Approach

Dr. Anita Johnston answers questions about disordered eating.

The singular preoccupation with dieting and weight that obsesses millions of American women has created an endless spate of nutrition, diet, and exercise books. Yet women continue to struggle with anorexia, bulimia and compulsive eating. Are American women doomed to continue a fruitless search for an end to their eating problems?

Not if they are willing to redefine and rechannel their search, says clinical psychologist Anita Johnston. Dr. Johnston, who specializes in women's issues and eating disorders, helps women understand and discard their destructive eating habits by a process that is as old as the spoken word: the use of storytelling as a means of enlightenment.

In Eating in the Light of the Moon, Dr. Johnston uses storytelling to encourage women to unearth and reconnect with the root issues that have triggered their compulsions. As she examines such core concerns as women's self-image, the social roles they’ve assumed, and their relationships with family members and lovers, Johnston turns to a wide array of ancient myths folk tales and legends to illuminate behavioral paradigms.

"Storytellers speak in the language of myth and metaphor," Johnston explains. "They tell us a truth that is not literal, but symbolic. If we hear the stories with only our outer ear, they can seem absurd and untrue, but when listened to with our inner ear, they convey an inner truth that can be understood on a very personal level and absorbed. In this way, they help us connect with our inner world, our inner mythic reality."

The mythic reality Johnston applies is one that connects women to the natural rhythms and cycles of the earth, one that celebrates the power of women’s intuitive wisdom – a formidable gift that contemporary women often conceal or suppress (like the natural roundness of their bodies) in order to fit into society's emphasis on the linear, rational, logical mind. Drawing on case studies of women in the throes of self-imposed starvation or binge eating (which, she notes, are symptoms of spiritual and emotional hunger), she weaves into these studies tales and stories that contain metaphors about the feminine spirit – an essential part of the female psyche these women have displaced in order to conform to what they perceive as societal standards. As these women become attuned to the metaphoric threads in the stories they are presented as well as the metaphoric cords that bind them to their unhealthy relationship with food, they can begin to move toward a recovery of the feminine self that no longer finds its expression – or suppression – through eating.

Just as stories and legends can provide clues to a woman's emotional hunger, so too can dreams provide clues to the way in which food, fat and eating serve as metaphors for a deeper hunger. Eschewing the Freudian notion of dreams, Johnston discusses the value of dreams, how to interpret them and how to remember them. She also emphasizes the importance of learning assertiveness techniques as a way of exploring and communicating feelings that otherwise might lead to compulsive eating. She cautions that this skill, like any other, takes practice, but that it is essential in expressing the essence of who we really are.

"The women on the road to recovery from disordered eating began with a journey that required them to follow a twisting, turning, winding path to their centers," Johnston writes of the women she has helped. “It required them to leave behind old perceptions of themselves that they had adopted from others and to reclaim their own inner authorities. They had to listen to the voice from within to give them guidance and support as they searched for their true thoughts, feelings, and desires." In doing so, she adds, "they found themselves letting go of all expectations of linear progress, disengaging the rational mind, and embracing the power of their emotions and intuitions."

Johnston notes that "often people struggling with disordered eating dream of a magical solution or some instant resolution." There are no magical solutions in Eating in the Light of the Moon. There are, however, the means for women to find true nourishment.