For some reason we have been processing after meals a lot more recently. Its a basic exercise that really just involves the group of us sitting around the large dining room tables for a chat. After loading our more or less empty trays back into the trolley to be taken downstairs we kill the radio that livens up our mealtimes and settle back into our seats.

With this being an eating disorder treatment center it goes without saying that there will inevitably be some issues surrounding meals. In processing generally someone starts the group off, lately this job has fallen to Elle, and from there we go around the circle and discuss anything from the dining experience that might have been difficult for us. Usually any staff with us at that point remains pretty quiet and we do our best to offer each other support for our various issues.

Just because I have been tacking each meal with an ease and acceptance thats surprising even to me doesn’t mean that everyone else has such a relaxed time with it. Different meals have different components that create different amounts of anxiety in different people. For some of us its been so long since we have eaten in a natural social setting that we aren’t even sure what a “normal” way to eat certain things might be. Questions, like weather or not you would use a fork to eat a brownie and how many pieces one would usually cut a hamburger into before picking each one up and biting in, do come up. These quarries may seem silly to someone looking on but, to my peers, they are legitimate and the search for the answers is real. We just want to get back to a societal normality because our versions of table manner are so bizarrely skewed.

Elle, for instance, has problems touching her things. The idea of something being a finger food is not a concept that is easy for her to accept. Once she touches a food she gets the feeling that its crumbs, oil, or other remnants are all over her face and hands. In the beginning she wouldn’t pick up any of her meal with her hands. Now, after some time and a lot of encouragement, she still cuts things up a bit more than other people but she will pick up the pieces to eat. She has also been doing a great job fighting the urge to wash her hands of the imaginary debris the food has left after each bite.

Another one of the girls, Carrina, has issues with peanut butter. It’s a fear food of hers and she doesn’t want to be around it because it used to be the main thing she would binge on when she was back home. The other day she explained to some of us that, before she came to Columbia, she cleaned her room and dug up about a month’s accumulation of jar from its depth. She admitted that there were 26 cleaned out peanut butter jars that had been stashed in various spots. Here though she still has to face her fear. She doesn’t have to tackle the peanut butter issue everyday but she’s not allowed to avoid it either.

Other issues surrounding our meal table include things like cutting food into miniscule bites, putting salt on literally everything, the compulsion to eat things only in a certain order, or chew each bite a certain number of times. We are all trying though. Its hard but we are doing our best to overcome these things which can be so baffling to the average public.

Processing after meals helps all this and, although I don’t always have a whole lot to add myself and sometimes people say the same issues over and over, its good to help. As far as providing support goes we are a good little family. I’d be more than happy to have any of these girls on my side when and if I ever need that extra help.