Eating Disorder Interview

Transcript:
Transcript based on the YouTube Video
“Jenette Mccurdy opens up about her
eating disorders.”
Age: 28 years
Jenette:
I was eleven, my err my mum actually had a
history with err eating disorders, she had
been hospitalised for anorexia a few times
and she had introduced me to anorexia err
errmm (starts shaking her head) because she
thought it would help me ermm (hand
gestures) play younger roles for acting
(nods.)
She thought if I stayed smaller it would be
effective.
And it was. (laughs)
I was 21 when the bulimia started, yeah.
It was just steamed vegetable she wouldn’t
eat anything else for dinner.
Err so, yeah, I learned that’s, that’s normal,
that’s what I saw as normal.
Err in, in eating disorder land, your never
ermm (lip smack) you're never aiming for
bulimia, like the ideal, there’s a higher Archy
(hand gestures) to eating disorders and your
like, (hand gestures) you, want, to have,
anorexia, if you have an eating disorder, if
you have bulimia, you basically failed at
anorexia.
Like that just the like you tried to not eat,
you couldn’t not eat so then you ate, then
you threw up what you ate, you failed at
anorexia, you landed at bulimia, is Kinda
how it goes. (Slight laugh)
It’s this very kind of unspoken rule I feel like
in young Hollywood of you know if you’re at
a Teen Vogue party and they’re passing
around hor d’oeuvres and you’re in the
middle of a conversation and you go to grab
an hor d’oeuvres it’s like you’ll get the side
eye from another person like, oh my, you’re
taking a crostini like this is insane.
It’s just this very, you can feel the pressure
of it, you can feel everybody kind of body
monitoring, food monitoring everybody else
in the room, it’s just such a part of the
business I think.
What I realised during recovery was that my
eating disorder and my addiction to it had
really been covering up all of the (pause)
uncomfortable feelings underneath it.
I was confronted with all those feelings that
I’d been bottling up and supressing and
shoving down for so long and that was so
difficult.
I’d been burying them for 13 years and I
never imagined that not throwing up would
(ermm). It relieved my anxiety so much that
not throwing up would leave me in a foetal
position on the floor sobbing, it was that
emotional to me, that this was just covering
up all this shit.
It was that level of emotional intensity, the
foetal position sobbing for at least a year.
I have, I had such a complex relationship
with my mum I think all of us do (laugh)
When I sympathise with her most it’s when I
realised that she was just desperate for me
to have a better life than she had, it’s really
the bottom line, she wanted me to be
successful and well liked and what have you.
Ermm... Her means of doing that was, were
desperate and detrimental to her parenting
and my well-being but on some level, I know
that she wanted me to do well.