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Meaning Of Jessica's Illness

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The societal roots and meanings of Jessica’s illness The meaning that Jessica gave to her illness inscribed itself in images of beauty and power that Western pop culture propagates. Jessica’s involvement in the toxic relationship with Michael fitted into literary and cinematographic clichés. Jessica liked the idea of being “a tortured soul” (Jessica, 2015). She glamorized the depression, the sadness because she thought that others would find appeal in her suffering: “I liked the sad beauty of a pretty happy girl who at the end of the day is lonely and miserable because she’s the damsel in distress who needs to be rescued by the tortured boy who’s so handsome and tough but really lonely. He needs the girl to swoop in, fix him and they love …show more content…

53). This phenomenon is a result of Byron Good’s “empiricist theory of language” (Good, 1994), widely applied in western medicine today. Good’s theory states that the meaning of the words that the speaker uses can be matched up with a precise, fixed meaning. Ironically, by trying to remove poetry and ambiguities in medical language, this theory has created some kind of poetry through the use of metaphors to describe illness and recovery mechanisms. Metaphors are significant and reflect the perception of a given illness. Jessica personified her eating disorder. However, the personification changed as Jessica’s take on her illness evolved. She originally referred to her eating disorder as Ed, a male monster bullying her. During her treatment, she realized with difficulty that Ed was “an angry me” (Jessica, 2015). She then started designating her illness with “she”. Jessica also used multiple metaphors to describe her experience. Her eating disorder was either her “armor and best friend” (Jessica, 2015) and “the soldier that worked hard” (Jessica, 2015) to achieve an ideal, or a “standing coffin” (Jessica, 2015) closing on her, suffocating her. She described the last few weeks before occupational therapy as “walking on eggshells very second of the day” (Jessica, 2015). Her frequent panic attacks …show more content…

69). Jessica’s story confirms Mattingly’s argument. She acknowledged that the reason for her relatively fast remission, besides her short history of eating disorder, was her “tendency to treat [herself] as a case study” (Jessica, 2015). As a case study, she extensively shared her story and secrets with other patients and documented her experience through summer journals. The positive effects of occupational therapy on her mental and physical health are undeniable: ”I think understand all the reasons why my ED happened to me. And I'm grateful that it did. I have learned so much about myself because of recovery. I consider myself luckier than a lot of people. I feel no guilt nor shame about my illness” (Jessica,

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