is grappled with through remembering and mourning.
Integrating Traumatic Events into Your Personal History
Remembering allows you to address your trauma story by placing the event, or events, into your life history. This is giving your memories temporal dimensions. Due to the physiological processes that are “online” during a traumatic experience, the subsequent memories can seem to float outside of time and space rather than being rooted in the timeline of your life. To truly heal and integrate the reality of your traumatic event, the experience needs to settle into your life history.
To achieve this, a therapist can work with you to review your life before the traumatic event, the circumstances that led up to the trauma, and life after the trauma. Such a life review includes looking at others’ reactions, as well as acknowledging and healing from secondary wounding experiences.
By engaging in this emotional work, you transform the traumatic event from something that was done to you into something that is a part of your life experience. Rooting the traumatic event into your collective life history enables you to reclaim yourself—not the trauma—as the main character in your life, and allows your personal meaning of the trauma to come to the surface.
Reconstructing Trauma Memories
Once the experience of trauma is rooted as a part of your life experience—as an event that has a sense of time and space—the next step is to reconstruct the traumatic event. This is not memory recovery work: no memory is created where there is none. Instead, your therapist will work with whatever memory you have, regardless of length or detail. The purpose is to transform the trauma memory from a frozen moment of terror into a memory that reveals your feelings about and interpretation of the event.
This work is done one small piece at a time, with the guidance, support, and assistance of a competent professional. Despite the therapist being “the expert,” you, the survivor, have the final say about the pace of this work. The end result for most survivors is that their trauma story is no longer one of humiliation and shame, but rather one of virtue and dignity.
Remembering the traumatic event or events and connecting them to words and emotions enables you to mourn what you have lost. While trauma may or may not result in physical loss, it always results in psychological losses. Emotionally connecting with your losses is a courageous act. It can feel scary or even terrifying, because this acknowledgment can confirm the finality of the losses.
Moving Beyond the Second Phase
For many, the work of remembering, mourning, and grieving feels endless, regardless of the actual amount of time this phase encompasses. Keep in mind that there is no set time limit to this phase. Every survivor spends a different amount of time in this second phase of healing, but it cannot be skipped nor rushed.
Survivors will know that they are nearing the end of the second phase of healing when, as Dr. Judith Herman states, “It occurs to the survivor that perhaps the trauma is not the most important, or even the most interesting, part of her life story…when the patient reclaims her own history and feels renewed hope and energy for engagement with life. Time starts to move again…the traumatic experience truly belongs to the past. At this point, the survivor faces the tasks of rebuilding her life in the present and pursuing her aspirations for the future.â€
As humans, we are social animals. One consequence of this is the potential to be uncomfortable or anxious around other people. Some people are born with this tendency and labeled “shy”: these children tend to be more inhibited and fearful around people they don’t know well. If shy children are adequately encouraged and supported when they are young, they often outgrow their shyness.
Adolescence is another difficult time in life for self-consciousness and discomfort with oneself. How well one fits into their peer group is of tantamount importance and affects adolescents’ growing sense of self. If all goes well, the adolescent grows into a self-confident and mature adult.
Early adulthood is the most typical time in life that people develop anxiety. Being an adult presents new stresses that people may lack adequate coping skills to deal with. Severe anxiety states may develop, along with the fear of other people noticing that anxiety. Sometimes this develops into social anxiety, which is characterized by fears of feeling embarrassed or humiliated around other people. Underlying this is the fear of being seen as weak, defective, or somehow not okay in the eyes of other people. Underlying this fear is shame.
Shame is a feeling of being flawed or unacceptable in some way. Sometimes this feeling is very vague, with people not knowing where their discomfort is coming from. Author John Bradshaw elaborates: “Guilt is the experience that you made a mistake, while shame is the experience that you are a mistake.â€
Early in life, shaming experiences happen in one’s family, in school, and among peers. Shame has the adaptive function of guiding us to conform to the ethics, morals, and rules of our environment. However, negative shameful experiences cause us to feel hopeless and inadequate, and sometimes lead to depression. Generally, there are certain areas in which an individual feels lacking or flawed: personal attractiveness, intelligence, competence, and lovability are common themes.
It is almost impossible to get through childhood and adolescence without experiencing at least a few shaming experiences. It is helpful to be aware of one’s areas of shame because shame very much influences how we interact with the world. Avoidance of meeting people is a typical response of someone with social anxiety. Dependence on alcohol and drugs may also be used to numb the anxiety. For others, criticizing or ridiculing others in order to make oneself feel less inferior is another strategy. Clearly, these strategies can have very negative consequences in one’s life.
If you think that shame may influence some of your difficulties, working to transform the underlying beliefs that live inside you may be a good idea. You can continue to read about shame in books like John Bradshaw’s, talk to supportive friends, or see a counselor or therapist.