BY SANDRA GUY
The first openly transgender NCAA Division I swimmer says his struggles with his gender identity and an eating disorder motivated him to become a national spokesperson for mental-health counseling.
Schuyler Bailar, 23, said he came to terms with his identity as a man and overcame his body obsession when he got psychological counseling for an eating disorder.
“I didn’t identify as a woman, so all my womanhood was wrapped up in my body,” he said. “I thought to myself at the time, ‘I don’t have any personal, soulful connections to womanhood.’ It became how I identified my self worth.”
Bailer is speaking out during National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, Feb. 23-March 1, in his new role as a fellow for Monte Nido & Affiliates, a residential and intensive outpatient center that treats people with eating disorders and exercise addiction. The center’s aim is to help people achieve a clear understanding of their problem and its effect on their life, and to find their own appreciation of what’s necessary to recover.
Monte Nido is opening two new treatment centers in the Chicago area: In the DuPage County suburb of Winfield in early March for all genders, and this spring in west suburban Naperville at Clementine, exclusively for adolescent girls ages 11 to 17.
Bailar said he became aware that he wanted to be a boy by the time he was 9, and started dressing like a boy and wearing his hair short.
But he kept struggling to conform to society’s pressure to be a woman, so by middle school he was trying to be a “perfect woman” – and he received praise for being skinny.
“My body was part of my worth as a woman,” Bailar said.
The break point was literally that – Bailar broke his back at age 16 in a biking accident with his brother. He fractured two vertebrae on Aug. 24, 2012, after he accidentally fell over the side of a mountain.
The ensuing several months – with no swimming allowed – left Bailar struggling with depression.
“I felt very much out of control, and had no idea what to do with the time – I was suddenly doing nothing after training 20 hours a week,” he said. “I had lost my social life.”
He adapted – in what he now acknowledges was a mal-adaptation – by trying to control the situation by restricting his eating.
Bailar reached out for help and spent time in a residential treatment center — The Oliver-Pyatt Centers, a program run by Monte Nido in Miami, Florida. The program helps people gain insight and coping skills to recognize the emotional and psychological issues that can trigger a relapse.
That’s where Bailar uncovered his true gender identity.
“My therapist saved my life by providing me the space” to do so, he said.
He spent time at the YES Institute, which focuses on helping young people develop in a healthy way in their own gender identity and orientation.
“There’s so much shame in getting treatment,” said Bailar, who faced the double pressure of being from a Korean culture that never mentioned mental health issues.
“We need to rewrite the narrative for men,” he said. “The culture I grew up in was all about ‘Man up. Be a man. Grow up. Don’t be sad.’
“That’s the culture I grew up in.”
In treatment, Bailar said he learned to be grateful for what his body could do, rather than focusing on his body shape. After he was allowed to swim for 30 minutes his first time back in the pool in five months, he said he felt a sense of ease and peace.
“I felt a thankfulness of where I was,” he said. “Let’s think about the fact that my heart beats. My eyes can see things. My legs can walk me around.”
Bailar said he wasn’t entirely satisfied with what his body looked like at the time, but he let go of fighting his body “every second of every day.”
“I’m not sitting here thinking I’m less worthy because I don’t have a model’s body,” he said. “Oh, and I’m someone who is smart, silly, resilient.”
It’s about putting one’s energy into what really matters.
Bailar said part of the breakthrough is figuring out why you need control.
“It’s about the intentionality. Perhaps the reason is because your mom told you you’re too fat, [but] that’s not a good reason,” he said. “That’s a good reason to do therapy about how much your mom hurt you as a kid.”
By the time Bailar was in high school, he had emerged as a star swimmer. Harvard University recruited him for the women’s team.
But in 2015, he decided to swim with the men’s team. He finished last in the men’s 200-yard breaststroke but considered it a victory for achieving his personal authenticity.
Dr. Joel Jahraus, Monte Nido’s chief medical officer, says men and boys now account for 20 percent of eating disorder sufferers.
Men get obsessed with lean muscularity – they want big pecs and shoulders to feel good about themselves – rather than seeking the feminine ideal of a slimmer total body shape.
“They’re trying to fit societal expectations,” said Jahraus, a physician for more than 40 years who co-authored a chapter on eating disorders in Textbook of Psychosomatic Medicine, published by the American Psychiatric Association, and The Treatment of Eating Disorders: A Clinical Handbook, published by New York: Guilford Press (Grilo, C. M. & Mitchell, J. E. (Eds.), (2010).
Sports activities often accentuate the male body ideal, but collegiate and high-school sports leaders have grown more aware of the potential for disordered eating and eating disorders, Jahraus said.
Jahraus said he emphasizes to young men that proper weight and nutrition are essential to being fit, rather than telling them that they’ll run faster if they’re thinner and lighter.
“I tell athletes who think they can perform better at lower body weights that it’s impossible for the body to function at peak performance when metabolism is impaired from compulsive workouts and severe food restrictions that cause a serious drop in weight,” he said.
“And I point out that any type of purging behavior causes a loss of electrolytes and fluid, which are essential to proper muscle and other bodily functions,” he said.
Another source of harm is that when boys or men lose weight excessively, their organs shrink, their cholesterol levels go up, and any obsessive-compulsive traits about food, weight or body image intensify, Jahraus said.
That’s potentially deadly, since starving can cause the heart to lose up to 25 percent capacity of the left lower pumping chamber – the primary pumping chamber that sends blood throughout the body.
The brain can get smaller; bone loss may magnify, and the testicles, uterus and ovaries can shrink to pre-puberty levels.
The key to helping people is to “dig deep” to find out what drives the eating disorder, Jahraus said.
“If you don’t get to the root, you’ll never get lasting recovery,” he said. “The good news is that, with proper nutrition and weight back to normal, most of the body and organs usually return to normal size and function.”