I became acquainted with the dark side of human nature at a young age. I was 6 years old when was subjected to the first of several sexual abuse incidents. I was abused by members of my extended family as well as by several members of the clergy. It was around that time when I began eating compulsively.
This to the consternation of my mother. She called out my name for taking yet another bite of food almost as much as she did to tell me to come home after a period of play. Though my mother set a good example for health care, she was regrettably uninitiated in the psychological world of compulsive overeating, so I was never taken to see a specialist. Had she done so, it might have saved me some of the adversity I was to experience in the intervening years.
My father, for his part, was a food addict himself, so my abnormal behavior was merely looked upon as an object of fondness for him. How endearing, it seemed to him, that he had a daughter who liked food as much as he did!
My overeating made me different, and I knew it. Because I was unable to curtail my intake, I was very chubby and self-conscious as a kid. And that, perhaps predictably, led to ridicule at the hands of both family members and others. I needed help, but instead I received scorn.
My overeating made me different, and I knew it.
When I became a teenager, the growth in my height along with teenage cultural norms against overeating resulted in a slimmer version of myself, but I was still subjected to ridicule. Amazingly, though I was able to wear tight jeans, I was still considered fat (although such comments were likely owing to jealousy or distorted cognition). Additionally, many of my critics were “appearance-challenged” themselves and ill-equipped to judge the looks of others. It seemed as if you were damned if you did eat, and damned if you did not.
Due to a second installment of abuse around this time, my overeating tendencies experienced a resurgence. Because of this, I lived with a quiet desperation for many years, envious of those with normal eating habits and feeling hopeless that I could never really resolve this personal anomaly.
In my mid-twenties, I saw a therapist for a work issue, which led to a side discussion about possible childhood trauma and the need for recovery. This was the beginning of my foray into OA and recovery from overeating. However, rather than facing my problem head-on, I leaned on the laurels of the insight I had gained. The result was additional years lost to compulsive overeating, and the concomitant loss of quality of life. The now-uncovered trauma was a double-edged sword, so I led a kind of double life. I was forced to correct those parts of myself affected by the abuse I’d suffered, while also living my adult life, which proved to be enormously stressful. Because of this double whammy, I continued overeating. Ultimately, my failure to address my eating problem led to a Type II diabetes diagnosis. On the bright side, the diagnosis did propel me harder toward resolution, but I still failed to get my eating under better control. Year after year, I did dances with my doctors over my A1C, promising them I would curtail my eating until I got it right. To my credit, I did try, but it was never enough.
Auxiliary health care efforts to address the problem didn’t bring about lasting changes. The only eating disorder specialist in my area wasn’t seeing new clients for another two years. My insurance didn’t cover dietary consultations at the local hospital. The books I’d read, while interesting and informative, didn’t provide long-term relief. So I was at a veritable ground zero, in my efforts to treat my disease, and my mental health suffered considerably for this.
The conventional wisdom is to seek help if one has a problem, but what do you do if you can’t find it? What I did next was something unorthodox for me: I threw in the towel. I continued to react to life’s unpleasantries, no matter how minor, by overeating. Somehow in all the mess, OA made its way back to me, evoking for me the image of the crossed beams that stood above the pile of rubble at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I had reservations about OA but was able to put them aside and delve into the literature that I had kept from two earlier attempts. It turned out that the third time was indeed the charm. In the literature, I read personal accounts of the disease in others and found a special spiritual connection. I also uncovered many nuggets of wisdom in the pages and was excited at the prospect of more. I realized, too, that I could fine tune my recovery by doing what the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, recommended and by taking what I wanted and leaving the rest.
This time, rejoining OA meant finding the best meeting and combining it with the literature to round out my program. This is what I had wanted all along. Although I’d sought out and sampled many OA resources, a formal program dedicated to improving the lives of compulsive overeaters was what did it for me. In the short time since I have reconnected with OA, I’ve experienced more frequent bouts of happiness, which are born from the hope within the program. I am now more grounded because the OA program functions as a caution light of sorts on the road to wholeness. I feel unparalleled gratitude toward our founding members and simultaneously look forward to continuing the journey.
—Linda L.
