Nuria Casas believes that suffering has a meaning, that's why she has written "The scar that lasts"The book is a collection of her reflections on her journey to overcome an Eating Disorder (ED).
The scar that lasts
Beyond being a story of overcoming anorexia, "The Scar that Lasts" is a testimony of hope and resilience. A Christian teenager, coming from a family of 6 siblings and a healthy environment, finds herself in a pit from which she discovers that she cannot get out alone. Nuria Casas, author of the book, invites us to reflect on how the deepest wounds can become a strength. She managed to transform her pain into a source of inspiration and at only 24 years old she was encouraged to publish this book with which many, despite not being related to an ATT, have felt identified.
What encouraged you to write this book?
- Normally people have the idea of the book and then they write it. And it happened to me a little bit the other way around.... I have always needed to write, I have channeled everything that way and in moments of chaos and darkness I needed it even more. When I was about to be discharged it was the psychiatrist herself who said to me "you have a lot of things written down, don't you?" She had once read reflections of mine. Then I started to look at it, put it all in order and suddenly I saw that, if you put chapters and an index, it could be a book.
I thought about keeping it to myself but it clashed with my philosophy of life, which is "everything is for the best" what sense does it make for me to go around saying everything is for the best, have this written down knowing it can help someone, and keep it to myself? And that's how the book came out.
Being a normal girl and in a healthy environment, how do you get to that point of an ATT?
- It is true that there is no specific thing. We all have our little backpack, and what I explain in the book is that anorexia does not come out of nowhere: it is a disease, but always a consequence of something. In the end, what is physical and what is visible is the tip of the iceberg, but everything that is buried is the cause of it all.
Many readers have told me that without having any kind of relationship with the TCA they have felt identified with me, because the book is about my anorexia but in the end it talks about wounds that we all have, about suffering in general that everyone experiences at some point.
In the book you state "Running away does not cure pain, it makes it worse". What would you say to a person who denies his suffering, who does not accept that he is blind and has to go to the eye doctor? How would you help him to love his cross?
- Although I do not agree with Freud's philosophy, he did say something very sensible and that is that everything we bury always ends up coming out, and the longer it takes to come out, the worse. This is even seen in our body when we somatize something. That is why it is better to face it as soon as possible and more being aware of why you suffer. There are people that after burying it so much, when they want to recover they do not know what is happening to them and they have to go back and look for the cause of it all.
The exercise of acceptance is also important: to accept the good and the bad is not only to accept what I don't like about myself but also what has happened to me. I would not like it to have happened but I cannot change it, how do I deal with it in the best possible way?
What advice would you give to know how to accept our weaknesses, to accept our imperfection, to accept ourselves as we are?
- The one who helps you to accept yourself completely is God. Because he is the one who created you. And not only has he created you, but he puts you in the situations that are presented to you. And we don't always understand it at the moment when we suffer, but everything has a meaning. What is happening to me now, and it is being a strong experience, is that people are contacting me, I am understanding the meaning of all the suffering of these years. Many people are asking me to enlighten them under the light of my experience and that makes me see that the suffering I have gone through has not been in vain.
In the face of suffering there are two ways out: the first is to think that the world has been unfair to you and you think you have the right to be unfair to the world, shutting yourself in. The other is to open up to others, because you have suffered so much that you do not want anyone to go through what you have gone through again without having the tools that you can provide from your experience, thus developing a natural empathy. After all, people who have suffered usually connect better with the suffering of others. This second way makes you recognize yourself as weak, accepting your nature, your limits and your fragility. By showing your weakness to others you suddenly discover that this weakness is actually a strength, because through it you serve to help others with the light of your experience.
Do you believe that everyone should share in your suffering?
- I think it can help us to talk more about vulnerability because we are in a society that gives us the message that you can do anything, you can do it alone and you don't need anyone. And that is not true. As Aristotle said: human beings are social by nature. That is, we need others and many times, until we break down, we do not realize this truth.
On the other hand, everyone has to find their points of support and know where they are. In the book I explain it: God always sends crosses because He knows that at that moment you can carry them because He gives you the grace to carry them and at the same time He always gives you points of support and in my case it has been 100 % my family and my friends.
I am a tutor and I teach a couple of subjects of 2 of ESO and high school philosophy that I love. Someone once told me "I don't understand where you get the patience with the kids", because it's true that I have the most intense class in all of high school. And yes, obviously I have to exercise patience with my children, but I think that people who have suffered are able to see beyond the person, that is, a child is behaving terribly, fine, but what's wrong with him? We want to go a little further. I have understood that patience comes from the fact that, as with me the people who have wanted to help me have been so understanding, then I must also be understanding with those who suffer as I do. To give what I have received.
What does the light of faith bring to the experience of such an illness? What is the difference between how a Catholic and a non-believer cope with it?
- I can only tell you the version of the person who is a believer. It is true that in this process I had moments of great darkness with respect to God and of being very angry with Him and not understanding absolutely nothing, so maybe I also have a little bit of that vision, but what has helped me has been God. That is why, without Him, I find it very difficult. It is possible, and there are many people who have done it, although it is also true that it depends a lot on the circle around you.
God has helped me in the deep part of accepting myself, not wanting to have everything under control. Anorexia is a way of having something under control in a moment when everything falls apart or everything is chaotic. What happens in the moment when you let God in? You learn to leave that control in his hands. In fact, the moment I reconnected with God was by praying a prayer like this: "I can't take it anymore. I have been all these months wanting to do it myself, but now I leave it in your hands." This sounds very nice and very theoretical, but from that moment on, God's work in my life was reflected in concrete facts. Until then I had been closed to going to the doctor and yet the day after praying that prayer I decided to go and I started to let myself be helped.
Many times people who come from a Christian family take faith for granted and live it as a simple moralism, a doing things right, until they have a personal encounter with God and begin to really understand His love, to experience it in their lives. How was your encounter with Him?
- It is true that many times there are people who need to get away to meet Him personally. It happened to me that I met God in college, at the time of my relapse. It was the first time I thought about God as Nuria. It had been explained to me that God was good, but in my suffering I thought, "Either the God who has always explained to me that He is so good and loves me so much does not exist, or He does exist, but then He does not love me and does not care about me".
I did not understand the reason for my suffering. But the moment I reconnected with God I understood. Suddenly the cross became my favorite subject because I understood that it is precisely when he sends us crosses that he loves us the most. If we were perfect, everything was going well for us and we didn't need anything we would think "Why do I need God if I am perfect?" The cross, therefore, makes us see that we cannot do it alone and that we need him. When he sends us a cross he is loving us because he is telling us, "I want you to be close to me".
