Elisabeth Anna Muldowney and Jon Balzotti, English
Introduction
Narratives have the power to help people understand experiences that are foreign to them. But narratives focusing only on a single dimension of a story have the potential to cause harm, as many popular depictions of eating disorders demonstrate. Common eating disorder narratives often correctly acknowledge that mental health challenges occur in result-driven communities. The category “result-driven” refers to environments that associate value and success with physically measurable achievements or unrealistic aesthetics. Some of these communities include dance, sports, acting, and modeling. Recent research has suggested categorizing religious groups with communities that potentially contribute to eating disorders.1
Although society often associates eating disorders with these communities, the broader public is grossly ignorant about the significance and preventability of such disorders. In fact, many of the narratives in popular culture are limited and even destructive in how they portray pressures that aggravate mental health concerns and subsequent behaviors. These primarily behavior focused narratives can become triggers. Using the power of stories, this project aims to change how we talk about victims of eating disorders through a digital library of narratives, changing the previous focus on statistics and behaviors to a broader perspective of communities and emotions. These personal narratives will be available in a variety of formats—text, video, and audio.
Methodology
To collect these stories, I conducted interviews with individuals who struggled with eating disorders. This interview had three sections; each section focused on a particular time period in the participant’s life, and all sections posed reoccurring questions related to emotional themes like fear and hope. The first section focused on the individual’s childhood and adolescence. Questions in this section explored the individual’s life experiences in communities such as school, neighborhood, extra-curricular groups, family, and religion. The second section focused on emotions and events that contributed to the development and perpetuation of an eating disorder. The third and final section included questions about the individual’s current situation and mindset. Interviews ranged from 20-60 minutes, and I conducted them in person or via email or telephone. In addition to taking notes, I captured audio recordings of interviews whenever circumstances allowed. I am in the process of transcribing audio recordings and breaking the transcriptions into categories of themes (i.e. family) with subcategories (i.e. mother, father, etc.).
I used the following methods to recruit participants: contacted dance coaches, gymnastic coaches, therapists, relief society presidents, and acquaintances using digital platforms such as social media, forums, email, and phone, as well as personal visits. I formally interviewed 15 people and had an uncalculated number of informal conversations with psychology professionals and individuals who have struggled with their body image. Finally, as a way of grounding my interviews, analysis, and writing, I read eating disorder studies conducted during the past several decades and a variety of mental and physical health narratives.
Results
Reoccurring emotional themes revealed fear as a primary trigger, fear that revealed itself in diverse ways: fear of acceptance, fear of control, fear of failure, etc. Within the realms of fear, the individual’s relationship with his or her parents was a trigger—particularly the father daughter relationship—as was the individual’s perception of community expectations and its impact on his or her perception of self. Some individuals pointed out triggers in their religious community, but more often they claimed religion helped in their recovery. And beyond community, while many participants spoke of people who helped them recover, personal conviction and healing their relationship with themselves ultimately inspired change.
Discussion
While I engaged rudimentary methods of analysis in an effort to recognize emotional themes, the project is not meant to establish statistical significance (although interviews often correlated and provided anecdotal evidence to eating disorder research). Instead my methods of analysis focus on finding narratives that could be used to connect and clarify emotional themes. Result-driven communities did appear as themes, but the various communities overlapped so much that it became difficult to attribute eating disorders to a particular community. However, I found that themes of family were most prevalent and that the emotions associated with the community of family were at the core of how individuals interacted with result-driven communities. Thus I have decided to incorporate narratives that explore familial relationships in terms of community.
I am currently drafting a book, short stories and essays, and investigating audio visual narrative options. The shorter pieces are a part of the digital component, but I decided that a book would be the best way to provide an overarching narrative. These pieces are meant to be different but to work in harmony with each other. During the process of interviewing, I prepared a prototype2 of the archive. This prototype was a part of my presentation at the Keystone Digital Humanities Conference at the University of Pennsylvania in July 2015.
Conclusion
There are several limitations with the results thus far, not just in the number of participants, but also in my participant population. It has been incredibly difficult to locate willing participants. The most successful means of recruitment was word of mouth, so I am connected to most of the people I interviewed through personal or mutual acquaintance. Because most of my associates are connected to BYU, all contributors are or have been affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I would particularly like to continue exploring the roles religion may play in eating disorder narratives. To combat these limitations, I am currently reaching out to individuals associated with the University of Utah’s psychology department in hopes of diversifying my pool of participants. My next step will be reaching out to other religiously affiliated colleges and universities, like Brandeis University and Eastern Mennonite University.
I am certainly not where I had aimed to be by the end of the year; I have met many difficulties finding people willing either to share their stories or to direct me towards those who might. However, the project continues moving forward and has met with a lot of support, particularly at the Keystone Digital Humanities Conference. It appears that by concentrating on emotional challenges, the broader repercussions of those problems, and the healing process, these narratives could create a bridge of empathy and expose triggers that may lead to more advanced problems.
1Dianne Spangler and Adriane Queiroz, “Body of Faith: Religious influence on Body image and eating disorders,” The Hidden Faces of Eating Disorder and Body Images, ed. Justine J. Reel and Katherine A. Beals (Reston: Central Plains Book, 2009), 84.
2mentalhealthnarratives.com
Bibliography
Spangler, Dianne, and Adriane Queiroz. “Body of Faith: Religious influence on Body image and eating disorders.” The Hidden Faces of Eating Disorder and Body Images edited by Justine J. Reel and Katherine A. Beals, 83-102. Reston: Central Plains Book, 2009.