What an Eating Disorder Is Really About (And It's Probably Not What You Think)
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When I was in college, shortly after being diagnosed with an eating disorder but still in denial of it being a big problem, a friend invited me over to her home. When we had a quiet moment alone, she cautiously asked me if I could tell her my secret.
Confused, I asked for clarification. She said she wanted to know how I did it. How I “got” anorexia, because she wanted it, too.
I remember sitting there in the chair across from her, very aware of my pervasive headache, light-headedness, hunger, fatigue, aches, chills, and overwhelming sadness within me as a result of my anorexia…. And I was flabbergasted. (Albeit flabbergasted to someone with an eating disorder is more like slow motion, well-concealed, disoriented astonishment.) Who would ever CHOOSE to live like this??
What she didn't understand is that you don’t choose to have an eating disorder. No one wakes up in the morning and decides, "Today’s the day; I’m going to start being anorexic."
Over the years, I’ve learned that she isn’t the only one who’s had that thought. She was just bold enough to vocalize it. I think it all boils down to the fact that so many people are desperate to lose weight, and they see an eating disorder as a means to that end. It’s really sad, and very telling. They simply don’t understand.
Eating disorders aren’t about dieting and losing weight. Little by little, awareness campaigns are helping to spread that message. But we still have a long way to go in helping others understand what they ARE really about.
Unfortunately, it’s not cut and dry. Eating disorders are highly complex. The layers seem unending. As soon as you pull back one layer, it seems you’ve exposed three others. The roots and reasons behind a person’s eating disorder are as individual and specific as the patient him/herself. However, some of the deeper thoughts experienced by those patients have many commonalities.
Although it's possible to eventually get to a place in recovery where these thoughts and feelings can be challenged, it’s a long, back-and-forth process. They are present because of things that have been so deeply engrained, from as far back as can be remembered, that they have become the reality. So even though these thoughts and beliefs are completely untrue, they are what's perceived as truth because it's all that's ever been known.
Experiences, words, relationships, actions – so many things contribute to this web of lies that culminates in an eating disorder. The malnourished brain and depression which result only serve to worsen these thoughts and feelings, because it's impossible to think clearly. And what you do think is further disordered because of the cloud of sadness that follows you everywhere.
There’s an article by The Healing Nest that talks about some of these feelings and beliefs (upon which some of this is based, but personalized for me). Over the nearly six months I spent at treatment, we reviewed the article as a group on three different occasions with three different groups of people. Well, everyone was different except the therapist and me since it seemed I had apparently taken up permanent residence there. And every time, by the end of group, we were all astounded and in tears over the commonalities we shared in this and the deep resonation that ached within us.
Here are a few of the darker, more unspoken issues of eating disorders.
If an eating disorder isn’t about food or weight, what is it about?
It’s about feeling unsafe in the world. About feeling like you can’t trust anyone, including yourself. Restoring weight feels especially unsafe. The eating disorder becomes a “safe place.”
It’s about feelings you don’t know how to express in words. Somehow you take them out on your body.
It’s about an intense feeling that you are not enough. Inadequate, no matter how hard you try. And feeling guilty for not being enough to the people you love, even though you so desperately want to be.
It’s about being overwhelmed. Life is too complicated and confusing. Problems are too big. Feelings are too uncomfortable. The eating disorder gives a false sense of calmness, security, and escape.
It’s about wanting so badly to be loved and comforted, but knowing you aren’t worthy of it.
It’s about passionately hating that you have needs and desires. Needs make you feel greedy and selfish. You feel you don’t deserve to have those needs met, and you find comfort in going without. It just feels right to deprive yourself. Even eating (or heaven forbid enjoying food) feels obnoxiously indulgent. Because you aren’t worthy of nourishment, even though it’s perfectly normal for everyone else. You’d be incredibly distraught if they went without.
It’s about an extreme self-hatred that is present for who knows how many reasons – inadequacy, disappointing others, abuse, regrets, self-blame for life experiences. You feel it in your core.
It’s being convinced you are somehow innately bad. Therefore you deserve to be punished. As you become more and more sick, the thoughts move towards believing you deserve to die a slow and painful death and conviction that the world would be much better off without you. Your family and friends deserve better, and that hurts so much. Because you want to be that person but just can't be.
It’s about anxiety and depression that simply debilitates. The eating disorder helps cope with these, because you don’t have to feel as much. It keeps you in a detached state of mind.
It’s about perfectionism’s paralysis. Your expectations for yourself (but rarely others) are so high that you always fail. Which confirms that you, indeed, are a failure....shameful.
It's about one of your "rules" requiring that you go above and beyond in everything you do, and that provides an inner drive and energy of sorts to get as much done as possible every minute you're awake. It's almost as if you're the Energizer-Bunny, robotically moving from task to task, rarely taking a break. Otherwise, you're lazy, and that's unacceptable. A single task usually morphs into four or five other projects as your mind races ahead of you to stay busy. Keeping your mind on other things also helps distract from life.
It’s about obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
It’s about comparing yourself to others and always falling short.
It’s about a total hatred of your body usually resulting from past trauma. You’re extremely fearful, loathing, shamed, and disgusted by any form or shape. It feels like your body has betrayed you and is an unsafe place for residence.
