Musicians and maladaptive coping- disordered eating
By Hattie Butterworth
I feel the need to preface this blog by saying, first, thank you for taking the time to read it and visit the site. It means so much to both of us.! Also that I wrote this blog post back in May of 2021. It has taken me until now to find the courage to post it! Things with food have only improved for me since then, and I feel grateful for new ways of coping with stress that don’t involve either restriction or self-destruction. I want to remind you that if you are suffering with food, no matter your body size, you are worthy of help right now. I know it can be hard to feel your problem is ‘bad enough’ or ‘worthy of support’ but it is. A link to our resource page on eating disorders is here if you need support.
I remember a darker period of my life when I was suffering a musical injury in my left arm in the lower sixth at Chetham’s School of Music. I felt lost, I felt low, but I mostly felt that I needed something new to focus on to take away from the pain, both physical and mental, of sustaining a playing injury. I turned to food control.
It started within the bizarre ‘gluten-free’ health-crazy world of 2015. I thought cutting out gluten would give me greater control over what I ate and giving me a sense of identity, as well as loosely trying to heal my IBS (irritable bowl syndrome) problems- or at least that was my excuse.
It got worse and worse as my injury refused to improve, and before I knew it I had cut out all carbohydrates completely and spent the summer following a rigid paleo diet. I was impossible to live with! I ate basically just meat, fish and vegetables for six weeks to regain control I had lost due to my injury. It was about losing weight, yes, but also about wanting something that the cello couldn’t give me- identity. A sense of purpose and something to work towards. I soon realised that I couldn’t sustain a carb-free life so made a 180 switch and became vegan overnight in the first month of upper sixth. I was a gluten-free vegan and somehow survived. It was my entire identity and control and I loved it. I didn’t find it at all ‘difficult’ because it was my way of coping with my injury and anxiety. I was good at following rules and plans and knew how to dedicate my life to it.
“ Musicians can be perfectionists by nature- we strive to take things further and further, even if they are destructive. Most of us were in complete denial, but the ‘not good enough’ undertones of our insecurities pervaded both musical and personal lives, stealing more and more joy and freedom in its wake.”
I wasn’t alone. The boarding school atmosphere became a problem for many of us. Many musicians developed destructive eating and exercise habits to take back some sort of control and to try and find identity. Many people found the gym to be a saving grace for positive reasons, but some of the well intentioned healthy eating and exercise habits turned sour. Musicians can be perfectionists by nature- we strive to take things further and further, even if they are destructive. Most of us were in complete denial, but the ‘not good enough’ undertones of our insecurities pervaded both musical and personal lives, stealing more and more joy and freedom in its wake.
Moving to London and music college and I quit veganism. It was a big step for me feeling better. My injury was healing, I was playing differently but my mental health got worse. I wasn’t focussing on food anymore, but on trying not to pass out with panic in the middle of London. My third year introduced disordered eating habits again. As my anxiety finally improved, I was hit with huge responsibility to put my energy into exercise and restriction. Because I couldn’t be the best cellist in college, I knew that my free time had to have another focus to try and improve my self-worth. I couldn’t allow myself to enjoy new found freedom from my anxiety disorder, I needed to return to the food/exercise focussed identity to feel in some way special.
I would panic about when and what I was going to eat, feeling so scared about losing control, then being hungry and binging. It felt like I was constantly walking a tightrope between resisting food and overeating. I spent a great deal of my time either running or at the gym and had a non-negotiable steps-per-day goal. Saying this, none of it appeared particularly dramatic, purely because I am a larger person. The pain within my mind and constant food obsession was invisible, the weight-loss appearing to be ‘healthy’. It still involved huge shame, secret binging, restriction and loss of my menstrual periods. I was constantly tired and hungry, but was being told I looked ‘so fit and healthy’.
It healed when I moved in with my sister and I couldn’t hide my weird food rules anymore. She taught me how to enjoy food and my body again and things got so much better. I wasn’t hit with huge food panic as often and wasn’t bothered anymore about the way my body looked. But then, at the start of the pandemic, my anxiety took another nose dive and my focus shifted again back to the debilitating intrusive thoughts. Emerging from this three months later and I looked different because anxiety had created horrendous nausea and loss of appetite. The food panic took over from the OCD panic again and I worried about maintaining this new body.
My cello life had taken a beating because of coronavirus and I doubted it all, whether it was my true passion and if I could do it to myself anymore. Luckily, I moved to a new place of work and retreat and worked on the issues with the cello and food. For me, anxiety recovery and letting go of my rigid cello schedule has actually tempted the more disordered food habits to appear and this is why I am talking about it now. It always emerges as the new focus, convinces me of meaning, attention and purpose that I don’t always see elsewhere. It helps me to feel a sense of accomplishment when my industry was frequently making me feel less than enough. It can appear after times of mental anguish and wants to replace the darkness with a more sinister and sneaky darkness, disguising itself as something positive, life-giving and motivating.
It’s difficult to open up about this because it is a coping mechanism. There’s still a large part of me in denial. It doesn’t like me admitting to it because part of me likes the apparent ‘safety’ it provides. It feels comforting when my life feels out of control. It is also hard to talk about because my struggles don’t feel very worthy. It has never made me look physically dramatically unwell or different. It is also one of quite a few mental issues that I have had to deal with in my early twenties, alongside OCD and panic disorder, and I fear being misunderstood or not believed. In light of the Guardian article speaking of Demi Lovato’s eating disorder, I wanted to share this. A 2017 study of 301 musicians found that 32% had experienced an eating disorder in their lifetime, and 19% were classed as having one at the time of the survey. This is far higher than the 1.9-5% of the British population who have suffered at some point in their lifetime. This says a great deal about how our goal-oriented minds can work against us.
“ A 2017 study of 301 musicians found that 32% had experienced an eating disorder in their lifetime, and 19% were classed as having one at the time of the survey. ”
A disordered relationship with food doesn’t have a look, a weight or any other factors to make it appear worthy. If it feels all-encompassing and debilitating, it deserves treatment, yet many avoid it for fear of not being taken seriously. Musicians love something that disguises itself as a challenge, we can feel pulled to look for other fulfilment when our career is suffering. Coping mechanisms are the ways we use to adapt to and deal with stress. It might be alcohol, drugs, self-harm or sex, as well as eating disorders, and it is sadly extremely common among those within the arts industries.
My story is one of many, some typical, some not typical. Many more people suffer with this than we realise and not all of them are ready to give up the control and comfort that eating disorders claim. Awareness, and giving people struggling with disordered eating spaces to be heard, is as vitally important as ever.
