The Columbia Chronicle Online 10/11/99: Valerie Danner: Empty Stomach, Empty Heart

Empty Stomach, Empty Heart
Finding life beyond an Eating Disorder

by Valerie Danner
Copy Editor

Valerie Danner is a recovering anorexic. She is a senior at Columbia studying journalism. By writing this piece she hopes to reach out to others by sharing her experiences. She lectures often at Columbia and at local libraries. Valerie also works here in The Columbia Chronicle as a copy editor and she can be reached via e-mail at Editor@ccchronicle.com.

The photo illustrations used in this special report were photographed by Jessica Quist.

I was driving with my friend Kim a little over a year ago down a suburban Chicago street, as we sipped the coffee we had just purchased. It was a damp, gray afternoon, and the weather suited the way I felt at the moment—a little dreary. She began talking about how her heart had been skipping beats lately. Kim was scared, and so was I. Heart failure is a major complication of eating disorders, and I knew that Kim was aware of that. She had been battling the demon in her head for so long. But even in her fear, her nurturing self came through. “Promise me Val,” she said, “that God forbid something happens to me—God forbid—you get yourself better.”

I think my heart skipped a beat in that moment. I didn’t know what to think; I felt like I needed to cry. I had so much to say, but had no idea how to articulate it. I wanted to tell her that I felt the same way. I wanted to tell her that our eating disorders had been controlling us long enough. I had mine for four years, and she had hers for 11. There was no way we could let them win.

Fate has a funny way

I remember the day I met Kim; I was scared to death. It was February of 1998, and I had hit rock bottom. She was 25 and I was 19, but we immediately bonded. I was hospitalized at the Rock Creek Center in Lemont, Ill., and was infuriated at my family and therapist for making me stay there. Yes, I had an eating disorder, but I felt I could manage it as an outpatient. But looking back, staying in the hospital for those nine days was a turning point for me. It rekindled my spirit to fight my anorexia. This is largely due to meeting Kim there.

When she feebly walked passed me the first time, sipping coffee through a stirring stick, I instantly knew that she heard the same torturous eating disorder voice that I did. Except judging from her appearance, the voice had been giving her hell longer than mine. She wore baggy clothes that hid her frail frame, and had dark circles under her eyes, even more pronounced than the pools that had appeared beneath mine. But her eyes were beautiful and she had a smile that shielded her hurt; my smile did the same for me. I was jealous of her at first. She was thin. So much thinner than me. I wanted to be that tiny and unnoticeable. I felt like a failure at my illness next to her. But that envious feeling didn’t last long.

As I see it, it was fate that brought Kim and I together. It turned out we only lived 15 minutes apart from each other. Today, we believe that we landed in the same hospital at the same time for the same reason—to find each other.

We share a lot with each other—our pain, heartache, and moments of happiness as well. When I listen to what she went through as a child, I am saddened. She was robbed of innocence before she even had a chance to experience her childhood.

She opened up to me about the extent of the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of two close relatives, abuse that lasted from the time she was seven until she was 16. Out of fear and shame, she never told anyone about what was happening. The guilt she still feels over the abuse is tremendous. There’s a part of her that believes she caused it.

There is no doubt that the sexual abuse has played a major role in the development of her eating disorder. Dr. Brad Kahle
has been a psychologist for 17 years, and currently works at the New Life Clinic in Wheaton, Ill. He has treated at least 50 cases of eating disorders, mine included. He estimates that 75 percent of his patients with eating problems have been sexually abused.

“It is a big control issue, and with sexual abuse there is a loss of control,” says Kahle. “When skin is hit or touched inappropriately, it is violating a very primary boundary—our skin. They are grasping at something to regain control of—food they can control.”

Dr. Cynthia Power, a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, also treats those suffering with eating disorders, and has a special connection to her patients—she’s been where they are now. From the age of 12 until 27, she bounced back and forth between anorexia and bulimia, and the experience left her unable to bare children. She says she is lucky to be alive.

Power now treats such patients in a practice she shares with her husband, also in Wheaton, and runs a weekly support group at Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, Ill. Many of her eating disorder patients also have a history of sexual abuse. She finds such victims are afraid of having a female body. “When they develop into a mature woman with breasts and wide hips—it might be too sexual for them then,” she says.

Kim has this problem. She has a hatred of her body—mainly her breasts. She believes they are what first attracted her abusers to her, so every time her eating improves and her breasts start to develop, she tends to regress again. Kim even has the urge to cut them off sometimes.

I tell her when she gets such a desire to call me at anytime, even if I don’t always know what to say. I was not sexually abused myself, but I try my best to reassure her that she did nothing wrong. She hears it, but it is still hard for her to accept. Kahle says this is common in eating disorders;
sufferers carry a lot of guilt on their shoulders.

