Bulimia Wasn't a Willpower Problem - It Was a Biology Problem

In this episode, Paige Gordon shares her personal journey with bulimia, treatment resistance, and how understanding the biology behind mental health conditions can lead to better treatment options. Her story highlights the importance of curiosity, compassion, and innovation in mental health care.

"I thought I was the problem."

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and guest background
02:17 Paige’s early experiences with bulimia
04:07 Treatment resistance and self-blame
05:27 The impact of medication on her recovery
06:56 Understanding the biology of eating disorders
07:32 The turning point: trying new treatments
13:26 Her upcoming memoir and its purpose
16:06 The need for more research and funding
17:02 Advice for those struggling with mental health
18:04 Connecting with Paige and closing remarks

“It's not a willpower thing, it's a biology thing.”

More Key Takeaways:
*Paige Gordon’s personal journey with bulimia
*Mental illnesses are complex and not solely a willpower issue
*The importance of curiosity and compassion in care
*The significance of personalized treatment approaches
*Biology plays a crucial role in treatment resistance
*Advocacy and awareness are essential for progress

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

I would say if you haven't found something that's helped you yet, like not to give up, because like I said, illnesses are really complicated. What helps one person might not help someone else. And science is always evolving. You might actually have the clues to like crack the code on what might actually be the next breakthrough for the next patient. And so not to give up and stay curious about how you're feeling and not have self-plame. You know, it's not a willpower thing, it's a biology thing. Biology trumps agency every time. Can't fight your biology. And so just give yourself some grace.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Paige, thank you so much for joining us here on a mental health break.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Big shout out to Audrey for putting it together. And everyone, welcome back to A Mental Health Break, the number one podcast to let you know that you are never alone. Thank you for keeping this show a top 5% global series via listen notes. And with today's guest, we're sure to keep growing because the impacts you'll make. We are brought to you today by Living Proof TBI Coaching at Living Proof TBI Coaching.com for all traumatic brain injury survivors, caregivers, family, and loved ones. You can book a free call there today, but back to Paige for more than 22 years. Paige Gordon cycled through therapies, treatment programs, and conventional approaches to bulimia yet continue to struggle in silence. In this candid conversation, Paige is ready to share what it means to live with a mental illness that doesn't respond to treatment as expected. She never gave up, right? The shame that often accompanies treatment resistance and why we need more curiosity and compassion in mental health care. And it gets even better. We have some books coming your way, her forthcoming memoir. So, Paige, I want to thank you so much for all you do for the mental health field. We're honored to have you. But I'm going to ask to please share your journey from wherever you feel comfortable.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Ah, thank you for that uh great intro. You really uh cue me up there. I was really sick for a long time. Before I started binging and purging when I was 18. I'm 44 now, and I've been in recovery for about four years. So there is hope recovery is possible. But before I had bulimia, I can take you back to when I was 11, where I first started binging, and I remember binging on a bag of Oreos, and I don't really know why I did it, but I did, and that cycle repeated uninterrupted until I was in high school and I got my driver's license. And like the most exciting thing about getting my driver's license to me was that I could go eat. In retrospect, that wasn't normal, but that's what's so tricky about mental illness is you don't really have a comparison point, right? All you have is your own brain and what you you're doing. And so you might have some clues that what you're doing is abnormal, but it's all you have is your own brain. And so I didn't totally know. But I quickly gained a lot of weight, which in and of itself isn't a problem. But for me, that was a symptom of my binge eating. Right. And uh binge eating disorder at that time in the 90s wasn't in the DSM. So I was a h I was ahead, ahead of the curve, and so no one knew what was wrong with me. And so unfortunately, I turned to bulimia. And at first, purging was a choice, and it was a a way to deal with this insatiable craving, this I guess what people are calling food noise now. But for me at the time, I didn't know what to call it. I just knew I had this constant food chatter obsession, mostly with alter-processed food, that I couldn't stop and I started purging. And that just lasted for 22 years. I knew right away I had a problem. I did have that self-awareness, and I checked myself into what I thought was going to be the best treatment for me. I I flew myself to John Hopkins and I checked myself into a residential treatment program and I was treatment resistant. I hate that word. I hate that word. It's a it gives a lot of shame for all the things that I tried, and I tried all the things that were out there. I never once questioned whether or not we just maybe didn't have a full understanding of my illness. I thought I was the problem. For the longest time, I thought that I had a discipline problem and that if I just tried harder and if I had more willpower that I could fix it. And what I've realized is I actually had a biology problem. And once I found a medication that worked for me four years ago, it really quieted my brain and then allowed my thoughts to change. I couldn't do one before the other. And so I kept on thinking that I was a failure and that I couldn't understand why nothing was working for me. And I took it personally and I just it was almost going to therapy for me almost had the opposite effect of being helpful because it just pushed me more into shame because I felt so misunderstood. I felt like what they were telling me my disease was didn't resonate for me. It was just sort of remarkable. And when I found recovery through taking a medication, and like I said, my brain quieted. That was the first time that I actually had a comparison point to be like, this is what a quiet brain is supposed to feel like. Like this is how normal people are walking around thinking and feeling about food and compulsion and addiction, like all the time. Like this is amazing. And that was taking a medication was the first time that I actually truly was like, oh, I have a mental illness, which is kind of wild. I mean, I knew I had bulimia, but still you're kind of like, oh, yeah, I just need to control it or whatever. But it was so profound the difference taking a medication for me of how much better I was showing up in my life that it was hard to deny. And that just opened up a lot of curiosity for me. Cause I was like, well, wait a minute. If this is how I feel on the medication, like what was so profoundly dysregulated in my brain, what did this do for me? And that opened up this whole line of curiosity and research and advocacy to truly, really try to understand this. Cause I realized that it's not that people are treatment resistant, it's that we don't necessarily have a full understanding of mental illness. Because the thing is, is like somebody can have the same diagnosis as me, but have a very different underlying driver. And so what a treatment that might work for one person might look very different for another person because the underlying drivers are so different. If you think of it kind of like cancer, we don't treat all cancer the same way. We treat it very differently depending on what type of cancer you have and that sort of thing. And we're just now starting to ask better questions, I think, on the underlying biology of eating disorders. Um, there's an inherent underfunding of eating disorders in particular. It's put us behind like 20 or 30 years and really understanding the biology of these diseases. And so that's just been a whole thing for me of learning.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Well, thank you for the courage to share your story, Chin. And congratulations again on how far you've come. Everyone, you are not alone. Be sure to stick around for the whole episode so you can find out how to get in touch with our amazing guests. And now thinking back, do you remember what that turning point was, or maybe that last straw where you said, okay, I finally need to go there? You mentioned and the courage taking medicine for the first time, your brain finally accepting it, right? A lot of us don't want to accept changes things. For anyone out there, maybe they're in your shoes, they're resonating so much. Can you walk us through that turning point a little more?

