The Crux

“Do you think your work and your eating disorder are linked?”

When I was first asked this question, I had no answer. I blinked…thought for a few seconds, and blinked again. I rewound the movie of my life to see what I could find. Were there any connections? Did one “feed” the other?

The truth is hard to uncover. For one, I developed anorexia less than a year into my professional career. I have never known a working life without its – sometimes dominating and other times fainter – presence.

Now to be clear, I am not suggesting that work causes eating disorders. But I have to admit that, as someone whose self worth is so inextricably linked to my professional achievements, the work environment is filled with situations that trigger my disorder and lead me to use maladaptive behaviours such as restriction to cope. 

Surprisingly, after 20 years, I still do not know the precise thing/s that my anorexia helps me cope with. Stress? Maybe… Anxiety? Perhaps. The self-imposed pressure I feel to get A+ in the work that I do? Perceived rejections (past or present)? Anger? Sadness? Failure (minute or grandiose)? Ouf… do I have to pick just one?

Reading this, you are probably thinking the same thing I often tell myself: “all of these things are part of life. You cannot avoid them like a turtle hides in its shell to wait out the danger. Of course not.

I don’t “turtle”. Not because I don’t understand the desire to shut down and wait things out. I very much do. However, I’m wired in a different way. I am programmed to take action. When faced with a challenge, I move. This may seem like a good way to live. And, often, it is. But, there are times where I move, and then move, and then move again – almost desperately throwing noodles at a wall in the hopes that something sticks.

I’ve been thinking about my journey over the past 2 decades. Like most people, no matter what life threw at me, I just kept going. To be honest, that wasn’t very difficult to do since I have not faced much hardship in my privileged life. What I haven’t done is taken a step back and listened to myself. Like many, I have spent most of my life doing what I thought I SHOULD do rather than what I wanted to do.

And, for the most part, that is a wise approach. Our adult lives flow with an undercurrent of obligation and responsibilities. Where I believe I got it wrong was in allowing the SHOULDS to be the only input into my decision making. Over time, I have become so disconnected from what I want that I no longer even know. This applies to small decisions such as what I want to do with my free time as well as to larger ones such as what do I want to accomplish next. A few years ago, I thought this only applied to decisions related to my eating disorder. After all, with my anorexia so ingrained, a simple question such as “what do I want to eat?” – always lead to an endless dialogue in my mind…never being answered by my preferences or desires.

Having undergone 2 intensive treatment programs, I have been forced to devote a lot of time to introspection – all with the hopes of determining what purpose my eating disorder serves. Doctors, psychologists, nutritionists and the client herself don’t even know for sure. But the general consensus is that – since my eating disorder is so persistent and resistant to treatment – something in my life is incongruent with my needs and I use restriction to cope.

And that brings me back to the question that started this post. Having explored various theories and scratched them off the list. And having noticed a pattern where my eating disorder makes a resurgence every time I return to work, I have been forced to at least contemplate the answer.

I refuse to jump to conclusions. I learned long ago in statistics that correlation does not mean causation. More investigation is required. And, maybe, for the first time in my life, it is time to sit still for a while. Or, at least slow myself down to a turtle’s pace.