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| My head is spinning [message #42150] |
Tue, 17 May 2011 20:05  |
 b_twin_1
Messages: 2620
Registered: September 2008
Location: Victoria, Australia |
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My head is spinning
I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel ~ Blackadder
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| Re: My head is spinning [message #42248 is a reply to message #42150 ] |
Sun, 22 May 2011 09:26  |
oldoakforest
Messages: 21
Registered: January 2010
Location: UK |
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I was really interested to hear another review of Wintergirls. I've picked up and leafed through it a few times in bookshops, but I know I'll probably never be able to read through it myself when even just the few pages I've read were intensely triggering for my own anorexia. I'm glad the book is out there, though - I think. From my perspective, I don't believe anyone who has never suffered from anorexia themselves and hasn't had the copious amounts of training to qualify as a psychotherapist specializing in anorexia can ever, ever truly understand what it's like inside the disease. I've had a couple of wonderful therapists who really understood what goes on in my head, but my poor mum, with whom I'm really close and who shuffled me to the first round of therapy and nutritional assistance appointments (while I was still home) and battled me through the first refeeding period and heard a lot of the pain still doesn't understand. I won't say she doesn't understand at all, but what she does understand barely scratches the surface of what's inside (as my grammar grows more confused). As a result, I'm curious as to just how right this book gets things. Admittedly, I think each person experiences anorexia a little differently, but we anorectics (and yes, that's the proper form, although anorexics is also acceptable) do have quite a lot in common - but that's quite a lot that the majority of non-anorectic people will NEVER understand. This is why there's such a stigma attached to anorexia, and why most people do not understand why anorectics find it so incredibly hard to get better (for example: saying, "you look so healthy!" to someone who is or nearly is weight-recovered (i.e. no longer emaciated) translates to "You look so fat!" in the anorectic's mind). The other major irritant to me is the way in which people assume anorectics must judge others as too fat. This is massively untrue. Anorexia is, in essence, an incredibly selfish disease, and in most cases involves the creation of one set of rules for the self and another for everyone else. I know intellectually that many of the people I think are beautiful and whose bodies I envy probably carry more weight than I do - but I look at them and think I need to lose weight to look like them.
I'm sorry, this is turning into an essay. I just wonder about this novel, and wonder if it's getting things right. I won't be able to read it, however, until I am in a better state.
I'm glad it ends on a positive, or at least hopeful, note, though. From inside, there often seems to be no hope: no hope of ever getting better, no hope of not being anorectic, no hope of having a 'normal' life. Recovering from anorexia often seems (at least to me) a whole lot worse than the disease itself.
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| Re: My head is spinning [message #42249 is a reply to message #42248 ] |
Sun, 22 May 2011 09:53 |
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Robin
Messages: 6024
Registered: September 2008
Location: England |
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There are books out there I can't read because they trigger stuff for me. I don't if that makes us oversensitive or normal.  But . . . WINTERGIRLS is a terrific novel, thought-provoking, brilliantly written, painfully empathetic, and I would be sorry if it is going to be measured by whether it gets anorexia 'right'. As you say, everyone's experience (of anorexia . . . or anything else, really) is slightly different because everyONE is different; WINTERGIRLS may be 'righter' for some anorectics than others. What I can tell you it absolutely *does* get right is that anorexia is life-destroying--sometimes literally. I'd myself say that the job of fiction is to widen the reader's horizon, sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes gleefully and sometimes desolately, and WINTERGIRLS does that. And as a writer of fiction who also has trigger points about some things, I would argue strongly against any guidelines that suggest that you have to experience something in your own body to be able to write about it. (For one thing, that would eliminate fantasy at a stroke. ) There are books out there that I'm not happy about, because they're 'wrong'; but I personally believe that on balance greater rather than lesser literary freedom is a good thing.
Good luck. (You realise that I have some experience of the it's-all-in-your-mind-and-if-you'd-just-get-a-grip syndrome: I have ME.)
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| Re: My head is spinning [message #42252 is a reply to message #42249 ] |
Sun, 22 May 2011 12:20 |
oldoakforest
Messages: 21
Registered: January 2010
Location: UK |
Junior Member |
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Oh, I really do hope the book isn't assessed by whether it gets anorexia 'right', as you say. I don't think that'd be an appropriate measure, and would almost certainly do it a disservice. It sounds like an amazing book, and I love Ms. Anderson's style. I do, however, get terribly bored of the stereotypes, and was wondering where this novel would sit with regard to those.
