I am excited about the release of Using Writing as a Therapy for Eating Disorders - The Diary Healer, because it resounds with the ‘voices’ of experience of seventy diarists from around the world in exploring the role and use of diary writing as a coping, survival and healing tool.
The story behind this book began in 1962, when I developed an eating disorder and began to keep a diary. I was eleven years’ old and did not understand why I was too afraid to eat, or why I could not sit still. My frustrated mother, unaware that my head was filled with bossy thoughts and compelling fear, criticized my behavior and compounded my guilt. I retreated and became withdrawn. Then, for Christmas that year, the gift of a diary provided a reprieve. I now had somewhere to offload and store the calorie numbers and food and exercise rules that were cluttering and dominating my mind. The pen and paper provided an external connection, a tangible recording tool. Until now, the eating disorder thoughts had been internalized but the diary offered a private place to externalize them as well; the mere act of writing the figures and words on the page allowed a sense of control and easing of anxiety, however brief. In this way the diary, like the eating disorder, became a coping mechanism for meeting the demands of daily life. Becoming what seemed an immediate, trusted friend, the first little book marked the start of a literary journey that, over the next 40-plus years, would chronicle the loss and recovery of my identity and self.
As a child and young woman, my diaries appeared as a haven in which to express and analyse thoughts, and develop coping strategies. But, unbeknown to me, confiding in the diary also was strengthening the eating disorder, its unrelenting and stringent demands becoming increasingly impossible to meet. Nothing I did was enough and the rules of the illness became secrets within secrets that had to be guarded and hidden from others. By age twenty-eight, my diary had recorded an almost complete disconnection of self from body.
When my healing journey began my psychiatrist, recognising that I was more at ease expressing myself in writing rather than speech, encouraged use of the diary and gradually, as trust developed, I began to draw on it in sharing true thoughts and feelings and challenging and confronting those of the eating disorder. The diary also provided a valuable tool for reflection and, with guidance from my treatment team, helped me to develop the ability and skills to live a full, rather than part, life. But did the healing journey have to be so long and tortuous? When I healed sufficiently to be free of the eating disorder I began to wonder about the influence of the diary in the reintegration of ‘true me’. Could the diary have provided a more pro-active role in healing? I wanted to find out. Writing a memoir [A Girl Called Tim, 2011] had helped to place the illness in the context of my life and to relate with others. Now I wanted to learn about and explain the pitfalls and benefits of diary writing and explore the ambivalent relationship with body and identity that could occur when experiencing an eating disorder.
Accordingly, the seventy diarists – who had responded to an invitation on my blog in early 2014 – embarked with me on a self-discovery path. Most of us had never met, but our mutual experiences of an eating disorder and diary writing enabled the immediate establishment of a firm foundation of trust.
Threads of the diarists’ first-person narrative are woven through twenty-five chapters sorted into two sections – Writing for Self, and Writing for Therapy. The first section reveals inside stories on choosing a diary, creating a friend, secrets, abuse, reflecting and connecting with self, learning about self through the stories of others, stigma, early illness signs and symptoms, recovery and how the diary helps in moving on. The second section looks at the diary as a connector and explores poetry, trust, relationships, forms of diary-keeping and sharing, behavioral health technology, creating a narrative for others, and being a participant in, and observer of, one’s own life. Along the way, health practitioners and researchers illuminate the text with literature-based explanations and insights. Another message the book relays is that, with guidance, the diary can be a useful tool in facilitating a connection with self, and addressing a person’s level of motivation and readiness for change in healing from an eating disorder.
If you do not already keep a diary, I am hopeful that the powerful messages in The Diary Healer will inspire you to start writing.
