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From:	Ruth (ac5-webproxy52.direcpc.com)
Subject:	Re: Chew/spit
Date:	March 25, 2006 at 6:31 am PST

In Reply to: Chew/spit posted by Sarah on March 7, 2006 at 3:57 pm:

I thought this article might be insightful to you - it was to me on many levels
(If you wnat it in it's entirety, email me)

Food for Thought: Eating Disorders Awareness
“Listening to the Heart”
Randy Hardmann

The following is a transcript is a presentation given at Brigham Young University on February 25, 2004.

I’d like to talk today about listening to the heart and the idea that listening to the heart is crucial in the recovery for anyone suffering with anorexia or bulimia. One of the sad consequences for women who suffer with anorexia and bulimia is that through the course and development of the eating disorder, they often lose touch with what is most powerful within themselves. They become numb or lose contact with their sense of heart.

It has struck me repeatedly in my observations of artwork created in the early weeks of a patient’s treatment in which they outline and then trace their body and then fill in their body with images and drawings and paintings, that the majority of their artistic self-expressions show a broken heart. These are hearts with holes in them, hearts bound in chains, imprisoned in bars, torn apart, covered in black, darkened, pierced, broken off, hearts damaged, very small or nearly invisible. These artistic expressions communicate that within the painful experiences and consequences of anorexia and bulimia these women have often lost the ability to connect with their hearts in a positive way.

What is the impact of a broken heart? As an eating disorder worsens, the ability to even recognize the impressions and intuitions of the heart are lost in the internal conflict, negative thoughts and turmoil these clients experience within themselves. The consequences of this inner confusion is that they do not trust themselves, others, and they do not trust themselves to have valid impressions, desires or intuitions that would help them correct the negative choices and decisions that they are making. In addition to the avoidance of their emotions, the need to be in absolute control of their environment becomes a substitute for listening to the heart. The heart just feels too far away and the impressions feel too vague to trust.

In listening to clients who I work with who are in the depths of despair and the inner conflict associated with depression, anorexia and bulimia, it becomes apparent that they associate anything to do with their heart as emotionally painful; therefore their sense of themselves is painful. When most of us think about the heart we think of it in positive terms and in positive ways. But for those who suffer with eating disorders, the heart is always filled with pain and failure. Therefore, they lose the ability to recognize the heartfelt desires in their lives because they are either trying to control and monitor everything through their mind or they have numbed or detached themselves from anything emotional. Any emotional pain can be interpreted to mean that the very core of who they are—their hearts—are damaged, bad and unacceptable.

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