The power of shared experience and connection in the midst of shame is one of the most incredible things I’ve experienced as a person and a therapist. Lizabeth Wesely-Casella, founder of Binge Behavior and and all around amazing woman, shares how she came to recognize just how significant that experience could be. 

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Shared experience is one of the most powerful life events a person can have.  Just by having endured something together, individuals have been known to overcome prejudice, overlook bitter rivalries or simply respect one another for knowing what the other person has been through.

You see it in the solemnity and sometimes tearful exchanges between military veterans or in the way a seasoned mother knows just how helpful it is to load and run the dishwasher for the new mother who is struggling to find her stride.  You see it in the way a person who has been walking around lost in their own shame breaths easier when they find someone who doesn’t tell them they are ridiculous for feeling ugly or fat or worthless, but instead shares that they too struggle with their self esteem.  Shared experience forgives, rebuilds and nurtures.

Until relatively recently in my life I didn’t get that I needed to have a shared experience in my life.  I was prideful and yet I was filled with shame, nicely cloaked as “personal strength.”

I always thought my greatest strength was being compassionate; that it was fulfilling to listen to and love others and that everyone needs that, external to me.  In my mind my problems weren’t big enough to matter and there was no need to seek compassion for myself.  I also took it to mean that by being listened to, I was taking up someone’s valuable time with my petty, self-made problems and that doing so made me selfish.

My feelings included thoughts like, “I’m larger than the ideal woman so it must be a selfish lack of control that I’m this way.”  Also, “So what if I feel shame every time I walk out of the house, come face to face with a magazine or try on clothes that were fashionably cut for a size 2 and merely expanded to my size 18 body?  How can I possibly consider these feelings worth sharing?  Who wants to hear a ‘woman of size’ complain about her size?”  And, “I must be horribly weak because even this oppressive shame can’t make me change into the shape our culture celebrates.”   I thought that if I shared those thoughts, people would see just how shallow my feelings are, were, and have been for years.

In my mind, these thoughts of mine didn’t merit sharing.  There was nothing wrong with other people feeling this way, but in my mind I had no right to these feelings.  I had (thankfully, have) a healthy husband and dog, I clearly wasn’t starving, I had a safe home…  I was bitching about the little stuff.  Well that “little stuff,” it really hurt me inside and by not sharing it, I only added to that hurt and piled the shame on higher.

Then came the day where the need to share broke me.

It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t even the right forum, but it happened in all of its vulnerability and power and tears and snot and… compassion.  I was speaking to a group and was given a really heartfelt compliment which I struggled to gracefully accept and that breached the walls.  I could no longer hold in my pain, my shame, my fury at being unable to cover it with my social mask any longer and it all came out in an unstoppable flood of admitting my feelings.

Now, as luck would have it, I was among compassionate people.  It’s wasn’t a group therapy scenario and these weren’t people I would interact in this manner ever again; however, the experience prepared me to seek out the right venue for sharing my feelings.  It showed me that I’m not the only person can listen without judging; who needs to give compassion in order to get it and it also showed me that the “little stuff” feelings are more common than I thought.  I had a shared experience in thinking about myself the ways that I did and I was not alone in being ashamed for feeling those feelings – I was not alone in that group.

When I finally found the right place for me to discuss my struggles with my body image and my binge eating disorder (after finding out that those were the struggles that I was having in the first place), I found that by sharing I was getting and giving a free pass of sorts.  I was present with people who had checked their judgmental selves at the door (or the Login page) and for us as participants, no topic or feeling was to go un-honored.  We each needed to know that our feelings were like the feelings others had and in knowing that, those feelings become less burdensome on us as individuals.  They became less troubling and far less powerful.

Those people that I have shared experiences with, they are part of my pack.  I will protect them and support them and I know that they will do the same for me.  We may not have met otherwise, we may not have otherwise enjoyed each others’ company, but in knowing the struggles we share, knowing them bone deep, we respect and stand for one another.

Shared experience means that you know from your own life what I’m dealing with in mine.  Can I count on you to value all that “little stuff” that I question about myself?  Can you trust enough in yourself to ask the same of others?  If sharing my own story has helped encourage you in any way, then that “little stuff” just became a little more valuable.

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Lizabeth Wesely-Casella is and advocate for people with binge and impulse control disorders.  She is the Founder of BingeBehavior.com and she uses her experiences with binge eating, binge drinking and trichotillomania to support others through writing and speaking.  Stay current with the latest information and join the forums at www.BingeBehavior.com or follow on twitter at @BingeBehavior.

I am honored to have written a post for the fabulous site, HealthyGirl.org. Sunny Sea Gold, author of Food: The Good Girl’s Drug and tireless advocate for those struggling with food issues, was kind enough to have me share my thoughts on a tough one – what to do once you’ve engaged in a binge. Here’s a bit of that post:

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Your eyelids reluctantly lift from their resting place as the harsh light washes over you, signaling it’s time to rise from this intoxicating slumber. You’d like to pull the warm comforter back over your head and disappear into the abyss of ignorance – the place where you can forget the shame of last night.

