GIVE EATING DISORDERS A NEW NAME – WINNERS!

Thank you, one and all, to everyone who submitted a new name for eating disorders! The diversity of ideas alone shows how complex these problems are – and what a grave disservice it is to pigeonhole them as “food and weight” issues.

Before I list the 5 names that spoke to me as the most right-on, I’d like to share the whole list. I think it reflects the difficulty of coming up with one label that applies to the wide variety of these conditions, especially when we consider factoids such as 1) most people who die of eating disorders do not die directly of starvation or obesity, but suicide; 2) weight is not always an indicator of an eating disorder; and 3) eating disorder behavior and thoughts often have nothing to do with food.

Here then, are all your suggestions, along with comments that you submitted to explain them. THESE are truly “food for thought”:

Metabolic Manipulation Dis-order.    The initials, MMD,  give it a sense of respectability.
Starved Self Syndrome... SSS
No-self syndrome
Empty self syndrome
Self-awareness escape condition
TrEATable disorder
"Undeserving" complex
Dissociative eating syndrome - Named because we dissociate into food, either avoiding it or finding it.  We dissociate from painful events and go into food thoughts
Not-eating disorders
Nourishing Syndrome
Sustenance Deprivation
Sustenance Support
Feast/Famine Crisis
Feast or Famine Defense
Nurturing Reception
Dissociative syndrome (the mind and body are dissociated from one another)
Maladaptive coping syndrome
Deprivation addiction
Dis-kinethesia syndromes - Dis-, meaning to undo, do the opposite, remove or free from, to deprive. Kinethesia meaning one's PERCEPTION of motion, weight, position, etc.
Genetic identity syndrome
“S.E.A.S.” self evaluated anxiety syndrome I have had an ED for 27 years and it leaves me washedout like the sea can.  Also, we make our ownevaluation of our worthlessness, nobody makes us hold onto these feeling.  In the air of hope, the tides can always change, perhaps washing IN healing.
Obsessive-compulsive Food Disorder How many other disorders do you obsess over just the food. . .and almost nothing else?
Food Dysmorphic Disorder  since we have a dysmorphia about the amount/type of food we put into our bodies.
Food-focused Disempowerment Disorders
"Drowning to death in a sea or plenty  -  It reminds me of a stanza from the poem The Ancient Mariner:
"Water, water everywhere and all the boards did shrink,
Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink."
I would change a few words to describe anorexia as:
"Food, food everywhere for one and all to eat,
Food, food everywhere, but none allowed for me."

I shared these suggestions with several friends, both in and out of the eating disorders field. We all agreed that it is near impossible to find a single term to encompass conditions as different as anorexia and bulimia and binge eating disorders. It’s easy to see why they were lumped together around the single symptom of disordered eating, but this label does not even hint at the emotional, chemical, or genetic underpinnings of these conditions. Worse, this label has directly contributed to the trivialization of these illnesses by the general public, much of the medical establishment, and insurance carriers.

As one of you wrote to me:
“I hear young girls through grown women say, ‘I wish I was anorexic - just for a week.’  I remember being an adolescent and being obsessed with eating disorders.  I would read everything about them at the library (we did not have the Internet), I would secretly read the ED section in our health books, and would read any magazine that had something about them on the cover.  I wanted people to think I didn't eat (I did), and I thought it was symbolic of being good, in control.  I wanted to be anorexic.  Eventually it grabbed a hold of me and has not let go… Let's stop making it so glamorous.”

I heartily agree! That’s why I launched this contest.

Here, then, are the names that we believe most closely describe the underlying reality and internal experience of all eating disorders, whatever their shape, size, or duration. They do not wildly overlap with other broad conditions such as depression, anxiety, and personality disorders, and yet they also do not fasten on abnormal eating as the sole common denominator:

Metabolic Manipulation Dis-order (MMD)
Starved Self Syndrome (SSS)
"Undeserving" complex
Deprivation addiction
Feast or Famine Defense

Again, my thanks to all of you who submitted entries. Copies of Gaining are in the mail to the winners. And feel free to share these alternative names with any of your friends or acquaintances who ask why people with eating disorders don’t just “gain (or lose) a little weight”!

Have a healthy, pro-active, and power-full Eating Disorders Awareness Week!

Comments

[Leigh]

Great "new names", I like the final choices!

http://livingwithananorexic.blogspot.com