Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Susan Nolen-Hoeksema

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Eating, Drinking, Overthinking

Owl Books (NY)

Chapter One

For Jill, a thirty-year-old account executive at a large bank, there were two distinct parts to each week. When she was "on-duty," from Monday morning to Thursday night, she tightly controlled everything she ate and drank. Breakfast, if she ate it at all, was just a piece of toast with a bit of jam (no butter) and lots of black coffee. Lunch was always a small, pristine salad with no-cal dressing. Dinner was as sparse and low-fat as she could make it and still call it dinner-usually just a frozen diet entree. And alcohol never passed her lips while on-duty, no matter how muck she wanted it. Even if she went out with clients to a nice restaurant, she ordered sparkling water, adopting an air of casual self-righteousness about her abstinence from alcohol. By Thursday night, however, Jill's cravings for food and drink were powerful. The sense of control and superiority that she gained from avoiding food and alcohol all week were overcome by feelings of frustration, longing, and defeat. Why wasn't she more fulfilled in her job? Could she really handle the stresses of her position? When was she ever going to find a man she could really fall in love with? And why did she have to deprive herself all the time just to stay skinny and put in long hours at work? The second phase of Jill's week, when she was "off-duty," usually began slowly, on Thursday night. She'd come home from work, feeling tired but agitated, desperately wanting a drink. "Just one drink," she told herself "I deserve it the way this week has gone." She'd pour herself a glass of sauvignon blanc and sip it slowly while she sorted through mail and microwaved her dinner: "Oh damn," she'd say, when the first glass was drained. "I'm not ready to eat yet." Then she'd pour another glass, vowing that two was going to be her max, for sure. By the time dinner was ready and the second glass was empty, Jill was ravenous. And a diet entree out of the microwave was not what she wanted. She put the entree in the fridge and brought out the chips. "I need some starch to soak up this wine," she'd tell herself. Jill then took her chips, and another glass of wine, and flopped down on the couch to watch TV. It felt so good, such a relief to let go and do what her mind and her body seemed to want to do-eat and drink. Jill spent the rest of Thursday night snacking on junk food and leftovers and drinking more wine, until she collapsed into bed around midnight. Of course, she felt terrible the next morning. But Fridays were usually absent of meetings, so she could hole up in her office, popping Advil while kicking herself for her indulgences the night before. By Friday night, however, she was ready to party. It was the weekend, she was off-duty, and she wasn't going to waste a minute of it. From Friday's happy hour with workmates through a party on Saturday night, into Sunday's get-together with friends to watch football, Jill raged. She ate anything she wanted to-hamburgers and fries, fettuccine Alfredo, everything that she forbade herself while she was on-duty during the week. And she drank. Hard liquor, beer, wine, whatever was being served. Come Monday morning, Jill was back "on-duty," wracked with self-loathing and shame. Why did she do this to her body? She had to stop, she had to be better about controlling her eating and drinking. She felt dirty, defective, diseased.

Jill isn't diseased but she has entered a perilous zone where millions of women every year find themselves trapped. This toxic triangle is the intersection of three troubles that affect women at alarming rates: yo-yo eating, heavy drinking, and self-criticism and despair. Each of these afflictions does damage on its own. Binge eating and self-starvation ravage a woman's body, increasing her risk of a number of serious diseases. Heavy drinking can wreck a woman's relationships, her career, and her vital organs. Low self-esteem, sadness, and lethargy can stop us in our tracks, preventing us from claiming all that life can provide.

Millions of women play at the edges of depression, eating disorders, and alcohol abuse. They'll take a few steps into the realm of eating disorders, calling their self-deprivation a diet or throwing up a meal every now and then because it "didn't settle right" with them. They'll experiment with how much they can drink before they begin to slur their words. They'll allow themselves a day or two in bed, wallowing in angry thoughts about themselves and others, or just shutting down and not thinking about anything.

These little forays can be insidious. At first, we step over the line just a bit, and pull back relatively quickly. But we are lured to return. The symptoms can feel good-it's such a relief to let go and binge or give up and curl into a little ball. After a while, we find ourselves inside the danger zone for eating disorders, or alcohol abuse, or depression, only this time more often, and for longer. Our symptoms, which were once mild and occasional, have become moderate and more frequent.

More dangerous than either of these discrete realms, however, is their intersection-the toxic triangle. Depressive symptoms, crazy eating habits, and heavy drinking rarely happen independently. As many as 80 percent of women who are drawn into one of these afflictions find themselves crossing the line into at least one of the others. The vortex where all three intersect is a whirling mass of confusing and self-damaging actions and feelings. A woman stuck in the toxic triangle can shift from immobilizing sadness to strength gained from controlling her eating, to shame and frustration from losing that control, and then to the relief of anesthetizing herself through alcohol or binge eating. Her family members and friends may try to help, though the target for their interventions keeps shifting. One day she won't get out of bed, can't get to work, and her voice is pure misery. The next day she seems happier, but she might be drinking heavily. Later, she swears she's stopped drinking, but she's losing (or gaining) weight rapidly.

Why Don't We Recognize the Toxic Triangle?

Although the toxic triangle is both poisonous and prevalent in women's lives, it has been largely ignored both by the lay public and by mental health professionals. One reason is the expectation that mild or moderate symptoms of depression, eating disorders, or alcohol abuse are "typical" for women today, and not terribly dangerous.

We comfort ourselves by saying things like, "Sure I drink, but I'm not a heavy drinker," or "Every woman I know goes on and off diets all the time-I'm no different from them," or "I'm not happy with how my life is going, but I'm not depressed-depression is an illness that you have to take Prozac to get over."

A critically important finding in my own research and other recent studies is that moderate, or subclinical, forms of eating disorders, alcohol abuse, and depression are each in themselves highly toxic and dangerous. These subclinical symptoms chip away at a woman's physical and mental health, harm her...