But your body won’t let you forget. You feel the distinctively sharp pains deep in your belly; you still feel the food sitting high and heavy. Your mind spins in circles, looping in and out of the names that last night held such beauty and power, but now elicit a feeling of disappointment. Oreo and Oscar Meyer and Special K and Hostess. Those bastards – letting you down once again.

You promised yourself this wouldn’t happen again, you wouldn’t let food leave you feeling bent and broken in the morning. But here you are – alone, frightened of the voraciousness of your hunger, and desperate to get out of this cycle.

Handling the day after a binge episode is most certainly not for the faint of heart; it is one of the most difficult challenges that we face in overcoming emotional overeating and binge eating. When all we want to do is hide under the covers is the precise moment at which what we need to do is call on all of our reserves and prepare for battle. We are no longer just fighting against the temptations of trigger foods, but also against the insidious voices that try to undermine our recovery….

Learn the tips and read more here…

I’m getting super excited to head to Philadelphia in March for the Binge Eating Disorder Association National Conference. (You should join us!) I’m starting to organize my thoughts and plan out the two talks that I will be taking part in. One is on the how social media can be part of the recovery process from binge eating, and the other is about whether binge eating is an addictive process and what the answer might mean for treatment. Fun stuff, right?!

Since BEDA and binge eating has been on my mind a lot lately – and, fortunately, on the minds of many of those working on the newest edition of the diagnostic manual for mental health (BED will soon be officially recognized!) – I’m focusing this week’s Five for Friday on this insidious issue. With almost 3% of the population experiencing this disorder at some point in their lifetime (that’s over nine million people!), we cannot continue to ignore the suffering that it creates for individuals, families, and even communities.

These amazing writers have covered the topic eloquently, so take a few moments to learn more:

• @ Medicinal Marzipan (via Marsha Hudnall) :: Binge Eating: You Know You Need Help, So Now What?
• @ Thick Dumpling Skin (via Amy Pershing) :: Myths About Binge Eating & Recovery Challenges
• @ Best Body Fitness :: Stuffed with Emptiness: Full Fledged Addiction
• @ Health at Every Size Blog :: Fat Stigma – Not Fat – Is the Real Enemy
• @ Oh She Glows :: Binge Eating: Why You Shouldn’t Feel Ashamed

Do you have a post to share on binge eating? Include it below!

{image credit :: ChrisCofer}

While Kerry Washington’s history of an eating disorder may seem to make her live up to the stereotype of the young Hollywood actress, it also shatters that of the powerful black woman.

The critically acclaimed star of Ray and The Last King of Scotland has talked candidly about her struggles with her body and food. In one interview, Washington revealed the ways in which her eating disorder kept her locked into an agonizing cycle.

She recalled, “I’d eat anything and everything, Sometimes until I passed out. But then, because I had this personality that was driven toward perfectionism, I would tell people I was at the library, but instead go to the gym and exercise for hours and hours and hours.”

Washington’s sharing of the details of her battle with a food obsession is, unfortunately, a rare exception. While memoirs and media spotlights of young, white women with eating disorders are seen with increasing frequency, portrayals of black women who struggle are harder to find.

The notion of eating disorders as only affecting affluent, Caucasian women is undergoing a revolution as we recognize how these illnesses impact all sectors of society. Black women are accounting for a larger proportion of those seeking treatment for disordered eating.

Like in other diverse communities, eating disorders in black communities often go unrecognized. Marna Clowney-Robinson, an eating disorder survivor, recalled, “Within my family I don’t think they actually saw it as a eating disorder. I am one out of six siblings and we all use food as a way of coping with stresses and stressful situations that came up in our lives at the time. What I was doing was pretty much normal with my siblings. So to us it was normal behavior.”

Clowney-Robinson’s experience is unfortunately common. In black communities, food often takes on seemingly sacred qualities and is used to demonstrate a range of emotions in families. Since food is often used as a means of communicating things deeply felt, it’s easy for a disorder to develop.

In fact, a 2000 study by Ruth Striegel-Moore and her colleagues suggested that recurrent binge eating, which is part of both Bulimia Nervosa and Binge Eating Disorder, is actually more common in black women than in white women.

The lack of awareness of eating disorders in diverse populations jeopardizes the treatment of these individuals. Without recognition, research funding is extremely limited and disorders go untreated for too long. When our health care system and communities already fail to acknowledge the seriousness of these illnesses, further ignorance is deadly.

Stephanie Covington Armstrong offers a compelling look inside her own eating disorder in a memoir, Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat, that shatters the notion of the “rich, white girl disease.” She notes that the black women are underrepresented in the statistics, “Because we don’t flock to traditional therapy, we are not counted.”

Like Washington and Clowney-Robinson, Armstrong is determined to make sure that eating disorders in the black community don’t go unnoticed. She said, “It is the silence that makes this disease possible. “

Do you think that eating disorders are under-represented in some communities? How have you witnessed this?