On the Bodies that Trap Us

A conversation I had with a friend recently inspired me to research whether or not there is any correlation between physical disability and eating disorders or what psychologists call "eating-disordered thought-processes." Eating-disordered thought-processes are the, often illogical chains of thoughts that people who consider or begin  starving,binge-eating and purging, or binge-eating OR purging, have concerning food. One can have these without engaging in behaviors typical of bulimia or anorexia.  Because of my minor in psychology, I have started a lot of papers that I could not complete because there wasn't enough scholarly research on which to write six to ten pages. This definitely would have been one of those papers , had even two pages been the length requirement. It seems virtually no official  studies have been done regarding the likelihood of someone with a physical disability developing an eating disorder or having eating-disordered inclinations, other than the obvious. We are more prone to obesity,which is an eating disorder, because of our sedentary lifestyles .

This really surprises me. I have spent most of my teenage and adult life as part of the blogosphere. Many of the blogs/online diaries/community posting have been written by disabled people; almost all of those writers (myself surely included) have discussed hatred of their own body or appearance at least once.The closest I came to legitimate research  on this was a sentence in a scientific journal that said "Most people living with ongoing physical challenges report feeling trapped in their own bodies." Then I realized  scientists don't peruse online-communities looking for topics to study... duh. Maybe we're such a small minority that society does not believe we could be a significant fraction of another minority, those with eating disorders.

Beyond that,  maybe individuals with disabilities and body-images issues have a hard time acknowledging that one has anything to with the other. We are constantly told by loved ones not to let our challenges affect things they don't have to.  Who we see in the mirror definitely falls under that umbrella. Maybe, it's really scary to think that we don't hate our bodies because they're ugly, we don't hate our bodies because they're too big, and we don't hate our bodies because we wish we were thinner. Maybe, we hate our bodies because they limit us, and at times that hatred manifests itself outwardly .  I started the last several sentences with the word "maybe" because as I said, I have nothing except my own inklings to support those statements. I wish some extremely educated person would research and publish about this  It would help a lot of people who are struggling to understand why they cannot see the beautiful girl her friends see. To all of my disabled readers: You're not alone in occasionally detesting the body that traps you .