Falling From My Pedestal By Chhaya Summary

The tenth case study, “Falling from My Pedestal” explores the troubling family life of a girl named Chhaya. Her story details how her relationship with her family influenced and affected her identity and later her health. In the case, Chhaya adopts an identity in order to please her parents and gain their love while saving her parents’ toxic relationship. All the while, the fake persona causes her not to develop a real one of her own. When Chhaya fails to uphold her perfect child identity, she feels as if her perfect identity was factitious all along and that everyone would find this out. Despite that, Chhaya manages to lose a few extra pounds which causes her to believe that her body weight is the only thing that she can control and perfect.

After that milestone, she becomes as overly obsessed with upholding the image weight loss success as she was before with upholding academic success. Her obsession gradually turns into a cycle of abusive eating and thinking habits which leads to her eating disorder. Chhaya’s issues are seemingly irreversible until she gets the professional help that she needs to show her that her way of dealing with years of family distress had caused her to end up in a deadly situation.
Chhaya’s eating disorder cannot be traced to an exact point of origin, but her childhood is where some of her underlying issues started to emerge. Additionally, her parents’ issues with each other often came to light when the two would bicker in front of her. With each argument came the fear of it being the argument that would cause her parents to divorce. Frequently, Chhaya wondered what she had done wrong to cause her parents’ bickering. She thought that if she would become the perfect child that everyone always wanted then her parents would finally love each other and love her in turn; thus, she adopted the perfect child identity. She strove to succeed academically for it was something that she could control and would bring the validation from others that she needed to develop her self-worth. As it turned out, the more she achieved, the less her parents were impressed because they knew she would do well regardless. They further minimized her academic success by telling her that her grades were not important and that common sense was more useful than book sense. At the time, no one saw these patterns as unhealthy but they caused Chhaya to not receive the validation of her worth that she attempted to gain.
After not receiving the appraisal of others to boost her self-esteem, Chhaya’s childhood problems further damaged her as she progressed through her adolescence in high school. During her junior year, she entered into her first romantic relationship with someone of the opposite sex. The relationship was the first time that she had ever been herself and independent to make her own decisions. However, when the relationship ended, she further felt as if she was inadequate and unable to do anything on her own and be a perfect person. A second traumatic event occurred during her adolescences only a few months after her first break-up. At that time, she was told that she would not be the valedictorian of her graduating class. This event was the ultimate blow to the image of perfection that she tried to uphold. She knew that she was expected to be valedictorian but now that she wasn’t, everyone would believe that her perfect girl image was just a façade or a lie that she couldn’t keep from getting out. Chhaya had fallen from the pedestal which she held herself to, causing her to deathly affect her physical and mental.
Gradually, Chhaya sunk deeper into a depressive state as a result of her failure to uphold her identity and receive her parents’ approval.

Gradually, she began to show symptoms of Anorexia Nervosa but the disease got worse over her summer break as she started skipping meals and creating elaborate lies to cover her unhealthy habits. At first, Chhaya started watching what she was eating in order to become healthier. When she was finally able to lose weight, she was elated that she was able to be successful at something for once in her life. Her obsession and accomplishment of losing weight replaced her obsession of academic success in order for her to establish self-worth. Over time, her new thin identity led to a self-destructing cycle in which she lost weight to bring satisfaction and fulfillment to her life while gaining weight signaled that she was losing control of her life. When Chhaya returned to school, all of her peers and teachers were shocked at how much weight she had lost, so she tried to cover her behavior by saying that she was sick. Chhaya had lied to others stating that an illness caused her to lose weight, however, her lie was actually the truth for she obliviously possessed a mental

illness.
Due to the overwhelming concerns at school, Chhaya was finally able to get the professional help that she long needed to change her life. A school nurse recommended to Chhaya and her mother that she meets with a psychologist who specialized in eating disorders. Although Chhaya was originally against the idea, she sought help from the psychologist for almost a month before the psychologist confessed that Chhaya’s condition had advanced so far that they were no longer able to help her. The only other option for help was for her to check into an inpatient care program. Once again, she resisted the idea of such extreme measures of help, but her parents forced her to go since they were concerned about her physical appearance and well-being, not her mental well-being.
In the program, Chhaya was able to realize the reasons why she was engaging in such destructive behaviors.

The program also provided the opportunity for her family to address their issues in order to become the loving unit that she always desired. Despite the opportunity, her family was not healed from the years of turmoil and conflict, for their problems were too immense to be handled during the one-hour therapy sessions. Ultimately, Chhaya realized that she could not be the rescuer that would mend her family’s broken relationships. Although she later relapsed and slipped into depression, she once again got the help that she needed to develop the security in herself and happiness that she longed for and

deserved.
Like Chhaya, I used to strive to achieve academic success in order to gain my parents’ appraisal. Both of my parents instilled within me and my sister from a young age the importance of academic success. I would frequently work hard in school because I knew that I could not disappoint my parents. However, when my sister brought home a grade that was below my parents’ high standards, I was stunned that she did not receive any chastise for her disappointment. For a long time, I was under the impression that both my sister and I had to meet my parents’ academic goals and when if we did not, we would dissatisfy them. When I realized that this was not true, I continued to strive for academic excellence, but I did so for myself. I realized that my parent actually instilled within me the self-drive and motivation that I needed to do well. Ultimately, they taught me not to succeed for others’ validation but to do so for my own benefit.