I admit, I was thinking less about literary freedom and more about the general public when I said I didn't think most people could truly understand anorexia. Perhaps I don't know anyone with a sufficiently good imagination... Now how else can I backpedal? I really didn't mean to suggest people shouldn't write about it; in a way that would be counterproductive, although there's been a certain amount of dodgy press lately.
Do you get the "aren't you better yet?" comments as well? They drive me right up the wall.
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| Re: My head is spinning [message #42253 is a reply to message #42252 ] |
Sun, 22 May 2011 15:35 |
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Robin
Messages: 6024
Registered: September 2008
Location: England |
Senior Member
[Hellgoddess] |
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Yep. 'Fraid so. I would guess, from what little I know or have picked up about anorexia, and from what people I've talked to who have it have said, that it is one of those 'there for life' things. You may get it 'under control', you may have no overt symptoms, you may be 'normal' . . . but you're aware it's back there, that the vulnerability is part of who and what you are, and you'll never be 'free' of it, any more than you'll ever be free of you. Correct me if I'm wrong. I believe that ME is one of those 'there for life' things. I've had years when I thought it was gone *enough* that I could afford to think of it as a vulnerability rather than an active (ha ha ha, 'active') illness . . . but mostly it's closer in than that. Mostly it still messes with me. You learn to deal, like you learn to deal with the rest of your life, and if you get it right, you learn to deal with it *better.* One of the ways I've mostly learnt to deal with it better is NOT to waste energy on morons saying moronic things about ME. I don't always get this right however. . . .
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| Re: My head is spinning [message #42272 is a reply to message #42253 ] |
Mon, 23 May 2011 10:54 |
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| Robin wrote on Sun, 22 May 2011 20:35 |
Yep. 'Fraid so. I would guess, from what little I know or have picked up about anorexia, and from what people I've talked to who have it have said, that it is one of those 'there for life' things. You may get it 'under control', you may have no overt symptoms, you may be 'normal' . . . but you're aware it's back there, that the vulnerability is part of who and what you are, and you'll never be 'free' of it, any more than you'll ever be free of you.
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Something I have difficulty understanding is how people (generic "people", you understand) are so tolerant of physical conditions but so lairy about mental conditions.
If somebody has or has had cancer, nobody has trouble understanding that it's "there for life" and even if it goes into remission there is every chance it might flare up again.
What is so difficult to imagine about this counting equally as much for something like anorexia?
I suppose adopting a child with Special Needs changes your perspective, but I firmly believe that just as you can catch a physical "cold", you might suffer some kind of mental equivalent: something that knocks you down for a bit then wears off. Similarly, while you can break a leg and it heals, why not the same for your mind?
Sadly my daughter's condition (she has a Language Disorder) is not anything that can be "treated" nor will it ever "wear off" but she can patch her way around it like nobody's business and we're proud of how far she has come.
Phil
My friends say I have CDO…
which is like OCD but with the initials in proper alphabetical order…
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| Re: My head is spinning [message #42280 is a reply to message #42253 ] |
Tue, 24 May 2011 15:48 |
oldoakforest
Messages: 21
Registered: January 2010
Location: UK |
Junior Member |
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Actually, the topic of recovery from anorexia is a bit of a hot one at the moment. It does seem that for some - and by some, I mean at most 1 in 5 known, treated sufferers - it is possible to recover completely from anorexia. I would suspect the actual frequency of full recovery (and what does it even *mean* in this to be fully recovered?) is much lower. Those who do recover, who are able to put the whole anorexia thing behind them totally, seem to be the ones who develop the disease at a fairly young age, are identified early, and are treated using family-based therapy/the Maudsley approach by a very good psychotherapist/counsellor/psychiatrist. I find it mildly amusing that the proven most effective treatment for anorexia has been designed for the youngest sufferers, when there's much terror over how anorexia is appearing in ever-younger individuals.
For the vast majority of anorectics, though, it's definitely there for life.
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| Re: My head is spinning [message #42282 is a reply to message #42150 ] |
Tue, 24 May 2011 18:59 |
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Melissa Mead
Messages: 996
Registered: October 2008
Location: Albany, NY, USA |
Senior Member |
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Jackie Morse Kessler wrote a fantasy novel called Hunger on the subject, and it really opened my eyes. She illustrates that no, you don't just "get over it."
[Updated on: Tue, 24 May 2011 19:00]
Member of Carpe Libris: http://carpelibris.wordpress.com/
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