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Sure. So I have a stigmatized disease, as all mental illnesses are, but eating disorders, as they go, people tend to think that they're like a vanity thing or they're not real or you know, they're self-imposed or whatever. And I also actually take a really stigmatized treatment that's not well understood, which is why I've jumped into this research lane. So I want to be careful when I'm describing it. But I actually take a very low dose of a GLP medication. Super low dose. It's much lower than what you would ever take for weight loss. In fact, when I take the medication, I actually gained weight. And that just is what really opened up the questions. I we understand now more that a medication is doing something for the dopamine. I don't know if you're aware, but they're currently trialing it for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and they're trialing it for alcohol use disorder. But four years ago, no one really knew what was going on. But I had taken other medication. I had tried Prozac, and that didn't help me. And I was just listening to a podcast on listening to someone talking about a P medication. And what struck me is that what they were describing what it did to their brain. They weren't talking about weight loss. They were talking about the quietness that they felt around compulsions. And I was like, wait a minute. So it was really from a place from desperation where I had to like kind of go out on my own and try something that was out of the box. Because at that point I figured I couldn't hurt myself any more than I was. I was actively killing myself with my binging and purging. I was like, well, I can't possibly get worse. For me, it was a place of desperation. And within a couple weeks, my binging and purging completely disappeared. It quieted my brain. It was gone. It was gone. And that's what made me be like, wait a minute, like we're missing something super fundamental for not all, certainly not all, maybe not even most, but for a subset of patients that are truly treatment resistant, um, that keep failing, like it points to that we're missing something in the biology. And this medication having such a profound effect on me in a positive way was evidence of that. I told researchers before, I told my spouse, like my spouse didn't even know I had a mental illness and that I was bulimic. When this started happening to me, I was like, people need to scan my brain, they need to take my blood, we need to figure out like what's going on here so that it could potentially help other people.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Well, I really respect you know your mindset behind this. Hey, I want to help other people. This doesn't make sense to me, so it may not make sense to someone else out there. One of the many missions of this show, you are not alone. You may feel alone, but I promise, even me, getting hit by a drunk driver, having a traumatic brain injury. And unfortunately, I'm not the only person that's happened to, so there is community out there. You mentioned through her story, sometimes it takes some time, longer than we want. But I found in life that's the case in almost everything worthwhile. Getting to where you want to go isn't going to be easy. So thank you for sharing that. But before we dive into this book talk, which I'm super excited to show you some love here, everyone, be sure to add it to your Amazon pre-order list or queue wherever we're at. What are some things you began doing or even maybe still do to take care of your mental health? I always advocate for walks outside right after this call on the computer. My butts outside for a quick five, 10 minute walk. What are some things you do to stay mentally healthy?

