My Eating Disorder: Thoughts During Sickness and Recovery

By Branch Kimball

This book summarizes how anorexia and bulimia affected my life in the past and how it troubles my present. It has affected my relationships at home, school, and work. Indulging in behaviors brought me to rock bottom when I had to quit my job and nearly separated from my wife.

I spent three months in residential treatment for my eating disorder. All my meals and bathroom breaks were monitored. I could not stop my behaviors on my own; I was literally addicted to them.

This book also summarizes principles of recovery I used to help me fix the cognitive distortions that kept me blind from reality. It summarizes things I learned in residential that I hope all who struggle with an eating disorder, or any addictive behavior, can use.

All names and places have been fictionalized at the request of my publisher. The stories are real.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Aug 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490763224

Branch Kimball

I was born on June 17, 1983, in Salt Lake City, Utah. I have five sisters, a brother, great in-laws, and two good parents. I was raised in Mesa, Arizona. I graduated high school from Mountain View and served a Mormon mission in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I attended Brigham Young University, where I studied history and medicine. There, I met my wife. We married and embarked to medical school back in Arizona. I graduated medical school and am currently in residency, training to become a psychiatrist. My wife and I have two beautiful children.

Book preview

© Copyright 2015 Spencer Hansen.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-6321-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-6322-4 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Trafford rev. 08/10/2015

21816.png    www.trafford.com

North America & international

toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

fax: [phone]

Contents

Introduction

Timeline

Holding the Hand of My Eating Disorder

Origins

The Take Home

Why Write?

Assumptions

Stay Open

A Human Being, not a Human Doing

Strong Enough to Get through Medical School and Run the Boston Marathon; Not Strong Enough to Eat a Bagel

Trauma: Anything Less Than Nurturing

Really, It’s Not about the Food

Tied

Understanding the Disorder

Do No Harm

A Word for Doctors

Catch Me If You Can

I Have Fought the Good Fight

Laughter in Sickness and in Health

Willingness

D-Day

D-Day From Another

Breaking Rules Is Healthy

Sugar Enchiladas, Citrucel, Ice Cream, Kleptos

Residential Routine

Catch It, Challenge It, Change It

Rock Bottom

Chicken Shit

Chicken Shit: Final Thoughts

Friends

Friendship

Silent Friends

Challenges and Control

Body-Checking

The Runner

Suicide by Moving

The Binge Basket—A Kiss From the Enemy

Ropes Course

Control at the Table

Ignoring the Hand of My Wife

Disease classifications for Eating Disorders

Positive Affirmations

The Art of Saying Thank-you.

One Fine Morning

The Back Table

Finding Myself So I Can Lose It for Others

Kari’s Story

Meretricious Patterns

One Boundary Will Suffice

What’s your Motive?

Kiss From My Enemy

Remembering My Humanity at Residential

D-day and Dad

Boundaries and Honesty In a Relationship

Urges

Rainbow Thinking

Insurance

Therapy in a Group

Good and Bad

Soccer on Forbidden Lands

We Are Not Here for our Physical Development

The Disorder Germinating

Before The Move

Abusing Food and Exercise

Eating Disorder in the Family

Depression; Not an Eating Disorder

A Piece of Chocolate

Oreos

Brownies and Death

Keep It Simple

Art Therapy Saves

Simple Exercise

Enjoying the Holiday

The Question

Infinite Patience

Implementing Patience and Truth

Safety Switch for the Triggers

Patiently Becoming

Learning Patience from Others

Gandhi

About the Patient Truth

Truth about Weight

Truth about Farting

Kung Fu

Kung Fu Affirmations

The Masters

Perfectly Imperfect

Stories

Wearing My Shirt

Remember the Guilt?

Admitting I Was Wrong

The Drug’s Lie

The Game Changer

The Marriage Game-Changer: Family Week

Codependency

Too Codependent for Alcohol

Still Codependent?

Afraid to Make Friends

Facing Codependence

Just When I Was Feeling Good

Eating Disorder on Fire

I Can Let Go Today

Independence Day

for Dorothy,

who paved the road for my escape…

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but

the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

Proverbs 27:6

The most important play is the next one.

Colt McCoy—NFL quarterback

What is in front of me meets my needs. I will accept

this food as nourishment for my body and mind. May

my life be enriched by these gifts I am receiving.

