The golden cage of anorexia

The golden cage of anorexia

Anorexia begins with a person´s desire for perfection. This characteristic of striving for perfection in ways such as sports, school grades and a healthy diet is often admired by others who have less self discipline. The cage gradually becomes apparent when the person concerned loses touch with reality, follows all activities to excess and becomes obsessed with controlling her life. To escape from this cage is a very strenuous, difficult and enduring process which sometimes concludes in death.

Even though the number of cases of this illness has rapidly been increasing over the last 40 years, one cannot speak of a new phenomenon as it has been described by the best known British doctor of his time, Sir William Gull, over a 100 years ago. He gave the illness the name anorexia nervosa, meaning “without hunger”. Considering that a person suffering from anorexia is actually constantly hungry and only represses her desire for food, this name is quite inappropriate.

Not only girls but slowly also boys, mostly between 11 and 17 years of age, are affected by this illness. Nevertheless, due to the ideal of beauty for females which has changed into an unnatural slimness and is constantly being shown in the media, girls make up about 90% of the cases. Another reason why so many more girls than boys become anorexic is that when their bodies start to develop girls often find it hard to accept the fact that they are approaching womanhood and would rather remain in childhood.

As adults they are going to be faced with the stressful pressure of job and family. Many fear they will be unable to cope.

This eating disorder occurs mainly in the affluent societies of the countries of the First World. There the outward appearance of a person seems to play a role far more important than in countries or social stratums below the poverty line.

In order to prevent more and more teenagers being trapped by the cage of anorexia, some schools are taking various measures. However their efforts are not very successful and can even have the opposite effect. For example, weighing youngsters in front of their classmates in order to spot early signs will only cause humiliation. Most people believe that somebody who shows signs of this eating disorder should be confronted with articles about the serious consequences, high death – rates and photos of anorexics in their final stages. In their opinion this person will be so shocked with the result that she will stop tormenting herself. I myself have been anorexic and know that in contrast to this common point of view, everything that has to do with this disease is interesting and fascinating for its sufferers. So instead of helping her recognize her wrong attitude towards food it proves to the person that she is special when she is associated with this illness. Additionally anorexics very often want to attract attention and when showing them how concerned about their health and well–being one is, they see that what they doing is attracting attention and therefore they will go on in the same way as before.

The key to stop more teenagers developing anorexia is to change the whole society and its ideal of beauty. As this is, of course, impossible other ways could be tried.

One of the facts that helped me overcome my phobia about weight and food was that my mother and my best friend were always there for me and were not half–heartedly trying to convince me of my illness (I never

wanted to accept that I was in the same situation as the girls in the dreadful stories I had read. Instead I thought I still had everything under control and could stop losing weight whenever I wanted to. After nearly two years I realized that I could not.). Another fact was that I met a boy I liked very much and who became my boyfriend. Through knowing that he liked me not only for my appearance but also and especially for my character, I developed more self–confidence.

Even though these people helped me very much my psychologist is still the one who contributed the most to my recovery. For a long time my mother had wanted me to have therapeutic treatment but I had always been against it as I was too scared that I would have to put on weight. Eventually I myself thought it would be best to get professional help and from then on my condition has improved a lot. My therapist helped me realize that perfection in ways of perfect school grades, constant exercising and, most of all, keeping my weight as low as possible was not going to make me into a perfect person. Now I am not so afraid of growing up anymore and have found out that boys do not like girls who are extremely skinny, as I had previously believed. I have to say that the process of gaining weight again was actually very often harder and more painful than the losing of it had been. Still I feel much better now and am incredibly glad that with the help of my psychologist I have managed to recover from this illness.

In conclusion it can be said that the best thing to do to help somebody suffering from anorexia is not to try to reason with her in any way but to make her go to a therapist. An anorexic is far beyond just being on a healthy “diet”. She is suffering from a serious illness and therefore needs to go to a therapist. This may not seem very appealing at first since she has believed herself to be self sufficient, perfect in many ways and not in need of assistance. Yet the sooner she receives professional help the greater the chances for recovery are. After a certain time she herself will recognize this. Hopefully she will be able to, like me, escape the golden cage of anorexia.

Sources: >The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa> by Hilde Bruch

>Reviving Ophelia. Saving The Selves of Adolescent Girls< by Mary Pipher