Wow, look at me - two posts in two days! I wanted to reflect on some of the things that came up in the Yoga Immersion today, and how they resonated with me, especially in comparison to the eating disorders day program. For any new followers, last year I spent 8 weeks in a day-patient treatment program for eating disorders, and I was not happy about it. Please refer to my posts from last January - February to get a sense of how things went. Anyway, just to recap, the program was extremely militant with its rules, and it seems that other mental health "treatment" programs are very similar. If you are seeking help through Alberta Health Services, basically you are told "these are the rules, you must follow them. If you don't, you have to leave. We know everything, you know nothing, because you suffer from a mental illness. Therefore, anything you have to say that conflicts with our rules is invalid". Not in those words, of course, but that's the basic message. I am not sure if private psychologists are also this way; I can't afford to pay $170 an hour for counselling, so I've never been to a private psychologist. Family counsellors and ones that offer subsidy are good, but I haven't found any counselling yet that has been completely effective in treating my eating disorder. But, I digress.
Anyway, there were a couple of things that came up about beliefs and healing that resonated strongly with me. When you have an eating disorder, there is a set of beliefs (may not be the same for all) around food, weight, and size. Of course, it varies from person to person, but generally, it's things like "Good foods vs bad foods", "Thin is good, thinner is better", "I eat, therefore I am disgusting", "Fat = worthless" and so on. The instructor, Amy, mentioned something about beliefs and how they serve a purpose for us, and we can only let go when these beliefs no longer serve us. In the day program, our beliefs were challenged every day, and many of the girls (myself included) had difficulty letting go of these. When I spoke at the Women's Resource Center about bulimia (see February 8 post), I likened this to ED beliefs being like our religion. We have these beliefs, they make us feel safe (even though they are destructive), and they are deep-rooted. A practicing Christian has beliefs about God that are deep-rooted, and make the person feel safe. So then these eating disorder treatment people come along and tell us "Your beliefs are wrong. Here are better things to believe. Change your way of thinking." which is probably about as good as someone from a contrasting religion saying the same thing to the Christian. This is not going to be very effective, and if anything, will just make the person being challenged upset. They won't want to change their beliefs just because someone tells them they should. Now, I realize that being a Christian and having an eating disorder are two very different things - being a Christian is probably good for you, while having an eating disorder is bad for you. So I understand why our beliefs were being challenged. However, I think that there could be a more compassionate, understanding way of helping someone to change their beliefs, rather than forcing them. The technique used by the program is systematic desensitization, which can be effective for things like anxiety and phobias, but I'm not so sure that it works for eating disorders. Maybe when the patient is truly ready to change, then it can be helpful. But if they are still in that contemplative phase (thinking about changing, but not quite ready), then it wont help.
Which brings me to my next point. Lisa. the assisting instructor mentioned something about healing only being able to occur when the parasympathetic nervous system is working. If you arent up on your CNS physiology, let me just explain that. Im sure youve heard of the Fight or Flight system - the one that kicks in during an emergency, during a challenge, or some kind of scary situation. Hormones and neurotransmitters kick in to give us an energy boost, which helps us to decide whether we are going to take action or run like hell. This is the sympathetic nervous system working. The parasympathetic nervous system, on the other hand, is known as the Rest and Digest system- other hormones and neurotransmitters kick in when we are in a state of relaxation, and allow for natural physiological functions to take place, including digestion, recovery, and growth. When one system is activated, the other is dormant, and vice versa. Now, I think generally when this system refers to recovery and healing, it means physical healing. Damaged tissues, viruses, etc. But I think this can also apply to emotional or spiritual healing. So, again, this made me think about treatment, and the state of mind I was in while I was there. I was arguing with the staff every single day about something. I was on edge more often than not, and we were stuffed full of so much food, I dont even know how we digested any of it (at least for the first couple of weeks for me; I didnt have to eat as much as the girls in weight recovery, but it was still a LOT of food). So, if healing (and digesting, for that matter) can only take place during parasympathetic activation, how on earth were we supposed to accomplish anything when our sympathetic systems were so highly activated all the timeÉ Now, I dont know this for sure; we didnt use an fMRI during treatment to find out which parts of the brain were activated during psychotherapy, but I am going to make an educated guess that we were in fight or flight far more often than we were resting and digesting. So, the conclusion I am drawing from this, is that when you are treating a mental illness, it has to come from a place of gentleness and compassion, rather than forcefulness.
I know the program has been successful for some, but my eyes are opened just a little bit wider as to how I would like to treat mental illness once I start working in that field. I had thought during the program that there must be a better way, and what I learned today has contributed to that way of thinking.
*Sorry for the lack of punctuation in my second paragraph. For some reason, my computer acts up once in awhile and instead of an apostrophe, I get è, and É for a question mark. I dont know how to change it back to normal.
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