Food as a Metaphor for Love

Vivian Hankin

Published in Open Exchange Magazine October-December, 1998


A metaphor carries over the meaning of one thing to another. Metaphors in psychotherapy are current life situations, feelings, or beliefs that feel somehow familiar but are causing you unwanted pain and difficulties. Because the metaphor originates during childhood to help you cope with unmanageable situations and feelings, it currently feels "real" instead of a mechanism to help you work through as an adult what you couldn't as a child. The metaphor is "carrying over" those feelings and beliefs from childhood into your adult life. The problem with the metaphor is that it is stuck in the past and has little to do with your current awareness, knowledge, abilities, and experience. By revealing, exploring, and understanding it (along with the early childhood experiences it represents), you will find doors opening to new opportunities for change you never dream possible. The process isn't always easy or pleasant, but it definitely is worthwhile. Here is an example of a woman who came to me struggling with bulimia, one of the more difficult metaphors to expose.

When I first started seeing Dana, she was in her early 30's, had completed a BA in Business Administration and had just transferred to the San Francisco Bay Area from the Midwest because of a job promotion. (Of course, "Dana" is not her real name, and her story could be that of many other men and women as well.) She was respected at work, was an accomplished amateur clarinet player, had many friends, and was quite attractive. She juggled the demands of her job, helping her friends whenever they needed her, and trying to find a romantic partner. With all this to offer, Dana had few positive things to say about herself. She felt her accomplishments had nothing to do with her and everything to do with luck. She believed that no matter how hard she tried, she could never do enough to be good enough and that the only way people would like her was if she took care of their needs and didn't ask them for anything for herself. She also believed she had to be "thin enough" to have people like her. Dana had been bulimic since her teens but it got worse after she left home. The bouts intensified when she knew she was feeling bad about herself but didn't know why. When she came to therapy, she felt she was losing control of it and of her life.

Like many of my clients, Dana didn't believe at first that bulimia had anything to do with how she was treated as a child or with the feelings she experienced back then. She was convinced that the problem was hers alone, that she was "bad" for not being able to stop her bingeing and purging, and she mostly just wanted to get rid of it. Over time, however, she began to see how the behaviors and feelings she was compulsively driven to by the bulimia were repeating how she was treated and felt as a young girl.

Dana grew up with three sisters and knew her role in the family was to be the "good girl." That meant taking care of her parents' needs, one of which was taking over as much responsibility in the family as possible. She cared for her sisters, fixed many of the meals, and did most of the housework. Her parents also talked to her as if she were an adult, about their own emotional problems, even asking her advice or wanting her sympathy. Being a "good girl" also meant doing well at school, which simply was expected of her. Her parents praised her only when they could take credit for her accomplishments.

Dana longed for approval, love and acceptance given to her directly for herself, but since it wasn't forthcoming, she believed she must not deserve it and that there was something wrong with her. Although Dana was constantly alert to any problems between her parents, or within the family and always tried to "make things right," the problems persisted. She ended up feeling ineffectual and undeserving. She had little sense of who she was outside the roles she played. In other words, without the roles, who was "Dana"? She felt an "endless, empty dark hole" inside her. She turned to food for relief.

Whenever she felt unworthy, unappreciated, out of control of a situation (especially an emotional one), or not seen for who she was and what she needed, she would experience a deep craving for food and would eat large quantities. The cravings would come after she called home to talk with her family, or when her boyfriend forgot to ask her how her day was, or when she tried to help out a friend who didn't seem to appreciate her efforts. At first Dana felt the food as nurturing, but soon she couldn't get enough. The unwanted but familiar feelings resulting from an "everyday" life event triggered the food cravings, which, in turn represented the love, acceptance, and approval she had longed for all her life. By eating large quantities of food, she was trying to fill the deep, dark hole inside of her that could never be filled. Instead of nurturing her, the food soon made her sick and she wanted to purge for relief. The purging represented her "carry over" feelings of not deserving positive emotional nurturing (which she had "given herself" in the guise of food). Thus she had to "give it back" by purging herself.

Each time Dana began the binge/purge cycle of feeling bad about herself and believing she would feel better afterwards, the cycle helped her turn away from the unsolvable original problems of her childhood and push down the painful feelings surrounding them. But it gave her a new set of problems and feelings to deal with: those of feeling the conflicts of her childhood, but they were being "carried" by the bulimia and she had no one to blame for "her eating disorder" except herself. And that, somehow, was easier to bear.

Dana worked hard in therapy. She courageously looked at the reality of her childhood experiences and recognized that her parents' failing marriage and inability to openly love and support her weren't her fault (or entirely theirs). She began to take her accomplishments, talents, and desires seriously. Friends who had liked her just because she did things for them were replaced by people who liked her for her and cared about her feelings, thoughts, and dreams. In time, she was able to recognize the metaphor triggers for what they were - "reminders of unresolved feelings" and could face them directly. To her surprise, she found she no longer wanted to compulsively eat, binge, or purge.

She also stopped obsessing about her weight and acknowledged her body as beautiful just the way it was. The door to her future was open.