Today's prompt invites me to share my experiences about a professional or professionals (doctor, therapist, nurse, etc.) who had a negative impact on my recovery, to ponder how they made me feel, to explain how I spoke to them about it and their response. But with the exception of a gynecologist who told me to drink milkshakes and eat cheeseburgers to fatten up and some pretty incompetent university health center nurses who had to look up "fainting" in a reference book when I arrived with complications of my anorexia, I have been lucky enough to have had some very positive experiences with professionals.
Every professional who was part of my "team," several years ago, was great: therapist in Pennsylvania (L.C.S.W.), university therapist in Delaware (psychologist), registered dietitian in Pennsylvania, registered dietitian in Delaware, group therapy leaders (PhD students & psychologists), etc.
I met the demand for work and I felt respected. When I didn't feel completely understood, the message that they were TRYING to understand was always there.
So today, instead of recounting a negative experience with a professional, I have a slightly different story to tell you. There was a time about 7 years ago when I was faced with the opportunity to share my perspective and educate someone or sit silently and let the negativity continue. I chose to use my voice and this is the tale:
When I was a senior in college, I was taking a class called
Sociology of Sex and Gender.
It was a good class, and in it, we spoke often of eating disorders and
body image, because those are major things women deal with in today's
world. Eating disorders and body image issues are also feminist issues.
That said, class discussions often turned to personal experiences and/or
stories.
There was a girl in my class named Holli who had a
roommate with what sounded like (from Holli's description) a serious
eating disorder, namely anorexia. During a week when we were discussing,
as a class, eating disorders and their various manifestations, effects,
and victims, Holli brought up her roommate. She declared that her
roommate was "anorexic" and "crazy." I didn't like the adjective "crazy"
she used to label her roommate because of her restrictive, paranoid,
and obsessive behaviors, but I also took it personally because I had
anorexia (though was making significant progress in recovery) myself.
Holli
went on to say that her roommate's hair had begun thinning and falling
out and she was "crazy" because she still said she'd rather be thin with
ugly hair. Now, granted,
this is irrational thought, but I related to
the poor roommate from past experience when I was just as ill, and it seemed to me (by the manner in which Holli was
speaking) that Holli had next to no compassion for this troubled girl.
The more Holli spoke, the more I felt irked and sad inside. I did not
dislike this girl, Holli. In fact, she had always seemed rather nice and
friendly. But I distinctly did not like the way in which she talked
about her roommate. Holli sounded selfish, as though we as a class
should have pitied her for having to live with such a freak. She also
sounded coarse, as though she didn't want to try to help her roommate.
But this was all, as far as I could tell,
because Holli didn't understand.
And more than that--she made no effort to TRY to understand what her
roommate was going through.
It hurt me that Holli would pass this
girl off as "crazy" for having a problem and a disease. So I decided I
couldn't stay silent. I decided it was my duty to let Holli know how it feels to live with anorexia and to
show her what she could do to be supportive and/or understanding.
I
did not speak up in class. What I had to say would not have been
appropriate, nor did I want to let everyone in the room know I had an
eating disorder. I would have gotten emotional. I would not have been
able to be as articulate as I wished to be. I wanted to be anonymous,
because Holli sat at my work station in the room and knew who I was. I
wanted to speak to Holli anonymously, but how was I to do this?
After
class, I followed our professor (a wonderful woman named Dr. A)
to her office. She invited me in and I told her I wanted to talk to her
about something. I was beside myself. At that point in my life, I was young, still recovering, and very shy. And I was very nervous. I know I was blotchy as I tried to
formulate my thoughts. I used the direct approach; this professor seemed
like one to whom I could talk. I told her I suffered from anorexia, was on my way
down a healthy track, and felt disturbed by the day's class discussion.
She looked ready to listen. I explained how Holli's story made me feel.
Dr. A seemed to agree with me. I told her how I wished I could
tell Holli how it was from my perspective and how it was for me when a
friend DID want to help me, DID try to listen and understand. Dr.
A was nodding vigorously and was all for my idea. I think the
professor had noticed the "rolling her eyes" way in which Holli had
talked about her roommate and I think Dr. A found it as upsetting as I did. Dr. A suggested I write a letter to
Holli anonymously, then Dr. A would give it to Holli for me.
