“Society tells us we can handle everything on our own, and it’s not true”

Nuria Casas is the author of the book La cicatriz que perdura (The scar that lasts), in which she tells how she managed to overcome an eating disorder. Teresa Aguado Peña heard her story.

Nuria Casas believes that suffering has a meaning, that’s why she has written La cicatriz que perdura (The scar that lasts). The book is a collection of her reflections on her journey to overcome an eating disorder.

But more than a story of overcoming anorexia, The Scar that Lasts is a testimony of hope and resilience. A Spanish teenager, coming from a family of six siblings and a healthy background, finds herself in a pit from which she discovers she cannot get out alone. 

With her book, Nuria Casas invites us to reflect on how the deepest wounds can be turned into a strength.

This young woman 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 suffering from this condition, have felt identified.

What encouraged you to write this book?

Normally people have the idea of a book and then they write it. But for me it was a little bit the other way round…. I have always needed to write, I have channelled everything into writing 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 them, put them all in order and suddenly I saw that, if you put chapters and an index, they could make a book.

I thought about keeping all this 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 all this written down knowing it could help someone, and keep it to myself? And that’s how the book came out.

Being a normal girl from a healthy background, how did you end up with an eating disorder?

While it’s true there was no specific cause, we all have our baggage, and what I explain in the book is that anorexia does not come out of nowhere: it is a disease, but it’s 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, even though they don’t suffer from an eating disorder, they have felt identified with me, because the book is about my anorexia but in the end it talks about wounds we all have, about suffering in general which 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 or her suffering, who refuses to see it? How would you help them to love their cross?

Although I don’t agree with Freud’s philosophy, he did say one sensible thing which is that everything we bury always ends up coming out, and the longer it takes to come out, the worse it is. This is even seen in our body when we somatise something. That is why it is better to face it as soon as possible and become more aware of why you are suffering. 

There are people who bury their problem so much that, when they want to recover, they  don’t 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, so 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 you have to face. And though we don’t always understand it at the time of suffering, everything has a meaning. 

What is happening to me now – and it’s proving to be a powerful experience – is that people are contacting me, and I am understanding the meaning of all the suffering of these years. Many people are asking me to give them light in light of my own 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 the world has been unfair to you and 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 you don’t want anyone to go through what you have gone through without having the tools you can offer them from your own experience, thus developing a natural empathy. 

After all, people who have suffered in their lives 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 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 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 very often we don’t realize this truth until we break down.

On the other hand, everyone has to find their points of support and know where they are. In the book I explain it in this way: God always sends crosses because he knows that at that particular moment you can carry them as he gives you the grace you need to do so. And at the same time he always gives you points of support which in my case have been one hundred per cent my family and friends.

I am a tutor and I teach a couple of secondary school subjects in philosophy which I love. Someone once told me “I don’t understand where you get all your patience with the kids”, because it’s true I have the most lively class in the whole 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, beyond a child who is behaving terribly, OK, but what’s up with him? We have to go a little deeper. I have understood that patience comes from knowing that, just as the people who have wanted to help me have been so understanding with me, 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 can cope with it?

I can only give you the believer’s version. 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 anything. So maybe I also have a little bit of the non-believer’s vision, but what has helped me has been God. 

That is why, without him, I would find it very difficult. It is possible to overcome anorexia and there are many people who have done so, although it is also true that a lot depends on the circle around you. 

God has helped me in that 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, ‘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 often there are people who need to get away to meet God personally. In my case I met God in college, at the time of my relapse. It was the first time I thought about God as myself, Nuria. I had been told that God was good, but in my suffering I thought, “Either the God who has always told me he is so good and loves me so much does not exist, or if he does exist 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 favourite subject because I understood that it is precisely when God 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?” But the cross makes us see we cannot go 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”.

This is a translation of an article which first appeared on the Spanish website Omnes. For the original article in Spanish, see here. It is re-published in Adamah Media with permission.

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