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The Secret Language of Eating Disorders
Blog Contributed By: Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin, Psy.D.
What is your eating disorder saying to you? Restricting, binging and/or purging often express what cannot be thought, felt or even known. For example:
“I feel fat”
Fat is a substance, not a feeling. Substitute an emotion (mad, sad, afraid, anxious) for the word “fat.” What are you really feeling? You may fear your emotions, needs and/or wants are too intense and burden other people.
Translation: “I feel, want, and/or need too much.”
“I ate so much, my stomach hurt”
When emotional pain is unbearable, painful emotions are converted into physical sensations. If you’re lonely, you may use food to symbolically fill an internal void. In this way, eating until your stomach hurts is an unconscious way of turning the ache of loneliness into physical pain (which may be easier to manage and get rid of than emotional pain).
Translation: “I’m in emotional pain.”
“I’m in the mood for potato chips”
Expressions involve biting (“don’t bite head off” or “he chewed me out”) connect biting with anger. Similarly, crunchy foods like potato chips convey anger. If you’re upset and can’t communicate your feelings with words, eating crunchy food is a way of showing anger. If you get mad at yourself for what you’re eating, you’re taking anger towards others, or at a situation, and turning it on yourself.
Translation: “I’m angry and upset.”
“I feel like an addict – I just can’t stop eating”
Food metaphors often describe a feeling of yearning: Hungry for love. Starving for attention. Your relationship to food can reveal that something is missing in your life. Are you hungry for love, connection, or acknowledgment? By recognizing the deprivation, and meeting your true needs, you stop using food for that purpose.
Translation: “I can’t get enough of what I need in life.”
“I like that clean empty feeling after purging”
If you feel shame or guilt about wanting more or have mixed feelings, you’re in conflict. Since conflict can feel messy, purging can be understood as a way of figuratively cleaning up chaotic internal feelings.
Translation: “I want to get rid of my messy thoughts and emotions.”
“I hate to eat.”
People struggling with anorexia often experience closeness as dangerous. Their solution is to keep others at a distance and deny needs for anyone or anything, especially food. They may fear taking up space in the world, being “too big” and having an opinion.
Not taking in food is a way of keeping out intrusion in the form of food, not people. Restricting is a way of showing disdain for needs and/or others. Staying small may also express a fear of being an adult (whatever your actual age).
Translation: “I don’t want to have needs. I’m only safe with myself.”
Deciphering the language of disordered eating is a crucial step to recognizing out what’s really going on internally. When you identify your true emotions, needs, and wishes, and attend to them with words instead of food, you can give up your eating disorder for good.
About the author:
Nina Savelle-Rocklin, Psy.D. is a Los Angeles-based psychoanalyst who specializes in weight, food and body image issues. She is a recognized expert on eating disorders, interviewed and quoted by the Los Angeles Times, Prevention, Real Simple, and many other publications.
Dr. Nina writes an award-winning blog, Make Peace With Food, hosts a popular podcast, Win The Diet War with Dr. Nina, and can be seen on her YouTube video series, The Dr. Nina Show. She is currently writing a book for Rowman & Littlefield on the psychoanalytic treatment of eating disorders. For more information, please visit www.winthedietwar.com.
The opinions and views of our guest bloggers are shared to provide a broad perspective of eating disorders. These are not necessarily the views of Eating Disorder Hope, but an effort to offer discussion of various issues by different concerned individuals.