It’s about your childhood family dynamics and environmental factors.
It’s about secrecy and isolation. It feels better to be alone in your head. Big groups bring great anxiety.
It’s about being afraid that you’ll be too much. A burden. An annoyance. An inconvenience. A dread. You simply cannot stand this thought.
It’s so very, very much about numbing difficult emotions – fear, shame, hurt, sadness, guilt, worry, etc.
It’s about being off the charts sensitive. You feel things with such intensity and so deeply. And not just your emotions. You’re affected by others’ emotions as well. You usually take on their pain. It kills you when you aren’t able to fix it for them. It seems you’re always crying. You take everything very personally.
It’s about overthinking everything over and over and over again.
It’s about being lonely. Not fitting in anywhere. Not being understood.
It’s about being convinced that somehow you are just different than anyone else on the planet. You can be surrounded by people and still feel this emptiness and separation within.
It’s about survival. It’s been your way of coping with some pretty awful experiences.
It’s about an inability to be assertive. You say yes when your insides are screaming no. And you feel guilty for even having no for a thought. It’s about always putting others first, no matter the cost. No exceptions. It’s easy for you to be taken advantage of, which adds more fuel to the feelings of unworthiness. But you’d rather be taken advantage of than to put anyone else out.
It’s about wanting to become as small as you feel. Light, airy, wispy. Just blending into the background. You don’t want to stand out.
It’s about wanting to be undesirable. Wanting to hide away.
It’s about having so much emotional pain that you can’t possibly survive feeling it. It makes the pain of the eating disorder a blessed relief in comparison. Focusing on the discomfort of the eating disorder serves as a help to distract from what’s really going on inside.
It's about seeing yourself with your own eyes differently from what everyone else is telling you that they see. Are you losing your mind? How is this even possible when everything else you see is exactly what others see? Someone is crazy - either you or the rest of the world. It just doesn't add up.
It’s about so many other feelings and factors that you aren’t even able to identify.
What may begin for some as an attempt to control weight soon morphs into an animal that has nothing to do with it. And its complexity makes it entirely impossible to be able to fully describe or comprehend.
For this reason and many others, it is not helpful to say things such as, “I wish you’d just eat.” If it were that simple, recovery would be easy. You could just stick a tube down your nose and be done with it. It goes so far beyond that.
Wow, I feel kind of sad after typing all of that out. Many of these “abouts” still resonate so deeply it hurts, even after being in recovery for over a year now. There’s still a part of me that yearns to get back to that “safe” place where difficult emotions are blurred. To be thin again so I can just blend into the crowd. There are days when it seems that full recovery is too far out of reach. And that makes recovery feel exhaustively futile and brings guilt.
But those are just more lies. That was not a safe place for me to be. Being thin actually makes me stand out rather than blend in. Full recovery is not too far out of reach. Guilt is not from God. And the negative aspects of an eating disorder FAR exceed the "helpful."
The truth is that God has brought me so far. I’m such a different person than I was eighteen months ago. And He hasn’t brought me this far just to leave me. He will finish the work that He began in me – He promised, and I trust Him.
It seems appropriate to challenge all of those statements regarding what an eating disorder is really about. My therapist reminded me in our session this week that our focus has to be on truth.
I guess the truth in there is that yes, those are the things that eating disorders are really about. But the reasons they exist are so deeply rooted in core beliefs, which were established during the most formative years. The lies were built into you without your knowledge and have skewed your perception of reality. You have no idea that you are trapped and held captive by those lies. When others try to point it out to you, because the lies are such a part of who you have become, it doesn't even make sense.
Recovery is about unwinding all of that. Reframing life events. Removing the blinders so that you are able to understand and see reality. My recovery has opened my eyes to the truth of what God says about me versus the lies which distorted what was real and true, but always seemed perfectly normal and appropriate to me.
I’ve known what God says about His creation since I was a teenager, and I’ve always believed those things to be true. But more for others, because remember, one of the “abouts” is that you are somehow different from every other human being. It just “felt” like it didn’t apply to me, because I was much more unworthy than anyone else. I felt that God was ashamed of me.
Do you see the vicious cycle in all of this? It’s as if those lies play off of one another, pinging back and forth, further reinforcing with every bounce.
So I definitely don’t want those “abouts” to have the last word. Because even though they ARE really what eating disorders are about, they are not the end of the story.
Some may still resonate so deeply for me. BUT GOD. Because of Him, it doesn’t stop there. In Him there is hope, healing, restoration, and a renewed mind.
You can’t change a lifetime of core beliefs in a day, or a week, or even a year. But you can work hard every day to focus on the truth and allow it to penetrate your mind and heart until you are no longer blinded and haunted by the lies which have held you captive for decades.
However, you’ll have to stay tuned for Part II, because it has been recommended to me that I shorten my blog posts. And I’ve already gone too long! Oh well….Part II will be a challenge of those core beliefs which are what the eating disorder is really about. Because the truth is what gives freedom, and it should be heard above the lies, even if your feelings haven’t caught up to it yet.
Feelings never change what’s true. And I am clinging to that fact this week.
You can read more about challenging negative core beliefs here.