Holding Patterns

For: Professor Darrel Elmore

By: XXX XXXX

ENC 1102

For some, the world can be a lonely and scary place. When an individual is challenged with a life altering experience, such as recovering from childhood exploitation, rape, incest, or being held up at gunpoint, it is almost always difficult to improve without any guidance. Occasionally, a person can be resilient, while others countlessly suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and develop self destructive behaviors such as an eating disorder. When in harms way, you have two responses, commonly known as flight-or-flight. You are either going to avoid danger or face it head on. With PTSD, this recoil of a decision is altered or impaired. PTSD is established when a terrifying incident places you in jeopardy of being harmed, which later interferes with a persons life or health. With many PTSD patients, they have developed eating disorders because they find that this is the only way to control their physical and emotional manifestations. Studies have shown dramatically the relation between patients who suffer from PTSD and those who develop eating disorders. In Timothy D. Brewertons The Links Between PTSD and Eating Disorders, he shares some statistics. 74% of 293 women attending residential treatment indicated that they had experience a significant trauma, and 52% reported symptoms consistent with a diagnosis of current PTSD based on their responses on a PTSD symptom scale. What are the effects that PTSD have on eating disorders? It is important to keep in mind when dealing with an eating disorder is that no assumptions can be made. It is important to investigate the effects of post traumatic stress has on eating disorders in order to help those fight back rather than self destruct.

Long gone are the days of me looking down at my lunch in a toilet bowl and being so frightened by a single click of a pen thinking it was a gun shot. But are those days really gone? Two years ago, I attended University at UC Boulder. A town that is located on the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, 5,430 feet above elevation. Id just finished getting groceries from the local grocery store when I heard a car passed by. I noted nothing of it other than the fact that maybe they had to go to the bathroom really bad. The car went a few feet past me, pulled into an ally and turned around, came back and passed me again. My mind was back on the beef jerky I was about to make. While I continued to salivate and lollygag back to my dorm, out of the passenger side door, came a six foot ogre running straight at me. As he ran closer to me, he pulled out a black .45 from his waist and glued it to my hip. Give me your wallet. This wasnt happening. I did nothing other then look at his mouth quiver with anger as if we knew each other from a past life. Give us your wallet or we will shoot you. I froze. I burrowed my hands deep into my pockets hoping to pull out a bomb, but fished out my wallet instead. What else could I have done? $40 dollars and my COSTCO card was not worth my life.

French toast, oatmeal, toast, strawberries, and kiwi. Tastes just as good coming up then going down. The warm putrid feeling that rose up my throatthe acid tasteand the burning sensation makes me feel at ease with myself. People who suffer from PTSD feel alone, guilty, shameful of themselves; and do not have a healthy way of taming their emotions. In fact, they might actually find serenity in self-destructing actssuch as anorexia and bulimia nervosa. In order to establish a sense of control over my body and life, I started to purge. I felt that having complete control over my mind and body, would make seem okay again. My therapist, Danielle Stern said, XXX, controlling what you throw up doesnt really mean youre in control. When restricting food intake, it does not do much to overcome your traumatic event, your disorder will only get worse, and harder to treat. For those who have experienced childhood sexual traumas, are at a higher risk of PTSD. Based on the American Psychiatric Association (1994), the diagnostic criteria for Post

Traumatic Stress incites fear, and a feeling of hopelessness. Survivors are more likely to suffer from depression, suicide, and eating disorders. Survivors of such traumatic events, have also shown to be a greater risk of problem with alcohol use and eating disorders. (Galaif, Stein, Newcomb, & Bernstein, 2001)

After watching a documentary on Netflix called Just Eat, I found that there is a correlation between childhood trauma and how it effects symptoms of patients with physiological disorder such as Schizophrenia. Many of these case studies, find that there is a tremendous link between patients who have been diagnosed with an eating disorder and also having some kind of childhood trauma affecting the symptoms of some patients. People with established eating disorders often are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder without realizing what the origin is. Victims of PTSD have a feeling of being dead inside, having chronic anxiety, or flashback to the abuse.

Regardless of what youve seen on Mean Girls , eating disorders should no longer be an area where we tread lightly. Multiple studies have shown that out of the people who both have PTSD and an eating disorder reveals that their PTSD came first. In the International Journal of Eating Disorders, it stated that 66% of men and 40% of women suffering from bulimia were also suffering from PTSD. However, the price of having an eating disorder is quite costly and the most important thing to recognize is that these disorders are real and require treatment immediately before my self-destructing habits like cutting or suicidal thoughts occur.

Bulimia is like this monster that half ass grabs you by the neck, that skulks in the deepest crevasse of your brain. Like a pit viper luring in its prey by blending into its surrounding, waiting for the perfect moment to feed, bulimia starts to slowly take over you brain, leaving you on autopilot, but responsible for crashing.

Eating disorders do not discriminate. The stigma that surrounds eating disorders revolves around the idea of being a white girls disease, control freaks, and weak. Eating disorders, are overly sensationalized by the media and celebrities. Saturday Night Live sketches taunts celebrities with eating disorders by making them the butt of a punch line. Even though its involuntary to make fun of Lindsey Lohan, SNL has made her and eating disorders a joke rather than an on going American epidemic. Lindsey Lohan has donated a shit load of her own personal wardrobe to starving people in Africa. Too bad they have to drop a whole new wardrobe size to fit in. Howard Stern has played games like Guess the Bulimic on his radio show. Just imagine being isolated in a chamber. You can leave at anytime. You see your friends and family encouraging you to unshackle the chains and to escape. However, there is a chain in your back, and every time you think or move, it lacerates your back. Restricted from freedom. The chains holding you back is PTSD. Eating disorders is one of the most misunderstood illness in America, simply just a punch line. But how many times have you said, Wow, I wouldnt mind a little bulimia! Eating disorders are not a sign of a unhealthy relationship with food, rather an underlying problem in ones life PTSD.

If you think LSD is just a drug that Hippies took in the 70s, or good for nothing except getting high and tripping out to the point you see purple elephants youre wrong. LSD, ecstasy, and even those magic mushrooms that Mario consumes could actually be used to eliminate anxiety, addiction, and even PTSD. While there are more than twenty-five million military veterans, who suffer from PTSD, there is hope. There has been a new break through of psychedelic therapy which has dramatically alleviated the terrible symptoms of post war. Tom Shroder, writer of Acid Test: LSD, Ecstasy, and the Power to Heal, focuses on the use of potential benefits that LSD could have on these veterans. In Acid Test, Shroder wrote a story about a man Nicholas Blackston, a Marine soldier who suffered from hallucinations and panic attacks upon his return from war. Blackston, went under psychedelic treatments to end those suffering nightmare hallucinations. Even though I am not going to start tripping anytime soon to get rid of my PTSD, it could be a great place to start with the right supervision.