What do disordered eating, domestic abuse and thoughts of suicide all have in common?
Last month I was made redundant as Papyrus (prevention of young suicide) went into administration. While that came with a shock, it's also given me the time and space I needed to set up private practice. It's also put me into a very contemplative headspace and I've been reflecting on my experience over the past 7 years in various mental health services.
My experiences have spanned from providing emotional support and training in the field of eating disorders/disordered eating, supporting women experiencing domestic abuse and/or sexual trauma and providing emotional support and crisis intervention to people having thoughts of suicide.
On the surface these things may seem to be completely unrelated. Different experiences that need very different approaches. While they aren't the same and saying "let's work on challenging the food rules" isn't going to help someone who's thinking of ending their life (unless maybe the food rules are contributing to the thoughts of suicide!), there are a few similarities in the emotional and psychological experiences.
So let's look at them....
Inner Conflict
"Parts are little inner beings who are trying their best to keep you safe... the harder we try to get rid of emotions and thoughts, the stronger they become. This is because parts, like people, fight back against being shamed." - Richard C Schwartz
It's not uncommon for people who are experiencing disordered eating to feel like there's two personalities battling inside of them. The restrict part of them whose identity is based on "discipline" and wants to keep everything under control versus the binge part of them wants to say F you to the diet rules and eat the damn cake.
Just in the same way that most people who've experienced domestic abuse or sexual trauma feel conflicted. Part of them knows they aren't to blame, yet another part of them is constantly going over and over the situation to figure out what they could have done to stop it. Blaming themselves.
Similarly, many people who are having thoughts of suicide experience inner turmoil as part of them genuinely believes suicide is the solution, the escape. Yet another part, maybe a part that's or doesn’t want to leave loved ones, is telling them to stay alive.
It is this inner conflict that causes distress. It feels destabilising and disorienting.
Feeling Misunderstood
"The worst kind of loneliness in the world is isolation that comes from being misunderstood, it can make people lose their grasp on reality." - Sienna Brooks ~ Dan Brown
Let's be honest a huge proportion of our society in the UK is dieting or trying to lose weight. It's become so normalised that when someone is struggling with an eating disorder or disordered eating, it can easily be overlooked. Or worse, reinforced. "It's just food" or "Everyone overeats" can feel like dismissal and misunderstanding.
In the case of domestic abuse and sexual trauma, we sadly have a very victim-blaming culture in the UK. Empathetic responses that understand the complexity of these experiences are limited. "Why didn't you leave sooner?" or "Did you flirt with them?" completely miss the point.
When it comes to experiencing thoughts of suicide, I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone's experience, or even witnessed in real time, someone jumping in to say "But you've got so much to be grateful for" or "You're not thinking of something silly are you?". This completely bypasses someone's internal experience.
Being misunderstood and dismissed like this also add to shame - another commonality.
Shame
"If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive." - Brené Brown
There's so much stigma around thoughts of suicide. Some of it's societal (like the responses above), some of it's historical (suicide was classed as a crime until 1961) and some may be religious (suicide is seen as a sin in many religions). Plus if we take the humanistic thinking that we all have an innate drive to self-actualise (reach out potential), wanting to end your life can generate a deep feeling of shame for "going against yourself".
Many people feel a lot of shame around their eating habits, particularly those that struggle with binge eating or compulsive. The secrecy of these behaviours and the out of control feeling that accompany them, coupled with the weight-centric, fatphobic society we live in which demonises certain foods and pushes narratives of overeating with gluttony, laziness and disgust, leads to big feelings of shame.
Often there's a deep thread of shame that runs through many people's experiences of domestic abuse and sexual trauma. While they may rationally know they aren't to blame, many feel like they are weak or like there's something wrong with them. They may feel like they're dirty or damaged and as a results ashamed that this happened to them.
Threat to Safety
"When we are chronically overwhelmed, our nervous system loses its resilience and its ability to return to a baseline of calm and safety." - Peter Levine
The threat to safety is probably most obvious when it comes to domestic abuse or sexual trauma. Physical, emotional, verbal or sexual abuse. They all pose a real and significant threat to someone's physical safety as well as their psychological sense of safety.
When it comes to disordered eating, let's look at restriction. Restriction, whether that is physical restriction through calorie counting and cutting out food groups, mental restriction through telling yourself you shouldn't be eating a certain food or perceived restriction by planning to "make up for it" tomorrow, is threat your nervous system. We need food to survive. Limiting it, or mentally planning to, is read to your body as "famine".
Having thoughts of suicide poses physical and existential threats to safety. The physical threat may be through self-harm, previous attempts or planning to end their life. The existential threat looms in contemplation of the suicidal thoughts themselves - "What's the point of life? What's my purpose? What's next?....".
If you've experienced any of what I've shared above I hope my post has been able to raise awareness of these experiences in a nuanced and compassionate way. I'd love to know....
What's something someone has said or done that made you feel genuinely understood and safe with them during a difficult time?
And of the four experiences I've explored — inner conflict, feeling misunderstood, shame and threats to safety — which would you most like to learn how to navigate?
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