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Introduction
“I hate you because you’re taking over me,” cried Samantha White in her poem My Best Friend Ana to describe her true attitude towards anorexia. However, in the next line, Samantha White introduced a different opinion and confessed that she loves it “cause you’re making me the girl I want to be” (Smith). The rest of the poem confused and inspired me as a reader because Smith, as well as millions of people around the globe, proved the impossibility to have one particular definition of anorexia in modern life.
Anorexia generally associates with an obsessive desire to stay thin, a flawed perception of one’s own body, and a pathological fear of overeating. Although up to 2 percent of all women in Western countries have suffered from anorexia during their lifetimes (Burkert 29), most of them still embrace it and explore the mindset that encourages the development of this specified disorder.
What goes through the mind of an anorexia person when they looking in the mirror? The answers might be “I am fat”, “I am ugly”, “I won’t eat anymore tomorrow”, or “People might love me more if I weighed less”. By attempting at wrapping an anorexic person’s mind around how they come to the point of developing anorexia, numerous explanations have been offered, with some of those centering on the influence of the patient’s family. This raises a legitimate question of whether the anorexic family plays an important role in the development and treatment of anorexia, and, if so, what this role is.
Main body
In the essay There Once Was a Girl, Waldman, a recovering anorexic herself, discusses the probable causes behind the development of the disorder based on her own experience and scientific evidence. Waldman paid attention to her family and the way actually contributed to the development of anorexia problems. Trying to depict her emotions and feelings about her family, Waldman, as well as White, was challenged by doubts and ambiguity.
She could not get rid of the thought that “I was a miserable anorexic” but “convinced that the disease was deeply wrong for me yet unable to shake its influence” (Waldman). In the essay, Waldman tries to establish the moment “when the spores of anorexia first crept” into her. After consideration, Waldman finds these ‘spores’ in her childhood memory of comparing herself to her thinner and, supposedly, prettier sister.
In her situation, her parents did not accept the decision of her sister to eat less at first. But a few years later, they accepted it as something “normal-ish” (Waldman). Hence, Waldman rejects the idea that her parents exerted any pressure to be thinner or follow the established standards of beauty on her – she emphasizes they are “lovely and kind and interesting people.” Still, when asking herself whether her parents actually “enabled” her and her sister in their sickness, Waldman admits she has no definite answer. Waldman considers the possibility that her parents’ ill-chosen words may have accidentally convinced her that her anorexic sister’s behavior was “not really crazy”, and refuses to blame them.
By describing her own experience, Waldman reveals the danger of anorexia lies in its connection with family relationships. The problem is that Waldman believed that the anorexic behavior of her sisters is normal and required neither critique nor healthcare interference. According to Warin Megan, a famous researcher, “The desire to belong to a collective – be it family, community, or place – is a universal motivation” (71). Unfortunately, this universal law worked against a healthy sister who became motivated by the desire to be close to her twin (Waldman).
Considering family as a source of motivation and emotional support is a common concept in managing anorexia and similar disorders stemming from the lack of self-esteem. In There Once Was a Girl, the author laments that the state of being uninformed about the problems that her sister was facing led to the latter’s untimely demise (Warin 8). Thus, it is implied that the family would have addressed the issue adequately, providing a healthy alternative to the ridiculous standards that modern media pushes onto young women (Warin 8).
However, the specified scenario does not necessarily have to be correct. According to Warin, a range of families lack the knowledge and skills needed to support patients with anorexia (11). The described situation may aggravate the problem, causing patients to feel even more desperate and, thus, experience severe psychological trauma while continuing to develop anorexia-related eating habits. Indeed, in retrospect, the story told by Waldman portrays a classic case of a misunderstanding occurring in a family, where parents are unable to detect a developing problem of self-esteem that is likely to grow to reach the level of self-destruction. In her attempt at recalling the events that led to the tragedy, Waldman mentions that the presence of media influence presented an obstacle to understanding her sister’s problems:
But perhaps the myths of beauty girdling anorexia fed into how I idealized my sister, how I assumed that she presided over aesthetic secrets I’d never understand. And I certainly permitted the voice of the disease to mingle confusingly with my parents, so that I ended up ascribing to them the hate I sometimes felt for myself. (Waldman)
Therefore, the evident lack of awareness in both the narrator and her parents affected the situation adversely, causing the loss of the author’s sister. The described situation indicates that, while a family can be quite supportive and sensitive toward the needs of its members, the lack of understanding of how beauty standards and media affect young people, especially women, leads to drastic outcomes. However, it would be a mistake to believe that the lack of awareness and health education cannot be helped in the specified scenario. After noticing changes in the attitudes toward their bodies in a family member, it is critical to consult an expert to receive further instructions on handling the issue.
