Mum's the Word

A singer came to see me about her bulimia. She binged/purged an average four times a day. She’d done it twice already that day.

She’ had an eating disorder for nine years, since she was 14, and had in that time received wall-to-wall therapy. This included 6 months at a well known and very expensive residential institution where she learned that she could escape by swapping the anorexia she went in with for bulimia.

As part of the case history I asked her about her parents. She started to tell on her mum, then caught herself and said that no, it wasn’t fair to blame everything on her mum. I said she was probably right but that in my clinical experience it seemed that about 70% of patients who visit my couch are put there, one way or another, directly or indirectly, deliberately or accidentally by their mums.

So she talked about her mum, and started to cry.

I gave her a tissue and she dabbed the tears away as they formed on her lower eye-lid.

I shut up and listened.

She kept talking, and let the tears fall and caught them on her cheek.

I stayed shut up and kept listening.

She kept talking, and let the tears fall and caught them on her jawbone.

I stayed shut up and kept listening.

She kept talking, and let the tears fall and didn’t try to catch them anymore.

In amongst it all she said she felt as if all her energy was spent maintaining her balance on this tightrope.

I asked what would happen if she fell of the tightrope. She said she didn’t know but thought she’d go mad, or die.

I asked her what was beneath the tightrope. She didn’t know and couldn’t look. I said “Wouldn’t it be a pity if it turned out the tightrope was two inches above a meadow?”

And then she said she felt as if she had this great big hole in her tummy.

Fearing that my tiny brain couldn’t cope with more than two great big metaphors (the tightrope and the hole) I wrapped the case history up and invited her to the couch.

“I know you’ve had constant therapy for the last nine years,” I said, “and I don’t want to drag you back through all that again, but just tell me one thing. What did they say about your tightrope and your hole?”

“Nothing,” she replied. “We never got there.”

I hypnotized her and during a 10 to zero countdown deepener I said she was drifting and floating – so, obviously not on a tightrope anymore. She started laughing out loud and I was no longer sure she was hypnotized. I don’t recall much of the rest of the session other than that I dealt with the hole by adding a w to the front of it.

When I woke her up she was elated (technical term = ‘post hypnotic euphoria). I asked her where she ended up after her float down and, guess what!. It was a meadow.

The following week she auditioned for and got a significant role in a West End musical (she hadn’t worked for two years). And she hasn’t purged in the last four years (as at May 2007).