Residential Grace

Introduction

T HIS BOOK IS NOT written to fit a specific genre. It is mostly a narrative, a memoir, of the what, where and how in relation to my eating disorder and recovery. It is not organized as a self-help book with a list of things to do. It is not a practical guide to overcome an eating disorder. There are no steps to follow and the narrative is not linear. There is nothing linear about an eating disorder. It’s a zigzag of behaviors, emotions, patterns and consequences. You will feel the zigzag as you read. My hope is that your personal feelings and experiences will intersect with some of the points on the zigzag. My hope is you will benefit from reading what I learned in therapy. My hope is you will read to the end because what I share is not my own, but the collective wisdom and experience of everyone involved in my life.

I still struggle every day with the disorder. But I don’t see myself in relapse because I have my integrity. I have not lied to my wife once in almost 365 days. That is a miracle. My past was built on lies; a foundation of fabrications. The lies fueled my disorder, creating an indistinguishable inferno. The only thing that could extinguish the raging fire was to take the same first step that millions have taken in Alcoholics Anonymous: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol— that our lives had become unmanageable. There is complete applicability in this step for eating disorders. Once I admitted I was powerless to change my behavior on my own and that my life was unmanageable, the raging fire suddenly encountered a destructive limit on the distant horizon.

Timeline

Holding the Hand of

My Eating Disorder

I WAS TOO HUNGRY TO wait…

My one-year-old daughter fell off the kitchen chair onto the tile floor, hitting the side of her face. Instead of rushing over to soothe and console, I turned away from her and stuck my head into the sink to throw up dinner. My daughter stood up, started crying and walked over to me with arms up. I ignored her, leaned into the sink, and threw up again. I had to get all of dinner out of my stomach. I could feel her little fingers gripping my pants.

Finished purging, I could now redirect my attention to Ingrid. I picked her up, hushed her—hugged her little body. I kissed her face. And then I thought, what if I didn’t purge everything?

I placed Ingrid on the floor, turning back to the sink for another round of self-induced vomiting. She cried loudly, cries of abandonment; not enough to keep me from purging again. Finished purging for the second time, I wiped my mouth with a red kitchen towel, let out a sigh and turned back to Ingrid who was still crying. Allison, my wife, was at yoga with friends. It was a Wednesday night and I was mad at myself for acting out on my disorder before putting Ingrid to sleep. Shaking, sweating, and weak, I took Ingrid to her room and changed her diaper. I dressed her in pajamas and set her in the wooden crib. She reached for Bunny and crouched down in her sleep position, exhausted. I stood by the side of her crib and began to cry—my first real tears in a long time. Real, raw emotion I walked out of her room, turning off the light on my way.

Wednesday nights were my binge nights at home because it was Allison’s yoga night downtown. As part of my routine I usually put Ingrid to bed soon after Allison drove away. I then returned to the kitchen to binge and purge. Usually Ingrid would stop crying shortly after I put her to bed. Some nights she cried longer. I was too busy purging to give her company. I rationalized she would never remember these nights anyway.

Back in the kitchen, alone, the image of Ingrid falling on the floor replayed in my head. The echoes of her cry bounced around my brain. It was Wednesday, March 19, 2014. Two weeks later I would begin ninety days of residential treatment at a center for eating disorders (hereafter referred to as Residential) in Arizona. Going to residential was a game-changer.

Origins

I WAS TAUGHT EARLY IN life that with hard work I could accomplish anything I wanted. The only thing I wanted was for others to see me as worthy. If I could obtain worthiness by saying the right thing, I said the right thing. If I could obtain worthiness by people pleasing, I people-pleased.

Running cross-country made me feel worthy. Getting good grades made me feel worthy. Being a good Mormon made me feel very worthy in a community of mostly Mormons. And medical school: who would feel unworthy as a doctor? My choice to become a doctor seemed to bring universal praise from the people in my life. Was becoming a doctor what I really wanted? No one ever gave me the impression it would be a bad thing. And while I wanted to be an educator, the difference between a teacher and pizza, according to my high school history teacher, was a pizza could feed a family of four. Well, the idea of money was important to me as a youth. I felt it was a way to earn worthiness. Who was rich and not happy? No one I knew. If there were unhappy wealthy people, I filtered them out with my subjective blinders.

The Take Home

M Y FOURTH YEAR IN medical school I gave a PowerPoint presentation on Wegener’s Granulomatosis. My slides were comprehensive but disorganized. I had a lot of information to share and I felt nervous. My audience was internal medicine residents, attendings and other medical students. After the presentation I sat down feeling positive. I had disseminated a lot in only fifteen minutes, including nifty pictures. Even if I was nervous and fumbled over my words, no one could say I wasn’t thorough. A physician approached me where I sat after the presentation and placed both hands on my desk. He slid his free-hanging tie inside the front of his white coat.

