The Beginning of My Relationship with Eating Disorders

It began at the end of my internship when I was already committed to a Postdoctoral fellowship at Mt. Sinai in Manhattan. I was pregnant with my second son and I received a phone call from an old acquaintance asking if I knew of any psychologists who were also yoga teachers.

She was the medical director of an eating disorder facility and told me they were hiring. The job was part time and right near my apartment and I was exhausted after 70 hour weeks of internship. I made a spontaneous decision that I would apply for the job.  It seemed like an ideal solution to getting my post doctoral hours done and being able to spend time with my family. 

At that moment I did not realize that taking the job in an Eating Disorder center would send me down the path of finding the career that would define me. 

I never imagined that working with these patients would become my lifes’ work, nor did I imagine how captivated I would be by this population of people. 

As with all new jobs, there are areas of the job that you are particularly worried about. 

I was specifically worried about the impact of this work as a pregnant woman, both on me and my patients. I was anxious about how this population would respond to the changes that were about to take over my body. I was trepidatious; worried that they would be unable to connect to me, or feel alienated and disgusted by me because I was so visibly experiencing physical change. 

However, my fears turned out to be the polar opposite of my experience. These women (at the time all of the patients were women) seemed to look at my pregnancy as a type of emotional experiment. They began to question, through my evident physical transformation, the concept that they may be being “hard” on themselves.

They discussed in group therapy that perhaps their bodies were built for a multitude of things and thinness and perfection were potentially a manufactured ambition. 

They were supportive, encouraging, and incredibly curious about what my physical journey was. I witnessed a huge shift in the way they came to see the physical body (or certainly my physical body).

Though obviously they did not “recover” because of this, I believe the way they were able to watch my physical experience without actually having to do it themselves opened a small window into their minds that my words simply could not have done.

Their resonance and connection with my physical body was striking. Their fascination and curiosity were as if I was having this pregnancy for them as well as for me. I learned at that time, and now in my on-going work, that patients who suffer from eating disorders are a population in which I feel inextricably connected to and compassionate about. It is a perfect storm of complexity, challenge and utter frustration.

It has little to do with narcissism and vanity, and everything to do with a brain that has simply gone beyond their control.

The question for me from the beginning was simply, how do I get in? How do I compete with the eating disorder for access to the brain of someone who is actively starving?

Initially my body helped me find a window, after that I had to find a different way in.