faulker053

This stormy day, oppressed by the weather and the limits on my freedom to enjoy the outside, I find myself home, contemplating your freedom. It’s July 4, a national holiday in these united states.  Fortunate to have been born in the US, never oppressed by my government, I take for granted the freedoms that some yearn for. Yet through my day to day interaction with patients, I’m painfully aware of how enslaved many are by their own thoughts and actions—though admittedly not by their choosing. Most wish not to suffer, but feel entrapped; they are overwhelmed by the rules which dictate what’s acceptable to eat and the intrusive thoughts and judgments about their eating and activity. They irrationally fear anything from white flour and sugar to fats. Sometimes the type of foods is not the issue, but the portions are. At first glance, a food record may look impressively normal—until I probe about quantities consumed—the limited bites here and pieces there that are actually consumed. “We...

Perhaps you CAN rise above the clouds. I don’t know the Harvard psychologist Dr. Sheila Reindl, but I have recommended her book Sensing the Self , many, many times over the years. It’s filled with wisdom about recovery from bulimia, honed from Reindl’s extensive interviews with 13 recovered women. (Not bulimic? Please read on! There’s something here for you too!)   Maybe I was attracted to it having learned that several of the pseudonym-ed women were actually past patients of mine, shared with a therapist who contributed these cases to the book.  Or maybe that it meshed research with patient stories, extracting the essence of the recovery process into meaningful chapter themes.  Personally, I hate reading books about recovery (but I read this at the insistence of a patient). That likely has mostly to do with the fact that I discuss recovery almost 40 hours a week. Do I really want to engage with strangers’ stories on my down time? I don’t think so. Yet I likely suggest i...