How My Eating Disorder Developed

I experienced a significant session at a meditation school in Italy in 1987.  I was thirty years old.  I was at the school for a total of seven months.  I went to get well.  I meditated, attended group sessions and did individual sessions.  I also cleaned toilets, vacuumed and worked in the gardens and the kitchen.  In all of the therapy experiences, all participants took turns being client and therapist or guide. Halfway through my stay, I received a session from a participant.  I dropped into a deep state of relaxation and after some time I moved into experiencing my birth.  I did not remember my twin brother, Sean, being in the womb.  I experienced being in limbo and then my birth.  I came down the birth canal and it felt like coming down a big slide at the park.  As I slid, I was saying to myself, "Look out world, here I come."  I felt such joy and excitement in being born. 
 

On another occasion at the meditation school I did a session where I remembered being six months old.  I was sitting on a blanket outside, at our summer lake cottage.  I was feeling very angry.  I was crying and screaming.  I wanted my mother to pick me up.  She was so very busy caring for her eight children, four of whom were two sets of twins in a row.  She just could not fulfill all of my needs.  I was still upset and I turned and looked at my twin brother, Sean.  I recall thinking how beautiful he was.  He looked like a sunshine boy.  He was joyfully playing with his bucket and shovel.  As he smiled, he looked so quiet and peaceful.  In that moment I felt so ugly in my rage and unhappiness. 

That was the start of what I came to call my "ugly complex".  Over the years it developed into a feeling of my being the ugly duckling of my handsome family.  It is very important to know that it is a natural part of us to be self-critical and non-accepting.  I have watched my son, Regan, being self-critical on occasion.  At five years old he had a great part in the movie "Mystery Alaska".  One day he told Veronica the make-up lady to make his ugly face better.  She said he was not ugly but cute as a button.  He said, "buttons aren't cute.  I'm ugly!"  Later on after hearing from Veronica I talked with Regan.  I encouraged him to be aware.  I told him that we all feel ugly sometimes.   I explained to him the possibility of also creating such a state if he continually said he was ugly.  He seemed to understand.  When I was six months old and feeling ugly beside my beautiful twin brother, it was human and natural to label my experience as feeling ugly.  It is through this process of experiencing feeling ugly that later on we can appreciate the experience of feeling beautiful 

I did another session with my brother Casey as guide.  I wanted to explore a childhood pattern.  Sessions that explore childhood are called age regressions.  I was told that I held my breath when I was four years old.  I do not remember doing it but it is a family story I had heard many times.  I would hold my breath in anger until I passed out.  One time I did it in the living room in the presence of my parents and a family friend who was a doctor.  My parents rushed over to me and said to the doctor, "See, see, look what she is doing.  Is she going to be okay?"  The doctor said, "Oh yes, she'll just pass out and start breathing again.”  Eventually my father had enough of it.  I have been told that he picked me up and took me to the bathroom.  He put my head over the toilet and said that if I didn't start breathing he would flush.  I breathed and did not hold my breath again.  During the age regression I saw for the first time what I really did.  I saw myself standing at the foot of my parents bed.  I was four years old.  I wanted to be between them, in their bed.  I did not ask for this.  I just stood there.  I felt powerless.  I held...and held...and held...feeling my muscles tighten and then everything went black.  I see that I did not hold my breath.  Instead, I held myself, stuck in frustration.  I clenched so much that I passed out.  I finally understood what it meant to “hold my breath."

I was developing a pattern of not asking for what I needed.  I was telling myself that I was ugly, or not worth being picked up, or that nobody cared about me.  Of course this inner dialogue probably did not occur all the time.  However, a pattern was developing.  As children we look for nourishment in our parents, siblings, teachers, friends.  We do not look for it inside, and we are not taught to go inside.  We are not taught to go inside because the majority of people do not go inside.  From being born in complete joy I went on to feeling frustrated at not getting all of my needs met.  I felt ugly in my anger.  By four years old I held, not asking for what I needed.  I literally passed out from it.                      (... click to continue)