“With sexual abuse trust is a huge issue,” says Kahle. “It is a such a primary violation of your person that you don’t trust anybody.” Without trust, it is difficult to reach out to anyone for help.

Sexual abuse isn’t the only contributing factor to eating disorders though. These disorders are multi-caused by family, society, and even chemical imbalances in the brain. In the United States, eight million people suffer from them, one million of whom are men. It also is estimated that between 10-15 percent of all Americans suffer from some form of an eating disorder. In fact, eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any other psychological illness. Twenty percent of those afflicted will die from it. However, society is sometimes clueless to the real causes of these problems—it’s always the media and those images of the waify models that grace magazine covers. This is certainly an aspect, but not the cause.

“All little girls grow up with the media,” says Kahle, “but not all become eating disordered.”

A Deadly Friend

In reality, eating disorders are more like a passive suicide than a mission to be model-like. Weight and food are not the real problem. The issues are much more complex. It is about a severe self-hatred, lack of self, accompanied with a belief that you deserve the condition. In my own experience, I wanted to be tiny; I thought I’d be unnoticeable if I could shrink away. Eating prolonged a life that was too painful to live, and in a chaotic world, anorexia was my control. It never left me. My empty stomach matched my empty heart.

But Kahle finds that parents are a significant factor in eating disorders. I can relate to that. I don’t completely blame my parents for my disorder, but I know that they have contributed to my self-destruction.

Growing up, I was constantly belittled by my grandmother. She favored my older sister Becky, and did everything possible to make me feel inadequate. She would introduce Becky as the smart one and me as the “social butterfly.” That was the furthest thing from the truth. Becky was definitely smart, but I was encased in shell that few could crack. It was hard for me because she lived with us for several years; I never was good enough. I remember how I used to sit next to her at dinner and she would kick my ankles under the table with her pointy shoes.

My parents never did much to stop it. I remember running up to my room in tears, but my father, in particular, sacrificed me and chose never to say anything to stop his mother.

Instead, he took his frustrations out on the family. We were his verbal punching bags, and my mom never stood up to him. I remember how afraid I was when he came home from work. We never knew how he would react; I saw him as a time-bomb that could go off at any minute. Out of fear, my mother allowed it to go on. I would try to protect her from it, but I ultimately would fail. As a result, I learned to be a peacekeeper and to stuff my feelings—ignore the problems and they’ll just go away.

“Don’t say anything to set dad off—we don’t want him to get angry,” was usually what came out of my mother’s mouth. The only feeling I completely understood was guilt; I felt responsible for everything. But I couldn’t communicate it with anybody.

Kim and I also had loving mothers who also were very critical. It was always “you’d be prettier if you did this with your hair, or how come you don’t take care of your appearance like this person?” Both of us ended up not only discontent with our looks, but with a severe hatred of our bodies as well.

So by eight, I was reading food labels. I remember sitting on the kitchen floor carefully dissecting the contents of my Cheerios. At 15, my eating disorder really started to take hold. I’d reached a boiling point and needed to release my hurt. In the beginning my eating disorder was a friend. It comforted and distracted me from my pain. I could focus on my body and that number on the scale. It didn’t hurt as much as thinking about the ache I felt inside. But I know that isn’t true anymore.

I also began to self-injure. I took to cutting my forearms and upper thighs as a way to release my pain and frustrations. Kim also would slash her arms and occasionally her stomach. For myself, the eating disorder, coupled with the depression and self-injury had gotten so bad at one point, that they are what sent me to the hospital for more intensive treatment.

Some are freaked by the thought of self-injury, but Kim and I both learned to take our frustrations out on ourselves, be it purging or cutting, it all serves the same purpose—it makes us temporarily feel better. We know it’s a terrible thing; however it is not an uncommon problem. It is estimated that two million people suffer from self-mutilation.

Kahle estimates that 60 percent of his eating disorder patients engage in self-mutilation. “Everybody who does it describes it as an emotional release,” says Kahle. “The pain of cutting yourself is less than the pain inside.”

Actions like these are particularly distressing for our families to handle. It’s hard to explain to someone who has never
experienced the self-hatred Kim and I have, since that is what motivates such behavior. That’s why our friendship has been so valuable. We understand and have supported each other, unconditionally, which has been critical for recovery.

Kim especially knows how unfriendly an eating disorder is. At 14, she became anorexic and only ate an apple and an ice cream cone each day. Two years later she turned to bulimia and binged sometimes up to 10 hours a day, and then induced
vomiting. She also excessively exercised and abused laxatives. One time, she almost died after ingesting 90 of them. She weighed
herself 50 to 60 times a day and once stood at five feet four inches and weighed just 75 pounds. She has bounced back and forth between the two evils, and today, is anorexic.

