A call for our language: Anorexia from within

Understanding Women’s Journey of Recovering From Anorexia Nervosa

“…In these studies, women define recovering as psychological rebirth, whereby they stop doing what others expect (Beresin, Gordon, & Herzog, 1989) and as reconnection with self, others, and nature after having been strengthened through suffering the isolation of AN (Garrett, 1996(Garrett, , 1997. Women have attributed recovery to such personal elements as developing personality strength, being ready, and having faith (Hsu, Crisp, & Callendar, 1990); distancing self from unsupportive others and rebelling against expectations of others (Beresin et al, 1989), including rejecting authoritarian views of causality (Mukai, 1989); learning to trust self and others in relationships (Way, 1993); having therapy (Beresin et al, 1989;Hsu et al, 1990); and maturation (Tozzi, Sullivan, Fear, McKenzie, & Bulik, 2003). These studies provide isolated elements with no clear understanding of the process.…”

Anorexia Nervosa and Motivation for Behavioral Change - Can it be Enhanced?

“…This often is the starting point for treatment seeking. There are also reports from AN patients [24], exemplifying how this ambivalence extends to interactions with health healthcare professionals, who sees AN as a disorder which needs to be treated and cured, while the patients favours or can't let go of the positive side of the disorder. Healthcare professionals benefit from acknowledging and addressing this 'egosyntonic nature of thinness and self-control' [20].…”

“…There is also a directive element guided by differentially eliciting and reinforcing change talk. Several systematic reviews have analysed and found evidence for a moderate effect size of MI and often long duration of effect in several disorders especially in addiction [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. However, as yet, there are few studies done in ED [30] although at least one study describe a moderate to high effect size [31].…”

Between feminism and anorexia: An autoethnography

“…This sentence was key, I think, to my developing anger surrounding the feminist work, as it created a space in which it was (and is) difficult to speak back: after all, anyone who did not feel that their gender offered the central explanation of their eating disorderat least as presented in the feminist accounts -would surely risk being accused of 'false consciousness'. In this regard, it is interesting that the work on anorexia (and bulimia) which preceded or emerged as part of the autoethnographic turn (Mukai, 1989;Tillman, 2009;Chatham-Carpenter, 2010) In line with common psychiatric perceptions of anorexia (Bruch, 1978, Crisp, 1980, I was not fat before developing an eating disorder. At nearly 5"8 and 10 stone, the most striking thing about me was probably my height.…”

“…This sentence was key, I think, to my developing anger surrounding the feminist work, as it created a space in which it was (and is) difficult to speak back : after all, anyone who did not feel that their gender offered the central explanation of their eating disorder – at least as presented in the feminist accounts – would surely risk being accused of ‘false consciousness’. In this regard, it is interesting that the work on anorexia (and bulimia) which preceded or emerged as part of the autoethnographic turn (Chatham-Carpenter, 2010; Mukai, 1989; Tillman, 2009) does not explicitly engage with the feminist work, nor position gender as clearly central. An exception here is Saukko’s (brilliant and moving) autoethnographic account of her treatment for anorexia in 1970s Helsinki, but even this focuses more on her response to the psychiatric and medical diagnostic discourses than the feminist research itself.…”