What’s Eating You? Understanding the Struggle with Eating Disorders

Aug 12

Eating disorders are one of the more well-known and yet highly misunderstood mental health conditions in public perception. Too often, there is a mischaracterization of eating disorders as propelled wholly by a desire be thin. And while this may be the conscious motivation and resulting physical manifestation of the disorder, there is much more to be understood about the psychological processes driving the relationship to food and the body.

Food is something that all of us depend on in order to survive. Yet not only do we need food, we desire food. Food is meaningful, extending beyond physical sustenance to act as a vehicle for emotional nourishment; it is celebratory, comfort during a difficult time, and a means of connecting with family and friends. If you reflect upon life’s more emotional moments, both good and bad, food is usually involved in some capacity, symbolizing love and care.

Food also impacts our physical form, eliciting both conscious and unconscious culture-specific biases about beauty, social status, and personal attributes linked to cultural values. And despite efforts to challenge homogenous ideas about the body, or the harmful conflation of beauty and value, we are still contending with deeply ingrained ideas about what one’s external shape suggests about the capacity to live up to Western culture’s idealization of control and independence.

Thus, you can begin to imagine how striving for “thinness”, and a related struggle with food regulation, may become emblematic of managing more than one’s appearance. Rather, it may represent a psychological process of contending with one’s own vulnerability and dependence: an unconscious attempt to become impervious to the sometimes out of control nature of being alive, our inescapable reliance on things outside of ourselves and the accompanying painful feelings that arise from unmet emotional needs.

To someone struggling with an eating disorder, denying physical nourishment is akin to turning away from emotional need. Relationships have not been emotionally safe, thus healthy, emotionally complex relationships, both with others and one’s self, have become devalued as a means of self-preservation. Instead, the individual has come to value deprivation, and the persistent fighting against desire, as evidence of inner power.

Understandably, family and friends may attempt to intervene via offerings of well-meaning advice centered on what they see on the surface. However, it is the unseen agony and terror that needs to be addressed; the past events and learned relational expectations that have led to the individual viewing their shrinking body, and subsequent shrinking interpersonal world, as a symbol of strength.

Eating disorders are lonely, with the struggles and related behaviors usually kept private. Support is imperative, and a necessary first step towards healing. I strongly urge anyone struggling to reach out to a mental health clinician. There are professionals who understand and can help reclaim the space in your mind that has become crowded with thoughts of food and weight, assisting with reengaging with yourself and the world around you.

If you are interested in therapy to explore these issues further, please contact us today, call (310) 271 2275, or email info@pbapsychology.com to schedule an appointment.