What is Anorexia?
Within Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, sexual, social, and emotional anorexia may take a variety of forms. This document is intended for sexual, social, and emotional anorectics, that they may see themselves, and know they are not alone.
Possible Signs of Social, Emotional, or Sexual Anorexia:
• we may not have had sex or been in a close personal relationship in years
• we may be in partnerships but find it difficult to be emotionally close
• we may have many acquaintances but no one we’re really close to
• we may have close relations with only certain people, our children, say, but keep distance from anyone else
• we may feel overwhelmed in social settings
• we may feel incapacitated by shyness in relationships with others
• we may be emotionally invested in a relationship but remain sexually or socially unavailable
• we may have an overwhelming dread of making phone calls
• we may function well in the workplace where intimacy is not usually valued, but find we are distant with family or friends
There are many other varieties of anorectics, but whichever kind we are, all of us in some important way have distanced ourselves from experiencing love. Faced with getting our needs met, we are baffled because we can’t even name these needs. However, beneath the surface, anorexia consists of not doing something. Not trusting, not committing, not surrendering. Here, unlike picking up a drink or shooting up a drug, anorexia’s symptoms are obscure, and uneventful. We observe that we are engaged in a policy of dread of others and a strategy to keep them at bay. Whether our anorexia is social, sexual, or emotional, we awaken to the fact that we are not experiencing the giving and receiving of love that is so precious to human life.
Are You Anorectic?
Ten questions are provided here to help you decide if an anorexia group may be something for you.
1. Do you go for long periods without being involved in a sexual or romantic relationship?
2. Do you go without social activities for extended periods of time?
3. Although in a relationship, have you found that, for a long while, you have not experienced: romance? sexuality? intimacy? friendship?
4. Are you alone more than you want, but feel unable to change that?
5. At work do you have trouble developing relationships, talk only when absolutely necessary, or hide out in the work?
6. Do you avoid relationships with a certain gender?
7. Do you stay aloof when in groups?
8. Are you afraid of being noticed?
9. Does being in the presence of others exhaust you, even if you like them?
10. Do you habitually panic or push people away when they start getting too close?
Hope and Recovery
You are not alone. There are many who respond as you do and who feel as you do. Or who once felt that way. We have begun to do the work of recovery and change in Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. We endeavor to stop a pattern of sex and love anorexia and we work the Twelve Steps of S.L.A.A. We have found, no matter how different or alone we feel, that reaching out to others – to give help and to ask for it – helps us to recover from our anorexia.
Some S.L.A.A. meetings have a specific focus on anorexia. If there isn’t an anorectic meeting near you, you may want to start one. For more information about recovering from social, sexual, and emotional anorexia, including anorexia-focused meetings and literature, contact the Fellowship Wide Service Office of S.L.A.A, www.slaafws.org.
©2012 The Augustine Fellowship, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc. All rights reserved.
Excerpted from Anorexia: Sexual, Social, Emotional Pamphlet (Conference-Approved Literature)