eatingdisorderself-cure

How does Campling’s eatingdisorderself-cure work?

My decade-plus years of working with clients, both in one-to-one sessions and via the media as an advice writer, has often re-affirmed my belief that the work involved in any form of therapy is best done by the client or in this case, the person who has the disorder.

Obviously I don’t claim to be alone in believing this – I fit into the client-centred therapist world. However it has alarmed me how often even well-meaning therapists and specialists have sought to control externally the client or patient’s disorder. In my work with clients I am – according to the feedback I once received from a tutor – ‘generous with myself’.

I use my therapist congruence – congruence meaning that how I am appearing on the outside, and what I am experiencing inside from what the client is telling me, is consistent and is not concealing my true feelings or thoughts. For me, part of therapist congruence is not sitting in silence while my client suffers through something that I, in some way, have some personal knowledge of. Instead I will share it, offer it to my client for him or her to make the use they want to of it.

And since I – thirty years ago – struggled and suffered through my own eating disorder, I base my eatingdisorderself-cure not only elements of the approaches taken by others, and clients information – but also on my own, direct, experience. So what helped me, back then, is what has become the basis of my overall recovery approach.

Therefore there are certain understandings which need to be in place if you are looking to use my approach to bring about recovery, either for yourself, your client, or someone else.

Fundamental to the approach – and similar to 12 step fellowships like alcoholics anonymous and its offshoots – is accepting that you are ill and in the grip of a power greater than yourself. It was only when I stood on a scales and measured myself as weighing 92 pounds (42 kilos) (Fig. 1) rather than my ‘normal’ weight of 140 pounds (64 kg) (Fig.2) that I finally accepted that I was seriously ill. That brought about a deep panic and fear inside me because I knew that I was not in control of my body, and that any attempt to put on weight would kick off a violent reaction from my disorder.

Fig. 1 At 19 With Anorexia on my way to 42 Kilos Fig.2 Fit and Healthy in my 20's

(Click on images for an enlargement)

So firstly – accept that you are in the grip of an illness in which you are not in control.

Secondly, consider the idea that we are not one ‘I’, but made up of many ‘I’s. If this was not so, it would not be possible to recover using my approach because it would not be possible to separate. And this separation is the basis of eatingdisorderself-cure recovery. Just as I did many years ago, where the weak, desperate to be healthy part of me began talking to the stronger anorexic self, you or the person you know who has a disorder needs to learn to separate.

Separation entails realising that the disorder is not all of you: it is a powerful part. But ‘you’ also exist elsewhere, in another voice, with another desire – to recover health. So rather than hearing the voice of the disorder – whether it is telling you to exercise, or purge, or that it is the only way you can get through life – and believing you are hearing yourself, you accept that it is the voice of the disorder. Which means that you have the potential to manage it.

So then it is this managing that enables recovery. Reminding you of what the disorder is – a self-concept which has stolen energy from the proper centres and is now trying to run ‘you’ – rather than being angry with it, or trying to out-manoeuvre or trick the disorder – you recognise its frailty. The reason why the disorder causes the person to exercise until they pass out, or eat only a few peas, or chocolate, or cheese at a meal, is because that is all it can do. It isn’t actually trying to destroy the person because then it would die.

Therefore – and this is how I did it – look after the disorder. Comfort it, re-assure it that you are not angry with it, not trying to destroy it. From the disorder’s point of view, if you are trying to recover, then ‘it’ must die. This is why merely forcing more food into the person cannot work – the disorder merely increases its efforts to starve the body by exercising, denial and purging.

But if you understand that, not only is the disorder trying to get you through the day, but it’s also deathly frightened – frightened of the opinions of the outside world, frightened of even trivial things like meeting friends (because it feels an enormous, skewed, unrealistic responsibility to ‘get things right) – then hopefully you will change your attitude to the disorder to compassion. And in this way – with compassion for yourself rather than beating yourself up, with compassion for what has gone wrong inside you, rather than hating yourself for having a disorder – you can start to bring about a fundamental change in who is in control.

That was what I did. I negotiated with my disorder. I knew that I couldn’t swamp it with food, couldn’t force it to put on weight – but I could negotiate. What worked with my disorder – and each person must discover how their own disorder will react and work with it – was to tell it that I needed to eat food in order to exercise. Then gradually I increased the amount of food safely.

But that’s not the whole picture. What is also necessary is the input of new impressions. Impressions of health, of the happiness of being alive and healthy, of what I – or you, or anyone – could do with their day once the agony and exhaustion of being under the disorder’s whip was over. Just as the disorder is an artificially created self, so the creating of a new, healthy, joyous, alive self is necessary to continue the shift of control and power.

For myself coming back into normal life meant accepting myself exactly as I was, and getting on with finding out who I was in life and what I really did want. For anyone coming out of the grip of a disorder there is the question – now what do I do?

Often it is this question that keeps the disorder in place. Whatever the disorder has told the person – that if they starve and exercise they will be safe, or no one can hurt them again, or something terrible won’t happen – it is sometimes the prospect of coming back into ‘normal’ life that is most terrifying. I had one client express it as ‘the disorder stops me feeling. If I recover, then I will feel the grief and agony of having had a disorder.’

It is very helpful – and crucially important – for the person coming out of a disorder to believe that this will be a positive thing, a letting go of agony, not agony from a different place. My own experience – and that of clients and others – has shown me that when we begin to really recover a wonderful joy infuses us, that just being able to go about our day changes us so much that we just don’t have the wish, or the energy, to continue to suffer the way our disorder would have us do.

Throughout recovery, be very careful not to antagonise the disorder. One client told me about an approach where one of the steps is writing the disorder a letter telling it what it is stopping you from doing. I don’t believe this is helpful. Much better is to understand the frailty and limitations of the disorder and to take back the energy, the control, the power. But it’s not necessary to attack the disorder, it’s only part of you, it’s only trying to do its job. It’s just that its not the right mechanism for the job.

To summarise:

The disorder is an artificial ‘centre’ that has became strong by robbing the proper centres of energy. It tries to do work it is not suited for. It is not essential ‘evil’, but it will repulse conventional attempts to force the person to eat by doing all it can – starve, purge, exercise and lying.
The way to recovery, without causing the disorder to kick in, is to gently take back the energy the disorder has acquired.
This is done through separating from and then negotiating with the disorder. The overall purpose of the negotiating is to shift the energy/power back from the disorder to the healthy self.
This can be done by healthy exercise, by building a new, healthy self.
It’s important that there be healthy impressions. These can take the form of writing notes to yourself – eat, sleep, relax, breathe, live, rest, enjoy – little mantras that help build up and support the healthy self.
It is also necessary to understand and heal the original causes if there be any specific ones such as sexual abuse, violence or a traumatic loss.

The goal is not to destroy the disorder, but take back the power so that the disorder eventually re-integrates with the new, organismic self rather than the artificial self-concept.