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Well, I wrote.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

So when my eating I didn't want to ask that and make it sound like I was queuing it up, but I love that.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

So for me, when my brain went quiet, I had a lot more headspace because my eating disorder took up the majority of my free time. And so it was the first time I was actually able to sit down and process and try to make sense of my life because up until that point, the majority of my treatment was me actually trying to stop the behaviors is a little bit like, you know, addiction where you can't really get into the work until you stop the harmful behaviors. So that was the first step. And then after that, just having curiosity and really taking ownership of my lived experience and and jumping into the research scientific um funding lane is what's helped me own my experience. I to be honest with you, I had such a bad experience with treatment professionals for a long time. This concept of that, about like sort of the harm sometimes treatment can cause people, especially if you're treatment resistant. Um, I never felt like what they were telling me resonated with me, and I never once questioned it. I guess what my point is. Recently I've decided to go back into therapy. Um, but it took me a minute to get there. It's like I sort of stopped my behaviors, I wrote my book, I journaled, I figured it out, and then finally I just was like, okay, now I do need some more support, uh history of complex PTSD. And I was like, okay, now it's time for me to work on that. But it's with trepidation, to be honest with you. I have a very strong mistrust of just from my personal experience. Took me a long time to find someone that I wanted to listen to because you can have a really good therapist, but if you have one that is bad, it can do just as much harm and good.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

I love how you said that there. And everyone, therapy is one tool in our toolbar. I ask each guest what they like, what they have trouble with, because it is not A, for everyone, but B, it's not a one size fits all. And after my brain injury, I tried to find some therapy, and then it took a long time to find someone I liked, which was right before COVID. So I guess that's 1920. I was in St. Petersburg, Florida. It was about an hour away, but I I was okay with it. COVID came, he went private practice at like something ridiculous, 700 bucks an hour. Oh my gosh. Here comes this podcast, you know, shortly after a mental health break, born on January 5th, 2020, right before all of this happened. So this became like indirect therapy sessions, where like many entrepreneurs, insurance is one thing, but good insurance is a whole nother. So everyone, get creative, find ways to prioritize your mental health. If you want to start a podcast, that's awesome. But there are awesome ways to do it, like writing a book. And let's dive deeper into this book now. Title Expected Release Date.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yes. So the title is Searching for Full, How GLPs Change My Eating Disordered Life. And the release date is January 12th. So that title is one part obvious and one part not obvious. The obvious part is I was truly searching to feel full my entire life. I was constantly binging because I never could feel full. It turns out in my advocacy work, I've learned that I have a rare variant on my GLP pathway that is probably contributing to me not feeling satiated, which is probably why GLP medication helped me. I'm I'm doing more research on that. But besides that obvious part, for the majority of my life because of my mental illness, because I was sick, I always felt like I needed to fix myself. Right. And the way that that looked is I was performing. I felt like the person that I was wasn't gonna be good enough for anybody. If I told anyone how I actually was, they were gonna run away. And so I was like a fraud. And so, and I was constantly searching for validation through other people, love relationships, whatever. And so that title is also a nod to that, that I just never felt like I was enough. I was constantly searching for someone else to fill my call.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

