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Face to Face with EDs: An Interview with Joanna P., LMFT

by angelique on February 7th, 2008

Our special guest for today’s installment of “Face to Face with EDs” is Joanna Poppink, LMFT, a psychotherapist in private practice. Her office is located in Los Angeles, California, and she specializes in the area of eating disorders. She also works with people who love someone with an eating disorder.

Because Joanna’s interview encompassed so many wonderful ideas and took us in several fascinating directions, I have decided to make it a two-parter. So make sure to come back tomorrow, Friday, February 8, 2008!

In the meantime, please visit Joanna at www.eatingdisorderstoday.typepad.com and www.poppink.com.

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Breaking the Mirror (BtM):

How many years have you been working in the field of eating disorders? How did you become interested in EDs?

Joanna Poppink (JP):

I’ve been licensed as a clinician since 1980. I began working with people who suffered from eating disorders around 1983 and gradually moved toward a deep specialty.

The diagnosis, bulimia, didn’t exist when I discovered how to binge and purge as a young teenager. Bulimia governed my life and was my terrible secret. Since the diagnosis wasn’t known I believed I was the only person in the world who did this horrible thing, so I could not discuss it, nor could I stop it.

In graduate school the word “bulimia” came through a flyer at UCLA to my mail box. A new illness had been discovered and psychologists and graduate students were meeting to learn about bulimia.

I was relieved this thing had a name. I was terrified that I would be discovered. I couldn’t bring myself to go to that first seminar. I thought everyone there would see a big “B” on my forehead. Eventually, the desire to be well overcame all fears, and I began my healing journey.

Fortunately for me and for my current patients, I was a good student. And my teachers and mentors were friends. Many were senior in the psychoanalytic community and one was a recovering alcoholic with seven years in AA.

I knew nothing about AA and little about psychoanalysis at the time. But I knew a tremendous amount about living with bulimia. They wanted to know what I knew. I wanted to know what they knew. The conversations were rich, loving, exciting, and a fabulous exchange of real information at a deep professional and personal level.

I remember one analyst asking me why I thought bulimia only affected young, affluent, intelligent, creative women. He asked his question tenderly with genuine caring and concern. This was in 1981 when little was known.

I remember my passionate answer. “Bulimia affects any age, economic level, level of intelligence or creativity. It’s just that probably most people with bulimia die unless they have money, intelligence and creativity to survive both the bulimia and history behind the bulimia.”

I remember we were both shocked by the passion of my response and the sudden realization in both of us that my statement was probably true.

Professionally I had no intention of specializing in the field. But people suffering from bulimia started coming to me in hopes of finding help. When I heard stories of treatment attempts that I knew in my bones were not only ineffective but hurtful, I felt I had to contribute what I knew, as they say, “from both sides of the couch.”

BtM:

The media often portrays EDs as having their roots in wanting to look thin, but EDs are much more complex… What are some of the “back stories” you’ve heard in your years in the field?

JP:

Many stories are horrific.

They are particularly horrible because often the person telling the story is conditioned to accept her own experiences as unexceptional. Others tell their stories with a combination of fear and courage. I see in their expressions that they hope I will hear them and are afraid I will disregard or demean them as others have in the past.

Women with eating disorders first tell their stories in several ways.

1. I have no reason to have an eating disorder. My family was loving and good to me.

2. My father left my mother when I was two. My mother said I was to blame for his leaving and for the end of the marriage and the ensuing deprivations.

3. My father molested me on a regular basis and my mother didn’t know it but always pushed me to be alone in the bedroom with him.

4. My mother beat me, locked me in closets and forced me to eat more than I could at meals. I remember many times sitting alone in my high chair, staring at the clock knowing that when the big hand was on the 12 my mother would come in and beat me if I hadn’t finished eating. Sometimes I got so scared I would throw up and she would make me eat what I threw up as well.

5. My father introduced me to his friends who molested me. He brought a dog to play with me when I was three and the dog attacked my face. I needed plastic surgery. My father didn’t see me for many years after that and never knew the results of the surgery.

6. My parents screamed at each other and us about sex. My father (or mother) had constant affairs. My father (or mother) told me all about the affairs and how terrible my other parent was.

7. One parent or another continually put the child in danger: usually by being left alone in dangerous situations.

8. Dramatic and volatile behavior of adults with various addictions in the family: drugs, alcohol, sex, rage - yes, some people are addicted to rage, violence against one or more family members. This includes violence against family pets and other animals.

The person with the first response usually may have little or no memory of her childhood. When the memories come in they fall along the lines of the other stories. However, her history may not be of vivid abuse like the others. She may not be able to get a handle on what happened to her because it was blatant and powerful but not clear to her.

This person may have had her boundaries invaded by too much giving of material possessions and license while being given little or no love or respect. Plus, there may have been a sexual undertone to transactions that did not lead to physical activity but created a sexually charged atmosphere where the girl learned to behave in a seductive way to gain influence and freedom and money from her father. She also learned to be superior and deprecating to her mother.

And unfortunately, she never developed a core strength in her own identity. That inner lack can’t be filled by gifts or a sense of false superiority. She will attempt to fill it with food or fill it with a great absence of food, living out a sense of deprivation while demanding more material goods.

These are just a few examples. But all of them share the theme of unrelenting boundary violation. That’s a topic that needs to be more thoroughly addressed in eating disorder recovery.

… to be continued tomorrow…

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Don’t forget to enter Breaking the Mirror’s “24 Hours of Body Love” challenge as well as our “Fall in Love with Yourself” contest.

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POSTED IN: Bulimia, Interview, Recovery, contest, intervention