The Negative Mind
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, I am not a psychologist, I am not a counselor. The best treatment is intensive therapy or a stay in an eating disorder clinic. If there are any contradictions between myself and a professional, side with the professional.
You can call her “Mia”, “Ana”, or you can call him “Bastard” or “Ugly”. Whatever you want to call it, there is inside of every bulimic or anorexic a sort of alter-ego, almost like a split personality. This is not to say that eating disordered people have multiple personality disorders, nor are they demon-possessed. All of us have a “Mia” or “Ana” inside of us. For the purpose of this guide, we’ll always call this evil entity “Ana” even though she might be “Mia” or might be envisioned as a male. This theory was coined by the world-renowned Peggy Claude-Pierre, owner of the wildly successful Montreux eating disorder clinic, in her book "The Secret Language of Eating Disorders" and where she called this entity “The Negative Mind.”
Ana is that voice inside of you that tells you that you’re stupid, that you’re unlovable, that you're fat, that you're ugly. We’ve all thought that before, and therefore we all have an Ana to varying degrees. But in a “normal” person, the “Actual Mind” -- or the reasonable and stable part of your mind, the essence of who you actually are -- refutes the claims of Ana. When you hear in your head that you are unlovable, almost instantly your “Actual Mind” says that this makes no sense because you have multiple people in your life who love you. But the eating disordered individual’s mind has been hijacked by Ana and she possesses more control over the thought pattern of the anorexic than the Actual Mind does. The acuteness of an individual’s disorder is based on how much of the Actual Mind has been defeated (I never became acute, which is why I was able to treat myself.) Ana’s goal is to brutally torture and kill the Actual Mind and the body that houses it.
The incredible malevolence of Ana is very hard for the average person to understand, but try if you can to imagine the most Satanic entity you can come up with, and that’s Ana. This is no overstatement. She is cunning, she is violent, she is cruel, she is sadistic, and she is manipulative. She has not an ounce of sympathy or love in her being, and you must never try to negotiate with her. Negotiation is always based upon the hope that the opponent has a shred of humanity. Ana does not.
Ana controls the show. She tells the anorexic that she does not deserve to eat, of course, but she also tells the anorexic many other things. She doesn’t deserve to sleep on her bed, she must sleep on the floor without a blanket. She must cut herself. She doesn’t deserve to shower, or she must scrub herself raw several times a day. She must push away friends and family members, because she doesn’t deserve the love and support that they provide. She has to count her steps as she goes down the street, otherwise something bad will happen to a family member. She has to do a ridiculous amount of jumping jacks. She has to cook for the family. The symptoms vary from person to person, and are based partially on the degree of illness.
You may wonder where all these horrible things that Ana says came from. I tend to think of her as an interactive audio tape of the negativity that the anorexic has absorbed over the course of her life, and a large chunk of it comes from sexual molestation and the spoken or implied messages that the anorexic heard surrounding that traumatic experience. Sometimes Ana is actually nothing but the internalized dialogue of the rapist or molester, repeating over and over and over. I found that my Mia was a hodgepodge of the man who molested me, the negative messages (spoken and implied) that I heard from family members surrounding that incident, and various nuggets of self-hate I gleaned from television, magazines, family, and junior high. As you can see, one of the insidious parts of this disease is that it builds itself up by plucking messages from the environment, which is why you have to give her a totally safe and positive environment for recovery.
It is important to separate, in your own mind and in hers, the difference between her disease and herself. She might see herself as a whole, but helping her to learn to distinguish between her actual mind and her negative mind will give her the ability to know who her enemy is. Now, you must never become angry at the anorexic. NEVER TRY TO USE TOUGH LOVE ON AN EATING DISORDERED PERSON. An eating disorder is not like a drug addiction, and your anger and closed doors is what Ana wants. She told your loved one to drive you away, to throw a tantrum, to cuss you out. Your anorexic didn’t want to do that. It was agonizing for her. But Ana told her that if she doesn’t, then something bad will happen to you. Or that the anorexic doesn’t deserve your help, that to allow you to continue to love and support her is to use and degrade you. Or Ana told her that if she didn’t, then she would be punished later for her insolence; Ana would keep her up all night with her chattering, or make her cut herself. (More on how to handle this in other sections.) Do not confuse Ana with your loved one, or you'll be fighting on the side of anorexia rather than for your loved one.
Return to Main Recovery Page
Return to Main Fat Acceptance Page
Email: ericaherron@hotmail.com