Is anorexia a form of brainwashing?
I
have been interested for a long
time regarding what makes people
change their beliefs, mindset, and
attitudes towards things. I firmly
believe that most eating disorders
are caused by people’s wrong beliefs
and attitudes towards themselves and
others.
Once I was reading an article about
brainwashing. Brainwashing is any
effort aimed towards instilling in
the mind of one person different
beliefs and attitudes that
eventually make a person behave in a
certain way and believe in certain
things. Brainwashing was used a lot
by communists to spread the
mentality of communism. It was also
used on war prisoners in the Korean
war – when American soldiers after
being captured and kept in Chinese
camps sometimes ended up taking the
side of the communists and
considered themselves to be their
supporters.
Brainwashing occurs when people join cults or weird religious groups. These change people’s identity completely, just like anorexia changes people’s identity completely.
So, you see, brainwashing is something that can change your total identity. The media does it all the time too. And not just only the media things like the culture you live in can also brainwash you.
When I was reading this – I thought: How much is brainwashing relevant to developing anorexia! Anorexics really become the victims of brainwashing: their whole value systems and thought-patterns are changed in a matter of months after contracting anorexia.
American Psychiatrist Robert Jay
Lipton did a special research
project on what’s involved in
brainwashing. He came up with a list
of steps on brainwashing techniques:
1. Assault on identity
2. Guilt and shame
3. Self-betrayal
4. Breaking point
5. Leniency
6. Compulsion to confess
7. Channeling of guilt
8. Releasing of guilt
9. Progress and harmony
10. Final confession and rebirth
I believe anorexia goes through
similar stages? I think it really
does when you think about it. The
only difference is that when people
get brainwashed it is done
deliberately by someone else. In the
case of anorexia, people normally
perceive events in their life and
what happens to them and take it the
wrong way then they become prisoners
of their own thoughts and feelings.
I have analyzed the brainwashing
steps above in relation to eating
disorders and here is what I have
come up with:
1. Assault on identity: when anorexia begins after an emotional event or a number of events, the anorexic starts to think that they are not who they should be and who they want to be. The person is under constant self-identity attacks for days, weeks or months, to the point that she/he becomes exhausted, confused and disoriented. In this state, their beliefs seem less solid. They look around for a substitute for their identity.
2. Guilt and Shame: Constant
thoughts: “You are bad the way you
are.” They feel that their body is
disgusting, they feel ashamed of
their own body. When the development
of anorexia coincides with the time
of puberty - thoughts of being
ashamed of their own body is
associated with feelings of disgust
about sex and intimacy and this can
have dramatic consequences.
Associations of guilt and shame
about intimacy can end up being a
lifelong sentence for many sufferers
unless major neuroplastic changes
are instigated later in life.
Eating can be also associated with
guilt and this is a major reason why
anorexia turns into bulimia at later
stage of the disease for some
sufferers. People begin to feel a
general sense of shame, that
everything they do is wrong.
Many researchers have shown that
feelings of guilt are tightly
associated with the development of
eating disorders (especially bulimia
and binge eating).
3. Self-betrayal: This is when the anorexia starts to tell her/him: “Agree with me that you are bad”. And once the person is confused and drowning in guilt, these thoughts force them to withdraw from her/his family, friends and peers who are eating normally and enjoying their life. This betrayal of her/ his own trust in themselves and people close to them increases the shame and loss of identity that the person is already experiencing.
4.
Breaking point: The sufferer is
constantly asking her/himself: “Who
am I, where am I and what am I
supposed t
o
do?” At this point the person has
her/his identity in crisis,
experiencing deep shame and guilt.
Also, the person may undergo a
“nervous breakdown.” This may
involve uncontrollable sobbing, deep
depression and general
disorientation and withdrawal. Not
everyone has the same severity of
symptoms but lots of people do have
this exact reaction.
5.
Leniency: The Anorexia then tells
the sufferer:” Follow me - I can
help you.” Anorexics often believe
that their anorexia is
the
only way of life they can follow.
