Early Damage

If we use food in the progression of self harming then we have been damaged somewhere in our childhood and may be continuing to do what was done, either in the same way or as a substitute for love.

'Attachment is a reciprocal system of behaviors between an infant and ... mother. The term reciprocal is apt because not only does attachment affect the child's behavior, but also affects the responses of the mother, who emits care-giving responses in the presence of signals from the infant' - John Bowlby

As a child, mealtimes for me were erratic and very much dependant upon my mother's return home from work. She worked in a canteen and brought food home with her in a shopping bag. It was food she had taken from the kitchen or saved from the meals she had cooked in the day. I used to be so hungry after school I would wait for her on the street corner. I would carry her bag the rest of the way home, feeling so much better once I was through the front door, especially when she started to heat up the food that arrived like Christmas presents each evening.

In retrospect, my mother didn't feel hungry because she worked with food all day, so she rarely considered how hungry we children were. Today I do associate meal times with contact and love and expressions of care. Food to a greater or lesser degree meant contact and the warmth of companionship.

Being in relationships for me means eating with my loved ones; entertaining was always about providing food for my guests. At one time, if they requested something I didn't have, I would have been mortified. As a child, food was always scarce until I reached twelve or thirteen. By this time we had moved to live over a café, and from then on there was an abundance of food, which became a substitute for attention. Today I struggle between not having enough or having too much.

• Think of how food was used in your home as a child?
• How are you influenced today by what happened back then?