Eating Disorders - fieldi

Young Adult Women 155
doomed, and alike. I do not assume anything! A college student once
came into my office and announced, “Today, I feel like an eating disorder.”
That’s when I feigned ignorance—I didn’t get it. I gently
teased from her exactly what those words meant to her on that particular
day. So the work began. As her description unfolded, so did
her feelings. Gradually I became smarter, and we both got to know
her better; then we began together to “get it.” We were connected.
In addition to my function as an individual psychotherapist at the
Wilkins Center, I also am a leader of three groups. Wilkins provides
psychotherapy groups for adolescent girls, young women of college
through postgraduate school age, adult moms with eating disorders,
parent groups, and groups for women who suffer from compulsive
overeating. Female young adults comprise one of my groups, which
is the age group I have focused on in this writing. Most of the issues
and facets of the treatment process discussed above are elements that
appear on some level in the group setting. I see group therapy as a
springboard to individual treatment, and vice versa. Issues often
come up in one arena to be further explored in the other. The two
modalities dovetail to enrich or facilitate the overall treatment
process. Painful though it may be, the group offers young women
who suffer from eating disorders a place to explore their issues
among those who have found the same way of coping.
Group members learn to relate to one another as they may never
have dared before—always being encouraged to come out from
behind their masks, to cease changing colors, to be more and more
real, and to continue to try to find their truest and most comfortable
hue.
In addition to attempting the nearly impossible—that of being
real—individuals in a group setting can eventually begin to exchange
with peers painful, significant parts of their lives and emotions they
may never have discussed with anyone other than the individual
therapist. For today’s young women, these experiences include not
only the conflicts and pressures of the “Superwoman Syndrome,” as
described earlier, but also discussions around incidents of date rape
and sexual abuse, topics that until recently have been taboo. The
publicity surrounding these two subjects has encouraged women to
come forward and discuss secrets formerly kept buried. For women