Performing anorexic behaviour – like
starving, purging which brings them
temporary relief of their feelings,
although short lived. But then it
demands more and more attention
until the person becomes 100%
consumed by their distorted anorexic
thoughts and feelings.
6.
Compulsion to confession: “I can
help myself.”
For the first time in the
brainwashing process, the anorexic
is faced with the contrast between
the guilt and pain of identity and
feelings of sudden relief and
leniency. The person may feel a
desire to talk to other people with
the same problems and
visit ‘thinspiration” sites. (Sites
that are set up by other sufferers
to try and justify their inability
to deal with their anorexia in the
real world). They may start sharing
their experiences about anorexia,
give each other advice on a best
diet, on tricks to induce vomiting,
make competitions about who has lost
the most weight etc. The sufferer
starts to confess that anorexia is
their life style.
7.
Channeling of guilt: This is why
you’re in pain.
After weeks or months of suffering,
confusion, breakdown and moments of
leniency, the person’s guilt has
lost all meaning – numbness replaces
it all. This creates something of a
blank slate that lets the anorexia
in deeper and deeper into the soul.
The anorexia attaches itself to the
person’s guilt and belief system
opposite what healthy people have.
For example, food is associated with
guilt and shame.
It is the stage when anorexics start to display bad tantrums when parents try to feed them or persuade them to eat and stop their abnormal behavior. They start to believe that anorexia is not an illness but it is a life style and associate their own self with the anorexia: they become one with the disease.
8.
Releasing of guilt: It’s not me;
it’s my beliefs.
With her/his full confessions, the
person has completed his/her
psychological rejection of their
former identity. The sufferer has
gradually giving up all their
previously enjoyable activities,
left their job or college quite
their university. All this is just
for the sake of practicing the life
style anorexia provides. People
start joining pro-anorexia groups,
forums, looking for
justification etc.
9.
Progress and harmony:” If you want,
you can choose good.” – say their
“thinspiration” friends.
These “Thinspiration” friends
introduce a new belief system as the
path to “good.” At this stage the
anorexia stops to hurt, offering the
sufferer physical comfort and mental
calm in conjunction with their new
belief system. People get a “team
spirit “attitude with their friends
who practice the same dangerous way
of living.
10.
Final confession and rebirth: Their
mind equals their Anorexia that
tells them:” I choose good.”
Good is the anorexia. The person
has no doubt in the righteousness of
her/his choice to be anorexic. At
this stage separating them self from
the anorexia seems impossible.
People continue practicing this
dangerous way of living. Thousands
of them die as a result of this
sooner than later. Some can live
longer but still eventually die from
severe complications or commit
suicide because of their starving
and the fact they can’t cope with
life and can’t evaluate things
logically.
This is how the anorexic mind gets
programmed (brainwashed) to be the
way they are suffering from severe
anorexia. Most eating disorder
sufferers go through similar stages
but often these stages happen
differently for each sufferer and it
is difficult to differentiate
between them.
The purpose of this article is to show you what the brainwashing process is all about and that what happens in cults and in prisoner of war camps is similar to what happens in people with anorexia.
Also I want to point out that the phenomenon of anorexia is mainly in the relatively young.
People in the past didn’t have anorexia to the same extend we have today. In the past single cases of anorexia was described only in people who starved themselves for religious purposes, cult purposes and the like. There were no anorexic cases reported of people striving to be thin for beauty sake or for prestige purposes.
This all points to anorexia being a modern disease: I believe caused by some beauty product advertisers and the media that promote beauty standards that are impossible to achieve by normal human beings. You can say that it is designed to make people buy more and more beauty and slimming products, making someone extremely rich, built on the suffering of many.
The solution to this problem is to teach young people and emphasise natural and internal beauty. To make young people strive for learning, studying and expanding their minds, not to strive for this unattainable look which some of the media and others portray as beautiful.
For many young people to reach for this unattainable level only brings suffering, hardship and death.