And I think you're certainly not alone there, everyone. If this is resonating with you a little bit, please remember to share this episode with someone who could use the value you're hearing today. Of course, subscribe to stay current, or you may miss episodes like pages. And I love how you highlighted before I said I didn't want to jump to it, the therapy in writing. For me, I mean, I never thought I'd eventually ghostwrite books and things like that. It started with Left for Dead, which my first book, my longest book, but putting my story on pages was, you know, therapy in a different way. We talk about it, we read it, we write it. After the brain injury, I had to adapt several different learning modalities to retain the same amount of information. My brain didn't work the same. So with that, I love to hear things and then I read things, and I it all hits me a little bit different. So everyone, again, that's gonna be in January. We'll find out how to follow her in just a bit. But can we have maybe who is the target reader? I know you mentioned the title, so it may be obvious, but just in case I'm missing something, I want to make sure this book goes where it's supposed to.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

So, really, when I decided to write my memoir, the main motivation was that I learned that eating disorder research is just so underfunded and that pharma has abandoned us. Um, we only have two drugs that are approved for eating disorders and nothing for anorexia. They don't want to do trials on us. Historically, it's they don't want to do trials on mental health, period, because they're risky. But eating disorders in particular. And so the memoir really is targeted for lay people, probably, because someone that has an eating disorder is already gonna understand everything that I've been through. It's really to try to help people that don't understand it, understand what one version of it could look like. And I'm just one data point. I can't say that I'm explaining what Bleamy looks like for everybody, but it's really for those people and for lay people to really understand how underfunded the space is. And if we're gonna move the needle, it's gonna take private investment to really get it done.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

So that's all right. Well, we're putting that out there. If anyone's listening on who is in position to make this happen and this is a topic meaningful to you through a friend, a family member, or yourself, again, you're not alone. And now everybody's waiting for this contact info. If they want to know how to follow you, follow the book. But I always like to end the show where if you can give a piece of advice to someone who is tuning on or viewing on today that is really struggling, can't find a way just to see the sunlight and the rain, what can you provide them to help keep them going?

SPEAKER_01 17:30

I would say if you haven't found something that's helped you yet, like not to give up, because like I said, illnesses are really complicated. What helps one person might not help someone else. And science is always evolving. You might actually have the clues to like crack the code on what might actually be the next breakthrough for the next patient. And so not to give up and stay curious about how you're feeling and not have self-plame. You know, it's not a willpower thing, it's a biology thing. Biology trumps agency every time. Can't fight your biology. And so just give yourself some grace.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Well, thank you for that final message and for everything you brought to the show today, everyone. This has been a heck of an episode right here on a mental health break. Please remember to subscribe, stay current, leave a review, and above all, share this with someone that you know could use the value and the courage shared in today's episode. We're on all podcast platforms, all social media platforms, a mental healthbreak.com and page. Where can we find you? And of course, stay in the loop with this book.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

I have a website, page Gordonauthor.com. I have the same handle on Instagram. I'm very active on Instagram, so PageGordonAuthor, and then also on LinkedIn, Page Gordon, you can find me. I love hearing from people. You can fill out a form. I'll talk to anyone, anyone that will listen to me talk about this. I'll basically keep talking until you close the door on my face. I'm like that passionate about it.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Hey, I appreciate the openness to connect with everyone. Remember, this is a community here on a mental health break. We welcomed our newest member today, Paige. Be sure to go check out all she has to offer, her book, everything in between. My name is Vincent A. Lancy, and I want to thank you one more time for joining us here on a mental health break. And with that, we're signing off almost bay to bay, Florida to California. Paige, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Thank you.