In addition, at the age when young people are most vulnerable, they tend to distance themselves from their parents and other family authorities: “As an example of family volatility, Julia described a Sunday family lunch. ‘They were horrendous,’ she said and rolled her eyes” (Warin 128). In moderation, the observed phenomenon is quite healthy and indicative of normal development. However, once there is a health issue that a patient fails to see, the authority of the family is critical in assuring the patient that the assistance of healthcare authorities is needed.
The problem of the lack of awareness within a family and the resulting inability to support their loved ones that experience self-image problems and face the threat of developing anorexia is amplified by the difficulties that healthcare experts have accessing the target demographic. Warin mentions in the reminiscence of her professional experiences: “Another major area that I did not have access to as people’s everyday relationships with family members” (Warin 37).
The absence of connection to families of the people that suffer from anorexia causes healthcare experts to fail to create an environment in which patients are inclined to recover. Moreover, the lack of access to families of anorexia patients implies that harmful myths and misconceptions about the disorder in question continue to affect patients, making their family members choose wrong behaviors and attitudes. In hindsight, the observed issue may be seen as the outcome of heavy stigmatization that anorexia patients experience.
The propensity toward silencing the issue can be explained by the presence of deeply seated misunderstandings and general misrepresentation of the problem of anorexia within society. As Warin explains, “More often, I was taken to a private space where doors could be closed (usually a bedroom or living room in family houses), or to the anonymity of public spaces” (75). The observed situation harkens back to the harmful influence of media, which imposes stereotypical ideas onto people without making them think of the outcomes of the suggested line of thinking.
Although family ties and extensive support that family members can provide are critical for a patient who is suffering from anorexia, it may not lead to recovery due to multiple complications that anorexia causes, as There Once Was a Girl shows very explicitly. Unless the signs and symptoms of anorexia are located quickly enough for family members to search for appropriate medical assistance and the help of a competent healthcare professional, the endeavors of parents and siblings in supporting their anorexic family member may fail to have any positive outcome. The observed phenomenon is not to be seen as the lack of support but the fact that the problem of anorexia is far too multifaceted to be approached outside of a clinical environment.
To enhance the role of a family in a patient’s recovery and ensure that family members provide effective support without inhibiting the recovery process due to stereotypes, one may need to consider guidance offered by healthcare experts. In their article, Marcon et al. mention the absolute necessity of parental involvement in situations that involve some form of an eating disorder in children. According to the results of the study, most people suffering from eating disorders were positive or neutral about their family members being involved in the process of managing their health issues (Marcon et al. 79).
The observed tendency indicates that the support of parents, siblings, and other relatives is crucial for the successful management of an eating disorder. The need for patients to receive family support and for parents and siblings to be aware of the health issue of their family members is justified by the influence that stereotypes have on young people in shaping their image of themselves (Marcon et al. 81).
The observed propensity toward following the standards imposed on young people by modern media and ignored by parents supports the argument that Waldman makes in her tragic story: “’You girls were charming tonight,’ she said. ‘I’m so proud of my beautiful daughters.’ ‘Proud?’ I spat. “We were an hour late. And she didn’t eat anything!’ I stared into my dad’s face, now a disappointed dad face” (Waldman). Marcon et al. come to a similar conclusion, even though they approach the problem from a different angle: “Residents referred to addressing family’s views about food, for example, ‘parents also need direction in challenging their own assumptions about disordered eating behaviors’” (82).
Nonetheless, both Waldman and Marcon et al. outline the fact that people with eating disorders have misconstrued assumptions about the idea of proper eating caused by the distortion of the image of themselves. Furthermore, both authors prove that the support of the family members has a crucial impact on providing timely treatment and ensuring that the recovery process takes place naturally.
Conclusion
Therefore, it would be legitimate to state that the role of the family in managing anorexia concerns mainly providing emotional and psychological support while a healthcare expert provides an appropriate intervention. Specifically, it is the role of the family to shield a patient from the effects of media and the persistent, obtrusive promotion of the unattainable image of physical beauty that it promotes. A family has to create the setting in which a patient can recover properly and manage the concerns associated with one’s appearance, coming to terms with the fact that media creates an idealized version of people’s bodies.
Overall, the narrative of the family being the core of emotional support for a patient and the source for one’s self-esteem has been emphasized in There Once Was a Girl and Warin’s Abject Relations. Similarly, the argument made by Marcon et al. delineates the importance of parental involvement and the levels of health education within a family as the crucial components of recovery. Each of the writers explains that a family can become the source of strength as long as its members are informed, yet it may cause more harm than good without the assistance of a healthcare expert.
Works Cited
Marcon, Tamara Davidson, et al. “Parental Involvement and Child and Adolescent Eating Disorders: Perspectives from Residents in Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Family Medicine.” Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, vol. 26, no. 2, 2017, pp. 78-85.
Waldman, Katy. “There Once Was a Girl.” Slate.com. 2015. Web.
Warin, Megan. Abject Relations: Everyday Worlds of Anorexia (Studies in Medical Anthropology). Rutgers University Press, 2009.
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