Finding Myself: An Intimate Look at Culture, Identity, and Healing from an Eating Disorder

Trigger warning: This post delves into detailed discussions about eating disorders, including specific behaviors and symptoms. Please proceed with caution if these topics may be triggering for you.

Growing throughout life, gathering experiences, and gaining knowledge all shape the people we become. Studies had shown that events occurring in the early stages of life can significantly influence brain development and chemistry, thereby shaping our personalities and characteristics. Our circumstances, experiences, and culture give us individuality, morals, goals, and a sense of belonging with which we are able to flourish.

For me, it was my eating disorder that contributed to my development. While the Asian community is widely recognized for its strong sense of unity and its celebration of food as medicine, I found myself striving to conform to the 'skinny Asian' stereotype, which ultimately led to the development of an eating disorder.

As a 16-year-old, half-Chinese, half-German girl, my shift from the vibrant streets of Shanghai at age 8 reshaped my world. With my father's absence, a part of my cultural roots seemed to fade. I found myself in a world dominated by beer and pretzels, yet deep inside, there was a longing for the familiar embrace of dumplings and the warmth of red envelopes. My heart yearned for an identity I felt was drifting away, making me adopt certain looks to outwardly feel more “Asian”.

Little did I know, this search would leave me feeling detached from my body, my culture, and those I cared about. Emotions swelled within me like waves, ranging from sadness to anger. They found an outlet in food, which became a comfort in times of isolation and longing. The societal pressures, the changing phases of adolescence, academic stress, and the absence of my father contributed to an emotional weight that seemed unbearable at times and affected much of who I became and how I acted towards people.

After about a year of dietary restriction, my coping mechanism for anxiety,  how I viewed my body became intertwined with my emotions, and food had become both my friend and foe. Food started playing a dual role for me: a source of comfort and a battleground. But four months ago, I began a new chapter, learning to release past burdens and cherish the present. I realized that eating disorders and the battles we face internally often delve deeper than just our reflections in the mirror. I needed to learn to let go of the rope connecting me to my father, my seemingly perfect childhood, the Asian side of my family, and the need to belong.

As I learned much later, my eating disorder was so much more than the dissatisfaction I had with my body. I was so unhappy with my life that the bingeing and purging gave me relief, and the starving gave me pride. Other aspects of my life had been heavily affected by my desire to connect with my Asian roots. I developed incapacitating anxiety and OCD along with my eating disorder, often inducing me into paralyzing panic attacks as I worked myself to the bone, hoping to hold on to the ideal of the “intelligent Asian girl”. I was starving to grasp something that I felt was lost to me. Trying to connect and hold on to the many things I had lost, including my identity, instead of creating the one that reflects me as a grown person now, had almost killed me.

I am still struggling with food. Only last week did I begin to eat meals without tracking, and only two weeks ago did I use my first teaspoon of olive oil to cook my chicken. But nevertheless, I am so proud that I am able to make memories again with friends and family over the unification culture of food (something that I still feel brings me closer to Chinese practices with food), see the world around me without falling asleep, and embrace myself through any means possible because, at the end of the day, I am half Chinese and half German, and there is only one of me.

Your body does not define who you are. Your eating disorder does not define who you are. I am proud to be of Asian heritage, and it shines through my life with the language, its traditions, my blood, my values, and my aspirations. None of those things can and will ever be reflected in how I look.

What helped me profoundly was opening up to someone close to me. For me, this person was my boyfriend. From the start, no matter his confusion about what was going on in my head, he told me everything would be okay. He sat with me while I cried, while I ate, challenged different foods with me, persuaded me to go to therapy, and still makes sure I know that no matter how much food I needed to fully recover, and no matter how much different I look, that I will always be beautiful. He has embraced the health that I have gained in recovery every day. The reassurance that I am in fact enough, the combined strength he gave me to keep going and to do it together was the only thing I can think of that really could have pushed me to recover. He gave the disorder the name “Rexi” and often talked about “her” as if she were not a part of me, helping me recognize that people you tell, will not see you for your disorder. Thus, I no longer identify with my eating disorder. Other people will not understand what you are going through, but even if they don’t, their loving support can be incredibly helpful. Even though this secret is a scary one to tell, I promise that it will be harder alone.

Even when the journey gets hard - especially when it gets hard - I’m grateful for all of the beautiful things I was able to do again. For me, the thing that motivated me were going out to eat with friends, going out for dates with my boyfriend, running and feeling the air on my skin without watching the numbers on my watch, baking and enjoying Christmas cookies and hot chocolate with my family, devouring my birthday cake, getting through the day energized, and so many more memories I missed out on in the past 3 years. I was gaining my life back.

I know. Letting this go and changing the way you perceive yourself, compared to what you had wished to be for so long, is gut-wrenchingly difficult. It tears you apart until you must reinvent yourself with what you have. The only thing worse than an eating disorder is dying from the eating disorder as someone who you will never become. As a copy of the person you saw on an edited post. Because then I would neither have been Chinese, nor German, nor myself. This way, I can embrace all of me, which of course, includes the many many aspects of Asian culture other than that of body size. 

My eating disorder journey was not just a fight for body image - wanting to be liked, belong, loved, worthy, or enough. It was a journey of acceptance of exactly who I am. It was the finding of my identity, and the shaping of a person that is completely and indefinitely original, because my mirror no longer reflects how someone else looks. I am on a long and tedious road of recovery, but I have found myself, who I want to be, closer to myself and thus my Asian roots than ever before.