When Love is Food

There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love.  ~Mother Teresa

What an interesting idea to hold onto from the perspective of eating disorders. On the surface, it may seem that someone with an eating disorder is needing nourishment on a physical level. While this is definitely true, I think that what they are needing most is soul sustenance, spiritual nourishment. What we all seem to be seeking most in this world is love, in whatever form feels most salient. 

At Monte Nido we conceptualize eating disorders as functional and relational. People seem to grasp the functional piece, but the relational one is more difficult to fully understand. It is crucial for people to recognize that they are playing out their relationship issues in their food and food behaviors. Rather than reaching out to people for support, they are reaching out to food. It becomes the safe place from which to ask for and receive love and comfort. Food analogies for this are ubiquitous - chicken soup for the soul, anyone? 

Food is the partner that never leaves, never disappoints. It is the relationship that listens, responds, obeys, the one that can be manipulated, the one that respects boundaries. Logically, we know that food is an inanimate object and can't provide these things. We realize that love can never be fully realized in a plate of food. But in the midst of an eating disorder, food feels like such a good, constant companion. In healing we realize that real relationships and authentic connections are what we are truly craving. We must challenge ourselves to be vulnerable, to ask for what we most want and need from others rather than turning to food. We must recognize that we are also responsible for loving ourselves and meeting our own wants and needs.

Love is the most basic need, the most nourishing bread. We all need it. We all desire it. We all must seek it out in equal measure so that food can just be be food. Where do you most need real love today? Can you challenge yourself to seek it out?

Comments

[Nadia]

I cannot agree with you more on this one.

I've always felt ashamed for wanting love, for some reason. I still struggle with that a bit now..feeling like I dont deserve to be loved and not really knowing how to get it or ask for it.

What do you mean by "Where do you most need real love today?"

[Keesha Broome]

Where are you using food or food behaviors as a substitute for real love? Can you reach out to a person rather than a plate? Will you allow yourself to seek out love instead of the eating disorder?

[Liz]

This makes a good deal of sense. Part of my illness has been a sense of being unworthy-unworthy of attention, unworthy of the best things (my siblings received the newest and best while I received used and inferior things), perhaps unworthy of love. I do recognize a sense of pushing away all needs and a necessity of denying that I had any needs from anyone. The only way to survive a world where no one will meet your needs is to have no needs. By starving myself I could affirm my lack of any needs, not even food or life. Doing without food and/or being thin was recognized by my mom as a sign of strength-as was pretending not to need anything or anyone. With bulimia, I would binge on food and need; however, I was supposed to have no needs, so I would have to purge. Overeating was always strongly condemned by my mom, as was showing any sign of neediness or weakness (although we were allowed certain types of medical illnesses-only certain types, however). I can also strongly sense the idea planted in me from a very young age that I was on my own in the world and should not look to anyone for help because no one would help me (except perhaps my family, who was teaching me not to have needs in the first place). This is almost like saying that no one else would love me. Part of my recovery has been to discover what I really want when I think I feel hungry with respect to bingeing and learning to care for my body and treat it with love as I would treat my daughter with love with respect to the starving.