It seemed a fine plan to me, so I went to my
apartment that day and composed the following letter:
Dear Holli,
I am someone in
your Sociology of Sex and Gender class and after hearing you talk about
your roommate, I wanted to write to you. I have struggled with an eating
disorder for years now and when I was a freshman here at UD, I was
confronted by the best friend I had made at college, a girl who lived
across the hall named Sarah. I was going through a really hard time in
my life, and was in the throes of anorexia; I was sick, tired, and
preoccupied with food all the time. I could really relate to a lot of
what you said about your roommate and her eating habits. In the worst
times of my disorder, I often didn’t eat for days at a time and was a
very low weight. My friends were very worried about me because what I
was doing was so noticeable, and my hair had even begun to fall out like
your roommate’s. I know it was extremely hard for my
friend Sarah to do what she did because she probably worried that I
would get mad, fight with her, or blow her off completely. But somehow,
she found the right words to say, and that is what I wanted to share
with you. I know how hard it must be to watch someone you live with do
self-destructive things to herself, and I know it is a very difficult
subject to broach, but sometimes it is getting your thoughts across in
the right manner that really makes all the difference.I
realize your roommate may be completely resistant to getting help or
even to listening to what you have to say, and for all I know, you have
probably tried many things over time to help her. I just wanted to share
my experience with you, from the point-of-view of the sufferer, with
the hope that it can help you approach your roommate in the future and
result in something beneficial. I know what the person suffering wants
to hear and wants to feel (generally speaking), and while your roommate
may not be willing to fully listen to you yet, if you say the right
things she may think about them later, ponder them, and eventually get
the help she needs. In any case, it’s worth a try.When I
was a freshman, Sarah knocked on my door one day while I was crying in
bed (a common occurrence in those days) and asked me through the door to
let her in. (I think the timing of when you talk to someone about this
is key; if your roommate seems upset one day, maybe that is a good time
to bring it up, instead of when you two are watching TV or something.)
Sarah wanted to know what was going on (and what HAD been going on with
me), but I was afraid to tell her…afraid she wouldn't like me
anymore…afraid she wouldn't want to live with me next year. I thought
she would think I was weird…and more than that: I worried that she would
think I was crazy because she wouldn’t understand. The first thing that
was important was that she didn’t judge me at all. She spoke to me
carefully and assured me that she didn’t think less of me, didn’t think I
was a freak, and didn’t think I was crazy even though she didn’t
understand what I was going through. (Even if you feel all these things,
I think it is vital to actually express them, because these things can
never be said enough when a situation is so delicate.) Sarah sat there
on my bed with me and listened while I cried out everything I’d been
keeping to myself. She just told me she was there to listen and she let
me say the things I wanted to. She didn’t come there to give me a list
of reasons why she was worried or to give me a list of suggestions for
what I should do. She just hugged me at the right moments and told me
she would help me.I know that this kind of incidence
involves an exchange of some kind, therefore if your roommate isn’t as
open as I was willing to be, the situation would not pan out the exact
same way…but I honestly think, no matter how little or how much she
wants to tell you about her problem, that you can never say “I’m here
for you” too much. Eventually, she will start to believe it and maybe
realize you don’t want to judge her. Instead of asking me why I did the
things I did, or why I felt the way I did, Sarah simply asked me what
was wrong. We talked for a long while and she said something I always
remind myself of when I’m feeling particularly lost—she said she’d never
leave my side throughout college and that she would help me in any way
she could. It meant a lot to me to have someone say that. Sometimes
support is the greatest thing—an offer to do nothing but be there.Something
I would advise you to avoid would be naming her problem. For instance, I
have always recoiled from calling myself “anorexic” because it labels
me in a way I don’t want to be labeled. Nor would I want to continually
say “I have an eating disorder,” or have anyone say to me, “I think you
have an eating disorder.” There are ways to say exactly that without
using those words. The words “anorexic,” “anorexia,” or “eating
disorder” seem powerful and scary. I don’t like to say I’m anorexic—I am
me and anorexia is what had me in its clutches. So, if you do want
to try again with your roommate, talk to her about her, about what she
needs, and about how she feels—not just about her problem. I
know you are very concerned about her by the way you spoke about her in
class, and it breaks my heart to know someone is struggling with same
issue I struggle with, because I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Even though
her habits might be strange and it might seem crazy that she would
rather lose her hair than change her eating patterns (as you mentioned
in class), just try to remember that anorexia or any eating disorder is
truly an illness like anything else, and irrational thought is part of
it. I know how it feels to think in that way and sometimes compassion is
the number one thing I want if I am feeling adamant in my desire to
keep doing what I am doing…not agreement that I am doing the right
thing, but compassion for the way I feel and how difficult it is to feel
in such a strange way.I hope you will take this letter
to heart and consider approaching your roommate again, and I hope you
don’t mind that I wrote this to you. You seem very nice and genuinely
troubled by what is going on with your roommate, so please don’t think I
am claiming that you handle the problem in an inappropriate way—it is
hard to know how to handle a problem like this—I just really want to
show you the other side and try to give you new ways of helping her, if
that is at all possible, because I had a good experience with
intervention and I wish that for everyone. I wish you the best of luck
with it, and thanks for listening. I'll never know
the effect that letter had on Holli (or her roommate, for that matter),
but I can only hope the fact that someone would take the time to
anonymously write such a detailed letter to Holli would have been enough
to make her think and feel and grasp even a thread of understanding.
It would have been easy for me to sit there and feel hurt or sad by the "eating disorder" discussion that occurred in my college class. It would have been easy to feel offended by the fact that several people shared the opinion that people who struggle with anorexia are "crazy." It would have been easy for me to do nothing. But something made me use my voice, and who knows, maybe Holli listened. I like to think that she did.
