A Painful Case by James Joyce ( 1914),
“He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor hear her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners
In the novel ‘a painful case’ by James Joyce, the reader is introduced to the character of a man who is no longer able to feel his body or experience sensations like love or joy. This narrative is seen in hearts that whisper cries of despair. The whisper is accompanied by a shadow being of ourselves, one we may not always recognize. A shadow that represents the hollowness of our bodies. Remembering the body is an act that can be seen as profoundly healing – it is a remembering, a re-piecing of who we actually are. The Maggie Rogers song, “back in my body” sings the following tune:
This time, I know I’m fighting
This time, I know I’m (back in my body)
This time, I know I’m fighting
This time, I know I’m back in my body
Her song speaks about our relationship with our bodies and our lives; the fight to remain present and true to ourselves. The feeling of being embodied means acknowledging the crippling immorality of humans. If we only have one body and a preselected amount of time to spend it in, we’re meant to recognize the aliveness of our being (of our bodies). We’re blessed with the diversity of biomatter. Yes, your overall body is composed of about 7 octillion atoms, produced by exploding stars in the universe. We are essentially matter. And yet, we’re cursed by a society that categorizes and socially distinguishes our biological matter as good and bad.
Population geneticists agree that all of us are literally one human family. And wouldn’t it be magical if we believed all bodies and minds were the same? Our brains and bodies interact and connect with one another using millions of neurons and neuropathways that direct and make up our being and experiences. We’re miraculous creatures on this planet.
Slyvia Plath writes, “This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.”
Our minds and our bodies are one and the same. In eating disorder treatment, it feels like all of the clients are mirrors of one another – looking into each other and finding something of themselves. If we’re stuck in disorder thinking about our bodies, then both our body and our mind is affected. All that we think deeply becomes a part of us. What we allow ourselves to think becomes a part of who we are – mind and body. A difference in opinion becomes us. Our waist size becomes us. A wrinkle becomes us. Our childhood becomes us. Healing the hollowed shadow within us helps us find wonder in the world again. Your body is your biggest chance of survival. And yet, we take our bodies for granted every day because we’re scared of being alone – of losing our innocence and becoming adults. The fight to be thin is a representation of an individual’s loss of hope in their search for identity. Opening the flowers of the heart begins by finding the hollowed body and welcoming it back home into your mind. The solution is in remembering who you are.
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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy | Neurocomplexities in Anorexia
[…] Eating disorders are exceptionally difficult to treat, especially amongst adult patients with a long-term history of the illness. Eating disorders tend to by symptoms of a complex ego system, with individuals who possess the disorder exhibiting extreme ambivalence to treatment. Inpatient or residential treatment is often needed to help regulate individuals with extreme symptoms and although these solutions can produce short-term improvements in the discourse on long-term improvements appears to be relatively low. “For adults with anorexia nervosa, there are currently no treatments that have achieved empirical support.” (Agras et al., 2004; Kaplan, 2002; G. T. Wilson, Grilo, & Vitousek, 2007). However, treatment for anorexia has seen strides in using cognitive therapies to help individuals with their thoughts and perceptions of their experiences with their bodies and eating. A growing body of research suggests that ACT methods such as experiential avoidance, hyper-awareness, and disordered values are central to the development and maintenance of eating disorders. Eating disorder difficulties are mapped out in terms of deficiencies in the 6 core processes of ACT including present-moment focus, cognitive defusion, experiential acceptance, transcendent self-awareness, valued living, and committed action. Treatment for anorexia looks to understand the avoidance, awareness and deficiencies of the 6 core components of well-being while increasing flexibility. “Experiential avoidance has been shown to be particularly high in eating disorder populations” (Cockell, Geller, & Linden, 2002; Keyser et al., 2009; Mizes & Arbitell, 1991; Orsillo & Batten, 2002), and it appears that eating disorder symptoms often function as a way to help the patient avoid upsetting internal experiences (Hayes & Pankey, 2002; Keyser et al., 2009; Paxton & Diggens, 1997; Serpell, Treasure, Teasdale, & Sullivan, 1999). Experiential avoidance represents an individual’s attempt to avoid certain thoughts, feelings, sensations or experiences related to their disordered eating. Individuals with eating disorders become very critically aware of their body and food intake as a means of controlling their external and internal environment. “Patients with eating disorders also tend to be less aware of their emotions than healthy individuals, which may make it more challenging for these patients to defuse from these internal experiences” (Merwin et al., 2011; Merwin, Zucker, Lacy, & Elliot, 2010). Research also points to the fact that individuals with eating disorders also show less regulation in emotional intelligence and poor personal awareness. Because of the emphasis placed on the eating disordered individuals weight, shape, and eating behavior, other areas of their life become neglected such as behaviors that maintain physiological and psychological well-being. “Patients with eating disorders also tend to have poor clarity for values unconnected with food and body image.“ (Fairburn, 2008) When it comes to addressing valued living, it is particularly difficult to motivate the eating disordered individuals to live from their personal values. This is because their values are skewed toward achievement on a specific body weight, shape and size. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), is helpful because of its emphasis on taking committed action toward living within proper value domains and increasing greater psychological flexibility and tolerance for discomfort. According to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Eating Disorders, “From an ACT perspective, eating disorders are particular forms of psychological inflexibility.” (Sandoz, Wilson, Dufrene, p.24, 2011) In a practice used to help increase psychological flexibility in the book, “Living in Your Body and Other Things You Hate: How to Let Go of Your Struggle with Body Image Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy,” the practitioner asks clients to take deep explorations into their inner-awareness through understanding their bodily sensations. Through guided visualizations and meditations that bring awareness to what the client is experiencing in the moment, they’re able to increase the client’s overall psychological flexibility by understanding and noticing their breath, how the body feels, bringing attention to different parts of the body, body scans and more. Through each sensation, the client is asked to breathe through any discomfort they’re feeling while accepting what it feels like to be connected to their bodies. An example of this looks like the following: […]