Today in class we watched a movie about Emily, a young woman suffering from anorexia. In the documentary we watched Emily's daily life and the struggles that she has been fighting with anorexia over the past 8 years. Using the information that you learned today in class about drive reduction theory explain how Emily reduces the drive of feeling overweight and restores her body back to homeostasis in her mind. Use specific examples in your answer and make sure you explain drive reduction theory
Emily has mentally told herself that she is not sick, but that she is incredibly fat. She is not happy with her body the way she is suppose to be. She has to reduce this thought in her mind by seeing how sick she is and how beautiful she is. Her drive for being skinny comes from her jealousy of her sisters. She sees their lives and wants that. She doesn’t think she deserves a good life like that though, because her rape diminished who she saw herself as. Once she separates in her mind who she really is and who she is not it’s easier for her to start down the road to getting healthy. It wasn’t easy, because she is very sick and she still has a lot of drive toward being something different than she thought she was. Emily is disrespecting the body God gifted her with by forcing herself not to eat or making herself sick. She saw herself as undeserving, and that’s what pushed her toward not eating. She was punishing herself for being something she shouldn’t have been.
ReplyDeleteEmily is an Anorexic, but one with a very serious case of it. She takes it way to far by almost starving herself everyday and working out to much. Emily had a very severe problem, and she thought she could help it herself, but she really could not. They main reason she became ill is because she always had to compete with her sister, and she would try to be better than her at many things in life, but Emily almost never succeeded. Another factor affecting Emily’s condition is that she was raped, and she could never look at her self the same way, so she wanted to be skinnier. She would eat almost fewer than 800 calories a day, and work out over three hours a day, just to maintain her “perfect” figure, and she would get progressively worse. They way she finally got better is that she finally noticed that what she was doing is a bad thing, and she wanted to get better, but she could not do it by her self, so the people from Intervention helped her through the ordeal, and she eventually got better. The way she got better is the same way we could get better with any problem that we have: Know that you have a problem, embrace it, and then try as hard as you can to stop the problem, and you could have amazing results.
ReplyDeleteThe drive reduction theory states that motivated behavior is an attempt to reduce the unpleasant tension inside the body to a state of homeostasis. Emily struggles with a terrible addiction to anorexia. Her mental body image is extremely distorted. When she looks in the mirror, rather than seeing someone very malnourished, she sees someone becoming obese. This feeling is what sets off her drive. Emily felt like she never lived up to her twin sisters’ achievements and always felt like her family, dad especially, were not proud of her. She was also rapped multiple times in college and has that scar on her the rest of her life. Emily finds her obsession with food removes those thoughts of inadequacy, keeping her body in homeostasis.
ReplyDeleteIn Emily's point of view she is not sick at all, she is just overweight. She in fact has Anorexia Nervosa and it effects every facet of her life. She exercised 3 hours a day and even in the shower, and she hardly eats anything but a piece of fruit and coffee late at night. Emily's anorexia was triggered by her twin sisters extroverted personality and achievements, in addition to being raped, and a harsh father. Emily never saw an anorexic person, just an overweight one. Her body continued to express a drive to eat. The drive reduction theory says that a body's behavior is motivated by and want to reduce any tension or bad feeling in the body. Like she ate that specified amount of food, like the 14 celeries and 7 carrots, etc. For Emily her life style of anorexia helps her think that she is better than her sister and deserving of her dad's attention, and that keeps her, barely, in homeostasis, or intune with her body.
ReplyDeleteDrive-reduction theory: motivated behavior in an attempt to reduce a unpleasant tension inside the body back to homeostasis.
ReplyDeleteIn Emily's case her constantly working out to make herself not feel fat or overweight was an example of the drive-reduction theory. She even explained that she would eat up to 60 laxatives to make herself lose weight. In her mind when she ate anything she would feel extremely over weight. So to make herself feel "thin" or not fat she would work out for hours or force it to come out.