A HUNGRY AND HURTING: EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL ABUSE (PSYCHIC VIOLENCE AND PHYSICAL VIOLATIONS)

The term "eating problem," while it is better than "eating disorder," is still a misnomer. In fact, women's changed eating patterns more often begin as solutions to problems than as problems themselves. Their narratives also illuminate ways trauma can be inflicted. While many women link eating problems to physical intrusions, others relate them to the psychic invasions of heterosexism, poverty, the stress of acculturation, racism, and emotional abuse. A combination of physical and psychic assaults leaves many women vulnerable to bingeing, purging, and dieting.

Psychic abuse is sometimes more difficult to identify than physical assault, yet the effects can be as devastating to one's sense of self. It is easy for a woman to deny or to minimize the damage done by psychic abuse —or by physical assaults that leave marks. Many rationalize that "someone else's pain is far worse than mine," forsaking their right to express or identify pain. Both separating and ranking psychic and physical violence trivialize the consequences of trauma.

An integrated view of trauma rests on recognizing how psychic and physical violence are often intertwined. The Puerto Rican activist and psychologist Elba Crespo writes:

The violence of racism need not be a direct physical attack. For example, consider the young man who walks around in a tee-shirt with the printed message "Speak English or Die." The message is clear: If you dare to be different you deserve to be the victim of violence. This threat of violence, and its potential effect of keeping people of color quiet, is not different from the fear and powerlessness experienced by women who have been victimized by verbal abuse. The threat of physical injury and/or death is a powerful tool of repression and control.

An expansive perspective rejects false dichotomies between psychic and physical violence. Crespo explains:

If we are to be successful, we must recognize how the entire experience of violence fits into the life experiences of women of color, and not just violence in [their homes]. . . . For example, let's assume that a woman has decided to leave [her] abuser. She is poor, African-American and has three children. While the violence . . . may have ended, she must still deal with discrimination in her search for housing and employment, in fighting the stereotypes of the single black mother and other forms of discrimination. She will still experience racism. Consider the parallels to the work that we do to address physical and emotional violence. If the batterer's physical abuse has ceased but the verbal and emotional abuse continues, we would not consider that a woman has escaped violence in her life. Why then would we assume that if a woman of color ends the physical violence in her home that she has ended violence in her life?

Finally, recognizing both psychic and physical assaults helps avoid the historical tendency to identify the body and the mind as somehow disconnected entities. A violation of emotional or intellectual capacities is felt in the body, and the response to it is also experienced in a bodily way. Similarly, a woman who is physically abused uses her mind to protect herself. The link between the body and the mind is also evident in the close relationship between a woman's psychological and physical boundaries. Often, when a woman loses an accurate sense of her body size and shape, this indicates that her psychological boundaries have been compromised as well. The effectiveness of eating problems as coping devices lies in their versatility—in their ability to soothe the mind and the body simultaneously.

*31\241\2*