Thought to Challenge: "I Don't Deserve to Eat"

06/03/18, 1:43pm

Another installment in my DBT homework series! The thought to challenge: "I don't deserve to eat."

Point #1: "I eat too much/have eaten too much in the past. I need to save food for others."

I know that food is not a cheap commodity and there was a point where my family really had to watch how much we spent on food. I still hold guilt for all the times I've binged and asked for seconds. I still hold guilt and shame for my mom having to worry about my weight in elementary school and for not having a beautiful dancer body in high school. Now I know that I tend to binge and purge on snack foods, which I see as a waste of food. This is not only a waste for my family but a slap in the face to all the hungry families America and around the world. This is a difficult one for me to challenge. First off, everybody deserves to eat and sustain their bodies – even rapists and serial killers. Eating is a part of the first level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We have to feed ourselves before we get to working on our goals and aspirations. Also, I may not think that I deserve to eat but I need to in order to achieve recovery and show that my mom's money was well spent. If someone with an eating disorder or disordered eating told me they didn't deserve to eat, I would try to argue with them tooth and nail. Of course they deserve to eat, no matter how bad of a person they think they are. And I'm no exception. I deserve to eat just like any other member of my family. There's no misdeed or crime a person can commit that bars them from the right to eat. Often it's the other way around. The innocent are taken hostage, by a criminal or terrorist group or government, and starved. I am extremely grateful to not be in that kind of situation. I deserve to eat and I want to see food as the ultimate nourishment, not something to be afraid of or overeat when I feel uncomfortable.

Point #2: "I'm fat and have no self-control. I need to cut back on how much I eat."

Even though I have trouble believing it, I am objectively not fat. My mom, brother, and friends have all made comments as to how skinny I am. If I can't trust my own eyes, I can try to trust theirs. My BMI is also in the underweight zone, so medically I'm not fat or overweight. I've struggled with self-control for a while. For most of my life, I would binge and not purge. I ate with urgency and anxiety. Now I still eat with urgency and anxiety but I also purge or eat very little or eat a lot of low calorie, low-fat foods. Realistically I'm not in any more control of what/how I eat than before. Food and feelings have control over me, not the other way around. In a "health at every size" podcast I was listening to recently, a psychologist was recounting her college dieting experience. She revealed that dieting actually caused her to gain weight because restriction brought about urges to binge. When she decided to take a break from dieting one summer, she found that by the end of it she had actually lost weight and was back to her "starting weight." Long story short, she is against dieting and for intuitive eating – listening to your body and feeding it what/how much it wants. I think my worries are also rooted in obesophobia. I don't necessarily see fat people as ugly or disgusting, but I usually think they're not taking care of themselves and not eating "correctly." And I do hold the belief that weight loss is always good, especially because so many health associations recommend it. I do hold the belief that weight loss means healthier and that thinner equals better. I do see thin models, rather than average-sized or fat ones, as body role models. I don't believe that I'll ever think that being morbidly obese is okay or safe, but I need to unpack my obesophobia, which is going to take time. And it's going to take rejecting cultural norms and values.

Point #3: "Food is for others. I don't need to eat."

Sometimes I feel very saintly when I don't eat – like the saint I was named for who died fasting in a cave. I feel this enormous sense of self-control and self-righteousness. I get this elated feeling and feel like I am floating about, not really walking anywhere. I feel as though I am better than others for restraining myself. I am proud of myself. I feel as though I've finally done something right. However, my assumption is just not true. Food isn't just for others, it's for me, too. Like I said before, I deserve to eat. I logically know that not eating will lead to death. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. And I've read in Brumberg's Fasting Girls of fasting girls and anorexia patients who died after refusing food for long enough or after not being able to gain weight and process nourishment. I don't think I want to die yet. I haven't even really accomplished anything yet! I want to go back to school, maybe even write a thesis – maybe even a thesis that focuses on eating disorders somehow. I want to do good in this world, but I can't do that (or it would be harder to) if I'm not eating and end up in the hospital. I think I need to try to associate self-control not with restriction but with listening to my body, and feed it with the nourishment that nature provides.

Point #4: "I'm too much of a burden on my family."

I have guilt and shame over my leave from university. I was the perfect student in high school and (nearly) the perfect daughter. I was on the Dean's List after my first semester at Cornell. Now I feel like a failure and a lazy good-for-nothing. On top of that, my mom pays for these therapy sessions (with the help of insurance) and I feel like I'm not excelling in that either. My previous therapy sessions in Ithaca were a failure. I stopped trusting the mental health services at *** Health and Dr. W*** dropped me as a patient. I feel as tough I cost my family too much money and I don't make enough to pay them back. However, my family, especially my mom, spends so much money on me because they love me and care about me. They want me to get back on my feet. It was their choice to spend the money to help me. And I am trying my best to get better. Things probably wouldn't be better for my family if I die. My mom would definitely be extremely sad – maybe even depressed. Who would help look out for my brother? All of my relatives in Russia would be affected. I guess giving up some money is a small price to pay to help your child. Besides, once I get better and establish myself in some career, I can take care of my family. Plus it's not like I dropped out of school. I'm just taking a break. I need this time to recover and straighten up my priorities. And realistically I don't think my mom sees me as a burden. She tells me quite frequently that she loves and appreciates me. Also, there is uncertainty in treatment. There is no absolute guarantee that you'll get better. However, I can do things to increase the chances of my success in recovery. I also need to give myself credit for all that I have done: I always show up to individual and group therapy, I always do my assigned homework, I try to apply skills outside of therapy.

Point #5: "My life is easy. I haven't suffered enough."

I often doubt that there's anything wrong with me. I've never been officially diagnosed, so I don't know if I even have an eating disorder. Anorexia? Bulimia? OSFED? Just a diet gone wrong? This thought tends to make me feel competitive and self-destructive, feelings that I've also experienced when going out with friends and taking Xanax and drinking a lot, or when my friends told me they were sad and fucked up and I felt like I had to out-do them. It's a weird form of perfectionism. I have to be the perfect disordered person. I also tend to doubt that my life has been hard in any way, especially in comparison to others. This drives me to want to bring on suffering, to justify all the therapy and to justify the leave. However, I have/am suffering, just in a different way than other people. I used to be in an emotionally/psychologically torturous relationship. I used to be extremely suicidal and would self-harm. I've been admitted to the behavioral services unit of a hospital. I used to have a drinking problem and a benzo+alcohol problem. I still purge and have anxiety about food. I restrict my food consumption. I get dizzy frequently. I don't need to end up in the emergency room to justify my suffering. Just because I'm not the most extreme eating disorder case doesn't mean that I haven't suffered and that I don't deserve recovery.