Bulimia Quotes

“I didn't realize there was a ranking." I said. "Sadie frowned. "What do you mean?" "A ranking," I said. "You know, what's crazier than what." "Oh, sure there is," Sadie said. She sat back in her chair. "First you have your generic depressives. They're a dime a dozen and usually pretty boring. Then you've got the bulimics and the anorexics. They're slightly more interesting, although usually they're just girls with nothing better to do. Then you start getting into the good stuff: the arsonists, the schizophrenics, the manic-depressives. You can never quite tell what those will do. And then you've got the junkies. They're completely tragic, because chances are they're just going to go right back on the stuff when they're out of here." "So junkies are at the top of the crazy chain," I said. Sadie shook her head. "Uh-uh," she said. "Suicides are." I looked at her. "Why?" "Anyone can be crazy," she answered. "That's usually just because there's something screwed up in your wiring, you know? But suicide is a whole different thing. I mean, how much do you have to hate yourself to want to just wipe yourself out?”
― Michael Thomas Ford

“Nothing in the world scares me as much as bulimia. It was true then and it is true now. But at some point, the body will essentially eat of its own accord in order to save itself. Mine began to do that. The passivity with which I speak here is intentional. It feels very much as if you are possessed, as if you have no will of your own but are in constant battle with your body, and you are losing. It wants to live. You want to die. You cannot both have your way. And so bulimia creeps into the rift between you and your body and you go out of your mind with fear. Starvation is incredibly frightening when it finally sets in with a vengeance. And when it does,you are surprised. You hadn't meant this. You say: Wait, not this. And then it sucks you under and you drown.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

“I have a remarkable ability to delete all better judgement from my brain when I get my head set on something. I have no sense of moderation, no sense of caution. I have no sense pretty much.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

“So there you have it--my sorry tale. That's how something I though I controlled ended up controlling me.”
― Sarah Darer Littman, Purge

“The barriers we face in life are so often the ones we create in our minds. As a child I couldn’t open that wooden gate because my body prevented me from doing so. As a teenager it seemed I couldn’t open that door because my mind held me hostage. The world that waited beyond it now was no longer one of safety or escape. Instead, I knew every time that I opened that door, it would be to a life of psychological insecurity and emotional entrapment. She - that cerebral leech who clung to all my thoughts - convinced me of this fact. Only with her could I find and maintain an asylum of mental armour”
― Leanne Waters, My Secret Life

“My body had never felt so small or so fragile. In one sense, it was a moment of ecstasy and I was comforted with soft, almost compassionate, encouragement.

"Delicate," she said. The word imprinted on me like the cold before it. I was weak and going numb, but I was delicate. This is what I had wanted. I wanted to lose weight and retain some ounce of delicacy to resemble that of the spider-figured women I had seen in all those flashing images. Suddenly, the lack of strength displayed by my body was counterbalanced with a surging lease of mental satisfaction and might. As I lay in bed, buried under all my layers of clothes and bed sheets, the warmth still could not reach me. It was too late for that now and I didn’t care. I just wanted to sleep, basking in my success and enduring the cold until I could finally slip into a forgetful slumber.”
― Leanne Waters, My Secret Life

“You see, a binge is almost always inevitable when one goes withut eating for such a long period of time. It doesn't just satisfy the physical hunger that becomes you; it nourishes the psychological need to escape from your own controlling mind. In this way, the binge presents itself as the ultimate loss of control.”
― Leanne Waters, My Secret Life

“Kernberg (1995) observes that patients with anorexia tend toward sexual inhibition, whereas those with bulimia are more likely to enact sadomasochistic sexual interactions, especially when eating disturbances temporarily recede.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Eating Disorders: A Contemporary Introduction

“Patients with eating disorders contend with an emotional landscape marked by isolation and loneliness as well as shame, guilt, and embarrassment, not to mention a profound hopelessness about the possibilities of emotional connection. Help with these struggles will never be found in a pill or a set of therapeutic exercises, in spite of the potential usefulness of both. It is only through a meaningful emotional connection that we can help patients begin to "bear the unbearable and to say the unsayable".”
― Tom Wooldridge, Eating Disorders: A Contemporary Introduction

“Vomiting may consciously be a behavior to keep the weight down, but unconsciously bulimics resort to vomiting as a way to cleanse themselves of the shameful amount of food they just devoured. By vomiting one literally bathes in shame.”
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You