Your presentation was full of information, but you flooded us. We are going to walk out of here overloaded about Wegener’s. Make sure to tie up your future presentations with the take-home message, a slide with two or three points of emphasis that you want us to remember. That way it will be time well spent for us because we will have two or three points to mull over on our way back to the wards.

He knocked my desk with his left index knuckle and walked away. I want to apply his advice in this book but I do not think I have the literary aptitude to hold back the random flood of feelings that pour into my heart while I type. It’s a deluge. And it can be destructive. When I shared the first draft of this book with my family it caused a measure of distress and discouragement. My only intent in sharing this book with loved ones is so that they can know my story. I hope they can love me more for it. But they just might be too close to the consequences of my sick behavior to feel anything but remembered pain.

I have a lot to say. But I have two take-home messages I want you to remember from this book: First, the only way to have peace is to speak the truth. Second, I define perfectionism as the attempt to maintain complete control of life, people and events. The attempt can lead to a breakdown. A perfect dad executes family vacation with not even a cloud in the sky. The perfect mom never allows her children to giggle in church or eat two servings of dessert. And the perfect mayor knows exactly how many cops it takes to cut down on crime. But the truth is it rains. Don’t apologize for it Dad. Kids sneak snacks and laugh at church. Get used to it Mom. And some cops don’t do their job. Face reality Mr. Mayor. But the only way to get used to it, not apologize, and face reality (the truth) is to let go of complete control. Life is not designed for us to have all control.

We will never have complete control in this life. Just look at the fact that no one in recorded human history, except One, had control over death. Complete control is not an option. But we strive for it. And we often suffer guilt or shame when we can’t be perfect—when we can’t have perfect control.

We are raised in a society that endorses getting control. Get a grip. Being out of control, physically or emotionally is embarrassing and uncomfortable. Observe when someone in a group cries. The rest of the group shifts uncomfortably. Some start looking for a tissue box. They don’t want to see someone out of control emotionally. And often, the crying person apologizes for crying, feeling guilty for not keeping control.

I attended a group therapy where our therapist made it a rule that we could not hand tissues to anyone. If we cried and wanted a tissue we had to get up from our chair and walk to the middle of the circle, where a tissue box was on the floor. It was hard for me to just sit there and let someone cry when my whole life I thought it polite to offer tissue. There were a few lessons about control our therapist was trying to show us with the tissue rule, not only for the one showing emotion, but others watching the emotion.

Truth for peace. I am at peace for the first time in my life. I sleep without gnawing guilt from who I am or what I’ve done. It was not until I spoke truth and only truth that I found this peace. I had to give up the addiction of my eating disorder to arrive at this place of peace. To my joy, I learned peace is a place I can take with me wherever I go. It’s a place in the heart. Anyone not in touch with the truth is not in touch with his or her heart, and will never be able to generate the sense of worth and authenticity needed to feel peace. Those in addiction repel truth. Every case of addiction I’ve seen, my own included, involves lies deployed to family, friends, and employers—basically everyone. We succumb to the belief our lies will keep us safe.

We think our addictions bring us peace. They don’t. They only numb feeling, good and bad. It felt good to binge and purge because for a few weak minutes or hours, I was numb to the guilt in my life. But I was also numb to peace and happiness. Ingrid was sixteen months old before I experienced happiness for being her father. Before sixteen months I was numbing out with my addiction and trying to hide my lies. I was so addicted to the disorder that the first thing I did in the hospital the night Ingrid was born was walk nearly one mile to find a fat-free salad, leaving Allison alone in her labor.

I have an eating disorder. I am an addict. I needed ten years to admit it. When I did admit it, my recovery began. Admitting I was an addict meant forfeiting my pursuit of complete control over my life. Admitting I was an addict meant breaking away from the belief that perfectionism can save me. When I admitted I was powerless over my addiction, I was able to pack my bags for Residential.

I may always be an addict. Thank God. Because of that I know I need my Higher Power every day. My addiction has taught me more about God than any religion. I am in some ways thankful for my disorder. If I could be perfect, there would be no need for a Higher Power. I wouldn’t need to reach up for help. But just as the leaves of the tree fall every autumn, all of us fall in mistakes. The power to be perfect is reserved for a Higher Power, at least during this life, where everything on earth, including the leaves on a tree, is unable to retain total control.

