Purification, Punishment, and Control: Eating Disorders, Self-Harm, and Child Sexual Abuse

Abstract

Eating disorders continue to be viewed as curable diseases, forcing people into predetermined narratives of pathology that shape how they are viewed and treated. Situated in a feminist application of Bakhtin’s sociological linguistics, we were concerned with how participants understood eating disorders, the nature of their experiences, and the causes of their distress. Following a dialogical method, multiple in-depth interviews were conducted with seven women who experienced an eating disorder and who had been sexually abused previously, and participants’ own drawings and poetry were obtained to gain deeper insights into meanings and emotions. We found an eating disorder offered a perception of cleanliness and renewal that was attractive to participants who experienced overwhelming shame. It is critical that researchers use a range of visual and sensory methods to move eating disorder understandings and treatment beyond illness and pathology.

“Once Again It Becomes a Friend in Times of Adversity”: A Qualitative Exploration of Interrelationships between Anorexia Nervosa and Trauma over Ten Years

“…However, the nature of emotional regulation varied from controlling, re-enacting, or escaping emotions altogether. While these differing responses have been captured in previous research [23][24][25]35,36], the variability present in the current study reinforces the individualised nature of emotional regulation and highlights the limitations of models that seek to capture these complexities using a single etiological pathway [34].…”

“…Following this approach, the research has elucidated a complex relationship between AN and trauma, whereby AN is used as a way of coping with the emotional and psychological effects of trauma and abuse [18]. While the specific functions of AN vary from person to person, one key theme present in the literature is its function in managing abuse-related emotions [23][24][25], such that difficulties with emotional regulation are theorised to be a key etiological pathway in the development of AN after trauma [26]. Emotions experienced during abuse-such as guilt and shame-are particularly difficult to regulate due to their sheer overwhelming and foreign nature for which the experiencing person (or child) did not have the resources to deal with them [27].…”