'I feel fat when I feel fat': affective forces of trauma in anorexia and bulimia

Eating disorders (EDs) such as anorexia and bulimia continue to be persistent problems and their treatment fraught. As others have identified, these issues are in part due to the continued overemphasis on the health effects of EDs instead of the experiences of them and the purposes they serve. In this article, I argue that attention to the affective forces that engender and maintain anorexia and bulimia provide insight into how these forces shape experiences and sensations of embodiment, as well as how ED practices function as responses to trauma. I use the Mobius Strip as a model for a body topology to illuminate how the psychic and material bodies are imbricated, informing how anorexia and bulimia work to secure bodily boundaries while actually inciting further psychic and physical harm. This article is based on 19 semi-structured interviews with 11 women struggling with and/or in recovery from anorexia and/or bulimia. My study found that the majority of subjects' anorexia and bulimia are rooted in negative affects (i.e., shame, fear, and disgust). These findings suggest that anorexia and bulimia are bodily constitutions in which spatial relations produce an intense vulnerability and sense of abjection, which in turn alters the body-space that ED practices work to stabilize and protect. Within geography, an attention to EDs can further elucidate the material, affective, psychic and historical forces that impress the vulnerable and fluctuating experiences of embodiment.