My eating woes have never been quite so severe, but they’ve been horrible enough. On my worst days, I ate breakfast, usually skipped lunch, and threw-up my dinner. I religiously weighed myself every morning, and usually after dinner again to see what damage I had done throughout the day.

I exercised until exhaustion, sometimes purging, doing 300 stomach crunches, and vomiting some more. My lunch was usually an apple, but there were also days that I went for 12 hours with only chewing gum—I wouldn’t even allow myself water. At one time, I was throwing up at least 15 times a week. The dizzy spells and the near blackouts didn’t deter me; not even the chest pains I sometimes got could stop my need purge the food from my body.

Right before my hospitalization, my 5-foot 4-inch body had reached its lowest weight of 106. I could see my ribs in the mirror, by I still had to lose just a little more weight I was on my way to my goal of 95. I didn’t want to have three digits appear when I stepped on the scale anymore. I knew in the back of my mind though, that I could never be content at 95. From there, the number would have to go lower. It’s the nature of the whole disorder—there is never contentment at a certain weight; it’s always how much more can I lose.

The Ups and Downs of Recovery

It is a vicious cycle and recovery is a long process. The only way to get through it is to have support. Fortunately, Kim has a lot of support from her younger brother James. My older sister Becky has been my biggest cheerleader. I know I can count on her for unconditional encouragement, and most importantly, unconditional love.

But it was Kim who eventually convinced me to stop weighing myself. “It gets into a number game Val,” she says. So I don’t. It’s easier when you don’t have to measure your day by that number on the scale.

I know not to comment on her appearance. I never tell her she’s looking healthier; she would interpret it as she’s getting fat. Instead, I say we’re not getting fat; we are getting better. We both have heard the incessant banter of “fat pig” or “fat bitch” when we’ve eaten drumming in are heads. So we remind ourselves that we deserve to eat; we deserve to get better; ultimately, we deserve to live.

The year after our release from the hospital was instrumental. We checked in on each other. There were times when I called and she immediately sensed pain in my tone, as I could with hers. We set goals for ourselves, like if you get the urge to purge, you call me. I used to feel lonely in my disorder, but Kim changed that. I fed off the her support and others around me, and slowly began to recover; I wish I could say the same for Kim.

Unfortunately, she has chosen to slowly cut me out of her life. I look at her and know that her frail body hasn’t gained a pound since I’ve known her. Soon my e-mails went unanswered; phone calls weren’t returned; plans to go out for coffee were cancelled at the last minute. She stopped attending her therapy sessions and began to retreat back into her self-destructive ways.

While in the hospital, Kim and I bonded as we helped each other hide our dinner from the staff, to make it look like we had eaten. We laughed at how easy it was to throw our graham crackers into the bushes on the way back to our rooms. At that time, it was enough, but I don’t want to hurt myself like that anymore.

My family matters haven’t been much easier. My father has all but disowned me and blames me for all the problems in the family. My mom and I, though I know she loves me, aren’t going to have the relationship I would have liked to either. She once told me she missed the “sweet Valerie,” or the one who was the always-smiling people pleaser— the sick Valerie.

I still struggle with my eating difficulties. There are days when I skip meals, or occasionally still make myself sick. But I still see Kahle every other week and continue to plug along. I’ve had a taste of how good it feels to love myself, and I want to keep the negative thoughts from influencing direction I want to take.

That is why I try to reach out to others by sharing my experiences. I’ve lectured at Columbia several times and at local libraries, and in December, I also had an article published in the “Chicago Tribune” about how to get through the holidays with an eating disorder. I couldn’t fix my family, but I can channel my need to fix things by helping others.

People die from this illness. I’ve made a commitment to myself that I will not only try to educate others, but also let those who are struggling know that I know the loneliness they feel; I know how much self-hatred they feel; I know that they don’t really want to die. They just don’t know how to live. I’ll always have my eating disorder; it will always be a part of me. But my eating disorder doesn’t have such a strong grip on me anymore.

Kahle once told me that, he would like for me to look at my anorexia as a gift. It seemed like a crazy thought at first, but now when I look my budding strength and ability to not fear close relationships anymore, I believe that he may just be right.

Please feel free to contact me at the Columbia Chronicle office, located in the Wabash Building, Suite 205 or call our main line at 312-344-7254.

Further Information

The Secret Language of Eating Disorders, by Paggy Claude-Pierre,
Random House, 1997.
National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders
Box 7, Highland Park, IL 60035 (847) 831-3438
www.something-fishy.org
Rader Program, Inc. Gives free referrals to Eating Disorder
Specialists. 1-800-255-1818 www.Raderpro.com