the puzzle image

A client and I came up with this image the other day, and we both really liked it, so I asked her if I could write about it on the blog.

We were talking about how precarious and non-enduring her sense of herself could feel, and the HUGE amounts of anxiety it causes her to feel as if she could "disappear" or "blow away" or fragment suddenly, and lose touch with who she is.

I've named this frequent and familiar phenomenon "The Humpty Dumpty Phenomenon" (I finally gave it a name after I'd seen people suffer from it so often- once I gave it a name it became easier for me to explain what was happening to someone and why- besides, the name Humpty Dumpty doesn't sound that threatening and it seems easier for people to wrap their minds around than some long-winded "psychological" term...besides, I don't know a psychological term for the Humpty Dumpty phenomenon!).

You know how in the story, Humpty Dumpty (I really hope I'm spelling that correctly!) is sitting on the wall? And then he falls off (in my own story about him I say a wind comes up and blows him off- I can't remember exactly what knocks him off in the real story :)

So, there he is, in a million pieces all over the ground- and he feels lousy and like his sense of who he is has fragmented into a million pieces and like the rug has totally been pulled out from underneath him... (I'm guessing at least some of you have an idea of what I'm talking about :)

Then at some point "all the kings horses and all the king's men" come along and put the poor guy back together again... in my story, the client and I gather up all the pieces and help figure out how to get things all integrated again. The Humpty Dumpty phenomenon is a brutal thing to have happen to a person, and it's really common for people who suffer from eating disorders. The goal in therapy is to get Humpty Dumpty so strong that he learns how to withstand the usual varieties of wind that come along in life (so he doesn't get blown off the wall much or almost never), and so resilient that if he does fall off the wall, he doesn't fragment very much if at all, and he can re-intergrate himself quickly and without too much agony.

Does that make sense?

Ok, so what does this have to do with puzzles? Good question.

Why are some of us more prone to falling/being blown off the wall than others of us?

That's the exact question I was trying to answer when we came up with the puzzle image.

So, give this image a try: we each are a full puzzle, already basically put together (whatever picture you want on the puzzle is cool with me) when we're born. We have all the fundamental pieces we're going to need and all what's "supposed" to happen is that over time as we grow up our puzzles stay together and if anything become stronger and more cohesive.

For people who have puzzles that have stayed all together and not been "too blown" by winds of life, staying as a whole Humpty Dumpty firmly planted on their walls. Most types of wind that blow through life don't knock them off the wall, and if a big one does come along and knock them off, they are able to hold themselves mostly together and get back on the wall.

Lots of people, though, have had various sorts of "too big" winds that blow over their puzzles. Sometimes the winds are big enough to blow out some of the puzzle pieces. "Winds" that can do this can include natural disasters, war, overwhelming loss, overwhelming fear/terror, trauma, neglect, emotional abuse or neglect, deprivation... there are many possible "too big winds." Children are most vulnerable to too big winds.

If puzzle pieces blow out of the puzzle we feel panicked- as if part of ourselves has been ripped away. We'll do anything to get ourselves feeling stable again (humans are super creative at surviving and re-stabilizing ourselves- we are majorly resilient).

Our first choice is to locate and put back the original puzzle pieces. But if they have become "un-locatable" we strive to "fill up" the hole/s left by the blown out pieces using whatever we can find. Some people use alcohol, some use compulsive working, some develop an eating disorder... (another reminder of why people become SO deeply attached to their EDs. To the sufferer, the disorder feels like a "glue" that's holding their puzzle together).

My client and I decided she'd go find a puzzle she related to and put it together- and the puzzle would represent her sense of self. She'd then take out pieces to represent where winds had come along and blown out certain pieces- and then use some kind of "putty" or clay she'd stick into the holes to represent how she'd "put herself back together" again- "glued" her puzzle to she could "do life."

The puzzle image gave this woman a concrete way of conceptualizing why her sense of self can feel precarious- and how, in fact, it really is not as precarious as she fears. It also allows her to look carefully at her "areas of putty" and see how they've "helped" her and how they may also limit her life.

You guys know I come up with a lot of images. I tend to get all excited about them. They help me explain things to people, and they seem really effective at describing things. I'm also pretty easily excited about things in the recovery world so it's not a surprise that I'd love recovery images! I hope you guys like the puzzle one :)

Comments

[Ann]

It totally hits home with me Johanna. This past four weeks, I've been trying to put my puzzle back together and my ED has been here telling me how I should fill my missing pieces. I think I went into student teaching without a complete puzzle, a lot of my pieces had been lost somewhere along the way. And instead of ED gluing new pieces in he's been tricky and taking extra pieces away. So, instead of finding myself (my whole picture/puzzle self) I am slowly becoming more and more fragile and more and more unstable. ED makes it easy to be completely blown off the wall, instead of helping me stay on top of it.