“Goodsit (1997), for example argued that patients with anorexia nervosa manifest a facade of pseudo- self-sufficiency when confronted with parents who are themselves se lf-absorbed, anxious, or otherwise unavailable. In this process, the maturation of the anorexic's self-object and self-regulatory capacities are unable to fully develop, leaving them painfully dependent upon others for their well-being. Bulimic patients, in contrast, are seen as more tension-ridden impulsive, and conflicted about whether to pursue their own lives or to remain available to a parent who utilizes them to maintain his or her own psychic equilibrium. In this context, symptoms - whether self-starvation, bingeing, and/or purging - emerge as last-ditch efforts at self-soothing and tension regulation. Over time, eating disorders become chronic conditions that provide patients with a compensatory identity and sense of self.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“With an eye toward the striking difference in prevalence of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa between males and females, Sands (1989 J suggested that young girls are presented with culturally shaped barriers to obtaining developmentally necessary mirroring and idealization. Whereas boys' needs for mirroring may be gratified through "showing off, being cocky, acting smart or aggressive”, girls are expected to be "lady-like." It is only in the realm of physical appearance that girls are encouraged to seek mirroring and, thus, in later life women are more predisposed than men to manifest psychopathology through bodily symptoms such as eating disorders.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“With an eye toward the striking difference in prevalence of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa between males and females, Sands (1989) suggested that young girls are presented with culturally shaped barriers to obtaining developmentally necessary mirroring and idealization. Whereas boys' needs for mirroring may be gratified through "showing off, being cocky, acting smart or aggressive”, girls are expected to be "lady-like." It is only in the realm of physical appearance that girls are encouraged to seek mirroring and, thus, in later life women are more predisposed than men to manifest psychopathology through bodily symptoms such as eating disorders.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“While many anorexic and bulimic patients describe themselves as feeling disconnected from their bodies, or even like heads without bodies, they are also trapped in an inability to differentiate affect from bodily state, as evidenced through difficulty articulating feelings verbally, and the use of food and the body as the primary or only means of self-expression.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“If the eating disorder is concretized by the "not-me" ED, the patient is allowed the safety to look around comers, to follow this "other self' into the kitchen; the bathroom; yes, even the bedroom; to observe. Shame and blame are reduced; curiosity is enhanced. Conceptually this is interesting. Many patients are able to observe once allowed to look. They know well who they are at these moments. Relationally, however, they have never been entitled to look, and, as a result, self-observation and understanding have been thwarted by relational constraints and consequent immediate behavioral enactments.
Ongoing, the patient is asked to consider what alternative behaviors can replace eating, purging or restricting. If the patient weren't thinking about food or weight, what else would she be thinking about? What else is needed? As the patient begins to consider concrete alternatives to symptomatic behavior, "contracts" are developed between patient and therapists.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“Becoming visible and substantial means that anxiety must be contained long enough to become available for emotional experience, thought and symbolization instead of immediately discharged into eating disorder symptoms.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“If mental health has been associated with the ongoing development of resilient and adaptive coping through early positive attachment experiences, psychopathology later in life has been associated with disturbances in attachment, characterized by deficits in coping with novelty and stress (Schore, 2001). For those who go on to develop eating disorders, there have often been pathological failures in early maternal responsivity, as well as maternal impingements. Bruch (1973), one of the first psychoanalysts to theorize about and treat eating disorders, noted that often. these patients have what she calls an interoceptive problem - difficulty distinguishing between inside and outside and between self and other - as the result of having their mothers' needs imposed upon them throughout development. As a result, the potential, or transitional space, never achieved as a space between two people, becomes an embodied, or "in-myself' space (Boris, 1984).”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“Moreover, the body is the projection screen for deadly objects stemming from primary, traumatic links with caretakers, compulsory binges and food rejection may amount to an angry response aimed at denying and attacking the body.

Additionally. dysfunctional eating behaviors are often attempts to regulate extremely painful emotions, especially those that may influence an individual's narcissistic balance. This condition is shared with different forms of psychic distress, whereby an object or a behavior plays the role of regulating the "'outer" emotions in response to a lack of adequate internal resources to contend with traumatic stressors. From this perspective, EDs can be conceptualized as dysfunctional strategies of affect regulation that are connected to an impaired capability to recognize, metabolize, and mentalize affects (Lunn & Poulsen, 2012).”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“Moreover, the body is the projection screen for deadly objects stemming from primary, traumatic links with caretakers, compulsory binges and food rejection may amount to an angry response aimed at denying and attacking the body.

