Journal December 2025 Release - Flipbook - Page 20
18
regimes. She struggled with short-term memory loss after the electroconvulsive
therapies. Joanna distrusted the nursing staff who told her she was paranoid and
psychotic, earning her higher dosages of psychotropics. Joanna said she was “fat
and ugly” and wished she could take a blade and slice off the excess mass. She
vomited after meals and stole food to keep in her room under her bed. She had to
eat under supervision, which only served to strengthen her distrust in the nursing
staff. Gradually Joanna would recover sufficiently and be discharged from the
clinic, vacating a bed for yet another woman struggling with her own difficulties.
However, the minute everyone relaxed and breathed a sigh of relief, there was
another profoundly serious incident of overdose and cutting. The last time this
happened, Joanna was home alone with her children, and her ten-year-old
daughter called me on the telephone desperately crying for help.
It looked like a crime scene when I arrived. Mercifully the emergency services
arrived before I did.
I felt I had missed something important. I refused to continue this game of
naming the problem, deconstructing its strategies, starting a process of
reconstruction in good faith only to have hope cut off in a moment with a cheap
Minora blade. I was fed-up with the situation. Although I was uncertain about the
solution, Michael White and David Epston possessed significant expertise in
addressing such complex issues. We needed help or Joanna might not survive.
Something had to change!
December 2nd, 2000, and as the annual holidays approached, I submitted an
email letter to the Anti-Anorexia/Bulimia League, addressed to David Epston. I
summarized our experiences, my attempts at helping her, and the cyclical nature
of the destruction she was living.
When I opened my computer again, I was so surprised to receive an email from
David Epston. It was December 4th, 2000. He said the Anti-anorexia/Bulimia
League existed in boxes in his office, ready to be placed on the website. (At that
time, David was planning on sharing stories on his website under an Archive of
Anti-Anorexia/Bulimia, giving anyone who needed to read these stories free
access.) The only other possibility that we had was for me and Joanna to be
An Apprenticeship in Extremis
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, December 2025 Release, p. 5-44.
www.journalnft.com