Thanks for sharing! I really love your images!

[Laura]

This explains things for me too... Lately, I went through a lil' change, and it caused me to fall off the wall and break and bring in the ed to put me back together. Lately, when this happens I get mad at myself. I think "How come I'm not strong enough to deal with this wind that just blew through?!" I guess, though, it's at least good that, although I still fall off the wall and break, I break less and less... I guess that's a good sign?

[Ann]

Hey Johanna, I just remembered something you told us last semester sometime. And I shared it with a friend of mine that is also struggling. "Better done than Perfect!!" This is something that I also needed to hear I procrastinate so much and get myself into an anxiety filled situation, which doesn't take much any more, because I simply am blocked by the self-imposed need to be "perfect". The funny thing is, I teach chemistry (one of my classes), and not even a gas can be perfect, so why would I try when the very air that I breathe could never be perfect. It would have to be in a super contained environment with no interaction from the outside world at all and its impossible. So, since being perfect is so impossible, Why do we feel the need to strive to reach this impossible thing of being perfect, when all it does is cause issues and allows ED to creep in and start filling in those missing pieces of the puzzle that are left open by the unachieved goal of being perfect. Okay, so that was probably a run-on sentence, but I'm not an english major so I don't care. :)

Okay, I need to take care of myself and get some sleep. I didn't get all my papers graded, but it will be okay. I can only do so much and my students will simply have to wait one more day. Laura, I bet you'll like the fact that I'm going to just let go what I didn't get done. :)

I'm feeling some anxiety over it, but I'm going to go to sleep with out finishing anyways.

[Sarah]

One thing that bothers me a lot is that I have never had any 'big winds' in my life and yet I still seem to have trouble finding the puzzle pieces!

Glad to hear you sounding more positive Ann!

[Tiger]

Wow. This really hit home. However, it's late, and i'm putting myself to bed, so I don't go crazy from exhaustion tomorrow, and so, am not going to comment properly today. Thank you for these ideas--they seem quite apt.

[Courtney]

Huh! This is really interesting. I definitely understand the part about suddenly disappearing, or falling apart like Humpty Dumpty.

(I'd like to point out that in the rhyme all the kings horses and all the kings men COULDN'T put Humpty together again. I guess that's a technicality but still, sometimes when I fall apart it feels like I'll never get put back together.)

As for your puzzle project, I really like it. I like the thought that if too many pieces of yourself get taken away you would crumble; just like if you did that to a puzzle (if you were to stand the puzzle upright, I guess). So you have to keep your puzzle/yourself together with something and an eating disorder would be that something. Very clever analogy. (okay, so it all makes sense in my mind, not sure if it makes sense when I write it out).

And Sarah, I don't really have any 'big winds' that knock me over either but my puzzle was never strong to begin with and my puzzle pieces have been blown over a million little times. It adds up. Like if you get hit with a stick in the leg once it would hurt but you'd probably be okay but if you got hit by a stick 100 times you'd probably have a fractured leg. (I don't even know if that's true but I like the image. I should leave the analogies to Johanna).

[Laura]

Sarah, I don't have any of the "big winds" that you're probably referring to either... I just figure that if I fell own or lost a piece of the puzzle, then their must have been a wind...

[Sarah]

I also like the "better done than perfect" bumper sticker. I posted it above my desk so I don't forget!

[Pauses4paws]

Great visual post...I once was humpty dumpty...used to actually say that it seemed like it! Then, I sought to be like Goldilocks, looking for the "just right" porridge. Maybe that's a sign of recovery....Fairy tales are great for making sense of things to myself,sometimes!

[wendy]

I really liked your analogy! It explains so much why ED has been so entrenched into my life! Also the fear of falling to pieces was so huge in my life. Wow! I kind of think that Ed causes more instability, but that could be because he uses the wrong pieces or as Johanna said fills the space up with himself...not what was originally there. For example many of us isolate and ED fills the pieces where relationships belong. Food will never really fill that hole adequately and without others our life is not fulfilling and really stable cause we were meant to relate...

yeah anne!!! Papers will wait!