Additionally, dysfunctional eating behaviors are often attempts to regulate extremely painful emotions, especially those that may influence an individual's narcissistic balance. This condition is shared with different forms of psychic distress, whereby an object or a behavior plays the role of regulating the "'outer" emotions in response to a lack of adequate internal resources to contend with traumatic stressors. From this perspective, EDs can be conceptualized as dysfunctional strategies of affect regulation that are connected to an impaired capability to recognize, metabolize, and mentalize affects (Lunn & Poulsen, 2012).”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“Controlled mentalization, identification and understanding of emotional reactions, and emotional regulation are significant problems for eating-disordered patients. In general, bulimia nervosa patients show problems in emotional hyperarousal and flooding. The opposite, a dominance of detached and flattened effect, is typically seen in patients with anorexia nervosa.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“…interoceptive confusion and body image distortions are forms of impaired embodied mentalizing and expressions of pre-mentalistic thinking. For example, psychic equivalence demonstrates how patients’ painful self and affect states are expressed though extreme body hatred and the mistaken belief that being “skinny” will bring them self-acceptance, "confidence," and agency. The teleological stance explains the obsessive drive for thinness as a method to obtain self-acceptance and the approval of others. In short, subjugation of the body is a confused attempt to gain mastery and control over feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of self-worth.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“Hypermentalization, frequently seen in patients with bulimia nervosa, is when the patient is so outer-directed that she is prone to obsessively interpreting others' minds but not in an accurate way. Hypermentalized fantasies about another's mind is an effort to meet and satisfy that person's perceived desires and needs (Buhl, 2002; Skarderud, 2007), and based on inaccurate interpretations of self/other mental states because of attachment anxieties. Similarly, pseudo-mentalizing is when the patient appears to be expressing or talking about feelings and thoughts, but the narrative lacks emotional connection. instead, words and expressions are empty of meaning and serve to defend against feelings of worthlessness, insignificance, or desolation (Skarderud & Fonagy, 2012).”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“The focus on one's own body as an object inhibits self-awareness and leads to stultifying self-consciousness.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“Eating disorders are a silent form of destruction: a destruction of vitality and the hope for a meaningful existence. They create the illusion of time stopping. Past, present, and future collapse: the insidious negative self-talk is too loud, and/ or the aftermath of trauma too pervasive and/or the affects too overwhelming. The body itself becomes the theater of war (McDougall, 1989) wherein the feelings. memories, longings, and stories that have led to the symptoms feel so dangerous that they are dissociated from the behaviors themselves.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“Eating disorders are a silent form of destruction: a destruction of vitality and the hope for a meaningful existence. They create the illusion of time stopping. Past, present, and future collapse: the insidious negative self-talk is too loud, and/ or the aftermath of trauma too pervasive and/or the affects too overwhelming. The body itself becomes the theater of war (McDougall, 1989) wherein the feelings, memories, longings, and stories that have led to the symptoms feel so dangerous that they are dissociated from the behaviors themselves.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“A person struggling with an eating disorder keeps their rituals and disordered behaviors secret - it is a double life of sorts - and the behaviors themselves could be thought of as a maladaptive attempt at a solution. The symptoms are used to maintain a state of mind, full of fantasies of the possibilities of a 'moment' or a 'life', without what 'feels' unbearable. The person, in the eating disorder (ED) 'body-state,' truly believes that there is no other way.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“Sadly, fierce in-group/out-group biases live within the eating disorder complex, generating and sustaining an ethical code of the culture as girls and women project their shadow upon one another. Individuals with anorexia secretly scorn those who struggle with bulimia or binge eating, those with bulimia and binge eating feel gross, often “wishing to be anorexic,” yet detesting their slim sisters with vicious jealousy. A callous hierarchy is formed, with anorexia as the idea; bulimia, as a very distant underworld second; and binge eating, clearly at the bottom of acceptability.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders: When Words Fail and Bodies Speak

“In other words, a complex resides in the unconscious. Which means it possesses autonomy, exerting force upon the individual regardless of his/her conscious intent.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“Complexes and their associated archetypes are the building blocks or blueprints of earliest human experience.”
― Tom Wooldridge, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders

“I loved a good bulimia joke and even sometimes initiated them, like after a dinner out with friends, "I'd better run home and throw this up." We all laughed; my girlfriends said similar things. But I was actually going home and doing it. I didn't know at the time that many of them were, too.”
― Cole Kazdin, What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety