Feeling Is the Hardest Part: Why Emotions Are Key To Eating Disorder Recovery
Eating disorders are just a distraction.
Bold words, I know. If you have ever had the experience of an eating disorder, you may be thinking- THIS is a problem. How can you minimize my pain by saying it’s a distraction? That makes it sound trivial. That makes it sound like some kind of conscious choice.
Eating disorders are not distracting you from something trivial, they are distracting you from unbearable emotions. You did not consciously choose to have an eating disorder— even if you really wanted to change your body and went to extreme lengths to do so. But something in your unconscious mind was deeply soothed by the obsession with food and your body and that, along with complex neurobiological factors, led to the eating disorder becoming entrenched in your life.
This is shocking for many people with eating disorders to hear. Their eating disorder tortures them. How could anything be worse than this all consuming body hatred that they must risk their very lives to appease or face overwhelming guilt and shame? How could this be a solution to anything?
The truth is, unbearable emotions live under the surface of eating disorders. Or what the person perceives as unbearable emotions.
It all sounds too simple. Or too intimidating, depending on what comes to mind when you first hear the word emotions. But the underlying psychological purpose of an eating disorder is to keep your emotions manageable, controllable, tolerable. To make life feel bearable. It’s both simple and all-encompassing.
My Experience
I remember in early recovery when I was told that my eating disorder symptoms and thoughts were just there to distract me from something else, something deeper, something more painful. I didn’t believe it. I truly believed that my body was the problem, and if I could just fix it, I would feel okay. I remember the exact moment I realized that my therapist was right, that the eating disorder was there to protect me from feelings other things, painful things that I didn’t know how to deal with. And to my shock and horror, those things were more overwhelming than hating my body. Luckily, I had a great relationship with my therapist who guided me through that next stage of my recovery.
My mantra became, “What would I be thinking about if I wasn’t thinking about my body and food?”
This question would help me dig beneath the surface of my eating disorder and find out what was really bothering me. It always came back to emotions that I didn’t know how to be with.
Anger. Joy. Disgust. Excitement. Sexual excitement. Grief. Fear.
Once those emotions could be experienced and known fully, my eating disorder faded away (coupled with eating adequate nutrition- no one can recover without that). Once I could take care of myself fully and meet my emotional needs, the eating disorder lost its function.
It sounds like a simple price to pay to be free of the torture of an eating disorder. But it’s not easy.
Cultural Pressures
Our culture rewards emotional suppression. This can be a huge perpetuating factor in your difficulty with allowing your emotions in. Whether you’ve experienced a single, big traumatic event or have been socially conditioned to only show a limited range of emotions, we are all submerged in a culture that values stoicism. How comfortable would you feel sobbing in a restaurant? Not very, I imagine. It goes against the cultural norm. And, conscious or not, we all pick up and internalize the message: there are parts of our humanness that are welcome and parts that aren’t.
Individual Vulnerabilities
But we have to understand infant/child psychology to really understand why some people are more vulnerable to the cultural message of emotional suppression.
Infants and children cannot survive without their caregivers. Not only for their physical needs to be met, but their emotional needs as well. Babies who aren’t held and provided with adequate emotional nurturing actually die, even when their physical needs are provided for (look up Romanian orphanages in the 80’s and 90’s- it’s so sad). Of all mammals, our child and adolescent period is exceptionally long. We are such a complex species; we have so much to learn before we are capable of being independent adults. Our dependence on our caregivers is long and profound.
As a result of that, we are hyper attuned to the people who care for us. We gather most of our information about them non verbally. We read their eyes, their minute facial expressions, feel their heartbeat. Things they may try to conceal are clear to a sensitive child.
Your parents may have been loving and caring— but if you felt your mothers gaze shift away from you when you were sad or angry, felt her heartbeat increase, felt her body contract instead of pull you close, you subtly learned— this emotion isn’t welcome. All of me is not welcome.
When this happens over and over, it creates a subconscious template for how to relate to that emotion: move away, contract, reject. Children instinctively know their vulnerability and do everything they can to maintain their connection to their caregivers— including rejecting parts of themselves.
It may have been as seemingly benign as your parent loving you so much that they felt deeply troubled when you were upset— so much so that they could not tolerate seeing you sad. Maybe they relentlessly tried to fix your problems and cheer you up. While well intentioned, the message this sends a young child is: sadness isn’t okay. We can’t trust sadness to leave on its own. We shouldn’t try to see what the sadness is telling us. It’s time to stop being sad and cheer up— now.
For children, who need connections with caregivers to survive, any emotion that pushes the people they love away from them, or makes those people uncomfortable, is going to be less tolerable.
But let me say empathically: a family culture of emotional suppression does not cause eating disorders. We don’t exactly know what causes them.
Emotional suppression is just a risk and perpetuating factor, meaning that it puts people at a higher risk of developing an eating disorder and it makes it more difficult to recover. Many modern families are terrified of emotions and no one has an eating disorder. That’s because SO many vulnerabilities have to line up for an eating disorder to develop— genetic predisposition, differences in the brain, environmental stress, cultural pressures— the list goes on.
I never want to criticize parents or caregivers. What can teach a child that an emotion is unacceptable or unwelcome may have been a parent doing their very best to support them with that emotion. Both can be true at the same time. Witnessing your child’s fear, grief, and anger are difficult experiences. It makes sense that many well intentioned parents want to make those feelings go away. This urge comes from a place of love and isn’t a bad thing. It just doesn’t help kids learn how to be with big feelings and not try to suppress or avoid them.
And while you cannot cause someone to have an eating disorder, you can help them recover by allowing difficult emotions to be present— in yourself and in them.
Eating Disorders Are About Control?
People always say to me, “eating disorders are about control”. Well, yes and no. Everyone wants control! We are such vulnerable creatures with such limited control over our worlds. If everyone who wanted control developed an eating disorder, we would all have one.
But there is an element of truth to that statement: eating disorders are about controlling your inner emotional landscape. People with eating disorders often feel the need to put on a happy, poised face. They try to be perfect and pleasing to others. They hide their emotions from everyone, even themselves. That is the kind of control eating disorders are really about. Controlling the inner emotional world.
Letting go of the need to avoid, control and limit emotions is the cornerstone of eating disorders recovery.
The Solution
How can you stop needing to control and limit your emotions? By finding someone who can help you feel all your feelings and learn to see them as the teachers and helpers they are intended to be.
We are not meant to bear emotions alone.
What is an unbearable emotional experience alone, becomes bearable with an understanding person. A person who has been through similar feelings and knows you are not broken or crazy.
You make sense. You just don’t know how to be with all the pain inside you.
That’s why therapy is so effective in treating eating disorders. Therapy can help you have a new experience of your emotions. You can experience them as tolerable, safe and bearable. You can see the ways they can help you connect and find comfort. You can learn to trust yourself with your body and your feelings.
This is why I know full, lasting recovery is not only possible, it’s inevitable if you allow yourself to be fully here and be fully known.
If you feel stuck and don’t know how to overcome your eating disorder, I can help.
I understand the pain and know the way out.
Reach out today to schedule a consultation. None of us can do this alone.
The contents of this blog are for informational purposes only. This blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment that can be provided by your own mental health practitioner. If you have any specific concerns about your mental health, you should consult your doctor and you should not delay seeking medical advice, or treatment for your mental health, because of information on this blog.
Megan Bruce
Megan Bruce is a licensed therapist specializing in eating disorders, anxiety and ADHD. She is based in downtown San Francisco and sees clients in-person and virtually in the greater California area.
