In my last post, I made the point that even someone as high profile as our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is not immune to the effects of feeling undervalued. Little did I know that his colleague and former Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott would drive home the point by revealing that he suffered with Bulimia for over ten years.
Mr Prescott described this experience in his recently published memoirs and he should be congratulated for his honesty in discussing this difficult and sensitive issue. The news was such a revelation because during his long career in the upper echelons of the Labour Party he had a well-earned reputation as a larger-than-life character. He has always been a physically big man who has sometimes been too direct for his own good. He once famously threw a punch at a member of the public who had thrown an egg at him in the street and more recently was caught having an affair with a member of staff.
With this public image, who would have thought that Mr Prescott was suffering with Bulimia - a disease usually (wrongly) associated with teenage girls? He also cites work-related stress as one of the causes of his eating disorder, which is interesting because the act of overeating and then vomiting is often reported by Bulimics as an attempt to gain some form of control over their environment. Of course, lack of control/autonomy is one of the main causes of workplace stress - so the link is clear.
This really does show that whatever a person’s public image, whatever their demeanor and what they look like physically, that person is subject to the effects of stress just like the rest of us. The science here is sound and now we really do understand the causes and effects of excessive stress - it’s not just based on a few isolated cases – research findings are conclusive enough to be generalised to all of us. Yes, we all have different thresholds, but the outcomes are largely predictable.
So, thank you to John Prescott for coming out about this - his honesty helps to remind us that we constantly need to manage our exposure to stress and that no one is exempt. He has also helped to dispel the myth that Bulimia is a teenage girl’s disease - if a senior male politician in his late ‘60s can suffer from it, then anyone can.
