As I said previously, I had always believed my problems with food began when I self-induced vomiting for the first time. IT was only during my last hospital stay that I realised my distorted relationship with food started when I was a child.
According to compassion focused therapy (yes that's a real thing, and harder than it sounds), we have three main regulation systems for our emotions and thoughts: Threat, Drive and Soothe. Threat(Anxiety/Anger/Fear) is basically your fight/flight system, when we feel a threatened in some way this system kicks in for protection. Drive(Excitement/Motivation/Achieving) is when you are trying to obtain a resource or incentive, and Soothe(Happy/Safe/Kindness) is when you feel content, protected and cared for. We move between the different systems as we go about our lives, and we can quickly jump from one to the other.
For example, imagine you have to prepare a group presentation in work, and whichever team has the best presentation wins €100 each. You will most likely be fully in drive, focusing on the task at hand and the end goal - the €100 prize money. But what if Larry, who you've never really liked, starts to take over the project, refusing to listen to any ideas but his own. And Larry's ideas are terrible, really terrible. So not only will you not win the cash, your boss will probably think you had something to do with that sorry excise for a presentation. So your brain goes into threat mode, your self-preservation kicks in and you snap at Larry to let other people talk. Assuming Larry concedes, you will flip back into drive and start firing off counter ideas. Although you may keep one toe dipped in threat, just in case that damn Larry doesn't tow the line. So, Drive->Threat->Drive.
There are plenty of online resources about CMA, which explain it a lot better and more accurately than I just did. But hopefully you get the basic concept. How is this relevant to my ED? Excellent question Cyberspace, so I'll get back to the matter at hand.
My earliest memory took place when I was three. I was running down my grandmother's garden, being chased by her dog Daisy. I don't remember running headfirst into an apple tree during said chase, and splitting my forehead open. I definitely don't remember being brought to hospital and getting 8 catgut sutures, while bawling my eyes out(understandably). However I do remember being handed a Cadbury Flake bar. So I have fear of the dog(threat) followed by yummy chocolate(soothe). You're probably rolling your eyes at me, its just a dog and a Flake, although Freud could probably have a field day with it. As far reaching as it may seem, that moment was pivotal in my life.
When I was a child my house was a very scary place to be, my parents nasty separation being just one example. At all times I had a certain level of anxiety and fear, just waiting for the next attack, constantly in threat mode. Luckily, I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother, Joan. From the moment I was born she looked after me when my parents couldn't, and even as a teenager I stayed in her house regularly. My grandmother was the one person in my life who made me feel safe, her house was my safe haven, it was the one place my soothe system was activated. And like most grandmothers back then, she spoiled me rotten, in the form of sugar. My grandmothers house meant red lemonade and 10p bags of jellies, it meant 20p coins to spend in the newsagents. It was sitting up late with her watching Coronation Street, eating pink wafers. Tiny Mars bars or ice cream between wafers if I was good. Homemade jams, stewed apple and rhubarb with custard...Food meant I was wanted and that I was being rewarded. When she got older, and couldn't get up to make breakfast, she would leave out cereal bowls filled with pink and white marshmallows for me and my sister. Nothing could make a seven year old and ten year old happier than watching cartoons while eating a bowl of marshmallows.
When my dad left home my mother would sometimes bring us with her to the pub at the weekend. In exchange for our good behaviour my sister and I would be gifted with a £5 note to spend in the shop next door. We would sit quietly in the corner, surrounded by inebriated strangers, safe in our little sugar bubble. When I was eight or nine I started stealing money from my house. It started out with 5p from my mum's purse, or if the man she was seeing was over, I would rob every coin from his coat pockets. I also got pocket money from my dad, £1 every second week I think. If something particularly bad happened at home, I would take my money to the sweet shop near my school and buy flying saucers and red licorice whips to cheer myself up. I'd buy 100 cola bottles and eat them until I felt sick, because with every jelly I thought less and less about whatever had happened. Because in my little mind, I subconsciously associated sweets with the one person who made me feel unconditionally loved - my grandmother. So if I couldn't be with her, I would try and replicate that feeling of safety and contentment with food.
When I moved to a new house and school at eleven things got even worse. My shy, bookish and slightly weird personality did not fit in with my new classmates, or my family. Now I was miserable in school and at home, so almost everyday I would spend my bus fare in the nearest shop and walk home. The combination of a long walk and the limited amount of food I could buy with my bus fare meant my weight stayed the same. At home, it was toast. I would sit in the kitchen alone every evening, watching TV and secretly munching away. Food was not just something I needed to live, it was a way to push down any thoughts or feelings that were too intense, or a way to try and fill up the growing emptiness inside of me. At the time I didn't think that there was anything wrong with my relationship with food, but I deliberately used it to comfort myself.
By my mid-teens I had, for the most part replaced food with self harm. A slice of cake had nothing on the sting from a fresh cut, in terms of dealing with distress that is. The cake obviously wins the taste test. Using food as a coping mechanism is not specific to people with eating disorders, or personality disorders. I would go so far as to say that most people have turned to food for comfort at some point in their lives. Whenever there is a break-up scene in a chick flick, ice cream and/or chocolate will inevitably appear. It's perfectly normal to eat Nutella off of a spoon after a really shitty day at work. The problem occurs when you think the only way to feel better after that shitty day is a spoonful of Nutella. It's when you realise you're standing in your kitchen holding an empty jar and panicking, because now you have to feel emotions. It's when you never think of food in terms of nourishment, or family, or celebration, that's when it's a problem.
So while my eating disorder first manifested when I was twenty two, my maladaptive relationship with food started about 19 years earlier. Which makes changing my beliefs around food and eating even more fun. Rather predictably, I now have an overwhelming urge to go and buy cake, in order to block out the memories I recalled for this post. But I'd probably just throw it up, so why waste good cake?
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