If you don’t believe in God, consider the life force your Higher Power. No matter how hard we try, it will always be greater than us. It is what causes our bones to break and our hair to fall out. And eventually we die. We cannot have total control here and now. Our aging bodies force us to admit weakness to a higher power, even if that power is death.

We might already know this. Certainly we grasp life isn’t fair. But for many of us who experience trauma, we feel short-changed on the control we think we deserve. We turn to addictions to make up the difference, to level the playing field of life. In some ways I felt entitled to my disorder. No one else suffered like I did. In my entitlement I lectured my Higher Power: Well, you weren’t there for me in my trauma, so why should you ask me to give up control and turn to you in my pain? Forget that, I’ll handle this myself.

I think it was anger that first compelled me to restrict. I wanted more control. I felt I deserved more—that I had been denied my portion. But the cunning nature of addiction is it gives us the delusion that more control over our feelings will take care of the pain. The truth is: addiction dissolves the self-control we need to act for ourselves. We become slaves, literally unable to experience life properly. The more control I exerted by restricting, the less control I had over my life. I became a slave to my drug: food.

Why Write?

W RITING HELPS ME STAY in recovery. I can’t write about my recovery while hiding unhealthy behaviors. It would make the book a lie. I make mistakes but I don’t hide them.

I write to share the experiences I have had and the insights I have received from others. I want that lost, broken soul that I know is out there dissolving away to know what saved me—because probably the lost soul will never have access to a place like Residential. Another reason I write is to preserve access to my truth. The drafting, editing, and re-drafting help me think and ponder the truth as I feel it in my heart. Fundamentally, I write because it brings me peace.

I received over $150,000 of therapy with only $150 of it coming out of my pocket. Insurance covered the bulk of the balance. Allison kept the home fires burning while I was gone. Residential was a gift of circumstance. Most will not have access to residential treatment. I hope these words someone who needs to know that recovery is a state of mind. You can get to that state anywhere.

The principles I learned to overcome my eating disorder apply to any addiction: anger, pornography, drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, shopping. And if you’re not addicted, instead suffering from the BLAST symptoms (Bored, Lonely, Angry/Anxious, Stressed, Tired), the principles I learned can bring balance and moderation. The principles, correctly applied, can heal relationships.

Do you have to go to residential treatment if you have an eating disorder? If you are like I was: yes, yes, yes. Locked bathrooms, around-the-clock monitoring, a professional team, regular meals and snacks were the only things that could break my disorder. Cognitively I knew this in the months leading up to Residential. Cognition of the fact did nothing to help me stop behaviors. Without a dietician planning my food intake I could not restore weight on my own. Without the requirement to eat my three meals and three snacks every day, monitored by staff, I would never have been able to down the four thousand daily calories needed to restore weight. (Residential hired a professional chef to make the massive amount of food seem less daunting, more appealing. Rachel is her name. She did amazing work.)

With regular nutrition my brain stopped obsessing over food. I could focus on something else—anything else, finally.

Ah.

It was soothing to just breathe without hunger. I could, for the first time in a decade, relax. I slept better at Residential than I had in years. Sleep uninterrupted by the demons of my disorder.

At Residential I learned to treat my body like I loved it. My soul responded. I started laughing again. Allison noticed my laugh on one of her first visits. She showed me a video on her phone of Ingrid in the high chair. I laughed. Uncontainable. Unpremeditated. Wholesome. I remember because it felt good. Allison said she had not heard me laugh like that for a long time. I laughed because I was present, mind and body. Someone with an eating disorder doesn’t really laugh. He or she is not really present in mind, and often never present in body—isolating instead.

Recovery is messy. It can leave you energetic, exhausted, lost and found all in the same day. There is no specific formula for recovery. Everyone’s path is different because everyone’s story is different.

You will know someone with an eating disorder, sometime, somewhere. I hope this book will help you understand him or her a little better

Assumptions

H AVE YOU HEARD A character in a movie say: I’ve got a bad feeling about this? How can a feeling be bad if it’s alerting you to possible danger? The feeling is a benefit, if anything. Instead, a character should say: I have a feeling something bad might happen. There are no bad feelings. No good feelings either. Feelings just are. We feel without yielding permission. The director at Residential, Wyatt, often told us that ninety percent of the world attaches the word negative to feelings. But feelings are neutral. Feelings are universal. They just come and go like the wind.

We relate to each other through feelings. When you and your